Couch 137: Jung's Obsession

The woman did not get references to Macbeth or King Lear or Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead.
Basically I think many of those people are functionally illiterate.

I love Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead.

Sometimes they remind me of you and ex-hankster. With better mutual comprehension.

Mmm. That's a hard-line view and it's fine if he wants to do things that way, but he shouldn't teach it to you as if it's the only way! He must think the majority of therapists practising are 'unethical'?!

I'm fairly hard-line myself on self-disclosure - there's a point where it's just silly (and kinda rude) not to answer though. One of my tutors used exactly that example of 'where are you going on holiday?' to illustrate how self-disclosure is sometimes not a big deal, and in fact it can be more damaging to needlessly withhold such things!

My T's undergrad degree is English, so I think she'd get most of those sorts of references. MC is more likely to reference '80s or '90s movies or sports.

I don't self-disclose a lot and i specifically ask my T not to self disclose. This comes from my experiences with T1. He self-disclosed so much i could practically write his biography.
But if a therapist tried to analyse why i was asking such a trivial question as that, i think they would deserve a slap.

Hahahaha! Yes... definitely.

The second one is better at art and literature. She is no better at classical music than the first.

I prefer to think of myself as the Player - I can do you blood and love without the rhetoric, and I can do you blood and rhetoric without the love, and I can do you all three concurrent or consecutive, but I can't do you love and rhetoric without the blood. Blood is compulsory – they're all blood, you see.

My t self-discloses a fair amount, but it almost 100% relates to what we're talking about at that moment. I hardly ever ask her personal questions, altho i did ask her how old she was and she told me.

I wish i could go back in time to yesterday's session exactly as it was so i can remember more of what t said...

This lecturer said that the only type of self-disclosure he would do is say something like "i play my guitar to distract myself". I told him I'd find that really unhelpful! I can't​imagine my T telling me about how he deals with his own issues, it would make me uncomfortable (as it did when T1 did that).

After almost four years with my T, she confessed: "Anais, I don't know what a [instrument, the performance and teaching of which I've dedicated my whole life and career] is."

She could have googled it in four years

I would've prefered she had!

My T self-discloses very little. She recently told me something and actually prefaced it with "I'm going to self-disclose," which felt a bit odd. And it was just about her having trouble listening to her daughter performing at an audition for...maybe some state violin thing...because she was so nervous for her. To make me feel better about being nervous for my daughter's IEP meeting. I think I was sort of like, "That was it???" I mean, hasn't most every parent been nervous for their kid at some point?

She did tell me a few things about early in her marriage, which were quite interesting (including the fact that she married at 21--so I guess they've been married >40 years!).

I told her at one point recently that her lack of self-disclosure (vs. MC's very frequent self-disclosure) made me feel like she had just led this perfect life and she was a very pulled-together person. She laughed at that and said she guessed she put on a good act. But I think I would have trusted her MUCH earlier if she'd let on that she was far from perfect... (separate post on a minute on MC's disclosures...)

The two I see, if allowed, would tell me stuff about themselves. Like I care somehow. I am simply not interested in what a therapist would or would not do ever. It is not like I am more or less inclined because a therapist of all people did/did not do something. It is not like I don't know what to do in any given circumstance and if I did not know, I sure as hell would not look to a therapist to figure it out.

The only thing I want to know is why they became a therapist. Because it tells you a) their level of self-awareness/intelligence, and 2) whether they have any dangerous delusions (like they were meant to be a therapist from kindergarten, a la DBC).

Otherwise, I might occasionally be curious, but I don't particularly care to bother asking.

Totally OT: tomato-carrot bisque is really good.

I still remember, before I started posting, someone on here saying that their T told them there's an arrow by the gas gauge showing what side of the car the fuel pump goes in. That's been life changing for me.

You know those pointless little questionnaires that used to get copied and pasted on livejournal or whatever? I'd like to give my T one of them.

Found one:

1. Are you a boy or girl?:

2. How old are you?:

3. What is your Chinese Zodiac sign?:

4. What is your Zodiac sign?:

5. Who is your best friend?:

6. Who are your favourite actor[s] that you think are hot?:

7. Who is your favorite actress?:

8. Who is your favorite band?:

9. Who do you love the most?:

10. What is your favorite color(s)?:

(...and then it goes on for another 91 questions... yes, seriously...)

I went and worked out his Chinese zodiac animal... he's a goat.

Apparently I don't have anything better to do this evening...

I think MC's is a dragon. Don't know T's birth year, so can't figure hers out. (And MC told us his age when we asked at one pont, but I only learned his birthday accidentally through past googling--it's a day before my mom's--very different year though!--and 8 days after H's. So many Scorpios!)

(I do have work to do, but this is more fun than checking reference citations!)

Edited to add: That's weird, I always thought I was a snake, but this calculator says I'm also a dragon. Maybe because my birthday is early in the (non-Chinese) calendar?

Huh, yeah, H's b-day is much later in the same year as mine, and he's a snake. Interesting...

I want to know what my t's is now. I bet it's tiger.

My t self discloses a good amount.. he has never really tried to hide things from me for sure. But his kids share a lot more on our five minute car rides home from school

I make sure they are licensed and that they have endured therapy themselves and not just as a requirement of their program (although it seems that is not a requirement of many programs)

Just looked it up holy cow i was right.

OK, just did compatibility thing on same site for H and me and found this to be amusing:
Both of you are very talented and stubborn. If you are willing to cooperate with better understanding and tolerance, your relationship will be smoother. The male snake wants to be dominant in the family. However the female dragon does not consider her husband competent enough.