Quote:
Originally Posted by agma
I think that part of the reason it bothered me was because it was different. All of my past t's and pdoc's have had very clean organized offices, and so it just felt very odd. I didn't realize it would bother me until I experienced it. My own disorganization and piles of stuff don't bother me but theirs did. I did feel a bit clostrophobic in my group t's office which made it really hard to concentrate and answer his questions. It also just could be me giving myself an excuse to be distracted and not engage in therapy.
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I think it is easy to wonder if the T has it "together" enough to be a good therapist when their room is a disaster (my word, not yours).
My therapist's room was very cluttered. With necessary things, but it seemed that all surfaces, save for the one small parson's table between us whose purpose was to be the tissue holder, had a multitude of things on it. A six foot stretch of shelving had kids' stuff on the shelves (one shelf was cockeyed for several years) and also on the top shelf. Dozens and dozens of little figurines for play therapy. A doll house sat atop there or a low filing cabinet. Her vertical blinds had one missing slat that had fallen off and laid on the floor behind her desk for months and months. Her purse, soft satchel-style briefcase (with files shoved in it), and any shopping she had done, all lay under the desk in the kneehole. If she had a child patient before me that day, the paintbrushes would be soaking on her desktop.
Sometimes it was overwhelming! It bugged me a LOT at first, and especially the kids' "fun" stuff.
I told her after several years that it bothered me, and that I wanted to sweep my arm across all the surfaces and clear them. Another time or two I shared how there seemed to be things 'everywhere' in there. The room was painted once and the clutter improved but not by much.
So last spring she moved to another room. She added a nice modern desk with a hutch on top, reorganized the kids' shelving and added nice brown wicker baskets to hold a lot of the stuff. No more stuff under the desk. New nice horizontal blind on the window. I must have told her a half dozen times how much I liked her new room! Once I went further and said how the room feels so nice because it isn't cluttered. "Yes", she said, "The office manager had some suggestions, and you did too." I was tickled and embarrassed too. Embarrassed because at that point in therapy, I didn't realized what the relationship was; I didn't realize that anything I said like that was taken to heart or taken personally. Allll about me.
At home, too, I am bothered by clutter. I feel SO good when things are orderly.
