What type of body language shows up in your sessions? (Pertaining to both you and your T). Where do you sit? Same chair every week?

I will set the stage.... and the rest of you can follow...

In my T's room, there are three places I could sit. There is a chair off to the side, which would be funny if I sat in it because then I'd be facing the wall instead of him. Then there is a chair that faces him. This is the one I always sit in. Then.... there is the dreaded psychoanalytic couch. I have never laid on it. I probably never will. He has spoken to me about using it, telling me that it is a great facilitator of free association. I am scared to death of the couch, and told him I would rather lay under it on than on it. He told me that I could even try it in steps, perhaps just sitting on the couch, maybe even for five minutes. Yeah. Right. Anyway, so my T always sits back in his chair, and he's always maintaining eye contact. How I know this, I am not even sure, since I barely ever look at him. Normally when I talk to him, I am looking at anything and everything in the room except him. I normally fidget with something intently (either a coffee cup lid, a button on my shirt, my scarf, etc.), as if it's a freaking science experiment or something. Very mature, I know. But whenever I do look up at him, he's focused intently on me and when I'm telling him something important (ready for this? I love when he does this), he always has his hand on his chin, and he's kind of slowly sratching his goatee, like he's processing the information really, really deeply. I love it, I do. Pathetic, I know.

*Bonus Question*

What percentage of the day do I spend thinking about T?

a. 25%
b. 50%
c. 75%
d. 99.999%

Hmmm... I would say.... D? Sad. Pitiful. Ridiculous.

[Becca07]

My t has this giant sectional that I sit on, and she sits on her big comfy chair across from it.

I've noticed that my body language tends to be protective of myself, in that I'm always pulling my legs up and scrunching as small as I can. I'm looking towards my t a little more than half the time. I tend to look away from her when I really have to think about an answer to her question.

Becca

[WinterRose]

Let's see - my psychiatrist has a few comfy leather armchairs - I like sitting in one of those and I too draw my feet up under me or sit indian style. He usually sits in a desk chair and I've played with the idea of sitting there to see what would happen. (Has anyone else sat in the dr/therapist chair? I have moved it when he's been out of the room but he doesn't notice.) Sometimes he'll sit at a round table in the room and then I do too. He's very animated and keeps eye contact without boring into you. He does this weird thing with his hand sometimes where his pinky is in his mouth and his pointer finger is at his eyebrow. Also, almost every time I see him he's different - hair, style of dress, etc. Very entertaining. Find I sometimes loose focus on what's going on because he's so fascinating to watch.

Now the Therapist - I always sit across for her and would never dream of trying out her chair. Her chair puts her slightly higher than me. There is living room type furniture in the office and I sit on the couch. When she gets excited about something she'll do a little wiggle in her chair and sit up straighter. I avoid eye contact when I get emotional, but she's always looking at me. I start glancing away trying to hide my tears. And I usually do this thing with my hands, waving them as if to brush away the emotion.

Interesting topic.

i've read some stuff on the significance of clients seating decisions. i've also read something on the supposed significance of the client taking what is fairly clearly the clinicians chair. hmm... what did they say... i'll admit that i don't remember what was said so much as being fairly shocked that someone would do that!

i think there were a few notions. one was that it could indicate that the client had difficulty grasping social norms / conventions (lol). another was some kind of power tactic to throw the clinician off course. but then of course there is simply playfulness (my interpretation of your desire) lol.

i hate the first session because i hate trying to navigate seating arrangements. actually, i hate navigating all arrangements really. selecting a chair in the wait room. then how the little ritual of going down into the office is going to go (please lead because i don't much like you walking behind me trying to give me directions when i can't walk forwards and look backwards at the same time). and sometimes there are strangenesses like them leading the way then standing aside kind of gesturing me in the door. i'm a little unsteady on my feet (leg injurys) and i don't much like them seeing me bouncing off the walls (sometimes i'll put out a hand to help steady me).

and then the dreaded navigation of the seating arrangement in the therapy room. cringe. doesn't help that i'm anxious (seeing them for the first time) and so my brain is whirring even faster than normal running through different takes on the significance of various decisions. sigh. (lol)

the first time i saw my t was in the public service (and i haven't been back to that room). i took what i thought was fairly clearly the most obvious seat for a client to take. he seemed surprised. he was kind of half way through a speel on how i could sit 'anywhere, anywhere you would like...' but i had sat down already. and he seemed kind of surprised. and cut short. he was like 'are you sure you want to sit there?' and he looked quite anxious. i have no earthly idea what was up with that...

the second time i saw my t was in his private practice (where i regularly have sessions). fairly much the same thing happened again. there was a desk chair by his desk, a chair by the window, a couch fairly much next to the chair, and a chair over kind of behind the door. the two chairs were kind of angled towards each other from opposite corners. the couch was closer to the chair by the door but the chair was kind of at an angle to the couch. he was kind of hovering around the door (and i wasn't going to push him aside to take the chair by the door) so i planted myself right in the middle of the couch. it is a two-seater so i don't think he uses it for couch work unless he has some midget clients.

and once again he seemed really surprised. he was kind of half way through a speel of how i could sit 'wherever wherever you like' and something about how 'most clients start off in the chair by the window and then move to the couch sometimes' and about how 'you can move around during the session too you don't have to stay put'. but i was planted on the couch already. and he seemed kind of surprised and anxious.

so i don't know what the hell he has been reading about the significance of clients seating decisions.

i lean forward so my arms are resting on my knees. sometimes my arms go all numb because i guess they are 'resting' there with quite a resolute pressure really. part of that is about my being uncomfortable (in general) with sitting unless i'm slouching (back injury) and part of it is about my being uncomfortable (emotionally) with sitting upright without something (like a bag) on my lap.

he leans forward to kind of mirror my pose, i guess. though he has started leaning back sometimes. maybe so it is more significant when he leans forward. also when i'm defending, i guess, he will kind of lean back (so as to convey uninvasiveness i guess). and when he says 'our time is almost up' or whatever to indicate that we are moving from the hard stuff to the reality stuff (to help re-orient me so i'm okay to leave) then he leans back and the pitch of his voice changes.

what i would most like...

would be to be able to lie down on the couch (i don't care if i have to hang my legs off the end) and he could sit on the chair next to the couch) so he can't see me. but... i'll never say that in one million years lol.

i'd like to try free association. don't know how i'd go at it. what i'd really like to get my hands on would be a few transcripts of clients free associating. mostly because i've heard there are about as many styles of free associating as there are clients who free associate. but i'd like to see something of the scope of that. i'd really like to do that. but even if it wasn't free associating... i'd still really rather that we didn't look at each other (not that i look at him anyway). but i'd really rather... he didn't look at me either. and that body posture etc wasn't an issue.

[sunrise]

There are two couches facing each other in my T's room, I'll call them Couch A and Couch B. Then T has his own special chair, a swivel type desk chair on wheels, which has a back support he has strapped on. He mostly sits in this and wheels between the couches and positions himself where he wants to be to interact with the client. The first time I visited him, I sat on Couch A on the far left side. When I returned the next time, I sat there again and he asked me to move to the far right side of Couch A. I figured out this is where he likes clients to sit who are going to do EMDR, because the EMDR gadgetry is on a low table next to that position. And since we did do EMDR our second session, this was appropriate. But I have continued to sit there even when we don't do EMDR. I like it there. It is next to the window, which has a nice view. T moves his chair really close to me if needed, in that "I'm giving you my energy and warmth" kind of move I've described before, where he pulls his chair up really close right in front of me, so we are almost knee to knee, and projects all that positive energy, warmth, and affection right at me. Some days, he will sit on the couch across from me, and I think his back is sore from a full day in his chair. Sometimes he will swing his legs up on the couch and kind of lie/sit there in profile to me. I figure his back is really bugging him then. It all seems to work. Sometimes I come in his room and I can tell the people there before me have been sitting on Couch B and that weirds me out! I see their indentations in the couch and T's chair is pulled up facing that couch. I feel like, how can they sit there, when he specifically told me to sit on the right side of Couch A? I feel like they are breaking the rule or something. I guess they must never do EMDR.

Other things about the room: it's very interesting, with lots of "props" and decor. I like it and feel really comfortable there. It's very masculine, but comfortable, and kind of earthy. Lots of dark colors.

When I first started going there, I had this "thang" about the lights being too bright in the room. I was always asking him to turn off various lights. He obliged to a point. I remember one time he said, "that's the last light, if I turn off anymore, it will be pitch black in here." Hey, that sounded kind of good to me! I guess I was thinking that at first I was kind of shy around him, and the dim light let me "hide." Later I realized it was because of this kind of "forbidden" dream I had about T between our first and second sessions (can you say early transference?) in which the room was very, very dim, and I was trying to recreate that. After I realized the connection to the dream, I stopped asking him to turn off the lights, lol.

For my former counselor, she had her barebones straight backed chair sitting across from 2 other such chairs. I always sat in the righthand one. I asked her once where most people sit and she said 90% of her clients sit in the lefthand one. Yay, I'm special! I like to be on the right as I don't hear well out of my right ear, so this maximizes what my left ear can hear.

Wow, I wrote a lot on that! Cool topic, pinksoil.

[sunrise]

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what i'd really like to get my hands on would be a few transcripts of clients free associating. mostly because i've heard there are about as many styles of free associating as there are clients who free associate.

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alexandra, sometimes you can get these transcripts by doing searches of the psychological literature. I read a number of transcripts of therapy sessions when I was first getting started with this T. It was interesting to me how each utterance of the T was classified into one of about half a dozen sorts of responses, for example, "transference interpretation." I do remember thinking, hey, my therapy sessions are far more interesting than these people's, lol. I don't remember reading any free association transcripts, but I'm sure they are out there.