Couch 160: The Squeaky Clean Couch!

Can't I just sleep through tomorrow? I know I am strong, capable and all that jazz....but I don't feel any of those things a bit at the moment.

I bought a lovely belt a couple of months ago and I couldn't even get the ends to meet. I can now get it in the first hole. I haven't felt this motivated to become healthy in a long time. I'm not going to let myself return to unhealthy habits with food.

Awesome! I'm happy for you!

That's great!

I'll add myself to the list of folks with sudden, strange car troubles -- my windshield's cracked all over again (just a few months after replacing it) and insurance, of course, doesn't cover it.

Rather discombobulating.

Direct quote from patient’s relative regarding yours truly: “I like this doctor. She swears, like us!”

(I know that Using Bad Words in front of patients is not Professional Doctor Behavior, but I only do it if the patient has used bad words first... and also I think it can be disarming, which can help build rapport in a tense situation... and can get rid of some of the Doctor Is On A Higher Plane bulls#!t, especially since most of the patients at my hospital are poor and are often treated like crap by people in power. That's how I justify it in my head, at least.)

There was one md my person had that I did not despise. Mostly because she seemed to be the one to realize my person got to make the decisions about her body and not the mds.
I swear a lot. I don't pay that much attention to whether others do or not. For me, it is not a bonding thing. I don't remember if the therapist swore or not. If she did, or the other one either, it did not make an impression on me either way.

When I struggled to tell T that an action I did was because I wanted to say F*** you and your beliefs. I was reading it from my journal and I got to the F*** part and stopped dead. I'm not one to use a large amount of profanity so to use it at all and in front of her was hard, and then to be trying to tell her that my actions/feelings were towards her ... another big thing. After I said it, she used it to try to normalize the expression and acknowledge that so much can be said/released with the usage of profanity.

It was interesting to have her say the words.

Ugh, sorry to hear that.

This made me think of when I was coming back to my car in a grocery store parking lot the other day. Background: My car is dented in the back due to, uh, a run-in with a fire hydrant shortly after I got it 7 years ago when I wasn't fully aware of its dimensions. At the time, I couldn't really afford to fix the damage, and it didn't really make a big difference to me anyway. Also a little additional damage from one of those "we both backed up at exactly the same time" run-ins in my ex-T's parking lot. Had about the same level of minor damage (plus I wasn't sure what was from that, what was from fire hydrant!), so we both let it go.

So, I was in the grocery store parking lot the other day, about to put my groceries in the car, and this car with "Mobile Car Repair" (or something like that) on the side. The guy rolls down his window and asks, "Do you want us to fix that damage for you?" Me, "Uh, what? No thanks, I'm used to it now." He then drove off. As I was pulling out of the parking lot, I saw the car circling around--he almost ran into me (one way to get work, I suppose). I'm wondering if that's what they do to get business, stalk people coming to their dented cars and ask them if they want it fixed. Maybe some people would be good with that, but it made me uncomfortable...

Must be some planetary misalignment (ok, I don't believe in that, but it sounds pretty good), b/c I am also having car issues. My coolant is leaking, so I have an appt. on Tuesday at the dealership. Meh.

Oh, and my dad backed his truck into his 2017 Corvette a few days ago. I call that wt*.

LT, I hit the brick wall alongside a Wendy's drive-through about 15 years ago or so...and hit it BADLY. The car I had at the time suffered a great deal. So I feel your pain re: the fire hydrant.

For those who consulted with another therapist, did you tell your therapist before you did that? If so, how did they take it? I would really like to touch base with another therapist, not to switch to them, but to get feedback on something. I'm just wondering if anyone has had this go well or badly.

The first new car I ever had (a little honda hatchback)--the one I quit therapy in order to afford—I was hit broadside by a car that ran a stop sign the very next day after I bought it. Not only was my sweet little car crushed, but so was my spirit. It was like the universe telling me I did not deserve a nice car.

I made the appointment with the new T, then told now-ex-T in our next session that I'd be seeing him the next week. That I wasn't sure if it would be just a temporary consultation thing or longer term, but needed to try someone new. She seemed a bit surprised, but was also very understanding. She did say she'd miss working with me. But she didn't try to keep me from going. Though when I told her who it was, she said he used to work there. She shared something he'd said to her at one point--"Don't work so hard!"--and I took that to be her speaking a bit negatively of him. Like, he doesn't work as hard as her or care as much about clients as she does. (When I told him that in one of our early sessions, he said he had no recollection of saying it, and it was probably just some random thing he said, no real meaning behind it.) So...maybe don't say who you're going to see...

Thanks, LT. I don't want to switch to another therapist at all. I just want a different perspective on something. I would actually like it to be someone who knows my therapist so that they would have a more balanced perspective. Mostly, I am looking to alleviate fears.

With former T (given my naïveté) — I gave her specifics (E.g. I’m going on Tuesday) but not the name (did give modality). So, I’d come back and like in a properly dysfunctional relationship, she’d want to know details (“Can I ask how it went?”) and I’d of course be coy. Just a totally terrible idea altogether.

Current T — I didn’t tell her before but even when I told her, I’d take a break, she was all like “Oh, and who do you think is going to be a better fit for you?”. When I saw a couple of other Ts and came back and told her (including their names but didn’t say that until I’d decided to stick with her — they’re all part of the same ridiculously small psychoanalytic community here), she was totally chill.

Bottom line — only consider your own comfort. Know that once you say it, it changes the dynamic and so, think about how you’ll feel if your therapist reacts as x, y, z whatever. It doesn’t really make as much of a difference to them as it does to us.

One reason I didn’t want to tell current T beforehand (even leaving aside my experience with former T) was because I knew I’d been much more vulnerable with her and so, her responses to my saying it would make a much bigger impact on me — I didn’t want my impression of the new potential T to be sullied by my crap with current T. So, I tried to make it as clean a new thing as possible.

I just read your last post, rr.

That sounds like you’re looking for a consultation and I’d say that’s best done with your T’s knowledge and potentially involvement? It’s like therapy relationship counseling?

I’ve never done that (I always assumed therapists would stick together and I’d be screwed) but if I were in your shoes, I’d go with full honesty.

I did tell my old T I was going to see a new one during a break (as you know I ended up not going back). He didn't say much. We had already had issues around autonomy and I think he didn't want to push my right to autonomy any further. But he did use a female pronoun to describe the new therapist and when I told him that my new therapist was a He, old T just said "oh" in a tone I perceived as a bit threatened.

I interviewed a lot of them even while seeing the two regularly. I told the woman I saw others and she just said that was my prerogative. I said I know. And that was it.

Thanks. Yes, it's only for consultation. I like my therapist. But I think that consulting another one would change the dynamic--that mine would assume I am being critical of her and she'd cut me loose. That's my dilemma, whether or not this need for confirmation is worth the risk. The main issue right now is that I disagree with her on what's going on with me. She says she's not going to defend her view, that she doesn't want to battle about it. I have not battled about it, but I have said I wanted a different approach. She said okay, but it was more like okay...pretend all you want that you are not dealing with X. When, in fact, it's not pretending. I actually don't think I have what she thinks I have. And I thought that talking to someone who knows her would put my fears to rest that she is making something up about me.

Omg. A moment of silence, please.

So does your dad need a chauffeur?

In that case, I’d want to go to someone knowledgeable about X to figure out if it’s really X or not.

I could be missing something here but I’m not sure how going to someone who knows your therapist will help in any way? Sans any real context, they’ll give the benefit of the doubt to your therapist?

I really doubt they’d say “Yep, she’s making crap up”.

If what you really care about is confirmation that it’s X or not X then in your place, I’d go to someone trained to deal with X, arm myself with the info they provide me about it (assuming I’m correct) and come back and show the evidence to my therapist that she’s wrong.

That really has little to do with her integrity but rather accuracy of clinical assessment (which isn’t necessarily a function of competence and definitely not a function of ethics).

I guess I’m not sure what you’re actually looking for?

I consulted with my previous t, and also with a couple of degreed friends, when i had a major rupture with my t, also in the sense that i wanted feedback on whether or not to continue. I told my t about it before and after, and we lived happily after after. Time really does heal all wounds. It was a huge deal at the time, now we've both moved on, at least i feel i really have; i cant speak for him.

When I tried out new T (hee hee, that sounds like I was test-driving a car), I didn't know if I wanted to actually switch T's. I knew I needed a different perspective on the stuff with MC and help working through that--and ex-T wasn't really helping with that. So I thought it might have been, I don't know, a month or two with a different T, get some help on MC issue, then go back to ex-T. I was up front about this with now-current-T, and he said he'd done similar consultations with people who were seeing other T's before. So I don't think it's an uncommon thing. He just wanted me to let ex-T know I was seeing another T.

Then I ended up clicking with now-current T and finding him really helpful and didn't feel the need or desire to go back to ex-T (I may go for a termination session next month, not sure). Basically, just saying that my original intention wasn't to switch T's...just to get a different perspective. Which sounds kinda like what you're trying to do as well.

Well, it's complicated. And it would cost a lot of money to be re-assessed. I am mostly looking for consultation as to whether or not it's normal, as my therapist says, for people to have the reaction I am having. I do trust that the person I have in mind to consult with would be objective.