[WikidPissah]

How do you see your t in your relationship?

I generally see them as a hired professional.

I see my T as a teacher or more like a college professor.

I had wonderful college professors (a high five to all of you college professors out there... I hope you realize that you can have lifelong impact on your students!)who would listen to me struggle with material or life. They would show me ways of thinking about things, issues, not all 100% about the material some about life and about yourself... but ultimately they didn't give you the answers but helped you find your way to your own answers.

[content30]

It only allowed one answer. So, I chose other. On the one hand, she is just a professional that I hired, but she is different than a primary care doctor or an accountant. It is a very personal relationship. It kind of feels like a friendship, but I know it isn't that. I'd say it most closely resembles a mentor/mentee relationship. They have mentoring programs at the two large corporations at which I have worked/work. Those relationships are professional yet personal...and offer guidance. In that relationship, one person is sharing his/her wisdom with the other while the other is seeking advice and guidance. Of course, this still has the potential to be more personal than therapy--in that your mentor may share more personal details of his/her life. However, I feel that it models the T relationship more closely than other relationships that I've experienced.

Edit:in retrospect, I think teacher would have fit best for me from the options listed--oops!

[wotchermuggle]

The best description I've found to describe the relationship is that we are allies.

[LadyShadow]

I think of my T as a teacher and as a friend. I would never say a curse word around a teacher but I have cursed around my T a few times. T makes me feel very comfortable and at ease. His relationship is the only one I have maintained for 7 years.

I see her as a 'sugar mother'.

[critterlady]

I see him as a hired professional, with occasional forays into paternalism/teacher.

I like the idea of he and I being allies. That seems to fit pretty well.

[tinyrabbit]

Allies works for me too.

[stopdog]

The therapist has used the word ally with me - early on. It makes no sense to me how a therapist/any health care professional could be an ally. I don't think it is possible. Perhaps my definition is not how others define it.

[unaluna]

It's a professional relationship. Pay no attention to the stuffies on our laps and toys on the tables and the hugs and the kisses. The level and content of information and services exchanged determines the professionalism.

This poll needs the option to choose more than one answer, so I voted other. I certainly see and respect him as the professional he is, and he is definitely a teacher. I don't see him as a friend, but I do see him as a strong support which wasn't an option.

[skysblue]

I wish we had a larger vocabulary for the different kinds of relationships we have. My therapist IS my teacher but I could not call her my friend. She is very professional and I appreciate that about her. And she's my support also

So, what word could we create that would stand in for this kind of unique connection she and I have?

Maybe 'sport'. She's my 'sport', short for support.

Or maybe 'sporty'. Support plus 't'. Yeah, that's it - my T is my sporty.

Yeah, but that sounds a bit too athletic.

What about 'profrient'? Pro (professional) frien (friend) t (therapist) - a PROFESSIONAL friend!!!! which is different from a day to day real life friend Okay, let's see how that sounds on the tongue. She's my profrient. Nah, doesn't roll off nicely and too hard to say and doesn't have a nice ring to it.

Well, maybe a completely made up word like 'sashan'. My T is my sashan. hmmmm
sounds kinda like we sashay all over the place. That might work.

Hey, I have an idea. Why don't we create the word here on PC and send it out into the universe and know we have done something useful and laudable for English speaking mankind. I mean, if people who live in Arctic can have hundreds of words for the varieties of snow, why shouldn't we have more options in vocabulary to describe different kinds of human relationships?

Sorry if this is too off topic

[unaluna]

Skysblue - I think "putred" is already taken! But good idea. Guru?

[WikidPissah]

I meant to make it ok to pick multiple answers...and I messed up.
I also wanted to add Lover as an option.

I think, skysblue, that sport-T is good, but it sounds like a sports bra.

[stopdog]

It is not easy to be a pollster. There are many challenges to creating polls.

[Fixated]

This is hard and brings up so many of my issues.

If thought of T as a hired professional, I have no incentive to share the worst, most vulnerable parts of me.

idk. I don't think there is a proper term for it. if t is just a professional, then i mean nothing to her...which is what i tell myself a lot.

I just want her to love me...in whatever relational form that takes. pathetic and impossible.

[tinyrabbit]

I don't think a T being a hired professional means you mean nothing to them - that's like saying no teachers care about their pupils, no doctors care about their patients, and so on. It's very black and white thinking.

My T is a hired professional. I know, without a shadow of a doubt, that he cares about me as I've seen plenty of evidence.

[WikidPissah]

aww fix... I didn't mean for it to be hard. It was supposed to be a light-hearted thread.

I don't think any of selections are "better" than the others...or that it's "wrong" to think of t in certain ways, we all just come at it from different angles.

[Fixated]

Originally Posted by WikidPissah

aww fix... I didn't mean for it to be hard. It was supposed to be a light-hearted thread.

I don't think any of selections are "better" than the others...or that it's "wrong" to think of t in certain ways, we all just come at it from different angles.

And I didn't mean to make it into more than it was. lol. I am just in a strange place today.

Generally, in session, T is either my enemy or sparring partner. I once described her as an assassin.

I picked teacher because in many ways t is teching me how to live my life to the fullest and teaching me to change my thought patterns that are making me so unhappy. I wish t was a friend too.

[healed84]

That was hard for me to answer... I picked paternal figure, but like a teacher was up there too.. I see him both ways, but I think right now, I am working with the 10 year old that go hurt and so I think I deal with T in a father type right now.

It was funning, when I saw a sparring partner... I knew that is what T would characterize my relationship with him is.. He has even said that he feels like we are sparring a lot. I don't think it is like that all the time, but it just made me snicker

[rainbow8]

I said "other" because I used to relate to her as an infant or child to its mother. Then there's the part who is in love with her, and relates that way. There's also the times we talk and share information about art, and it feels like we're friends. When we've done IFS, EMDR, and SE, I feel like she's my teacher. Often I feel like we're teammates. I like the word "allies' that someone posted. I know she would say she's a professional who cares deeply for me, and wants to be a coach to me. She wants to help me, to be a caring T. I wish it were that simple.

[sunrise]

T is like a companion on my journey.

[tinyrabbit]

To be honest I wish my T was my dad.

It's actually very hard to answer - not in a painful way, for me, just interesting and difficult to pinpoint (so thank you for asking the question, wikid!)

I answered "teacher" as that's the closest one for me, I think. I am a teacher myself and have colleagues who were my teachers when I was an undergrad, but I'm also a researcher and one of my closest research colleagues is my former PhD supervisor. So in my mind, a teacher is not far from a colleague, and in some sense my T is also a kind of colleague/follower along the road. He sometimes mentions the train of conversation, which we get on together without knowing where it will lead.

Sometimes I do get the sense that T is a strict and potentially punishing parent. Not that he has ever acted in that way, so I'm not sure where that comes from, really. (No, I do know. It's transference. "So bloody what if it is?", as T said when I pointed that out.)

There's a Swedish word "medvandrare" which roughly translates to "someone who walks together with you". That's also a way of viewing T, though it's a little too passive, since I do expect more than sympathetic company along the road.

And of course T is a professional I've hired. That's the basis of our T/client relationship. But many professionals are more or less interchangeable, and a T you're getting to know and trust is not easy to exchange for another professional.