[SarahSweden]

Even if acceptance from a T is crucial to therapy I sometimes feel this acceptance hard to handle. Perhaps others can relate. I feel that a T has to accept many things from their clients, like them repeating themselves, "complaining" about stuff that can´t be changed like "how society works", clients being vague and not able to put into words what they mean and so on.

Of course this is a very important ingredient in a therapy but in a way I personally feel that my T perhaps sometimes accepts things like others would never do. I don´t know of any specific situation, I haven´t screamed at her, rushed out or anything but I know I sometimes repeat things, I have talked against earlier sayings, not often but perhaps a couple of times.

I´m very thorough in how I dress and try to act correctly, not just within therapy but in other situations as well and I feel I by this acceptance from T can be allowed to act in a way that I shouldn´t. According to my standards that is.

Even if therapy wouldn´t be productive if my T told me things like "you have already said that" or "you dress very neatly but sometimes you don´t act like the person you want to be" I at the same time find it hard sometimes that she doesn´t scrutinize me more.

Someone else who feels like this or knows what this depends on?

[phaset]

Sarah, I can relate to everything you wrote. I am very hard on myself. She often says nice things about me and I feel totally awful.

I was concerned that I wasn't leaving the room properly for awhile. Should I stand up first? Let her lead me to the door? Should I open it? I don't think I was doing anything wrong but it always felt like I was. I told her about this as an example of stuff i worry about. We came up with a plan, she stands up, leads me to the door, opens it and we say goodbye. Seeing this in writing makes me feel a bit silly... I still worry about it sometimes.

[LonesomeTonight]

I understand because I have difficulty with acceptance from my T, marriage counselor, husband, friends, etc. I know in my case it largely comes from stuff with my parents, how they didn't seem to accept that I had a mental illness (OCD, then anxiety as a child, depression in late teens/college). And my mom was/is the type to hide any negative things about herself or her family, including mental illness and such (I only found out a few years ago that her brother, my uncle, is bipolar, for example. Which explains so much). So it's hard for me to think that others would accept this in me. Or various negative things I've done. Or even just thought.

My marriage counselor is especially good at understanding my need for acceptance and reassurance. I've sent him e-mails where I've talked about things like how I love/care about him or my paternal transference or how I worry about rejection, stuff like that. And he'll respond saying that he's absolutely OK with everything I've told him, that he's not going to abandon me, etc. T is not as into reassuring me (she's concerned I'll become too dependent on that), but she seems to have accepted most everything I've told her.

And that acceptance from them has given me the courage to tell a few friends certain deep, dark secrets, and they've, for the most part, still accepted me. T asked me why I felt the need to share some stuff with friends, and I've said it's because I need to know that they'll accept me for x. I've told MC how I worried if I didn't hear back from a friend after I shared something with her at lunch, and then was relieved when I later heard from her. He said I almost am like, "OK, come on and reject me already!" Like I'm testing them in a way (like kids do to their parents). I think it comes down to me having trouble accepting parts of myself, so how could anyone else? Like how could someone, such as my H, love me if I have mental illness or have done some bad things? But I think those are messages I got during childhood and I'm working on recording over them...

[mostlylurking]

Originally Posted by SarahSweden

I´m very thorough in how I dress and try to act correctly, not just within therapy but in other situations as well and I feel I by this acceptance from T can be allowed to act in a way that I shouldn´t. According to my standards that is.

Even if therapy wouldn´t be productive if my T told me things like "you have already said that" or "you dress very neatly but sometimes you don´t act like the person you want to be" I at the same time find it hard sometimes that she doesn´t scrutinize me more.

As a fellow perfectionist in certain ways, I'm going to guess that your perfectionism feels protective to you, like if you stick to it, you'll be less likely to be judged, misunderstood, or rejected. And if you feel those protective mechanisms weakening -- because your T seems likely to accept you pretty much no matter what, so you find yourself relaxing a bit -- well, that can actually feel threatening. Because what would happen if you lost your motivation to be perfect, and you let yourself slip? Perfectionists don't even want to imagine that.

But that could be part of the point of therapy... realizing you could "slip" in many ways and still be accepted, that you don't have to be perfect.

Repeating certain things, being dissatisfied with society, or finding things difficult to articulate hardly seem like failings, they seem completely and totally normal and human. I think therapy might be your opportunity to find out what happens if you lessen your tight control over yourself, or at least explore why it is you are so hard on yourself.

Not that I have been able to take my own advice very well. As I said, I'm speaking from experience here.

[Soccer mom]

I just had a realization last session. My ex-T criticized me a lot as in pointing out things she thought I should change - thought patterns, etc. My new T. has explained that all of them are normal and ex-T. shouldn't have handled me that way. So, this past session I expected my T. to respond to a story with the way I should have felt/handled it./etc. But, instead she normalized it. I realized I was waiting for her to tell me otherwise and that ex-T. DID tell me otherwise. So did others.

Yes, acceptance can be a weird feeling.

[SarahSweden]

Thanks. I have similar thoughts as you around this when I meet her in the waiting room and then when I leave her room at the end. We now do these things in a similar way but I always think about like how I look when I approach her, how I walk along the corridor up to her room and many other things.

I feel quite relaxed when I sit and talk to her but for me her acceptance can feel like critique without her meaning it that way of course. But I feel that as she tells me about some mishaps in her life, several of them which I haven´t experienced, to make me feel more accepting about things that can happen in life, I can feel it as she kind of wants me to "shake off" the perfectionism and become someone else.

At the same time, that´s one of the goal in therapy, but for me perfectionism is a part of how I am and I don´t know how to change character. By that being shown acceptance is sometimes hard to handle.

Originally Posted by phaset

Sarah, I can relate to everything you wrote. I am very hard on myself. She often says nice things about me and I feel totally awful.

I was concerned that I wasn't leaving the room properly for awhile. Should I stand up first? Let her lead me to the door? Should I open it? I don't think I was doing anything wrong but it always felt like I was. I told her about this as an example of stuff i worry about. We came up with a plan, she stands up, leads me to the door, opens it and we say goodbye. Seeing this in writing makes me feel a bit silly... I still worry about it sometimes.

[SarahSweden]

Thanks. Yes, part of it is a way to try to avoid being judged, feeling like I´ve made a fool of myself and so on. And I also feel that I can´t see a boundary between a more "real me" and the "perfectionist me" as I´ve strived for being good and competent since I was very young.

A part in this is also that I know that my T and most T:s has an accepting stance "by default" and that she may have complete opposite opinions in some cases, sometimes she perhaps feels bored by what I tell her and so on and by that this "total acceptance" isn´t applicable to real life so to speak.

I think like you mention, that what will happen and who am I without perfectionism? And an important thing - not all of me is about perfectionism either.

Yes, I would really want to explore why I judge myself and sometimes others as harsh as I do.

Originally Posted by mostlylurking

As a fellow perfectionist in certain ways, I'm going to guess that your perfectionism feels protective to you, like if you stick to it, you'll be less likely to be judged, misunderstood, or rejected. And if you feel those protective mechanisms weakening -- because your T seems likely to accept you pretty much no matter what, so you find yourself relaxing a bit -- well, that can actually feel threatening. Because what would happen if you lost your motivation to be perfect, and you let yourself slip? Perfectionists don't even want to imagine that.

But that could be part of the point of therapy... realizing you could "slip" in many ways and still be accepted, that you don't have to be perfect.

Repeating certain things, being dissatisfied with society, or finding things difficult to articulate hardly seem like failings, they seem completely and totally normal and human. I think therapy might be your opportunity to find out what happens if you lessen your tight control over yourself, or at least explore why it is you are so hard on yourself.

Not that I have been able to take my own advice very well. As I said, I'm speaking from experience here.