Reaction to seeing T's next client

I'm not looking for advice, just wondering if anyone can relate. My T leaves a gap between sessions, so I don't normally see any of his other clients. There are some other therapy rooms in the same building, but they seem to time sessions carefully so they don't start or end at the same time. So I don't normally see anyone except my T, and occasionally one of the other therapists.

Today, I got quite upset towards the end of my session and my T let the time run over a little bit to make sure I was calm and okay to leave. I then went to the toilet, so I left a little while after my appointment would normally have finished. On my way out, I passed a girl who went and sat in the waiting area, and I realised she was almost certainly my T's next client - and felt REALLY irritated with her.

It annoyed me immensely that she was really pretty and had nice hair. (I don't have romantic feelings for my T, so it wasn't that kind of jealousy. I do have problems with comparing myself unfavourably to other people.) I only saw her for a few seconds, but I've remembered her face and it's really annoying me.

I'd never really given my T's other clients much thought. I thought I was indifferent to them. Now I think it's the opposite - I don't like the idea of them at all. I'm really surprised by how annoyed I was with this poor girl, just for existing. Has anyone else had a similar experience?

Something like this happened to me today. I am completely surprised at how intense my reaction has been. I cannot handle it. I do not ever want to feel like this again.

I used to wonder how anybody could ever be cool about it. Then one time, t double-booked and saw me instead of the other client (looked like a married couple) and I was omg this is just like when my mother favors my brother and my SIL over me - only this time, that didn't happen. huge huge breakthru. I mean, my mother asks them what she should cook for my birthday that THEY want to eat, THEN she asks me what I want her to cook in addition. I don't have the face to ask the old lady to cook anything else. I get the message that everybody else is more important than me. And particular, and spoiled! Eff them. So I think it's a big transference opportunity, that's why it's so painful and fraught. So pretty much I'm cool, but I did want to strangle the girl yesterday who left saying, see you in TWO weeks - yes, it's a national holiday next week, you are so brilliant!! (Oh yeah, I'm SO cool!)

I've since constructed a name and a life for this girl. I have no idea why I feel the need to do this. It didn't help that I had been crying and looked terrible while she was all nice and fresh faced, either. I just feel so weird imagining a real person with a face in MY therapy room, talking to MY therapist.

I totally wouldn't have foreseen this reaction.

i wonder if she's thinking the same about you tonight?

Tiny rabbit
I have never felt like this but I would get jealous of ts other clients too. Like Asia said she most definitely feels the same about you, maybe even more so because t went over because you were upset and she probably thinks that t likes you better. I know it's no constellation but she feels bad too.
I also agree with hankster that there is learning from these feelings.
Did you feel unimportant and second best growing up? I did and I get jealous if somebody likes something t put up on Facebook, I feel like I don't matter anymore because I never mattered to anyone.

I get insidiously possessive with people and feelings of inadequacy don't lend me any favors when another client in the waiting room, or leaving the office, is prettier than I [perceive] myself to be. on one such occasion (a year ago when I was just a therapy tadpole) me and another girl had been double-booked on so in she walked with her dog while I was sitting there. t came out to retrieve me and realized her error and greeted the dog by name before seeing this other girl off but I imagine my face looked similar to this because it was such a critical hit to my shimmering therapy honeymoon innocence

Yoiks! I've been wished into the cornfield!! (What a great photo!!)

Yeah, I can definitely relate. Somehow, over the years, I often was scheduled back to back with the same client, even when my time slot changed. I've probably seen her 15 or 20 times. I know what car she drives, because I've seen her in the parking lot.

I don't have a hard time with comparisons about appearance. We're both kind of average looking, I think. Not the type to stand out anywhere. But I was certain that my T liked her better. On what I knew was T's birthday through FB snooping (we have a mutual FB friend and she comes up as a friend recommendation now and then), as I was leaving, I saw this client arranging flowers in a vase, presumably for her birthday. I felt terrible. I never could bring myself to admit to the snooping (and I didn't really see anything - she's not at all active on FB), or to just ask her when her birthday was. And here was this other client who knew it was Ts birthday and had brought her a gift.

I'm sorry you've been struggling with this, tinyrabbit.

With my ex-T the next client was always male and it made me always happy...sigh.

Because otherwise I would have been SO jealous.

My T sees many children. I'm super jealous of them b/c I'll bet THEY get to sit on T's lap and hug T and all. Once I saw a boy bouncing, so excited going into T's office. I started crying in my car.

I think it's about being 'held in mind' - if the therapist has other clients we can't possibly be important enough to be held in mind any longer - we disappear, perhaps we are forgotten? That can be a very painful and frightening experience - for me I experience it as a drop, an abandonment, as if I no longer exist (it's very early stuff) and then often go into crisis. We have been working with it for years. Horrible

Moon

Ugh. Just reading about this makes me feel sad and abandoned. I've only seen another of her clients once. I actually changed my appt time to a time when no one else was there to avoid this from happening. You know what stresses me the most? Not just to think that there are other clients that are important to T, but that she is important to other clients too. What if there is someone else out there who thinks the same way as I do about T? Painful ...

Another embarrassing thing to avoid talking to T about until I get the guts to do it ... yay?!

Also I think the fact that T is always on my mind and I am probably barely ever on her's is somehow upsetting...

I very nearly posted about this earlier. I usually sit in my car and wait for my appointment but went in and sat in the waiting room for 5 minutes. T apparently ran over with her client before me (a teenage girl) and when she was leaving I heard them bantering and T laughing. I can't even begin to tell you how much this annoyed me.

I have issues with not being a "favorite" I'm also a middle child.

I hear you. But the few times she's mentioned that she was thinking about me or something related to me has made me feel so good :-)

This has only happened to me once when I was about 15 minutes early for my appointment and some guy walked out of my therapist office and he was very loud, Joking and laughing with my T, I must admit it didn't bother me a bit.

I often see T's other clients and sometimes I have a jealous reaction, depending on the state I'm in at that time.

I also attend group T with some of T's other clients, and that is sometimes super hard when certain feelings are triggered.

Most recently, a group member acted in a very hurtful and threatening way - and he sees my T individually - and I feel betrayed because I know that T is being compassionate, caring and helpful towards him. I end up imagining one of my abusers being in T's office and how caring he would be towards him - which makes me SO angry and hateful. At the moment, the idea makes me feel that he is disingenuous and that therapy is just some BS game.

Thank you so much for the replies and hugs everyone. I hadn't even considered that she might feel the same, especially as the time went over, though I don't know if she arrived in time to be aware of that.

I did feel unimportant and second best growing up. I'm so grateful to all of you who posted about this because it never once occurred to me to make any kind of connection, not sure why now as it seems obvious. My parents acted in a more loving and caring way towards my brother. They made space for his feelings but never mine.

I'd been telling my T about how I tried to tell my mum I hated school and was being bullied. She wasn't interested and wouldn't listen. I've just remembered that my brother was bullied at school. Why do I know this? Because he WAS listened to.

So I think I also worry that my T can't have space to care about me and someone else, that I could get pushed out by their problems. Wow. I am so grateful to all of you for helping me work this out. I thought it was just that she looked prettier and happier than me - like someone who wouldn't feel the same as me about this! - at first, but it's not just that.

I can completely identify with this and I'm ashamed to admit it. I would complain about school and was told to "deal with it" "what doesn't kill you makes you stronger" kind of attitude. At the same time my mom would go rushing to my younger brother's school and stand up for him against teachers or believe him when he said something was unfair. I hated my brother for this. (Not anymore I was just a teenager)

With T I want to be the one that needs her most, that she cares about the most, that she worries about the most, that she is proud of the most, that she loves, the most, etc. For me her laughing with another client hurt this "most" because she has told me that she thinks I'm funny. Like you can't find more than one person funny. I really annoy myself sometimes.

I'm so sorry to hear you didn't get the same support as your brother. I think we've been raised to think that an attachment figure (a parent or a T) can't make equal space for more than one person.

I totally sympathise on the laughing thing. My T says I'm funny and I feel like that's MY thing, so I'd be the same as you.

We all have our things that bother us…something that bothers me, may not bother you, and something that bothers you, may not bother me. This doesn’t bother me. I think that there are several reasons for this. It seems like a lot of people who are posting on here rarely see other people that see their T. I believe that part of the reason this doesn’t bother me is that my T works in a counseling group and schedules clients back-to-back. I almost always encounter people in the waiting room (usually around 2). I also almost always encounter the person leaving my T’s office and the next person coming in after me. This has been happening to me since the very first time that I saw my T. So, this is the norm for me. I think I am desensitized to this. If I never saw people and then did just a few random times, I would probably feel like you and the others. However, I am just so used to this. Second, my T seems to see a lot of youth (teens are one of her specialties) and I’ve seen her see married couples and married women individuals. I kind of feel like I have my own niche as the “young, single adult client.” I’m sure that she has others, but I have not seen one. Also, although I have my list of family issues (TRUST ME), I was an only child for 14 years and an only grandchild on both sides for 9 years. For my formative years, I didn’t really have any competition for attention. Fourthly, one thing that I really like about my T is that she makes me feel special. She definitely tells me that I am a fun client and a special client. She also will tell me when something reminded her of me during the week. I really appreciate those comments. They make me feel special and like I exist outside of the room to her. It is hard being a client. There are so many of us to them, but we only have one T. These are all things that I’m really trying to keep in mind as I start school to become a T. I hope that I can make each client feel special someday…everyone deserves that feeling…. I’m sorry that this bothers you and others. It seems like the best-case-scenario would be to encounter this all the time (like me) from the beginning of therapy or never…but anything in-between seems distressing!

I'm usually the last client of the day, but once I came out of my T's office to see a very pretty client in the waiting room. I was jealous but also noticed that she had way too much make-up on, was dressed in a way too short and low cut, wrong time of day, dress that was summery on a still cold March day. (I know I sound so catty right now!!). But there was a lot of "trying hard" going on, in addition to the pretty. Anyway, when he told her he would be just a minute, she was looking at him like she was lost in complete infatuation. I was (and still am) dealing with my own infatuation but I remember not wanting to be like her - making it so obvious through clothes etc. I didn't want to be one of a legion of women that fall for him and make it so obvious. I wanted to be special and different to him. So I actually started making a point of not looking so freshly made-up etc when I got there.
Since then, whenever someone still had to come out before my appt I got a nervous feeling as I knew I would compare if it is another woman. I'm so relieved it has been a guy and it usually is for some reason.

I'm going to take this to a whole new level of jealousy just to make you feel better. But a couple of weeks ago i was waiting for my T to come out and get me for my appointment, and this other T came out to reception looking for her own client who just rushed in the door at that moment, she was young and slim and pretty. And i felt a pang of... inadequacy, jealousy or something and guilty and sad that my T had an ugly client and the other T got a young pretty one! LOL now THAT is pathetic

It's not pathetic. It's sad that you judged yourself unfavourably, but I do that a lot when I see people who I think are more attractive. But I bet you're not ugly. And I bet your T sees way more beauty in you than you do.

I know I do, just from your posts.

This is going to sound so weird, but tonight after my session I saw someone waiting to see my T in the waiting room. I have never seen another client after me. And for some reason it made me......happy. Yeah. Weird, I know.

Maybe it was the fact that it was a mother and her child. Maybe it was that she was really loud and talkative toward T as I left and I'm completely the opposite. Maybe it was that I just left a good session. Whatever it was, I felt a huge sense of relief. I think I just put a HUGE amount of pressure on myself in therapy and to see other people with my T takes some of that pressure off. Like he can pay them some attention now and the spotlight is not on me anymore (?) idk...

Anyone else ever react this way? Because with my abandonment issues I would've expected a way different reaction from myself. Not that I'm complaining...