(((((((ECHOES)))))))

I think different therapists do different things and there may be times in our lives when we need different things. At one time you had a therapist who emphasized guided imagery and wouldn't let you take the lead and do talk therapy. So you found someone who did let you do talk therapy. And I have read many wonderful things about your therapist from you and about your sessions. I remember you had wanted someone with the traditional psychoanalytic approach, and with that comes the blank slate, little self-disclosure, lots of distance, little physical contact, etc. So at one time you wanted these things. But now maybe you have discovered a need for something else? Maybe you can't get that with the current therapist but maybe you can use therapy to work on getting it in your life with other people? That could fulfill that need in you too. One of the things I want to work on in therapy in the near future is the lack of "deep" and meaningful relationships in my life. T is going to help me with that. It's great that I have a deep and meaningful relationship with him, but that is not enough for me.

In my own therapy, my T is not psychoanalytic, and I take the lead in my therapy. He explained that to me the first day, that only I knew what I needed to heal, so I had to take the lead. Very early on we realized how I needed a reciprocal relationship and self disclosure from him; thank goodness his theoretical orientation (humanistic psych, family systems) can accommodate that or I might not have been able to go very far with him in therapy. He gives me a lot of what I need, but to be honest, there are times when I read on PC about what others get from their T's and I kinda wish I had those things too. Like some people are allowed to email their hearts out to their T's and write about substantive issues. Others are allowed to have 2 sessions a week. Others phone their T's frequently and get calls back and receive support over the phone. Others sit on the couch next to their T's and hold hands. My T doesn't do or allow any of these things. My T and I do hug at the end of about half of our sessions, so I get this physical touch and it is truly wonderful, but it is never in the middle of sessions. Yet he is very, very warm; during the session he will sometimes say "I am hugging you right now" and he makes a hugging motion with his arms. I feel very held and warm at those times and don't need his arms to touch me.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that our T's are our T's and there is a wide diversity of T behavior out there. No single T is going to do it all. We can look in on other's therapy but we may be idealizing it from snippets we read here. ECHOES, maybe you wouldn't like a T like mine, who hugs at the end of sessions sometimes but doesn't take phone calls. Maybe you wouldn't want a guy who lets you lead in therapy but self discloses frequently. Who eats in session and takes out his laptop from time to time and even answers his phone occasionally. Last time his phone vibrated right near the end of our session, he looked at it and said its my wife and she's probably wondering where I am--I was his last client of the day-- and he answered the phone and said "Hi gorgeous." I'm more than OK with that. I love how he loves his wife. I have even had a dream about her in which we were friendly. But a lot of people here on PC would hit the ceiling if that happened in their therapy. So I'm just trying to stress that no one T is going to have everything you find ideal. And what you find ideal may change over time. If you do need more warmth, maybe that is a recent discovery, and if gets to really dominate things, maybe you would even seek out another T. I'm not suggesting that, as I think you and your T seem very close and have done great work, with more to come. I think we can learn to work within our therapist's constraints, up to a certain point, and then if we really believe we need something different to continue our healing journey, we are always free to move on.

I think the trick is to not let it interfere. Sure I want some of what others have in therapy, but it doesn't alter my own therapy in a negative way. Could that be something you could work on--how to be more accepting of others' situations and not let them impinge on yours? What your post makes me worry about is that you will decide that reading about other people's therapy here on PC is a negative for you and you will stop coming here. Because I would really miss you and your posts and insights and support if that happened.