Quote:
Originally Posted by Mactastic
Growthing, you deserve to work with someone you can truly trust. The thing is, I get where you're coming from when you're scared your LCM won't call you back or when you're fearful she will take off and abandon you. I'm that way, too. As a matter of a fact, as I type this out there's a piece of me that wonders if my T will abandon me this week because I laid out some crazy transference feelings for him in an email the other day. But deep, deep down I know he will be there. Right on time, smile on his face, and not afraid to talk about it. Trust is a process, not something one gives overnight. And I'm in my process because he's never shown me otherwise.
Don't you deserve the same process? LCM means well, I have no doubts about that. But she's in over her head and it rubs me the wrong way that she's not been guiding you more clearly on the path towards finding a T to help you once you stop seeing school T.
I also know what it's like to be afraid of meeting new people and picking up the phone, but again, with practice it gets easier. I had a "crash course" in this when I started my career 7 years ago and I can truly say it's much better. Not easy, but much improved. It is possible to work with a T to get over your social anxieties. I don't think there's many therapists that would expect you to be 100% comfortable with them and sit in silence waiting for you to tell your whole story in the first session. And consulting a T does not mean you have to pick one. You're just consulting.
I'd like to say one more thing, and this part might sting so I'm sorry. I want to ask you to give serious consideration to your future with LCM. Can you see this relationship continuing as-is without causing harm? What happens if she moves? Gets engaged? Realizes she's not therapist-material and changes majors? How might you handle it if she cuts down on your time together? I think you need a therapist to help you work through the changes in your relationship that will happen because life is about changes and nothing is permanent.
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She's 36 and has been working in mental health with clients for years. I doubt she'll be changing majors. She's with a boyfriend she'd been with for 7 years. Her getting engaged wouldn't change much. They already live together and stuff. She's practically married. And she already has a daughter. She could get pregnant again I guess.
We already know that neither of us are going to live here forever. I can't live here forever. That's just not in the nature of my "actual job" works. I go to school in one place for a while, travel to different parts of the country over the summer to meet and play with different musicians, then I go to school in a new location for two years, and then I travel the country taking auditions and move to where I'm hired. She already told me a long time ago that someday she wants to move to San Francisco but that won't happen for many years and the odds that my job takes me to San Francisco as well is slim. There is the SFSO but I couldn't win that job until I'm a little older, a lot better, and if there is an opening. I have zero control of where I live. Well, I can decide where I'm not going to live.
I already know it isn't permanent. I have hope that maybe we can do something long distance when the time comes and make it together longer.
They prompted me in the past to tell them stuff. LCM and I covered a lot of ground the first time I met her. Not all of it and she does suck at time and that will sometimes work in my favor as she sat with me for an hour and a half. exTT sat with me and also prompted me for information. We got through a chunk of stuff. I don't remember school TT too well. I was also literally her first client ever so it wasn't all that put together. I remember she asked for my name, what year I am, and what instrument I play.
And deep down, I also knew she wouldn't leave. That she'd be proud of me. I know I need a new T as well. I'm not trying to say that her alone is good enough. I just feel like I need to defend LCM too. She's been so good to me. Not perfect by any means, but loving and caring and accepting.