Quote:
Originally Posted by awkwardlyyours
My former T was pretty solid about professional stuff when I was seeing her -- but that's entirely because I was in grad school then and she'd been through a grad program herself and basically knew exactly what I was talking about (it was one of the few areas where we had near total understanding).
When I started working, I switched therapists as well. Current T is awfully clueless -- I tried telling her some of the stuff that had happened in grad school (stuff I'd told my former T as well) and she gave me such clueless responses that I barely managed to not snort. With my present work stuff, I have a bunch of things -- the rare few times I've tried talking to her about it, she's tried to be super supportive and validating but her cluelessness just screams out loud.
So yeah, she's really really bad at helping me with that sort of stuff -- I have a couple of people I can sometimes rely on to help me think strategically about work stuff and so, I'm sorta covered. But, man yeah, if I just had to rely on my current therapist for dealing with work stuff, I might as well call it quits.
To make matters worse, a lot of my work issues are sort of culture-related (as in ethnicity / culture sort of stuff) and my current therapist is even more clueless about that sort of stuff -- I mean her cluelessness is really laughably ridiculous in this regard. So, unless I have the patience to break it down into little baby-sized-bites for her to digest and potentially say something useful (by which time, I might as well figure it out myself), all I can do is watch her flounder and get even more frustrated.
This is another area in which I really miss my former therapist -- she was super duper sharp in knowing when someone was screwing with me (work-wise or even family / relationship-wise) because of cultural norms versus just plain old douche-bag-i-ness. And, she had no hesitation about pointing it out to me.
Current T on the other hand, does some weird, bungling, bumbling, nonsensically naive thing whenever I bring up any of that cultural stuff and I kinda want to bang my head against the wall.
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I imagine it's helpful that you have people to talk with about the work stuff. I have a best friend who is good at understanding certain experiences, but she can be judgemental and doesn't have the experiential knowledge of organizations outside of her own. Something you said sparked a thought-your last T who you miss, had street smarts. Not your words, but that's my take on it and something that I would find useful too. Too bad it's something that you don't have access to anymore.
I want my T to understand, though, partly because it's part of me. It's not that he's out of touch that bothers me; more likely it provokes certain feelings because it seems to increase the distance between us, which provokes certain childhood emotional memories.
Is there something specifically that rubs you the wrong way at the lack of relating, or is it general annoyance? Curious; if you want to share. Of course these things can be irritating, upsetting...or whatever, due to merits of their own.
I don't know about you, but the being out of touch eventually reminds me of feelings of being different, which is something I struggled with but hid for a long time. Different in a bad sense; feeling that originate from childhood. Feelings like I'm from another planet. The being naive seems to provoke negative feelings in me, but I think that's because of issues with my mother, observing her repetitive victimization behavior around my father. There are also fears related to people who are naive or clueless yet in positions that can impact the safety of others. I can write 10 pages about this one issue.
Well, overall, this doesn't seem to be a major issue here (or my polls are just incredibly unpopular--or both), but it can be impactful to some. Aside from the underlying feelings I just explored here, from a practical perspective, there was someone at work with strong sociopathic traits (eg, glorified violence) who triggered my PTSD in a pretty bad way. In the throes of those emotions, I think it would be helpful for someone to understand workplace dynamics. EAPs are sort of a token resource when it comes to this sort of thing. It was a huge struggle to get through and I felt alone and scared and had no one to help. It wasn't a minor 'riff' sort of thing that I needed to simply whine about. I tend to stay away from talking about others with coworkers as that can turn into a gossip fest no matter how well intended. So yeah, it helps to have someone who is in the know.
Anywayz, thanks for the chat.