Quote:
Originally Posted by comrademoomoo
Counter transference can also show as her responses to your transference towards her. For example, if you want empathy from her (when at core this desire for attunement is a developmental need hence transferential and not really about her), she might pull back from your call to her. She might find your transferential feelings uncomfortable if your need triggers something uncomfortable in her. This could be outside of her awareness, but you would hope she would have sufficient insight to process this in supervision/therapy as counter transferential responses are important information for therapists. I am not saying I think this is happening, just giving another example of ct.
Am I right in remembering her modality is person centred? If so, empathy is a core condition so I wouldn't imagine she struggles with the concept. Maybe she just forgot the information?
I wouldn't ask for empathy because it feels forced and if it isn't freely given, I am not sure what worth there is in it. I would certainly speak about how it feels to not receive empathy or to be overlooked. These issues are always about more than what's happening in the therapy interaction.
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I know I just basically gave opposite advice to this in terms of asking directly for empathy. But I wanted to say that I very much identify with the push-pull dynamic and agree that it potentially could be happening here. Dr. T has recently said that he realizes that happens in our work together at times. (I was already aware of the pattern, but I'm not sure he'd really acknowledged it--at least, not to me.)
It can often be subconscious, so a T may not realize they're even doing it. Could be worth thinking about whether anything similar has happened with you and R in the past, Lost. Or maybe it's unique to this one situation.