Well, this was bound to end up just as it has, wasn't it? You recognize this is about more than his standing or not. You recognize the emotion you're placing on this one minor action is excessive. The task of therapy is to take that awareness and follow it through, rather than short-circuit it by action. And that's where you are right now: you want to follow it through. The problem is, he doesn't share your framework for the task of therapy. He's a CBT sports psych guy and you keep trying to get him to respond outside his area of practice. He doesn't want to do psychodynamic therapy, yet you keep demanding that he do so. And he keeps dragging you back to that fact, which you don't want to accept.

That's a reenactment in the making. A reason it hasn't blown up entirely is that he won't play along. In that respect, he's doing his job. But the problem is that it still leaves you with an emotional conundrum that you can't resolve with him.

I'm curious about why the recognition on your part that this is about your childhood relationship with your parents isn't enough of a realization for you? Why isn't it for you to think about and solve? You know very well that he is not going to meet the unmet need; he's made that ever so clear. But you've already reached the insight: why do you need him to engage with you about it? You've said before that your parents dismissed your anxieties as a child and you felt some combination of shame/invisibility/confusion/pain about that. OK--there's an unmet need. But to expect someone who has been very clear that they are not going to meet that need and see no point in engaging about it, to nevertheless meet it, is fruitless. It's not therapeutic, it's a compulsion. Are you sure it isn't also fueled by anxiety/OCD?

I think he is defensive, and I think he doesn't express himself in the most skilled way. I think there is a level of rudeness in his reply. But one thing he is clear about is his boundaries and the psychological arena in which he practices. And he is clear about your refusal to accept this. I thought he should have drawn the line at the stone. I can imagine he talked himself into allowing it out of a sense of the stone as a talisman and mindfulness during your interview. That would fit with a sports psych perspective. It was when you made the association of connection to him that he got uncomfortable--because that is a psychoanalytically based concept, and he either doesn't know much about it or has rejected it.


For me, it's the question: what's really going on that you feel a need to keep trying to make him respond in a way that is counter to his perspective? And how does that help you? If he's been helpful in terms of anxiety or something, fine--keep using him for that. If he's a pretty good T, he'll keep drawing that line in the sand; if the time comes when he feels there's diminishing benefit to you to keep seeing you, he'll terminate. But you're never going to get needs met that are beyond the scope of his practice.