Quote:
Originally Posted by growlycat
Does your T ever unwittingly give you the impression that certain things or topics make them uneasy? Even if they don't own up to it? And does it make you wonder what their triggers and issues are?
For example:
My CBT T shares his office with a child psych intern. The tiny room explodes with toys. I have always found that sort of funny and charming. Toys make the kid in me smile. No matter how solemn the discussion, there are those 3 dopey teddy bears staring out from the shelf behind T's head.
These toys and mention of these toys seems to annoy, disgust and even creep out my therapist. Those 3 teddies might as well be evil clown dolls by the way he reacts.
It makes me wonder if he was pressured to grow up too fast and shun childish things? Although he is a cheery, upbeat and confident guy, toys make him leery.
I hope my thread makes sense. It's hard when T's throw up boundaries because they slip and show themselves anyways.
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My guess is that he might be annoyed about sharing his space with someone else? I had a T who had two offices once...one in one location was all his and the other he shared with someone else and he wasn't nearly as comfortable there. He commented on it once saying pretty much exactly that...he didn't have his own chair there and it wasn't decorated to his taste at all. I didn't like it there much, either...it was kind of awful.
I was also just thinking that if I had to share a tiny space with
that many toys like your T does, I would start to get overstimulated very quickly!
One of my Ts now sees a lot of children so he has board games and other assorted things...just one teddy bear, though. The teddy bear was sitting where I usually sit yesterday, actually...til I moved him.
His office is small, so I am glad he doesn't have any more toys than he does, because it's already kinda disorganized and that makes me a bit nutty.
Back to your question about discomfort...the aforementioned T doesn't like health-related things. He has confirmed this...he also said he could not watch Bones, my favorite show, because of the "forensic anthropology stuff." (So he also gets grossed out fairly easily, I suppose.) I have a lot of health issues, and he looks uncomfortable sometimes when I talk about them. It doesn't bother me very much, though; I figure it's kind of an empathetic response (like, in a way he feels uncomfortable that I go through so much crap). I am the exact opposite about health related stuff (nothing bothers me) so I just keep going. I figure he can deal with it (it doesn't bother me if he shows that he is human...I actually prefer it), discomfort or not.
Overall, he discloses quite a bit and I know a lot about him, so there isn't too much to analyze!