Quote:
Originally Posted by Syra
Further, if one person thinks it's happening and the other says "no, and I don't want to talk about it" it's a problem too.
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It depends. I usually say I don't want to talk about it when someone is being aggressive and isn't listening well to me. I expect that when I say I don't want to talk about it, for the person to stop talking about it. Doesn't mean that I might not be willing to talk about it in the future, if the other person drops what I perceive to be defensiveness and the conversation seems like it might have a shot at being productive. I can't imagine it being acceptable for a T to insist on talking about a certain topic, but I don't think it's acceptable for a client to insist either. It might be a big sign that it's time to end things with this T, and if I thought that a T was unwilling to talk about something I wanted to talk about, I would most certainly switch to someone else more open.
I'm not trying to convince you or anyone else that your T's don't give you valid or invalid negative feedback. I have learned that it's critical to healthy relationships to be willing to consider whether there is something of value in that feedback and be open to change, rather than reflexively put if off on the other person. Which is something I feel that people often do, myself included. But everyone is themselves in the best position to judge whether this is something they do, or not.