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Originally Posted by tomatenoir
Thank you both. It's nice to know I'm not the only one who only ends up feeling stuff hours, sometimes days later. And even then, I can't identify the emotion half the time. I generally only feel something when he repeats what I'm saying back to me. Then I think, "Oh! That's really sad!" I don't know what to make of it.
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That sounds so familiar. The T I had few years ago (the one who would allow e-mail) would actually actively help me to identify my feelings/emotions for myself. Also asking me all the time: What am I feeling? Whereabout in my body am I feeling what? The physical sensastion/s and the location/s in our body can actually give you some idea what the feeling/s are about.... Might be slightly different for everyone, ie fear for some is pressure in your chest/lung. For others it's a knot in the stomach etc.. But with time I actually developed some sort of map of my inner emotional landscape/s, which resulted in being more able to navigate those emotional states by myself.
My first T experience ever was in my mid 20s (more than 20 years ago). I didn't have clue about myself, my emotions, I was completely unable to get into my own emotions. I would actively avoid them at any cost. I kept begging this T to "help" me. I would just sit there and say nothing at all, or just do some chatting about everyday stuff. I would have needed at the time what the other T provided decades later: Help in "holding" my emotions, identifying those emotions, dealing with my emotions, and thus making the experience that my emotions won't kill me, that they might not be so dangerous after all...
But I wasn't able to specifically ask for that, and the very first T didn't realize that her approach wasn't really working for me...
Yes, your T can be a good and professional T, yet at the same time he can be the wrong T *for you* at this moment in time. Because you might need something else, something your T is not willing (or unable) to provide.
And I think, asking for some emotional grounding after an upsetting session isn't asking for too much.
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For me it's a singular kind of relationship, but it's not a fake one. I've sort of come to the point where I think it's fighting against human nature to say the therapist-client relationship is purely professional. I think it falls somewhere in-between professional and personal.
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Add some transference you got a mix that makes this relationship so very complicated.... For me, a lot of my (emotional) needs that surface in therapy are very early needs that weren't met for some reason or other. Because my parents weren't (emotionally) available, and now this T is for me, my little warped brain transfers those unmet needs onto T. Which might explain why those wishes and desires sometimes can get so incredibly strong.
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I'm considering changing therapists/quitting too. I sent an email to another therapist saying I was looking for someone open to the occasional email and the occasional hug, but I haven't heard back from them. Maybe I'll try someone else.
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That seems like a good idea. Maybe if you give a thought or two about what it is what you really need/want from a T, on a emotional level (and not just email or a hug...) you might be able to ask potential Ts the right sort of questions in order to find one who is a better fit...
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I have affection for my therapist, and I would miss him, but I know that would pass in time. It's frustrating, because he's so bloody insightful -- but if I don't feel like I can trust him anymore none of that really matters.
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The thing for me is, it is not so much about insight and analysis, for me it's more about putting the emotional pieces together. And for me, the emotional jigsaw does have a different picture from the analytical, cognitive one. So for me the quest is to put those to pictures together and integrate them into some sort of new narration that incorporates both, the emotional and the analytical.
Not sure whether it makes any sense at all.
Wishing you all the best, c_r