Thread: Trust.
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Old Jun 12, 2007, 08:41 PM
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Perna Perna is offline
Pandita-in-training
 
Member Since: Sep 2006
Location: Maryland
Posts: 27,289
I have a neat "example"/story I use for myself about trust.

My T was not born and raised in the United States (or speaking English) so her whole background and culture was different from my own. One session I spent a long time discussing how my plants around my house (on nearly an acre and backing to a State Park so semi "rural") were way overgrown and there was kudzu and creeper taking over my 80 year old hemlocks and too much poison ivy and my hedges in front were obscuring my windows, etc. and I'd bought a weed-whacker but I just couldn't "do" the landscaping myself, there was too much to do and it was too wild and besides, I didn't know how to mix gas and oil to run the weed-whacker and I was afraid of it and how I'd once bought myself an expensive chainsaw :-) but was terrified of that, etc.; I just waste money and think I'll do things but don't/can't and the darn plants just keep growing and that made me more anxious, depressed and ashamed, etc. I went on and on and my T was listening very closely and looking very sympathetic and was "with me" I could tell. It felt good.

The end of my discussing the plants and weed-whacker and how ashamed I was etc. happened to coincide with the end of the session and we were winding down/getting ready to leave and my T suddenly asked, "What's a weed-whacker?" I froze and then quietly explained what it was and it turned out she had thought all along that I lived in a row/townhouse with little property, had no clue I had such a big house/yard. I was momentarily crushed but then "remembered" her quality of listening, her wanting to be "with" me and understand/share my experience and I realized the intent had turned into the reality for me; she was with me and it didn't matter if I had been spouting Turkish, I knew I could always "trust" my T to do her darnedest to be with me/on the same page I was.
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