empathy for someone else

in my last session we talked a lot about the situation about the mother. in fact my T was the one who brought it up.she never does this. but she said so i thought we might want to talk about your mother some, if it was OK with me. so we did talk some .she thinks now it might be a good idea for me to go to FL and help set up a support system for her. very different from what she has thought in the past . i don't know what to think about it at all. i guess i understand it .her reasons are sound.but in the past when i have talked about seeing the mother she has been very adamant about it not being in my best interest. when she had that reaction it kind of felt like she cared some about what i was going through .i felt taken care of some.or at least as much as i can. i don't feel good about the change .i don't think i trust it at all.

also.she asked me about my traveling and what plans i had . i told her that i was not going to go to Cancun with my BFF this year and she was curious about why. i talked very superficially about how i felt we were out of control the last time i went. i told her about how lately i have not been in a great place and sometimes it is not good to get together when she isn't in a good place .we kind of feed off each other and get in trouble. she asked more about this friend and so i told her we have been friend for 23 years and we have been through a lot. i told her about how 3 years ago her son committed suiside and just some stuff we have been through and why she might not be in the right mind. my T seemed to show so much empathy for my friend. asking if she was in T and so on . i realized that i had never seen any level of empathy from her at all in the years i have seen her .she has been kind of neutral for the most part. i figured it was just who she was or what was best for me etc... i didn't think much of it .until i saw this.she had so much empathy and concern for my friend. i know this is so selfish of me .as usual who i am .a selfish spoiled brat. i was hurt and i feel like maybe she feels i don't deserve any empathy. who knows i probably don't. but she doesn't even know my friend and she was able to show empathy . yes my friend is very deserving of it but has her own T .i want to say that this doesn't bother me and who cares that she can empathize for someone she has never met but as usual hates me. i wish i could change who i am .i really do .kind of hating who i am right now .but i guess that isn't anything new either. i know T's are human and who knows maybe she knows more about me then i think. guess i deserve what i get .i am not the easiest client to tolerate

sorry feeling this way makes me feel so humiliated,selfish ,broken. i should just not give a crap what my T thinks about me .and what a horrible friend, my friend does deserve her empathy. anyway sorry

I am on my phone-so cant give a proper reply, but i have thoughts abt this and do NOT think you are a selfish, horrible brat (those are your MOTHER'S words-NOT yours)! I also think your T is very emphatic towards you, but you just cant see it. I will post more later.

I would say 2 things: 1, she probably didnt want to sound like a heartless beeyotch towards your friend. I think anybody's first impulse is to say oh im so sorry thats terrible. But when its your own t and you're talking about something sad or terrible, they dont want their own emotions to crowd us and take overand for us to worry about them or feel like their reaction is right and ours is wrong. It's a whole different thing. But I think it's interesting you reacted that way, and definitely worth talking to her about. "Why did you sympathize with my friend? I feel like you never sympathize with me." I can relate to that cuz I always came last in my mother's book too. But this t yeah he babies me to death.

2. Re Florida - well if you're gonna go anyway, why not talk about it before you do go, and feel like you have some control, like you're making a conscious decision. That way you can set some limits and then maybe not feel so bad or so driven to to it. Or maybe decide not to go after all.

I think it could be it is easier to see the therapist being empathic to someone else or even she has to moderate the empathy so it is not overwhelming to you. Or maybe it is just that I know I can find empathy painful and awful so it is easy to overwhelm me with it

In your last session two things happened that are confusing/dont sit well/you struggle with:
1. You T wants you to go help your mother, hwen in the past she has always been against you going to help your mother. And when she didn't want you to go it felt so like she cared about you, and you liked the feeling. But now that she doesn't want you to go, it feels like she doesn't care as much? Is that it?
2. You told her about your friend, adn she seemed to have so much empathy for your friend - empathy you have never experienced from her. And you used to just chalk it up to "how she is" but now you wonder and you want the empathy your friend gets (not that you want your friend's empathy, but you want empathy also)

So now you think maybe you T really hates you, and you are selfish for wanting empathy? and you get what you deserve and you aren't an easy client? And maybe your T know more about you than you do? Is that it? and most of all, you hate who you are and wish you could be somebody else.
And Ts are human and make mistakes. I hear your emphasis on HUMAN as justifying the mistakes. Is it like that?

This sounds like such a painful place, feelign like you don't have the empathy you can see, and thinking you are horrible, and being confused about your T.

granite, first of all, you're a wonderful person. Second of all, I think feeling a bit jealous of your T's response to your friend is normal. I mentioned before that a friend of mine went to see my T at my suggestion. But still, when she told me some of the nice things he said her, when he NEVER says any of those things to me, I got jealous. It's normal, I think.

hey i am trying to just get all this crap out of my head but i cant. i just feel so miserable about all of it .i am taking everything and making it all horrible in my head. the session before when everything was changed around when she said she was late getting me because she was on the phone with someone else .then she was cleaning the carpet and the phone ringing .again.probibly the person she was talking to calling back.then this last session when she was so caring about my friend .it confuses me.i don't want to care .it is getting me so angry at myself. who gives a crap if she doesn't care one iota about me ,right?? maybe she wants to start terminating me .feels i no longer need to see her.that she knows others need her more. i don't know how to accept any caring from her anyway so it is a huge waste of time and i bet she knows it. i don't feel anything i have to say to her is worth her time. i think she knows i will never be able to open up to her or fully trust her . stupid idiot i am .it is hard to see how she can be and probably could have been toward me if i was not such a dumb *** about it all. stop is right i probably would have freaked if she was like that toward me. not know what to do with it . it hate life.

I don't think being overwhelmed by empathy is the same as stupid. And I think it is easier, but not stupid, to see something when someone else is involved rather than one's self.

This might be a time to stop and ask or write down even, what the therapist actually said versus your interpretation which kind of sounds more like it is coming from your past not the therapist. Usually the stupid stuff, termination stuff and so forth - those terms and the like, have come from your mother, not your therapist. I don't see that this time is different. I am not saying this is easy, but could you try to focus on the experience differently? It sounds to me more like you are going off on distorted assumptions and internal past experience rather than what the therapist actually did.

I see your T as joining you in trying to understand your friendship. I don't see any judging of you.

I got in trouble with my T once, she was saying she was empathetic and I told her she didn't sound very empathetic and we had a discussion that was interesting. Apparently empathy is a feeling, not something one shows (interest, concern, etc. one shows). T was miffed because she is the only one who is able to say what she is feeling.

It sounds like when T is away and we don't feel connected? If T isn't talking about us when we are talking to her and she sounds kind, it's like wondering who's behind you that she's talking to? I know sometimes when my husband and I kiss, he's looking over my shoulder (it's funny looking and I tease him about it, like he's looking for someone else when just the two of us are there); it's hard for me to learn to broaden my scope, to see a larger picture, experience something personally but imagine the bigger picture where I'm only a part.

(((( granite ))))

I think a lot of the feelings that you're having are perfectly normal and understandable. I wish you wouldn't beat yourself up for feeling them. I too get jealous when T talks about other clients or shows empathy for others - especially in group T. There are times when he's talking to someone in a caring way, and I end up turning my head away from him because it hurts to even look at him. I'm sure there are times when he's empathetic towards me as well, it's just hard to recognize because my own feelings, anxiety, etc. get in the way.

((( HUGS )))

Empathy involves understanding what it is like to be someone else: how it feels for you to be you, for example. If my words and actions demonstrate a lack of understanding of what it is like, how it feels, to be you, then my claim to have empathy for you rings hollow.

wow...I can't believe this thread has been around for three days and I've missed it! Wiki is loosing it. Sorry chickie, I should have posted earlier.

Anyhow...
I don't think you are selfish, or self absorbed or any of those things. Honest. It's okay that you are a bit jealous, that's actually healthy. So don't beat yourself up, okay?

Sometimes things are there and we don't see them. Personally, it's like I have nowhere to put my T caring for me. I repeatedly miss his attempts to connect with me. It's like I'm blind to his empathy. My childhood experiences have created this shroud that stops me seeing my T as he really is.

Others have said this too. And I can't help wondering if it might be the case for you. My T says it's a tragedy not of my making or his, and I would say the same to you. That maybe you just can't experience your T caring - but that doesn't mean the empathy isn't there.

I also wonder if you think empathy is somehow a finite resource and if your T expresses it towards someone else it means they have less for you? But could you conceive of the fact that your T is showing empathy towards someone in your life, someone you care about, so it's actually a part of your T caring for you?