11-FEB Session: Support

I told T that I didn’t think she gave me enough support when things got bad.

Me: Last week you asked me why I didn’t schedule an extra session to make up for the one we missed. I told you that I knew from experience that emergency sessions never work. I always come in looking for support and go away without it. That may not be the full story, but that’s what my heart remembers.

I told her about the last time I came to her for support. This was when I had to get my teenage daughter to school on the first day of term while my wife was out of the country.

Me: I arrived upset and we soon got into a fight. You gave me some good advice but I went away crushed.

T: How can that be?

Me: You didn’t give me any support or encouragement. I had already talked to my boss about the same thing, and he gave me lots of support. He commiserated with me over the difficulties of teenage girls. He lamented how troublesome they can be. He told me some anecdotes about his own daughter. I felt heard and understood. I felt encouraged and heartened. I felt comradeship.

I went on to explain what I saw as T’s biggest defects.

Me: I’ve raised the issue of support with you many times before, and I don’t feel you have heard me. Whenever I give you feedback, you immediately defend yourself. That’s the time when you should be listening to how I feel. The other thing you do, is tell me I’m trying to control you. That completely ignores the specifics of the situation and leaves me thinking you haven’t been listening.

I tried to finish on a conciliatory note.

Me: I’m angry with you about this, but that doesn’t mean I’ve stopped respecting you or that I’ve stopped loving you. I don’t doubt that you are trying to help me. I don’t question your motivation or commitment. But whatever support you think you are trying to give is not getting through. Maybe I’m blind to it.

T: In that case we have a problem.

We talked a bit more. I sensed that she was as baffled as I was, and somehow that brought us much closer together. I felt heard.

Me: Let’s put this aside for the moment and talk about something else.

And that’s when I talked about my friend. And then:

T: If we were to ask your friend to help us with our problem, what would you say?

Me: I’d tell them that you and I have a persistent power struggle that keeps coming back and never gets resolved. (Pause) Come to think of it, that is at the bottom of most of our disputes and nearly all of our ruptures. And yet we’ve never looked at it head on.

T: Interesting, isn’t it.

Me: (Pause.) We can beat this.

T:

It's always been awkward for me too, to tell the same story again to another person, unless I had a good reason for the retelling. In this case, if I had already hashed it out with my boss, I might mention that to my T, but as a resolved problem. Are you saying the daughter problem was not resolved and you needed more insight from T, or you weren't satisfied with your boss's response and you wanted a better response from T? In the 2nd case, I can see her making you analyze what was wrong with your IRL R/S, instead of just satisfying your need. If you had brought the need unfulfilled into therapy, pure and untouched, unpolluted by your boss's comments, perhaps she could have looked more closely at the need and given you more support. You kinda did what Brianna did elsewhere on PC - you told your T that other people will support you.

Eureka!

I think I've solved it. It's the Blank Slate again.

T could have told me about her experiences as a mother, or the antics of her daughters, or even her own experience as a teenager girl. But she never did.

You can be supportive or you can be a blank slate. But not both.

But wait, there's more! T is more likely to tell me about herself when I'm in a good mood. That's how she makes good times better. And she is less likely to tell me about herself when I'm in a bad mood. That's how she makes the bad times worse.

I think it depends on your definition of support... you could have a T who shares antedotes of their self as a teenage girl or their children as a way to commiserate...

but you could also have a T just reflect back what they heard you say as a way of support... like that must have been difficult dealing with your d trying on 16 outfits.. or it sounds like it really tried your patience to have to take your d shopping for clothes...

This helps you know you where heard and then it could of moved into different ways you could have handled those situations...

Its your perspective of what support is... think its different for different people.

I don't know how she thought she was supporting but it didn't work.
And self-disclosure was what my boss gave me that my T didn't.

Although there were other things too. T never said she was confident that I could cope. That would have been a help.

Incidentally, I'm feeling triggered by your scepticism.

i"m sorry CE...what did I sound sceptical of? that your T was not supportive?

I didn't mean to infer that... I'm 100% sure you did not find your T supportive... I was trying to point out that perhaps her reason for being baffled is because she may be the same way with other clients who may see her as supportive...

I don't find the therapist telling me about her own life useful.
But could you just ask her if she had experienced anything like that herself? Or if she thought you could cope? Or did you try that and she rebuffed you?

I'm sorry. It's not your fault. A trigger can be anything.

I guess I was just coming down from my post-therapy high and realising that T and I are still not on the same page. Not even in the same book.

I thought I'd done something clever and solved the problem, but your post reminded me that things are not that simple. I probably haven't even scratched the surface. Inconvenient truths and reality checks are seldom welcome!

Maybe T should tell me some convenient lies.
Maybe that's what support means to me.

You feel that T (or anyone else for that matter) understands what your experiencing if she can relate to you with her own sharing of a personal experience that equals yours. I do the same thing. When I feel like my T isn't understanding me, I tell her that I wish she could just be in my head and feel what I'm feeling for one minute (which she always says "no thank you" to very quickly!) Actually, would she even have to relate a particular story? Could she just say, "I know what you mean, I've been there before" or "I get that" and that would probably be enough?

Even that would help a bit, I think.

Of course, I may be wrong about what I think I find supportive.

Bleah!

Only by questioning your own sanity can you find true wisdom.

CE: I'm having similar issues about support from t. They are leading me to believe I may be missing her efforts of support because of how I interpret certain words.

I baffled her last week when after this fourth time she said disappointing things have been happening and I was disappointed I said "please stop!" I hear that as being bad and I every time she said it I felt worse. It wasn't acceptable for me to be disappointed or dissatisfied as a kid regardless of what was going on. It was her attempt to support me. I told her it was the opposite of support and pointing out my bad parts. She said I have to learn different because it was meant as support.

It sounds like sensing efforts at support are tough for you too if that's what you t was doing. I can't tell. The blank slate is getting to me too. I told t that last week.

Thats how the blank slate works... its a technique... when you can't form opinions or infer stuff because you don't know much about the T you project your own feelings onto the T.. (very simplified since I am very simple) so bonniejean's example of disappointment... she didn't have a lot of outside info to make references to such as antecdotal stories and stuff so she took it that the T meant disappointing as the way BonnieJean hears the words... and now that you realize it you can change how you process that word when other people use it...

for me I thought that if I disappointed someone that they would be angry... I thought the two words meant the same thing...

I do think defining your terms with your T helps to eliminate frustration and (for me) resistance. My T kept talking about grieving for certain things. I was like, **** no! Turns out we had different definitions of what it meant to grieve. As silly as that seems, it was turn. Maybe CE, if you can define "supportive" and have her define it as well, then you two could come to some mutual understanding of how she THINKS she is being supportive, and maybe that would help you to see her as not just trying to make the bad times worse.

I guess it depends on finding a person who matches your definition of support. No T for me only a pdoc. No talk support, just behavior report. I did this and it was successful, I did that and it was not. What is your opinion/advice/solution. Then I follow it because that is what I am paying for.

This forum is a great tool for working issues out loud and reading other's experiences, coping and problem solving solutions. But like any thing else, you take what you can use and leave the rest behind.

I really don't think this is true. My T is mostly a blank slate, at least as far as biographical information is concerned. He will tell me what he thinks or feels about something I'm working on, but very, very rarely does he tell me of anything similar he's experienced. I feel more supported by him than by anyone else.

I cannot come up with a definition for support that encompasses therapist. I truly don't get how one of them could be supportive.
I think if you do have a definition CE - that sharing that with the therapist might be useful.

This is a fine example of unsupport.

Yes, I accept that is a technique. I see it as part of T's challenge toolbox. But I don't want to be to challenged when I need support.

I think it's her turn (!) to tell me how she thinks she's been supportive. I'll make a note of that...

How does he support you?

In a lot of ways, depending on the circumstances. He'll normalize my reactions but also challenge me to think of different ways I could react in future. Sometimes he just listens. Sometimes, he'll give me some advice (not very often) or explain the psychological mechanism behind what I'm experiencing.

You find challenges supportive?

What do you mean by "normalise"? Is that like "validate"?

Just a thought, triggered by a completely different thread:

When I support someone on PC, I don't comment on their spelling.

Maybe my T has a tendency to go off on side issues?

I find it more supportive if T sees things from my point of view.

I do find challenges supportive. He's helping me to understand other interpretations of situations that aren't based on me being unloveable and bad.

By normalizing, I mean that he explains how my reaction/feelings about things are reasonable (i.e., "normal") given my background.