Quote:
Originally Posted by comrademoomoo
I think I mean something different when I refer to him helping you to know how to emotionally survive the misattunements. I don't really mean if he is exploring coping strategies with you or taking a behavioural approach, but whether he is working through the misattunement with you and staying with it long enough that you can develop a sense of recovery and safety within yourself. I can't describe it very well.
Do you know the Gestalt prayer? Personally, I think it is pretentious and it's a bit of a cliche (and I am certainly not recommending Gestalt as an option, it can be brutally abrupt), but it says something about those times when being in connection isn't possible.
I do my thing and you do your thing.
I am not in this world to live up to your expectations,
And you are not in this world to live up to mine.
You are you, and I am I,
and if by chance we find each other, it's beautiful.
If not, it can't be helped.
So, easy to say "it can't be helped". When your core wounds are the business which is being missed, it really hurts, but I think there is something useful in accepting and still feeling safe in the natural disconnections of relationships.
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OK, I think I understand now what you were trying to say. With the misattunements, I feel he often thinks they're completely resolved and he doesn't have to address them anymore. And often, I will also think this, but then will realize the next session or a week or even months later that it's still affecting me, and I don't fully trust him or don't feel safe, say, sending him an email (or asking him for something or whatever).
So I think it's perhaps just as much me not staying in there and trying to work through the misattunement, thinking "OK, I'm past this" or "I *should* be past this." So to him, it likely seems that I am past it, so he's not bringing it up anymore. Yet it's still hanging out in my subconscious.
I had not heard the Gestalt prayer before--it's interesting. I was reading a little about Gestalt therapy and watching the Perls and Gloria session just now. And it feels like, despite not being formally trained in it (and maybe not even knowing much about it), Dr. T practices elements of that. Including the "It can't be helped" aspect of two humans interacting.
In this morning's session, he was telling me that he is more honest about what he's feeling with me than he is with other clients. Because he feels that it's "good" for me and will help me in the long run to realize that, for example, I can annoy someone, and it's OK--they aren't going to go anywhere, aren't going to leave.
I said how sometimes it was hurtful. He said he thought I'd prefer to see all the cards on the table. "Would you want me to have negative feelings about you and not tell you?" Me: "I guess not. But I also don't think you need to tell me every time that I annoy you." Dr. T: "I don't tell you every time." Me: "...So I actually annoy you more than you've said?" Dr. T: "Yes." Me: "Great, so now I'm worried that I'm annoying you all the time..." Dr. T: "LT, you really don't annoy me that often." Me: "OK. Good."
(You may note the contradiction there between his implying he'd share any negative feelings, then telling me that he doesn't share them all.)