Thanks for the feedback, everyone. It helps to get different perspectives.
I am still angry at T, but I am working under the assumption that we were both having off days that added up to nothing good. I came into the session slightly angry and disappointed by his statements from the week before. Yes, I did interrupt him twice. He occasionally tells me little anecdotes about his life (not usually relevant to therapy; he even prefaced his sock story with "I am going a little off topic here") and usually I appreciate them, but that day they were badly timed. There was so much else in the room that I wanted to address that it felt fair to interrupt him.
Unfortunately, he took offence with me interrupting his stories. He usually rescues me out of silences, but (at the end of the session) he admitted that he hadn't that day because I had interrupted him earlier. That felt like revenge. Not cool.
As for me not breaking the silence - there were three topics I wanted to talk about coming into the session, two of which he dismissed entirely (the birthday party and a conversation from the previous week) and one which did not get adequately resolved (the village thing). If he's not available to talk to me, why should I take the risk to bring up something else? I was not expecting him to be helpful anymore that day and I should have just left the session early.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Perna
If you did not continue to talk about what it was you were interested in (the birthday party?) and would not let him move on; where is he supposed to go? He is not in your head, does not know all about the birthday party and what you feel and what you'd like to know from him, etc. unless you let him know. Did you think it "took balls" to leave? Since he did, I would have followed up on that comment
|
It may have not been entirely clear from my first post, but I did keep talking after this particular comment of his. He just kept giving me short answers and never really engaged in that conversation with me, so I eventually dropped the topic because I felt like I was talking to a wall.