There was a famous Polish rabbi that lived around the end of the 18th/beginning of the 19th century. In part, he was known for being a gifted teacher. One day, Rabbi Burim was out walking with a group of students when he stopped and pointed to another group of men. "They're dead", he said to his students. They replied in confusion, "what do you mean, they're dead, they are out walking around?"

"They've stopped asking questions," said Rabbi Burim.

I told this story to my son a couple of weeks ago as we were having a discussion about questions, what questions can imply, and what you do with the answers to the questions you ask. In law, the traditional advice is never to ask a question (in court, on cross exam) that you don't know the answer to.

I do have a point, actually more than one. One is obviously that it is good, even critically important, to ask questions of your T. You were brave for asking the question. Keep asking questions and otherwise asking for what you need. But the other point is that once you ask the question, things are kind of out of your hands. I'm not always prepared to deal with the answers to the questions that I raise, or the reaction of the person to the question that I ask.

My impression from reading your description of the interaction is, first of all, it seems like you did a pretty amazing job raising the issue of the "ultimatum" with your T and trying to talk about it. It sounds like it was really triggery to talk about it, but you hung in there and tried to make sense of it. I'm sorry that you were left feeling so confused and upset.

But the other thing I'm wondering about is if you can see, from your observational stance, how you might answer this question if you had been asked it. Not necessarily that you are the T and she is the client, but maybe it would be useful to just think briefly about the question, "what would you have done if I did X?" if it had been asked of you, rather than by you.

My kid has asked me that question before, and the question itself seems to me to imply a dynamic where the presumption is that there will be consequences for "bad behavior." The question itself seems to set up a situation where the asker presumes that she is in a less than equal position to the other and that the other has the power to hurt her.

I wonder if your T was attempting to get at your understanding of the relationship between you and why you would think about your relationship this way. I could see how anything she said in this context might seem like anger, because you are kind of primed to see her in the light of a punishing other.

That said, I generally dislike it when T's, or really anyone, answer a question with a question, or a series of questions. I think a better way to have approached this with you would be to give you a straightforward answer, such as, IDK, maybe "I would have felt sad for you that you were choosing the mother rather than yourself." Then ask her questions in the spirit of, "can we look at what your question seems to be all about? It seems that your beliefs underlying the question are important here."

But, as is often talked about on this board, T's aren't perfect and they don't always know the best way to react to what their clients say and ask. Maybe if you feel like you can't ask her a question again, I hope you can at least raise the issue and tell her how you felt about this exchange, or ask her to talk more about it with you next time.

But please don't think that you shouldn't ask questions, that sounds like it's coming from the past where people tried to silence you. You don't have to be silent now.

Anne