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Old May 22, 2018, 08:52 AM
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LonesomeTonight LonesomeTonight is offline
Always in This Twilight
 
Member Since: Feb 2015
Location: US
Posts: 22,065
Reposting more relevant parts of from In Session Today as an update on this thread from yesterday's session:
Part 1 of 2 (to keep this from being insanely long): I said I still felt the need to discuss some of the stuff from last week. He said OK. I started crying and pulled out an e-mail I'd written but hadn't sent. I said I wasn't sure if I should let him read it or just read parts of it to him myself. He said up to me. I said I wanted to skim it really quick. Did that and nervously handed him to read, saying the handwritten notes on the bottom probably wouldn't make any sense without my explaining them. I sat there awkwardly while he read it.

Here's what it said (will continue actual session in part 2):
"I'm still upset that I feel you've been deceitful to me over the past 8 months. That I asked you numerous times if you'd feel comfortable working with transference if it developed, and you always said yes. But now you're saying it would be "unhealthy" and expressing your lack of comfort for it. So...how will I know whether to trust you in the future? It almost feels like you just said "sure, I'll be OK with it," hoping it wouldn't develop and you wouldn't have to deal with it. Which was doing a disservice to me.

Now, if this is a case where you *thought* you would be comfortable, but now, faced with evidence of it, like the stone thing, you're less sure. In which case, tell me that.

And I'm struggling with the "try to be more comfortable" thing. I appreciate that you're trying, but I still feel like it will make me reluctant to share, which I feel defeats the purpose of therapy.

Can I ask what makes you uncomfortable? Is it a case where you feel you're doing/have done something wrong in handling me, and it's about that? Or you're concerned you won't handle it correctly going forward? In other words, more professional sort of discomfort? Or is this more on a personal level, like you just don't like the idea of anyone, aside from you family, being attached to you?

I guess...are you more concerned about it affecting me or affecting you is sort of the difference, I think?

I feel like part of why I pay you is to keep your stuff generally out of the room. Otherwise...how is this much different from me being friends with someone who happens to have a psychology degree? Where I have to worry about their feelings and comfort, too?

Yes, I get that sharing some of your reactions could help me therapeutically. But...saying you're uncomfortable when I express any sort of transference/attachment...well, that comes back to the judgment sort of thing that you don't seem to understand. I feel like you're pathologizing me. It makes me want to go back to not sharing feelings/thoughts with people. Which, yeah, OK, maybe in some cases I shouldn't, but in other cases I should.

I don't know...I'm not sure how to make all of this make sense to you. And I'm not so much asking you to agree with me on all this, just to understand, to validate me.

I just keep thinking I want to go back and never have told you about the stone. Or maybe that I'd never even asked for one, because it made me have delusions that you were OK with things when you weren't."

At the bottom, I'd handwritten (because I hadn't intended to hand it to him):
"Not romantic love"
"Keeping me from discussing things--dream"
"Feel I have to consider your 'comfort' now"

(Part 2 below)