Light-hearted Therapy Moments

I have lots of light-hearted moments with my therapist. I love her laugh. We laugh a lot together, but when it's time to get to business she's a pro at switching gears. I'm always amazed at her skills.

I just have to share a moment from my session I had yesterday. My therapist dresses really nicely, and yesterday she had on a pair of really cute jeans. She was adorable.

As I sat down, she was getting her clipboard and pen off of her desk and as she turns around I see her back pockets are embellished with a little bling. I said, "Look at you with your sparkly jeans. Those are so cute." She said something like, "Yeah, sparkles right on my butt." I said, "Oops, I was looking at your butt." She laughed and struck a pose. I loved it!

Even though we have our fun times, it doesn't take away AT ALL from the work we do together. Moments later, to officially start our session, she asked how I was feeling (as she always does) and then came the big emotions and lots of tears and honesty. I left my session feeling heard, validated, loved, and cared for.

Do you have some light-hearted moments you've shared with your therapist?

My T has nice (i.e. expensive) clothes too. Recently she told me that she was changing a bag her husband gave her for Christmas, as she didn't want a red one. Today, therapy was quite serious and she was trying to persuade me to do something difficult. I saw her (red) coat and (red) scarf hanging up and spotted a chance to change the subject. I told her that she should hang onto the red bag so she had a red trio. She responded without missing a beat 'As interesting as that fashion advice is, we were just about to...' I cracked up laughing, because I wear the oldest jeans, sweatshirts etc and will never be in a position to offer anyone fashion advice.

At the end of the session, she put back the chair we'd been using for the 'critical parent' part of me. I told T I was worried the critical parent was just outside the door waiting for me. T said no, she's gone and I'm putting her chair away. I said 'I'll just squash her to make sure', and picked up T's bag and dropped it with a thud onto the chair. I picked it up to replace it, and saw it was a Prada bag If I'd known, I wouldn't have touched it, let alone chucked it around! Pretty sure that squashing imaginary parts of oneself is not what they have in mind when they design their bags!

I totally understand this, Improving. I will talk about everything under the sun to buy myself some time until I get the courage to be honest with how bad I'm feeling. My therapist will say, "You're avoiding, aren't you?"

What did your therapist say when you used her bag to squash your critical parent part? At least, you did it in style.

At 65 yrs old, I'm breaking in a new T, and it's going quite well. He's my eighth, so I'm moving along pretty quickly. This past two-hr session was our fourth.

I mentioned at the start of it that I was pleased with the progress so far.

He cast a brief look of concern at me. "Yeah, isn't this our fourth session?"

I said it was.

"Umm. Would you mind if we stopped now then? I tend to blow fourth sessions."

Of course when I looked at him he was grinning. Then he said, "You got my email? What did you think?" And we were off.

It was the end of the session so I left without having to find out what she said or thought! Yes, I am fairly certain that that pesky parent never saw Prada coming

T has actually told me that one of the ways he judges my mood is by observing my reactions to his jokes. Laughter and a bit of good-hearted harassment of each other is a staple of our sessions. He loves to harass me about being an English teacher. He gets evil pleasure out of assigning me homework. He was not a good English student, so he says he works out his issues on me.

Excellent- I hope you get a high fee from him

At the end of our last session, we began making our next two appointments. He told me he wasn't going to be in one of the days for his birthday, so I decided to ask how old he was. When he told me he was 37 I was like NO WAY! (yes with that face) He asked why, and I told him I would have never put him past 30. (He looks super young.) He smiled and blushed and thanked me. It was funny to see his reaction.

Yes, I love laughing with my therapist. It is fun, and so connecting

OMG. T hit the restroom before our session last week. At the end of the session, as we went to hug goodbye, I noticed something amiss (or amister?). I said, "uh, XYZ!" He goes, "ya know, most people wouldn't say anything, but you, you're different!" I go, "Hey, I noticed the ONE TIME in his entire career Johnny Carson did his monologue with his zipper down - you're just SMALL POTATOES compared to that!" No hostile Freudian slips there, nooo...

My t and i laugh a LOT. We do fun things. Doing heavy trauma work it helps to do some fun stuff once in a while like go get ice cream or go out for hamburgers.