Difficult session, core issue

Hi guys!

Saw my T for the first session of the year.

We're making another attack on a can of worms that has resisted all previous attempts. T says I feel I need to be right all the time. I'm not sure I agree, but I'm going to trust her judgement.

It is certainly true that in some contexts I feel "being wrong" as rejection.

She asked, did I know anyone who was intelligent but didn't flaunt it? The person who sprang to mind was her co-facilitator in our group (the "good" group, not the "bad" group I left last year). He was a smart guy, but he was content to take a back seat and on the whole let my T run the group.

(So I guess my T is not a good role model on this subject. She was quite willing to dominate that group. Must raise that!)

So how did I feel about that? I said it was a shame and a waste that co-T's talents were held back in this way.

Anyway, what I thought T was trying to say was, my need to be right made me intimidating and unpopular. Which is certainly not something I want to hear!

I have already worked very hard at not correcting people and not competing intellectually. Nobody works harder than I do at not competing.

I don't know if I can take a back seat. (That seems to be what she is suggesting.) Silence equals death. To me, being accepted means being heard. This is precisely the issue that prompted me to leave the bad group - I didn't feel heard.

So it's a difficult topic and I don't know if we are going to make any progress.

Perhaps reframing could help? Instead of thinking the co-s talents were wasted or held back, perhaps they were more beneficial to the group in the way he used them. Or instead of thinking of it as "taking a backseat", perhaps there is more than one right way or you are giving the other person the room to work it out or something like that.
It isn't easy, but there is that saying about would you rather be right or be happy.

If I may correct your logic! if silence means death, being heard means living, not JUST "being accepted". altho I guess for social animals, being accepted DOES mean surviving, still, yr stmt lacked parallelism. (I need things to be of equal weight!)

So - might you be minimizing? IDK. I had the most amazing experience in the mid-90's: at a new workplace, this one woman ran the user walkthrus as thoroughly as I liked them. If she was in the room, I could relax, I knew she would cover every detail. She wasn't "even" a programmer! And I DID relax. With anyone else, yes, I could and did find errors. Her, never. That was the first and only time that ever happened to me in 30 years. A few people at my last job came close, but that was a huge project, a major uni, they did some recruiting! So, I would tell you what my previous t/pdoc told me - figure out how to use your smarts to your advantage. But first I would STRESS, which he did not, that yes, you do indeed see things more clearly and more quickly than other people do. A LOT more. For me, that meant my mother and brother thought I was weird, a monster, idk what, when I was a baby, and it left me with a lot of emotional baggage. or UNemotional baggage. okay I am getting tired and making less sense than usual! talk to you later?! oh also that I like it here on PC because I can relax in that same way, I don't HAVE to respond, IE BE RIGHT - someone else has my back and will take care of the OP - it's very comforting, not something I had growing up or felt ever, until recently.

I think you are brave to face what T is saying and take this on.

A thought came to mind about children I sometimes come across at work (often adopted). They talk All. The. Time. Not particularly *to* anyone else. Don't particularly need any feedback. Hearing their own voices is providing the sensory feedback they need to confirm in every second that they are real and they exist. These are children who have not been 'seen' or 'heard' by others, to the point that they've been removed from their families because of neglect and abuse. I'm not sure how relevant this is to you, as you are talking about it at a very cognitive level. Just thought I'd share that there may be something even more sensory and fundamental about it too. Just in case

I found once that if I thought I would be heard in one place (T) I could take a back seat everywhere else (if needed). I did not get a real chance to work this out over time, because I discovered I was not heard in T.

Why can't I be both?

Sometimes you can. Is it working for you to be both all the time?

This seems really important. Do you want to talk more about this?

This reminded me of a post you made a couple of week's ago in granite's thread about her T sending the letter she wrote back:

http://forums.psychcentral.com/showt...07#post2176107

You said in that post that you were triggered by the thread, so I just wanted to remind you of that, in case you don't want to read any further or refer back to the post.

But-- I don't think what you wrote is the triggery part (what you actually said)-- so I'm going to quote you:

"I am very angry at Granite's therapist and I am angry at several people here.

I have felt rejected by my therapist on the subject of emails. If T sent my letter back I would feel really rejected. And nothing anyone could say would change my mind."

I found it rather interesting that you were angry at people because they disagreed with you on something where there clearly wasn't a right answer. Different people see things differently, and reasonable people can disagree about most everything. It seems to me that you insist that people agree with you, or else they are "rejecting" you, and then you get angry with them. I don't necessarily think that your needing to be right is the issue, I think the issue is what you do and how you feel when people disagree. Being angry with people because they disagree with you is not a healthy way to interact, as this suggests that no one can really be free to speak their mind. Paradoxically, it's not others that are insisting that YOU be silent, it is you that insist that other people be silent, unless they agree with you.

My $.02 anyway, adjusted for the inflation of the Aussie dollar.

Anne

Hmmm... I guess you like to be right, too!

My T seems to think that I did suffer from some form of emotional neglect.

Oh yeah, BIG TIME!!!

All the time, no. T says it is unreasonable to expect to be happy all the time. Or right all the time, either, I suppose.

Sometimes I am happy that I am right.

Well, if you ever find intellectual humility, let me know, won't you?

My wife and I agree that it's not being wrong that bothers me so much as being in the wrong.

Can you explain more so that I can understand better?

Yes, that's a good way to ask.

This is what I was referring to.