Couch 158: The Newberry Couch!

Those people are excellent gaslighters.

And the idea that I could not be angry in a letter or email or text is complete codswallop. I can be angry at one of those people any where and way I like. What ********.

I am going to wait until I actually need to hear whatever is in there.

30 mins tili pick up my car hopefully PC will have fixed the image uploading problem by then

NP--
I love that your T did this for you! How creatively kind and thoughtful.

OK, posted about the MC call Sunday in In Session Today if anyone wants, as my mom would say, "the gory details."

Thanks for the update, LT. I am starting to think MC only skims his emails, if he reads them at all. It kind of makes sense if he spends a lot of time running around trying to be everything for everybody. It was like he was reacting to a misheard, half-remembered conversation.

Now I'm starting to feel stupid for telling him I'll miss him. He's not going to miss me. He just said that out of reflex.

Random: This happened today-
It was an amazing sight to see!

Yeah, I'm wondering, too, if his whole thing about reducing outside contact was based on the volume of e-mails/texts, even though the ones after Tuesday were only a sentence or two (well, the texts in response to his were slightly longer, but that's different). And if he didn't actually read them. Because I very explicitly stated "phone call" in both an e-mail and a text, never said "individual session." I think he was making all these presumptions about what I was looking for that weren't true. And so he was being all blustery and making these statements on the call, only to realize I wasn't looking for what he thought I was looking for (individual session, to not bring it up with H after, romantic love).

Not sure if I'll write up Monday's session, but I'd said how I had asked him repeatedly in the past if my amount of outside contact was OK, and he'd always said yes. On Monday, he said it hadn't bothered him till the previous week, but he didn't elaborate as to why it bothered him then (looking back...there have been weeks with no contact and weeks with much more contact than this past one--and what I'd consider more intrusive contact, like phone calls and more texts...) And I said in session that really, I was just looking for a response as to whether he was going to bring up the e-mail in session. And if he'd just gotten back to me sooner (Wed. to Sun. is a fairly long time...), I would have left him alone. To which he also said, "Oh." Which...also makes me wonder if he actually read the e-mails (maybe just the most recent text).

*codswallop*
I like it!
(Noted)

Wonderful of him!

I don’t possess that amount of restraint.
riiiiiiiipp!

He wrote you a letter for bad times. He’s going to miss you.

I think therapists in general do not read carefully, or don’t retain what they read.

also a fan!

I feel like my T pays too much attention sometimes.

"I noticed you omitted the Oxford comma in your email. You have always used the Oxford comma in the past. Are you abandoning the convention, just like you mentioned last time feeling like your father abandoned you?"

Are you reading HIS texts carefully? They are pretty thoughtful.

Like in the first set, where he says its under YOUR control what you talk about in session. You were freakin out that he was gonna walk into session and announce to your h, "hey your wife loves me, nah nah!" Hes like, cool your jets, why are you even thinking that?

So its not your fault, but it IS your fantasy. You seem to be acting out something and not paying attention to what is being said. I think thats what happened sunday.

His "oh" might not be a guilty oh. Thats not how im hearing them. Im hearing them more like, "are you sure you want to go there?" Like threatening. Like oh girl i cant believe you are saying that to me. Not a good spot to find yourself in.

He is not there to gratify your needs per your directives. He is there to help you grow. There is a difference and he has a say. If you keep insisting on only the former, i fear this will end badly. But i dont think you can hear me either. I wish i knew what would help.

Proud mom alert - my son graduated from his Machining Certification program tonight! His boss came, so we got to meet him and sat at the table with us, it was nice to chat with him a little. Nice guy. That was really cool of him to come!

That would be me if I were a therapist. Lots of textual, grammatical, and punctuational analysis.

I only wish I had a therapist like that.

my T probably winces at my no capitalization, and all comma e-mails as she originally wanted to be a writer.

You and Info would get on well together. Well, except she doesn’t use commas at all.

It's the fact that he completely misinterpreted what I'd said and asked for. He said "I agree with your thoughts on this" when that wasn't what I said at all. I don't think he actually read my e-mails, in retrospect.

The way he was talking (and breathing--like he was trying to keep it together)--I got more of a sense that he was like, "Oh ****, I totally misread this situation, and now I've said all this stuff, but I'm also too proud to take it back and admit that maybe I was wrong."

I get that he has a say, but he doesn't have to be an ***hole to me. Though, he may have managed to kill the transference in doing so. Because the way I'm feeling now...it's like he showed his true colors. He let the side of him that's not all super-caring, "All feelings are OK," "I'll never abandon you" come out. Like, the claws. I'm not sure he can totally come back from that (barring some "Wow, I screwed up so much, I'm sorry, I take it all back" apology, but I don't see him doing that, based on past experiences).

The truth is, he's been, as I put it, wildly inconsistent with me. He's given me incredibly mixed messages. He's been very loose at times with his boundaries. Then tightened them when it was convenient for him (even my T, who used to work with MC and is friends with him, agreed with that). And those things are all his responsibility as a therapist. It's not up to the client to hold the boundaries--he knows clients will push them, will test him--he's told me this numerous times. It's up to him to set and hold them, to be consistent. And he's failed at that. It's not all my fault. He created this caring and accepting persona--of course I'm going to be drawn into that--I'm sure I'm not the only client (especially because teens are his specialty, and they're particularly vulnerable emotionally). But if he doesn't know how to deal with it after that...that's on him, not me.

Trying my best to hold onto the anger and push away the self-blame. Because that's how I'll get through this and walk away...

And you know, on Monday, he was trying to convince us to stay? I thought T's weren't supposed to do that. He was saying the whole "I'm not abandoning you" thing and saying how it could be good for me to keep seeing him to have that relationship where someone doesn't abandon me. (My response: Yeah, but you're emotionally abandoning me in some ways, so...yeah, I don't know. You're headed down that path...)

I was highly impressed that T sent an e-mail today where he correctly used "for LT and me to discuss"--most people would say "LT and I," which isn't right. I mean, I'm sure he'd lose in a grammar battle to my English major ex-T, but he's still way better than MC in that area (who is pretty hopeless at grammar/spelling).

I finally showed my mother one of my short stories.

Her only comment? “You do write unsettling endings.”

Jeez. She couldn’t at least offer to hang it on the fridge?

Sounds like my mom, when I was in high school, who complained that I only wrote depressing poetry. I wrote her something called "The Happy Poem." It was pretty terrible, but she liked it...

Thanks for all the input today.. just following up.

So in general I can tell t when I am pissed at him and have done it a lot. I guess today, though I had a hard time because even though sure he could have left his house a little earlier, it was still not his fault that is car wouldn't start. And the other thing that really ther me off today was the fact that he has a cold and was coughing a lot and it just kept interrupting my flow of thought. So both of these things were really not all that much in his control.

If he has been 45mins late and was like who sorry I just lost track is time, and he was distracting me by being on his phone or something. Then I would say those two things are totally in your control and I am not happy with you.

So regardless, I did email him and told him I was upset that the session went the way it did, and I needed something to be different next time. Like he needs to be on time and not be coughing so freaking much. Lol