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Originally Posted by unaluna
Oh, thats not good. Imo. That kinda explains why you keep bumping up against his "countertransference". I mean, my feeling was, i didnt like my feelings to begin with - i dont need somebody ELSE telling me im effed up and to stop it. I want to confront it with him.
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Yeah, I'm trying to confront him about it. He has this whole thing about being honest and up front with people--both clients and people in his real life. It's just, honesty is great and all, but there is such a thing as being *too* honest. So he's agreed to be more "gentle" with it for me, at least for the time being.
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But maybe thats part of his aspie/sports/AA paradigm - you dont want to indulge and thereby enforce the unwanted behavior, which UPR would imply, so he confronts and redirects it ASAP?
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Wait, what do you mean by the aspie and AA parts of that? He has a son on the spectrum, but pretty sure he isn't. And AA--Alcoholics Anonymous or something else?
But for the second part, see: the honesty thing.
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Because IF you wanted to confront it with him, then, when he turned around to put the stone back on the sill and you felt bad, you needed AT THAT MOMENT to tell him what you were feeling - that you had hoped FOR A MOMENT he would return it to you.
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The thing with that was...would he have only been giving it back because I asked? Would he have felt like he had to? I wanted him to offer it, to feel comfortable enough with it, from what I said, to say, "OK, you know what? Here's the stone back."
I did sort of confront him about it in my e-mail, saying, "Sorry, just one last thing. I think maybe your holding up the stone to me today to verify which one it was--that may have been kind of triggering. This stupidly hopeful part of me thought for a split second maybe you'd offer it back to me, especially because you said you didn't recall how you'd acquired it (so you had no particular emotional connection to it). So it sort of felt like you were dangling this potentially comforting thing in front of me, then taking it back again. I'm sure that wasn't your intention, but it felt that way a bit."
His response to that part was: "Regarding your other email about the stone, I'm sorry for the confusion and if my picking it up was hurtful to you. Not my intention, but I can see how you may have expected me to give it back to you at that moment as I reflect on the conversation with hindsight - which is, of course, 20/20. At this point the whole stone-as-a-connection concept has become muddled to me and I think I will need to talk to a colleague or two as a way of helping me make sense of my thinking and your needs/request."
So it seems he realized what he did and how I could have expected a certain reaction then.
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Its a different kind of therapy than youve been reporting, really being in the moment, but i think UPR is essential then. Because how could respond any way but kindly to you? Not necessarily returning the stone, but dealing with your feelings right then. But YOU have to make those moments happen. You have to realize that nothing else on todays agenda is more important than your feeling at that moment.
Thats how i did t, anyway.
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I'm trying to get better at confronting the feelings in the moment...but if he had said "No," when I asked for it back...that would have been extremely painful. I was too afraid of that. Or I'd worry he'd give it back for the wrong reasons and still be really uncomfortable with it, so then it wouldn't really give me comfort.