I guess I am taking the opportunity to use Psych Central to "journal." Maybe I should not do it. Maybe I should keep it to myself? I will express some thoughts that are not entirely "pleasant" and may upset some people.



Sometimes my therapist says something or does something that makes me afraid. I perceive (at least) that he is not being entirely honest, that he wants my approval too much, or that he does not want to contend with some behavior of mine or thoughts that I express to him. He does at times seem to criticize me for my behavior. Sometimes he seems not to want to understand what is happening, why people act the way they do; he would rather condemn, sometimes. I presume because some of it is a bit too frightening for him to contend with. There seems to me to be unresolved "counter-transference" to me and to others at times.

This reminds me of my own childhood: my mother often (always?) struck me as being insincere (at best). And along with insincerity, which I think I can understand (people being afraid of being punished or condemned for actually being genuine) came her punishing ways. I find it very hard to see, when someone seems to be covering up their true feelings, that at some point that is not going to result in a disaster for me. It reminds me too much of times in my childhood that were very challenging, in which I did not know if I were going to survive. (I am not sure I did survive entirely, psychologically.)

So having a therapist of whom I sometimes have thoughts that I think (correctly, at times) that he will not like, someone that I will have to disagree with, someone from whom I will definitely have to "separate" at times, can be very uncomfortable. It reminds me too much of times when as a child expressing a disagreement with my mother seemed like it would probably result in death. Certainly my mother often saw it as an act of treason against her.

I guess the same thing can be an advantage or a disadvantage. These things force one to remember highly unpleasant experiences from the past. The question I often have is this: are these things really in the past? Or are they still true today?