Second session of the week. I gave him some more notes. He told me he had read the rest. I mentioned how I had been thinking about topics to discuss with my teacher. Lots of normal topics like college, but I'd also like to ask him whether he remembers anything about our discussions over lunch. T asked why. I said it's not really that I care about whether he remembers, but I want to know whether my memories are accurate. Also, I don't really remember a whole lot about those meetings. I talked to that teacher for more than a year, for almost every week. Plus emails. But I remember very, very little. There's things that are almost like a movie, and then there's huge patches of no memories at all. My normal memory works differently, for example from my early college years, I couldn't tell you specifics, but I can remember the overall theme.
We also discussed that I had new memories that I never really remembered before that suddenly keep popping up. T said that's normal, that the mind works that way. That I'm currently thinking a lot about that time and actually am going back to the place where lots of the memories are, so it's normal that things come up that previously maybe didn't enter my mind.
At some point I started crying and shaking. T was quiet until I managed to calm down. He asked whether I was having flashbacks. I told him that at first I kept thinking that he'd not talk to me anymore and abandon me. Then I remembered all of the people who actually did that.
T asked whether that was something that I worried about with the teacher as well. I nodded. He wanted to know what my behavior was like during our lunch meetings. Whether I behaved similarly to the way I act with T, for example lie down and curl up. I said that the most I did was cry, but not very often. T asked how my teacher reacted to my behavior, whether he ever tried to comfort me. I said that it didn't seem like that a whole lot, but one time he hugged me. We also discussed what exactly I remember about these meetings, like topics, whether we ever did small talk, things like that.
I also told T about the emails we used to exchange. I was bullied and the teacher was my 'head' teacher, which means he was the one organizing everything for my class, the one who'd talk to parents and so on (our system is very different from the US system, he basically just has a bit more authority). I told him about the bullying via email almost every day. T asked whether those emails still exist, I said I made a backup but apparently child me only wanted to save the replies, not my actual writing. T laughed. He also asked whether there was already a way to back up data in that year and I said I created DVDs of my data...
T asked whether I thought the stuff that happened with my teacher was okay. I said no. He asked why not. I said first off reports of bullying should be taken way more seriously and it shouldn't be an ongoing thing for over months. Second, I don't think he should have hugged me or have met with me over lunch. And he should have brought me to somebody who actually knows how to deal with my issues.
T agreed with me. He said that the relationship wasn't really what it should be with a teacher. That a teacher shouldn't enter a relationship outside of class with a student, let alone have physical contact with them. He explained this for quite a while. He even compared it to
. Though he said my case wasn't as bad from what he could tell, he still said it was clearly very boundary crossing and that the teacher would probably have been fired if anyone found out.
T then mentioned how there's lots of similarities between my relationship with that teacher, my relationship with one of my former friends and my relationship in therapy. He said how he has to be careful not to repeat patterns I had with those people. I said how that sounds like I shouldn't give him my journal anymore (since I wrote a lot of things down in both of the relationships he had mentioned). He said that it's different. That he has to be careful, but at the same time engage with some parts of the pattern. And how it's okay as long as we talk about it any have an open communication.
He also talked about a stone my teacher used to play with, which I took after one of our talks. T said how that symbolizes to him that I need people to physically be around instead of just keeping them in my mind. I mentioned how I did the same thing with some of the stuff T gave me. he said that that's okay but that in the long run the goal would be that I can just have a memory of people that are important to me and that that's enough.
At some point we had to say good bye. He told me to be careful when meeting my teacher, to not fall into old habits. And that I could of course still write everything down so he can read it.