Quote:
Originally Posted by hankster
sorry, but no. this post should have a trigger on it. you made excuses for her seductive behavior at the beginning, and now she is telling you that her dogs are more important than your therapy. you were betrayed before by a T with bad boundaries, this T should be especially scrupulous, but she's not. she is putting her wants ahead of your needs. you didn't meet her at an exercise class, as equals. you know, if you can just hold on, accept these feelings, but not indulge them, they do go where they are supposed to. just keep them in the therapy room, realize they ARE about therapy.
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Hankster, thanks for your thoughts, but I fear that I've not expressed a few things clearly enough. When she asked about whether I ever had thought about wanting to go out to dinner, she meant in a friends way - we were talking about the boundaries of the T relationship in general and it was at the beginning of our relationship. I think, too, since we didn't know each other she was trying to get a sense of what I knew and understood about good, strong boundaries. She said that she had clients who sometimes wished that they could go to dinner w/ her as friends and that these are legitimate feelings, but such a thing cannot happen within the confines of a therapy relationship. I tend to beat myself up over feelings, thinking that they are wrong or bad to have and not recognize that feelings will come and that I'm not bad for having them and it's how I choose to react to them that matters.
About the dog thing, after I brought up thinking that I wish we could go to dinner or something, but knowing that this wasn't OK, she was again trying to legitimize my feelings (mixed up a little with shame for thinking this) by saying that what I said wasn't completely out in left field. I appreciate her sharing with me that the thought about me taking care of her dog had crossed her mind, but she didn't hesitate that this could not happen. We have a very open and honest relationship and I appreciate her sharing her feelings - I don't feel at all as though they've been put on me, nor do I feel like acting on my wanting to have dinner w/ her or whatever.
I cannot express what a difference this relationship is and how much this T has stood up for me with respect to my previous T.
I will put a trigger on the thread - my apologies to all for not having done this initially.
p.s. I think that her sharing about her thought process was also in the vein of modeling healthy behaviors - i.e., having such a thought, but then neither acting on it in respect of the necessary boundaries in the therapy relationship, nor beating oneself up for just having a thought. She tends to model lots of healthy behaviors for me given my lack of role models for this growing up...