In Session Today : Part III

Lately, I've felt like T has been very supportive and caring. Today he just...wasn't. I don't know if he was distracted or what, but he had his arms crossed most of the session (he never sits like that except for a minute) and just didn't seem to be picking up my need for support today. Instead, it felt like he was conducting a marriage counseling session, but with just me. I know the role of a T isn't just to support. But when I'm sitting there sobbing, asking for ways to stop having so much self-loathing...I feel like it should have been obvious I wanted something other than what he was giving me...And I only got a "See you next week" when we parted. Had to fight back tears (only moderately successfully) as I got on elevator--one good thing about MC/ex-T's office is that you can get out of there pretty quickly.

This sounds SO incredibly difficult. I’m so sorry your T didn’t see that you needed support today when you clearly needed it

Did YOU know what you wanted? Maybe the want or need WAS obvious, but he didnt know what it was either?

This is just a wild hunch, but if you were talking about the issue around income disparity with your husband, it could be that your therapist was in cbt fix it mode (or, fix your thinking/behavior--hard to tell without content here), not warm and fuzzy comfort the client mode.

I am so sorry that you felt an unempathetic distance today- it is a scary feeling that snowballs. It seems to happen in all human relationships, and Seinfeld kind of called a relative of that awful feeling the Flinch Factor. I bet you have been on the other side of that too- where someone you DO love/ care/ have emotions about asks for emotional contact and there's just this weird failure to connect you don't even want. I don't know why this dynamic happens, but I believe it does in all relationships. In real life it can be glossed over and the telephone wires go back up and all is well without too much trouble, but in therapy, where attunement is the only way to connect, it is glaring. So sorry- it is one of the worst feeling in the world. It makes me panic if it goes on too long.

Realistically, he could have had a different patient make a sucide attempt, he could have gotten food poisoning and been trying to hide it, or many other things besides not caring this one day.

I had a weird experience e once, in which T's crossed arms distressed me so much I brought it up to him the next session. He adamantly shook his head no, and said there is no way he would ever do that ever, and is just too well trained. He was so positive it came down to believing myself or him. He thought it was a kind of dissociative-ish issue, and I just ended up trusting him over myself.

Yeah...I think he may have been slipping into CBT mode. Talking about me finding out how H feels about it. Saying how in middle of argument, can help to stop and say something like 'That felt mean--what did you mean by that?" Like trying to get me to not just assume the worst and mind-read (he used that term), but to ask H about stuff he'd said recently and in the past instead. That even if H was thinking what I thought was the worst, at least I'd know and could deal with it. Which...that's not what I needed to hear. Like I get what he was trying to do, but...

T just responded to my e-mail. I'm reluctant to post my original here--could people please refrain from saying negative things about what I said or how I'm treating T like MC? Because this is my therapy and my therapist and our relationship. It's not the same thing. Anyway:

"Dr. T,
So, today I was really looking for/needing support, maybe connection. But you just seemed kind of detached (arms folded most of the time, etc.). Normally I feel the caring from you, but today I just didn't. Like I was sitting there crying and just felt nothing coming from you. I know you may not be willing to say the actual words "I care about you" because some therapists are weird about that. But could you just say something that suggests you do? Or at least that you're supporting me right now?

Note: Short, free response fine; if you want to do something longer, charge accepted. If you'd prefer to meet to discuss this and have something available later this week, also open to that--let me know."

"LT,
Your email is a surprise to me - I didn't realize that you were feeling this way. Of course I care about you and how you do/feel, and I'm sorry if somehow my actions failed to convey that to you today.

Let me know if you're OK to keep the next meeting on Tuesday."

Which is really nice...I think I'd figured him to be one of those T's who wouldn't actually say the words "I care about you." So, this makes me feel better...

So Info started by breaking the rules and asking me how I was when she came out to get me. We agreed months ago she wouldn’t do that because it made me self-conscious, especially if others were around.

But, she remembered she wasn’t supposed to do that and apologized. She has this awful new arrangement of furniture that means we sit further apart, and it makes it harder for me to hear her. So between that and the fact she was chewing a candy when we started, which interfered with hearing her clearly, I ended up snapping at her, “I feel like you don’t take my hearing disability seriously.” Because, like every other person with normal hearing, she forgets she needs to talk a bit differently. I need people to meet me part of the way if they want to communicate with me and vice versa. Apparently she thinks what I would call a voice just below normal range is shouting. I grew up part Greek. It has to be a LOT louder before I actually think someone is yelling at me.

So she moved and sat on the couch opposite my chair and we talked about the hearing for the first time. Feeling freakish. Feeling abnormal. Being bullied, not just for the hearing but for daring not to hide my intelligence in school. I even told her about the episode last weekend here on PC where some poster I don’t know called me the dumbest PC poster ever (fortunately I developed a thick skin in grade school).

In some ways my disability has been a blessing—it has trained my brain to think a certain way that is helpful in my field, and it means I am so used to being different that it doesn’t much concern me when I am different from the group—and in others it has been a curse, an easy way for 2ex to hurt me, and difficulty in forming relationships. I’m not sure she understood the first part, but at least she is aware of it now.

I don’t remember too much specific after the first ten minutes. But she listened, and I think she learned. The fall was so taken up with the No. 3 drama that in some ways I don’t think she even knows about half my issues yet.

Her only misstep was proposing EMDR to deal with the feelings around the disability. No thanks.

I may have annoyed her when she suggested I “make space” for an emotion she claimed she saw in my eyes (I didn’t feel any emotion), and I got up and sat on the arm of my chair. She asked what I was doing and I said, “making space for the emotion.” Hey, I thought it was funny.

But otherwise she continues her sudden surprising morph into a saner therapist.

I think it’s hilarious too.

Did she laugh?

She’s a total keeper, if yes. Orange or not.

Alas no. She seemed unamused. Like Queen Victoria with orange cleavage.

lol, that is hysterical!

Not laughing is a far greater sin than technicolor cleavage.

It made me laugh.

Tonight was a nightmare, I may actually be done. Not sure I can take one more moment of his fakeness

Absolutely the funniest thing I have read all day

well she clearly has no sense of humor!

And you know what they say:

"A laugh is worth a thousand acks."

Eta - youre right, i dont understand me either.

Oddly...it makes sense to me.

Thats good, youre who it was for!

Do you guys need a room?

With no chairs?

I'm glad your feeling better and I'm proud of you telling him how you felt straight away.

I'm glad you feel better. I don't mean this to be negative and I hope it doesn't come off that way-- I want to tell you what has worked for me in first my marriage and then with other people. T "taught" me this but he didn't do so directly.

I gave up trying to get people to pick up on what I was feeling, as unless I was pretty extreme (e.g. burst into tears or said something very hostile), most people including my H and T and those who'd known me for years and years had no idea I was upset about X. And as I got better managing my emotions (so they weren't so "hot" in the moment and more accepting of other people rather than demanding they respond precisely as I wanted), people could figure me out less and less.

So I began to rely on articulating, as precisely as I could, what was going on with me, trying to avoid finger-pointing. I would sometimes say, and T was the safest person to say this to, that I interpreted something he said as X or Y. What I got back was the real story about what he meant or why he did X, and I began to see that my interpretations were off a lot of time. So I started asking others more about what they meant when they said something that I interpreted in a particular (negative) way.

I think your T is encouraging you to check out your beliefs about him, and he's making it safe for you to do so. It's okay if you need to feel cared about before you can say the thing that upset you. I think you did a great job with this.

Many people have the illusion that they can read other people when there is no evidence to suggest this is true or not. So we go off on our interpretations that lead us mostly down dark roads and hurt our feelings. For me it has been useful to separate out what someone said or did and my interpretation of it. The clearest example of this was not long before my spouse was diagnosed with a fatal illness. I said I wanted to take a leave of absence from one of my two jobs and explore whether I could grow my business full time. I thought he replied that he thought that wouldn't work out and would turn the financial burden of our family too much to his earnings. He seemed angry and stressed about the possibility. I was shocked because he was incredibly supportive of my career and what I wanted. Later I ask him about what I thought he was saying and it turned out that he was stressed about finishing a project deadline that day and he thought the conversation was taking too long, but he thought he said that would be great for me, and that the short term financial hit would probably be made up by my greater earnings later on. It left me with an appreciation for the beauty of being wrong but being able to communicate further to check out exactly how wrong I was. Maybe I'm unusual, but I think I'm more likely to take things that are positive or neutral and see them as negative compared to the other way around.

This is a good post. I also don't think you are unusual--at least in this crowd--at taking things that were meant to be positive or neutral and interpret them negatively. I know I do it. Sometimes I can catch myself at it now, but sometimes I can't.

Thanks, Lemon! I've learned it tends to do me no good to sit on negative emotions like that--I just tend to ruminate on them (stupid OCD!)

Thanks, Anne. So, this is really interesting because T and I were having a similar conversation to what you said here, but in relation to my H, in session yesterday. I had reacted in a certain way to things H had said to me, over the weekend and in the past, and T had suggested I ask him if he really meant them as I took them. How if I'm assuming the worst...then chances are, what H is really feeling/what he meant by comments isn't as bad as that. And if it is, then at least I know what I'm dealing with.

Not sure why it didn't occur to me to do the same with T. Like...when he was sitting there with his arms folded for a good portion of the session...I suppose I could have just said, "What's up with the body language? It feels like you're trying to block me out." Or spoken up earlier and said what I felt I needed from the session. Or at least redirected him before the last 10 minutes if I felt he was going way off course. Or said near the end, "So I was looking for caring and connection, but don't feel I got that," to at least give him the chance to make things a bit right. Or even, "All I get is 'See you next week'?" So that I wasn't walking out of session fighting back tears.

It's just hard to learn how to do all that stuff in the moment. It sounds like you've learned to do this, and that's great. Any advice on how to be more aware of my feelings in the moment and check in with the other person, instead of afterward?

And I don't know how recently it was, but I'm very sorry about your H...