What If Your Perfect T Got Irritated with You?

I wondered if your T understood that you were doing the stuff in bold. I wondered if she understood that the music was emotional and vulnerable for you

Wait, I should have quoted this post. I wondered if she understood the part in bold in this post too.

This is something I will tell her tomorrow. I will spill my guts. I am so dang nervous. I am exposing myself more and more to her. I have to ask her again if this is right - that now my emotions are about my relationship with her. I know it is because our issues usually need to land on our T's so that we can work on them in real-time but still...

I hope that she is able to understand.

I am wondering what else was going on with your t that day? Yes she is a professional with a job that requires an abundance of patience shande also is human. I believe it is hard for us therapy goers to see that it is not always our fault or our trigger. What I am trying to say is, yes, you may have done a certain behavior that triggered an emotional reaction from her and there were probably other factors that influenced her emotion. Was she hungry? What else did she have in the back of her mind?

Before I had tons of therapy I always thought it was all me, I am the one that was at fault, etc... there wasn't ever anything wrong with anyone else. Now I know that, yep I probably contribute (sometimes more than others) but it is not always my "stuff" that created the rupture. Let her own a little bit of this.

My t has gotten very irritated with my behaviors at times but he always makes it a point to say, "KC I do not like it when you do....... this behavior." He has emphasized this so much that I know he can separate how he feels about my doing x, y and z than how he feels about me. It was a valuable lesson for me to learn because before any relationship in my life was so black or white. It was on and perfect or it was over and never to be again. Every t relationship is different, however, I know for myself personally my own relationship with t has deepened immensly due to the whole proccess of rupture and repair.

Oh yeah, when T and I talked about it back when, she was very kind and gentle and explained that being annoyed at a behavior does not mean that she disliked me. She said we must all learn that we can have these different responses to each other and it doesn't change the core relationship.

When I heard her say that it all made sense and it felt good at the time. But now that I'm entering a stage in therapy in which I'm opening myself up to an extremely vulnerable place, that incident has popped back in my head.

What I will tell T tomorrow is this, "Yes, you're right about relationships need to allow each person to not like something that the other person might be doing. Yes, that would be the basis of a healthy strong relationship."

"But that's in real life. In therapy, everything, EVERYTHING, is different. You really can't compare therapy with RL. I'm being encouraged to let down my defenses with you. I'm being asked to trust you and let myself be exposed. I'm being challenged to go where I've never gone before."

"If I must take such giant leaps in courage, I must be able to know that you will not judge me nor criticize me nor be annoyed with me. You know that is one of my biggest issues. If I am scared of you, how can I proceed down this path of self-discovery? How can I continue to peel off the layers one by one?"

"I know I will be very wounded if I keep pushing myself hard to overcome my natural resistance to exposure and I detect even a whiff of condemnation from you. You know how I reacted when I accidentally crossed a boundary. You would have thought I had murdered someone I felt so bad. My heart leapt out of my chest, I began to hyperventilate, my hands and knees were shaking and I began sweating. And that was nothing compared to what I hope to accomplish now with you in session."

"So, please, dear T, is there anyway you can explain to me which behaviors I must avoid to prevent you from being irritated with me? Please be clear about the rules. I can follow rules if I know what they are. It will so help me if you can do that for me."

Anyways, that is some of what I will say to T tomorrow. My anxiety is quite high at the moment but I'm trying to do breathing exercises to calm myself down.

Good luck sky! I think ur doing the right thing by telling her all this

Very nicely articulated sky. I hope you can tell her in those exact words. It shows your vulnerability in a beautiful way.

You know, even so, I don't know what she can say or do that will make this better. The bottom line is that she got irritated with me. That will never change.

I was just going to add what Kacey said. Here irritation may have been something going on with her. Therapists are human and subject to feelings too.

She may also have felt offended that you had your music on, even for a little bit, during the session. Your actions did not suggest that you were seeking connection, rather to me, they would suggest exactly the opposite.

When I see someone on the subway with headphones on, it emits "stay away", not come talk to me.

Put yourself in her shoes. How would you feel is someone scheduled a meeting with you and then sitting with headphones on?

I really do think some communication is in order here where you both exchange your thoughts.

when i feel my T is so frustrated with me it seem like i just fall apart.it is so important for somereason that she not feel this way towards me.i dont want her angry with me it just isnt a safe thing at all.i am hating this reality because i hate that i am even caring.

I think what she could have done is to ask me what was going on? Why didn't she say, "Skysblue, I've never seen you like this before? What is going on? What are you feeling? Why are you bringing your music in?" Isn't that what inquiry is about?

But, I just now realized something. There was another thing that happened during that session and I hadn't remembered until now that both these events were during the same session.

You see, right after I stopped the music, I 'forgot' about what happened. Actually, it hadn't even registered in my mind at that time. I am great at delayed response.

So, we went on with the session and I thought things had gone quite well. But a few hours later I kept having the nagging feeling that things were not right. That feeling kept pestering me until it dawned on me that my T 'wasn't there'. And then it triggered a strong feeling that she wanted to terminate me. Now, I wasn't even thinking of the music thing at that time.

So, I called and left a message then and 'accused' her of not being there. The next session she admitted that that was true. She had checked out.

Now, isn't this curious that I'm just now remembering that her annoyance with me and her 'checking out' happened during the same session?

Oh man, are we ever going to have an 'exciting' session today. I am beside myself with nervousness but we have to discuss this.

It'll be interesting to see what happens today in your session with T.

I admire that you are so verbal and able to communicate what you are thinking to your T. I have come a little way in being able to do this, but it's always in a kind of a beating around the bush kinda way. Sometimes it's because when I start to speak, the words literally fly out of my head and I can't remember what the question even was, other times it's because I hate when people say things that hurt other pepople and I don't want to hurt anyone- but, whatever the reason- I really do wish I could develope a full ability to speak what's in my heart the way that so many of you do here.

Will you let us know how your session goes?