In last session T was trying to give examples of how sometimes there can be positive results to negative events. He stated right out of the blue.."not to get us side tracked but just this week as a result in a break in at my house, I learned that possessions are just things"...then he moved onto another example and we talked about other stuff...but in my head I was angry... I was angry that T told me about it but then didn't really tell me about it... and then I just pushed it down and kept going with session... I didn't have time to talk about it at the end cause we went right up to the end... and really I didn't want to talk about it... because honestly this is supposed to be my session.

Then about 3 minutes after walking out the door... I had all these questions swirling around... were his wife and kids home? was he? ughh...

why did he have to break my therapy world with the real world...

By yesterday, I had myself feeling bad that I didn't even ask if everyone was okay or say anything...so I sent an email (which is okay to do) and just said that I was sorry that this had happened to him and his family...etc etc... I felt good about sending the email.

Then I got a one line response...Thank you for your kind words. Which for some reason annoyed me. I don't know what I expected. I don't know why I'm annoyed... Maybe I'm just annoyed with myself...

Anyone have any thoughts or can make any sense of this? anyone else's T's divulge accidents or bad things that you wish they hadn't? how did you handle it?

[rosesarered]

I think you might be reading in to this a little too much. I would encourage you to be honest with your feelings though. He needs to know how divulging even the smallest bit of personal information has an impact on you. I'm sure he was just making an example, like you said. But I'd say something about how it made you feel.
Ts aren't supposed to be our friends, its okay to not give a flip about what's going on in their lives. Our sessions are about us. Their personal lives be damned.
Hope that helps.

[SoupDragon]

Hi Readytostop,

I don't like it when my T divulges things to me, it seems to make me more curious about him.

I can imagine hearing about a break in could be triggering - for me I might worry about the what ifs - ....what if T had been injured etc...I understand the relevance of this as an example for illustrating what he was describing and maybe it was a little raw for him still which is why he used it as an example - however maybe he didn't think through the consequences of sharing this as an example.

It wasn't your place to worry about him, so I would ditch the feeling bad about not asking him whether everyone was OK - these sessions are about you, not him.

I wonder if the annoyance is anything to do with the strength of your feelings that led you to e-mail and the non commital response, of purely an acknowledgement. Like you felt strongly about this and his reponse was just a lame "oh". That would make me annoyed.

Of course this is all good stuff to explore in your next session - there may be a lot of learning here.

Soup

[kiki86]

hmm. curious. i think in cases like this the answer to why you're annoyed is something you can figure out by challenging yourself. it seems like you don't like being reminded that T is real? maybe that reminds you that he might judge you or something like that? what does T being real mean to you?

[CantExplain]

Originally Posted by Readytostop

why did he have to break my therapy world with the real world...

That would upset me too.

[mixedup_emotions]

I'd imagine that you're feeling dissatisfied because you didn't really address the issue when you emailed him.

He brought his stuff into your session. Sure, it was used in an analogy, but it was a very strong example that could provoke a lot in a client and steer things off course.

I remember being really angry with my T about something he said to me on my way out of a session....a really hurtful thing that I later learned he said out of frustration with me and with the hopes that it would make an impact on me....and I was all gung-ho about addressing it with him head-on during my next session.

When we were saying "hello", I asked him how he was doing...and he said "okay"....I could sense something was wrong, and I then learned that his dog was struck and killed by a car the night before.

That threw me off kilter, for sure.....we addressed that somewhat, but then I did go back to what I was originally intending to address....and afterwards, I felt awful because of the circumstances....UGH.

[unaluna]

that's like T emotionally flashing you. kind of startling, and then no support. it's like, you can't just throw something like that into a conversation - and this isn't a conversation, it's T.

[karebear1]

Why didn't you ask him about it? I'd be like "Whoa Silver! What do you mean you got robbed?? Is everything ok? What happened????" AND then I'd expect T to answer my questions.

For me, personally, therapy has to be as much of a two way street as it can be. It's very difficult for me to focus only on myself- even if that's the intention of going to T. I do like it when T tells me things about herself because that's how I relate to people.

So interesting how different we all are on this subject- isn't it?

Originally Posted by hankster

that's like T emotionally flashing you. kind of startling, and then no support. it's like, you can't just throw something like that into a conversation - and this isn't a conversation, it's T.

this describes it perfectly. Its like when T said "not to get us off track, but...." It was like he told me an emotionally impacting thing and then said but we can't get off track so we can't discuss it". One part of me realizes that something emotionally upsetting as having your house broken into would be foremost in my T's mind and so using it as an example is understandable... but another part of me thinks that if he had the forethought to preface what he said with "not to get us off track but..." then he knew it would upset me at worst or I would feel the need to talk about at best.. that he had the presence of mind to have chosen not to talk about it.

Ughh... I think I was annoyed because I thought he should have acknowledged that it was not an appropriate example to use ...