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Old Jun 28, 2018, 07:51 AM
LonesomeTonight's Avatar
LonesomeTonight LonesomeTonight is offline
Always in This Twilight
 
Member Since: Feb 2015
Location: US
Posts: 22,061
Quote:
Originally Posted by ElectricManatee View Post
Ooh, I kind of love this vein of predicting Dr. T's reasons for not wanting to listen to the voicemail. I'm going to say that there isn't any grand therapeutic reasoning but instead that he felt uncomfortable for reasons he doesn't quite understand and thus balked to avoid getting into whatever topic the voicemail would provoke. He put his own feelings first and LT feels understandably confused and rejected. If he had reasons, wouldn't he have shared them? Honesty is his strength, after all. Hesitating until 1) she felt ashamed for even bringing it up and then 2) dropped the subject doesn't seem like a very deft clinical maneuver. I can't imagine being allowed to "get away" with immediately dropping something I had clearly wanted to talk about a minute ago because broaching the topic suddenly became uncomfortable. My T would hop on that like a dog on a dropped steak.

Now I feel like I should take some bets before I ask him today! Of course, if the reason you suggested is the one, I doubt he'd tell me. Or he could just say he didn't feel comfortable with it without giving me a reason.

In some ways, I guess it was a deft clinical maneuver, at least for his benefit--it got me to not do something that may have made him uncomfortable, right? Maybe he's realized if he questions me enough about why I want to do something, I just end up backing down... Which is not beneficial to me, of course...

Though it was getting close to the end of the session by that point (maybe 15 minutes left?), so I didn't want to keep pushing it, then have him agree to it, then play it with like 5 minutes left for me to process the feelings it dug up. I like your dog/steak metaphor for your T!
Thanks for this!
ElectricManatee, SalingerEsme