[stopdog]

When with the therapist, can they tell what your emotion is? Do you know what you do different about sad or happy or afraid? Other than cry or laugh? Does it matter about visible emotion with the therapist? I understand it is not a big deal one way or the other for some.
It is possible to choose more than one answer.

[lifelesstraveled]

Originally Posted by stopdog

When with the therapist, can they tell what your emotion is? Do you know what you do different about sad or happy or afraid? Other than cry or laugh?

I don't think that my ex T ever could tell what i was feeling. I could barely figure it for myself. I just know that I would get very wound up talking about stuff, and T just had no regard for how overwhelmed I was. She never stopped to ask what I was feeling.

My new potential T at our first meeting could tell when I was experiencing a different emotion before i could tell myself. When we started talking about my family history, she asked about my mother and I guess at some point my foot started shaking and I started rocking the chair, and my tone of voice changed too. She interrupted me and asked what i was feeling and I told her anxious. She said that she could tell, and told me that my tone of voice had changed too and, I hadn't even noticed and said "it did?" and she shook her head.

I think skilled Ts can on some level determine what you are feeling by reading body language and listening to your tone of voice.

My T just said at the last session... that she's starting to figure out that the bigger the smile that I come into the session with the worse I feel emotionally. I didn't realize it but I do wear a mask.

[unaluna]

I voted other. The t is a tool for me, like a mirror or a stove. They have their own process. I'm just trying to figure out how to get the most out of the experience.

[stopdog]

Originally Posted by hankster

I voted other. The t is a tool for me, like a mirror or a stove. They have their own process. I'm just trying to figure out how to get the most out of the experience.

I agree it may or may not matter to each person. I am just curious as it comes up with the one therapist I see. I am not certain how the woman can screw it up so much when I actually tell her what I am feeling when I know it. It is not that I look happy when I am sad or even sad when happy if I understand what the woman has said. I really do not know what she means.

[tooski]

My T is very adept at reading my emotions, even when I try to hide them, which is most of the time. He can tell what emotion I'm feeling, but not what I'm thinking. That's why he's told me more than once that he's not a mind reader .....

Once he was talking about something and mentioned an atoll. As an aside, he said "that's a small island". I didn't feel like I registered any emotion at the time, but after the session I started to get annoyed. The next session I told him that it bothered me that he thought I didn't know what an atoll was. He smiled and said he did it on purpose. He said he could see it annoyed me, so he did it again. (I missed that one) But I could swear I showed no emotion at all when he said, but he picked it up.

BTW - If anyone thinks that he's being manipulative, he is - it's intentional. One of my big problems is that I don't speak up right when things happen but get a delayed reaction. He's trying to give me opportunities to react in session. I'm not doing too well at it ....

[healed84]

I show no emotion at T.. T has sad, he can tell how guared I am and has a hard time reading me. I kind of like it that way.

PS.. I am gonna call SD The Queen of Polls.. you have been starting lots of polls latley

[nessaea]

My therapist can almost always tell when something is wrong, even if I try to hide it, although it sometimes takes a while. She can't usually tell what I'm feeling, but just that I am experiencing a strong emotion.

She will often ask about it. She tends to use the phrase "What is going on for you right now?" to ask me to explain what emotions I am feeling.

On the flip side, I can also very often tell when something is going on for her, and I will generally ask about it too

[EllieBear]

My T is amazing at reading people, and I know she is able to tell how I'm feeling. However, she always asks me anyway and doesn't voice that she knows. I am not very good at identifying my own emotions so her asking me makes me pay attention to what is going on inside of me. She wants me to learn to identify and voice my own feelings, not just rely on other people to tell me how I feel. I know I do not show emotion. Even my closest friends have no idea what I'm feeling. I have no idea how my T figures it out, but when she eventually does tell me she is always right.

I voted that USUALLY he can tell what emotion I am experiencing, AND I also voted he will usually ask me because he is uncertain. In other words, while he's usually right spot on with what emotions I am experiencing, he always confirms with me because as he says, he's not a mind-reader and he wants to be sure what he is perceiving is accurate.

Having me verbalize it is also a way for me to practice really recognizing what I am feeling as for years and years I was really out of touch with my emotions. I'm better about it now than I was at one time, but still have to work at it. I don't always recognize my own anger for instance; I tend to call it something else, completely suppress it, or minimalize it. It's there, but it is so frightening for me that I have blinders to it if that makes any sense.

By the way Stopdog, you've been posting some cool polls these last few days.

[wotchermuggle]

Even when I think I'm doing a perfectly job of hiding, T knows.

Good question, stopdog!

My xT once asked me if I was angry and I said no. His response was that "he could feel the anger across the room"...

so maybe they do sense emotions that we don't know we are having (if you are totally unaware of your emotions like me)

[trdleblue]

I voted other again. My therapist has gotten much better at reading me, but he still does not have it completely down. Part of the problem is that often I don't know how I am feeling. There are still times when I am completely guarded, and pushing my emotions away and he will read that as me being calm and relaxed. I am also sure that it does not help now that I have started laughing when I am upset or nervous. I start briefly thinking that I may start crying, and instead I start to laugh. My t seems to understand that it is usually not a happy laugh, but I still find it quite embarrassing.

[trdleblue]

Originally Posted by Readytostop

My xT once asked me if I was angry and I said no. His response was that "he could feel the anger across the room"...

so maybe they do sense emotions that we don't know we are having (if you are totally unaware of your emotions like me)

I sometimes wonder about this as well. There have been a couple of occasions where my t said he thought that I was showing anger. I guess it would make sense if I was, but if I was feeling anger I did not realize it.

Originally Posted by Readytostop

My xT once asked me if I was angry and I said no. His response was that "he could feel the anger across the room"...

so maybe they do sense emotions that we don't know we are having (if you are totally unaware of your emotions like me)

Yeah, my T says I'm rageful actually, but it not something that comes across overtly. I don't yell; I'm not mean; I'm not destructive (to other people or objects). He says he sees it in my self-talk. He sees it in how self-destructive I become at times. He sees it in the mistaken beliefs about myself that I just can't seem to reframe and move beyond. It doesn't come across even to me really. I don't see myself as angry at all normally in fact, but I'm slowly started to actually recognize it in myself on occasion.

[content30]

My T is very intuitive and can almost always tell how I'm feeling. Once, I thought I was hiding it really well, and she asked me about a specific emotion that she deduced. I asked her if she used to be a body language expert consultant for the CIA, lol!

[ECHOES]

Well, I voted that my therapist will ask, because that's what therapy is about... saying with words what you are experiencing internally. Yes, she can see obvious expressions of feelings, but I think those are limited. Words convey so much more, a wider range of emotions (than expressions) and are much more meaningful.

[~EnlightenMe~]

I think that in general, my T is very intuitive and can pretty accurately read how I am feeling. That being said, last session, I read something I wrote to him, and he failed to accurately assess the emotional tone of my message. He may have been picking up on something of which I remained unaware, so maybe on this one he was 20 percent accurate. Otherwise, he is really skilled at knowing my emotional state.

This new t I went to a few times was excellent at knowing how I felt, she was really attuned to me. She knew when I was anxious and we did some grounding and she also knew when I would disassociate which no other t ever recognised. She always asked where I went?
She also pointed out things that I would not have noticed, that I laugh when I am nervous and apologise too much. I miss her already

[tinyrabbit]

I voted other because it really depends. Usually my T is very good at reading me. He pays a lot of attention to body language. But sometimes I try to hide how I am feeling which is an instinct from childhood, when I wasn't allowed to be angry or upset. If he notices anyway, I panic. So it's all kind of a work in progress.

[archipelago]

My current therapist is highly skilled in attunement; so he is always right with me to the point of almost feeling it himself. This is a skill on his part that is partly natural but something that he has consciously developed with lots of extra training as an analyst. And he lets me know that he is with me mostly non-verbally, though sometimes he'll voice it. Usually I'm pretty good at talking about it, even if I use images or metaphors to describe what he calls "my insides." I think they are carried non-verbally as well. He will watch me carefully and pays attention to the kinds of words I use. What's really remarkable is that he can do this on the phone as well and I'm not sure how because he can't see my face. He must use voice tone and pacing of speech to just get it. He has rarely missed anything, but he's been doing this for 35 years so I would think by now he's pretty much a master at it.

[Perna]

Only you can say how you feel; what emotion you may show, is not necessarily directly related to how you feel; you can feel mixed emotions but only show one, for example. Sometimes my face would do this spasm thing, for example, where it tried to go through all the emotions I was feeling at once. My therapist laughed, then apologized profusely for laughing at me but I explained to her that it felt funny/odd to me too, so I could only imagine what it looked like.

Other people have to go on what they see and what we tell them about ourselves in making their own decisions about how to relate to us and if we don't tell them anything but do/do not have a good poker face, etc. that tells them (especially therapists I think :-) something, even if we don't want them to know anything. The "nothing" may tell them we don't want them to know anything but does not tell them "why". We could be feeling afraid or we could not like them, they can't know what we are thinking unless they ask/we tell them. But there are other clues; if we haven't seen them long or know them very well through discussions, it's kind of hard for someone not to like you, they don't know you! So, either you are projecting scenes you've lived before with someone else or you're afraid because of some other situation you feel is similar, etc.

I always think of the Mary Tyler Moore show and the Chuckles the Clown funeral episode Chuckles Bites the Dust - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia when they were laughing at the funeral. We have pretty standard emotional shorthand; you smile and laugh when you're happy, frown and cry when you're unhappy, glare when you're angry, etc. When we see the therapist though, those things can be messed up or unconscious or we can not be familiar with how emotions work and want the T's help learning, etc.

I find it helpful to be told what I appear to be showing so I can check with my insides and what I'm feeling and match them up or see why they do not match up. Eventually I learned to get them "together" so I could help myself and others know what was going on with me so there would be fewer communication mistakes.

[tooski]

Originally Posted by Perna

I find it helpful to be told what I appear to be showing so I can check with my insides and what I'm feeling and match them up or see why they do not match up. Eventually I learned to get them "together" so I could help myself and others know what was going on with me so there would be fewer communication mistakes.

I like the whole post, Perna, but especially this. This is such a big issue for me. I want so badly to have my inside & outside in sync. I can always hold back emotions when I really really need to, but for most of the time I don't want a disconnect between what I'm feeling inside and what I'm showing to other people. Thanks for this.

My therapist always knows the emotions I'm feeling. She tries to get me to name the emotion(s). If I can't name them on my own she tells me. More importantly for us, is what's underneath the emotion(s). Many times she can't tell, nor can I. Our work together has mostly been to find what's underneath. Then it gives me choices on how I want to respond to a situation. Previously, I never ever thought before, and would just react, usually very badly. Now I can think before acting, which gives me much more control over my life.
This way of responding has started to become a natural pattern in my daily life.