[Calilady]

Have you ever had a T ask you the the wrong question, repeatedly? Or maybe a few times in a session?

For instance, if the T began to say, "Do you do this because you consider this your safe place?" and the answer isn't that, it's something completely different, would you feel any way about it?

I'm not talking about once. I'm talking about doing it more and more frequently over time. Would you begin to lose faith in them?

Or perhaps they didn't understand your questions or requests? I told my ex-t (in the process of deciding how to break up), "Can you see me? I thought you once did, but now I'm not sure. I just need to know that I'm seen by you." Obviously, I know she can see my physical embodiment in the room, I was asking for something more transcendent than that, but the question flummoxed her.
She responded with, "I don't know what you mean by 'see you?' Do you mean validation?"

[stopdog]

I tell the woman she is wrong and then I told her to stop talking altogether because she is just asking stupid questions

[feileacan]

Many times. It's highly irritating to me but the T doesn't read my mind and thus it happens quite frequently that he asks the wrong question or assumes the wrong thing.

[Argonautomobile]

I don't know that I've ever had this happen (repeatedly) with T, but I've certainly met people with whom I could just not seem to communicate. It's as if we're somehow not speaking the same language. It's very frustrating. I just stop talking to them.

I hope you find something that works for you.

[Elio]

Yes, my T can go down the wrong path and we have miscommunication. These don't bother me and she is great and accepting my answers as "course corrections" so to speak once we understand what each other is meaning/talking about. Like Feileacan said.. T's can't read minds, they can only assimilate what they hear and what they know of you then try to piece together the puzzle that is your psyche.

I work in IT.. there is a comic out there about product requirements and requests. There you go...
http://www.paragoninnovations.com/im...e_9pics620.gif

To some degree I think therapy is similar. We explain, they listen/hear, they process, they interpret, we hear and process... and back and forth it goes... sometimes we see the same picture or close enough and other times we catch it right away that we are looking at totally different images... then there are the times that we have mostly painted the picture only to discover I'm at the beach and she's in the mountains.

My ex therapist would have tried to clarify the statement also, maybe by asking the same question, "Do you mean validation?" I was changing over time, and my answers also changed, so yes she did ask the same questions over time, in addition to making the same statements over time to get them to sink in. I was slow on the uptake. She got it wrong lots of times. No I did not lose faith in her abilities. I went from not trusting her to trusting her a lot. She didn't give up like most people did in trying to understand me, and I did not have a need to give up on her. For quite some time she was my internal attachment figure, even after therapy ended.

[smileygal]

At times I have said things that my T has tried to clarify but been way off track. It doesn't help that I often have difficulty articulating my thoughts. They are human and not mind readers and like with any relationship miscommunication is bound to happen sometimes.

[stopdog]

I don't find the question the problem unless the woman persists - it is the assumption part that is galling. And that has nothing to do with those people being human or not (truly a designation I have never understood the point of when dealing with those people) - it has to do with condescension and arrogance.