Do you find it helpful when your therapist does this? Sometimes I feel like when I come in displaying a ****** mood, his mood can shift, thus shifting the session a bit. It changes the whole color.

[Jessica Hazlitt]

One of our quite significant moments happened around this.

For a while (apparently) I had been using my left hand to squeeze the top of my right arm when we were talking about difficult things. I suffer from dissociation so I find like, pinching myself etc helps keep me centered, so I suppose it's a variation on that. Anyway, T pointed it out to me. I looked at my arm worrying my nails may have dug in enough to draw blood (I didn't want to stain his shirt). He asked if I was checking if I'd hurt myself, I said no (lie). I felt stupid, that triggered getting trapped in silence. That's when he said, "well what if I do it?" He started squeezing his left arm. I just said "don't" to which he replied "I can take it". Without thinking I said, "I don't want you to hurt yourself" while I sort of peeled his fingers off his arm and caressed it with mine. Cue awkward pause, it felt like it went on forever! He broke the silence by saying "you're quite protective aren't you?" I couldn't speak, just gently squeezed his arm.

I know it may not sound like a big deal, but it was the first time I let him past my defences. It opened us up to talking about how we felt about one another, and how that related to the wider world, my expectations of others etc. I think it surprised us both in how meaningful it was.

[Argonautomobile]

Could you ask him about this? I think it could be an interesting/productive conversation. He may not even realize he's doing this, or it could be a more subtle/unconscious attunement, or it could be simply that your own poor mood is coloring how you see his mood.

I don't know if my T "mirrors" as some conscious therapeutic technique. I've never scratched my nose and had him scratch his nose, too, in some sort of comical pantomime.

Mirroring mood, though, I think is just basic attunement, and, yes, I find it helpful to an extent. I mean, if I slunk in in a depressed mood and start talking about the inevitability of my own death, I don't really want T to bounce in his seat, grinning broadly, and respond, "Yeah, but aren't cupcakes wonderful though?!"

Anyway, I hope you can come to a solution with your T. Good luck.

[lucozader]

Originally Posted by Argonautomobile

Mirroring mood, though, I think is just basic attunement, and, yes, I find it helpful to an extent. I mean, if I slunk in in a depressed mood and start talking about the inevitability of my own death, I don't really want T to bounce in his seat, grinning broadly, and respond, "Yeah, but aren't cupcakes wonderful though?!"

Heh, I love the thought of my T getting excited about cupcakes. The shock of that would probably be enough to bring me out of a depressive slump to be honest...

But yeah, surely you also wouldn't want your T to mirror your mood by sinking into his seat and quoting Sartre at you or something?

Thinking about it, it's not something I've ever consciously noticed... but I am aware when our moods seem to be out of sync, and I hate that.

[Elio]

Mine does selective mirroring. Sometimes when I am down, she'll bring her mood down and become quiet like I am. Sometimes she'll mirror my physical movements. She doesn't ever mirror my agitation states - anger, crying.

Sometimes, I think early in the session when I am down, she'll try the opposite.. try to be up beat to see if I am able to mirror her; like she is trying to help regulate my emotional state.

Then again, maybe this is all just my imagination

[Argonautomobile]

Originally Posted by lucozader

Heh, I love the thought of my T getting excited about cupcakes. The shock of that would probably be enough to bring me out of a depressive slump to be honest...

But yeah, surely you also wouldn't want your T to mirror your mood by sinking into his seat and quoting Sartre at you or something?

Thinking about it, it's not something I've ever consciously noticed... but I am aware when our moods seem to be out of sync, and I hate that.

Hahaha! Yeah, fair enough. I don't really want to spend time with anyone who slumps about quoting Sartre (and I'm speaking as someone who has done exactly that!).

So, yeah, I see OP's point.

T mirrors at times, but not in a physical way. If I'm in more of a lighthearted mood, he'll laugh at my terrible jokes and tell a few of his own. He joined right in with me on Saturday when I unleashed my inner sailor and started to curse. What I find interesting, though, is when he chooses not to mirror me. When I talk about the traumatic things that happened in my childhood, I'll approach them from a cold, factual place. T isn't afraid to show the sadness associated with some of these events. I'm having a hard time allowing the inner child express her sadness.

One time I remember clearly was telling him about this one instance where I was talking about

Possible trigger:

being molested as a child

and T was like, "that's awful, Daisy!" I kind of just shrugged my shoulders. Then T says (with this pouty face thing he does), "just thinking about if that had happened to one of my daughters makes me sad."

The uneducated me thinks he does this to show me that it's okay, normal, to be sad about these things. I've repressed those feelings for so long, though. Maybe I'll get there someday.