Quote:
Originally Posted by atisketatasket
I agree it’s a huge problem, though not exactly for the same reasons. He’s afraid of your emotions. He seems to have little grasp of them—like he’s surprised how upsetting the move is to you. Who knows what else his fear of your emotions has caused—like letting other boundaries lapse. He’s not thinking long-term about your treatment, just placating you in the short term.
(I am not saying any of this is conscious on your part.)
What he wants is an adult client, not a more personal relationship or friendship. But you’re not his typical client. You’re in therapy mainly to heal childhood wounds as far as I can tell. That means in therapy you’re not in adult mode, and you want that personal relationship or friendship. You need someone who isn’t afraid of your emotions and can hold boundaries in the face of them.
And this fundamental dysfunction leads to blow ups like this and others.
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Yes, I think you've described the dynamic pretty accurately. He's even said a couple times lately (not related to session reduction or the stuff this past week), regarding telling me something, "I didn't want to risk hurting you."
I do think he's afraid of my emotions at times. So he tends to pull back and get more closed off--if he doesn't understand what's going on. If he seems to get it, like something going on with my D, then he can be very empathetic.
And he has said numerous times that he's been surprised by how strongly I've been affected by the move. Even though I've tried to explain. It's not really helpful for someone to say, "Wow, I'm surprised at how strongly you're reacting to this."
I do think maybe he has let other boundaries lapse sometimes, and then maybe he's annoyed at himself for doing so and kind of takes that out on me maybe? I don't know. Like "You made me do this," even though he could have said no? He made a comment in session about how he had to call me Tuesday, and I said, "You didn't have to call me. You could have just replied to the email, and we'd have talked about it later in session."
Incidentally, my father also isn't good at dealing with big emotions. And neither is my H (what's that thing about marrying your mother or father?). H's mom has big emotions, too. So I guess that fits into these being enactments with Dr. T.
And yeah, I know I need a different one...