[withit]

So this new t has her office in the basement of her house...so one day I see her child leaving the house...and another day I see her husband on the porch....

Something about it is disorienting to me. I can't quite put my finger on it. With my previous t (there I go again) I knew nothing about her personal life. Nothing. Until a few years into treatment, when someone told me my t has children....
She was a blank slate. I found that helpful. It was what I needed.

This new t is no longer a blank slate. And it's not my comfort zone, knowing about her personal life.

That she hasn't birthed any children makes me feel she can't relate to my struggles as a mother. (That child I saw is a foster kid, a teenager). That she's married and has s-x oh my god.....I hate to know too much about her!

[withit]

On second thought, y'think above post is grist for the mill? To discuss with t about what all this means to me? What it means to me to know too much about her? That there is too much of 'her' in the room, and I want it to be about 'me' only?

[Perna]

I liked that I didn't know much about my T (and I knew her for 27 years) but things snuck in the first time (she took a call once from her 8-9 year old son, in about 1979 so I "followed" how old he'd be through the years :-) and then around 2003 she was comparing me to her granddaughter (and I knew she had a groundson a year or two older :-) but it got better when I had grandchildren, etc. kind of like when I got married, my stepmother and I could discuss our "husbands" together :-) and finally have something to talk about after 35 years. If you think about it, you really don't know much about "her" just that she's married, etc. not about her interests or problems, etc. You can guess how much schooling she had, approximately how old she is and I think we do that unconsciously; I would have had trouble with a T having an office in her home, I knew my T's address and that always bothered me like I was afraid I'd go there to check it/her out.

My 1st T had an office in her house. Sometimes when I pull up to park, I'd see her husband come out. I knew she had five kids-- I knew that they went to good colleges. I knew where she went on vacation.

My current T? Nothing. I guess he's married since he wears a wedding ring. I can get an implicit idea that he appreciates literature. Ummm let's see.... what else? He likes socks because he wears them? Haha, very much a blank slate, as you can imagine.

I, too, felt that I knew too much about my 1st T. I didn't know what transference was back then. But I must have been feeling it. My mother was too self-absorbed to support me in going to college-- and I knew that my T's kids were going to really good colleges... so I was really mad about that. But I never expressed it to her.

Wow, I can't believe I had a female T. But that's a separate tangent.