Hankster, yes. Totally. I feel like a lot of traditional therapeutic stances (just like a lot of parenting baloney) does not give the client enough credit. We're not stupid. We aren't resisting improvement. You said something in another thread about tactics and I HATE tactics. Actually tactics were a source of the last one of these conflicts between me and T, where he was trying to adopt the "cold and distant" dogma of the Freudian camp, but did not tell me he was going to do that. Like I wasn't going to notice a difference. Understanding is absolutely a two-way street.

I like that for the most part, T DOES give me credit for being perceptive and having a good grasp of the theory behind a lot of this stuff, to the point of being able to tell the difference between something being difficult and something not working. But sometimes it just blows up.

Today was not good . Indeed, at the end there was a whole "tactic" thing that came up. By the end of the session (we went WAY over time), I was almost yelling, as close to yelling as I get with someone who isn't related or married to me. The slight Boston accent I had before college began to rear its head, as it is wont to do when I am really incensed.

Last night we talked on the phone, and we talked about what I'd said about wanting to ask him if he was really doing everything he could. He said yes, and I was just so disappointed and crushed. "No" would have made me really angry, but at least it would have given me a little hope. What do you do when someone's best isn't good enough?

And then this morning... well, we talked a lot, and he was again getting chronology mixed up. And the chronology is actually really important for this particular issue. One of the major events was one he didn't even really remember (which is ok in and of itself, I could see why it would have seemed small at the time), the other he had mixed up, and said something like, "I can't imagine myself saying something like that after already knowing X." Well YOU DID. And finally I just said that it didn't even seem like he had tried to go back and figure out what happened, and who said what when, and try to understand why he did what he did. I felt like he kept saying things like, "Well I don't remember, but I don't think I would mean X," or "That doesn't seem like it would have been my intention," when I suggest a possible reason for his behavior.

And he said, "You're right. I haven't gone back to my notes or e-mails about this."

My actual response: "WHAT THE F*** IS THAT??"

And then he went on to explain the stupid theory, that there was a reason why he was only going on my perception of events and correcting things when they seemed to be off, blah blah, and I said I GET IT. He asked me to explain, and of course I know why. Normally, he'd want to stick with the way I saw things, MY truth, in order to keep the focus on me and my thought process. But he wasn't really doing that. He was sort of half-correcting based on information he didn't even remember. I told him he couldn't have it both ways, and anyway now is not the time.

He said, "But this is the opposite of what you said, that you get tired of my explaining where I'm coming from." UGH. "I get tired of your explaining irrelevant aspects of where you're coming from that don't have to do with why I'm upset! Then you DON'T explain the things I keep saying I don't understand!"

And in the end, he started twisting my words around. Like I said, this has to do with scheduling, and in part that he said one thing at one time, then said the opposite without acknowledging that he'd even said the first thing. I can't deal with that s*** and will not have it in therapy. He keeps coming back to thinking that what I'm really upset about is that time that was available is no longer available, but I'm not: I am upset about feeling he's not trustworthy when he says that he will have a certain availability no matter what happens with my job or location.

He had tried to correct this somewhat before by saying that if I HAD changed location, he WOULD have made that time available again, so it's not accurate for me to think he'd have just said, "Oh well, guess we can't meet." I found this irritating because it's not what I'm upset about. He keeps insisting it's important I know that, and it probably is, but NOT NOW. I told him that even though that might be the case IF I had changed location, I haven't changed location, and what I did do was change jobs, and he has been a pain in the ***** about accomodating that. And he said "So it IS about the time!" My actual response: "NO. It's about your being an a**h*** about the time."

I left when I was about to really start ugly-crying. I was so upset, so distraught. I didn't even plan to write about all this but I'm just so frustrated. With a little time to calm down, I realize that I really can forgive all of this... if he were just sorry. None of it is a big deal. So he forgot to tell me that what he said he could do before, he could no longer do starting a few months ago. It happens. You just say, "I'm so sorry, I never told you, I can't make that time anymore. Let me look at my schedule and we'll see what we can do -- it will work out." But no.

I think what really bothers me from today, though, is his not looking back at old e-mails and his notes and seeing why he f***ed this up so badly. It means he doesn't really even feel the need to figure this out even just for himself. It means that even though he said he's doing everything he can, he didn't do this. I even asked him, "So if I just decided to stop coming back, and sometime a few months from now you found it in yourself to go back over this, and you saw that everything I said was true and made sense, what would you think? Would that be ok? Would you feel good about it?" He said no. AAAAAGGGHHHH.

Thus begins my time away. I've been avoiding just e-mailing him and saying that I have no real reason to wait, I may as well quit now. If it's at the breaking point and he doesn't even want to check his notes...

It's making me so sad, though. I got some referrals from my pdoc, who coincidentally I also had to see today, and as I look these people up I keep thinking of ways in which they are not T. T was a math major (yeah I don't know either) and gets all my lame math and science jokes. I am thoroughly spoiled with the amount of time I get from him. He knows everything about me. He saw me through some of the hardest years of my life. He can be really sweet. He is a vegetarian who like Pink Floyd and is well-read. WHY can't this just work. Sad