Quote:
Originally Posted by smileygal
Hhmm, maybe a response from me here is required but going to share my thoughts again anyway since it is a thread and you are open to discussion.
I don't know the rest of the story behind this comment so I may very well be off base but it actually irked me a little. Like yes of course it is positive to hear a client say they want to change something explicitly but you are in therapy because you want to change things.
|
Thanks for your comments. Honestly, it kind of bothered me, too. Like, of course I'm here to change things! His comment came about because I said I felt like on Friday and Sunday he was being critical of how my mind works. And today I said, "But I don't want to be this way. I don't want to be reacting so strongly when people are critical. Can you help me figure out how to change that?" (This was through tears.)
Quote:
He seems to place a lot of the onus on you and your response. I mean yes you are the one in therapy sure so he should be examining that and not himself in your therapy but a personal peeve of mine which doesn't happen in my own therapy is the lack of discussion around how the dynamic works and how two people are interacting within that dynamic all the time.
The two things that jumped out from me when you mention him giving you feedback or correcting you are they are off things that he initially created and then changed. Like the emails. I may be misremembering a bit but he put them out there as a thing you could do and then they started to get a bit much. To me by doing that he is sending you the message implicitly that you are being too much (I'm not saying you are) but verbally then saying you aren't. That would be confusing to me.
|
Yes, and this is something that has also been an issue for me in the past with T's (and other people) in my life--and he knows this, as we talked about it a lot early on regarding my former marriage counselor (ex-MC) and a bit with ex-T.
He was saying today again that he let me know as soon as it was bothering him (well, he waited a session because I was really struggling with an outside issue, so he didn't think it was an appropriate time). So it wasn't a big deal for him. That he even tries to let me know earlier on than he would tell other clients because he knows it's a concern for me that things have been bothering someone for a while and they haven't said something.
I did say today with the check-in texts that it seemed like he just expected me to psychically know when they became too much for him. How it was particularly difficult for me because it was something I had even checked in about. That's been an issue in my outside life, too, if I check in with, say, a friend or my H on whether something is OK, they say it's fine, and then at some random time they suddenly decide it's not fine, and I had no way of knowing that. It's harder for me because I did try to make sure it was OK.
Quote:
|
I don't know I'm waffling now but if just seems some of the feedback he gives would sting me too but I know it's because of my own trauma and rejection and abandonment issues. Wounds like that can be deep and it is understandable that people respond in certain ways when they are wounded like that. I don't know if him repeating and old wound and then just expecting you to react different because you want to or 'know' you should the way.
|
It helps to know some of it would sting me, too. And I also have some trauma and abandonment issues. I think I got through to him more today in what it can feel like for me. I had made this comment on Friday while he was being critical that I felt like I just wanted to jump out the window. At the time, he didn't really say anything, and I quickly changed it to "I wish I could throw my brain out the window and get a new one."
Today, I mentioned that comment--prefacing it with my fear that it would sound manipulative (he's called something I said that in the past)--and said it was the sort of thing where he could choose to explore it, like, "So what is going on with you here? What is making you feel that way?" He nodded. I said how in that moment, it was that the shame felt so unbearable that I wanted to just disappear. I think maybe he got it a little more then?