Couch 161: The Hexagonal Pyramidal Couch

I am sorry to hear about your furnace - but glad no one got asphyxiated and that you had the money to fix it

Exactly SD! Thank you for changing my attitude about the whole thing. I'm grateful it happened now while I'm making extra money. Cuz it was gonna happen at some point...

Ugh, sorry Art--that sucks...

HVAC isn't cheap. I had to have them replace the whole system while they were repairing the house after the fire partly because it was old and partly because my husband saw himself as some sort of mad scientist and kept effing around with the system. Ended up costing me upwards of $8,000. That was very painful, but at least the electric bills are reasonable now.

Yeah the guy we had out here this evening said it could have been worse for sure... I never realized how connected it all was. I thought the furnace was the furnace and the air conditioner was the air conditioner and never the twain shall meet but apparently parts of each work hand in hand or something I dunno.

Piaf...

She does this little questionnaire thing at the beginning and end of session, like DBC did, first on how you feel coming in, at the end how the session went. ("I felt heard and listened to..."). I still hate these as much as I did when DBC did them, so I wrote "no comment." She wrote something on her pad. I asked if she was describing me as intransigent. And then we went around and around about my word choice, did I think I was intransigent, why did I use that word, etc. At one point she offered the etymology, which was correct.

Sometimes the verbal jousting stuff was more fun, like so:

ATAT: [pointing to Piaf's business card's Shakespeare quote on "This above all: to thine own self be true, And it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man."] Why did you pick that quote to describe therapy?
Piaf: I thought you didn't want to know anything about me. Isn't that a personal question?
ATAT: Okay, then. Why did you think that quote would appeal to clients?

(The explanation was something like people come in having trouble in their personal relationships, so being true to themselves leads them to be honest with others.)

Talking to her is very like talking to No. 3. That's bad. She's going out of town, so my next appointment is a month away. That's good (given the reminders of No. 3).

I think I just broke a cardinal rule of the couch and drunk emailed my therapist. It was pretty pathetic what I said, but in my defense I was crying at the time. Oh well. I can't retract it. I guess I'll have to deal with it later.

In our session today, I told him how he was saying/doing some things lately that sounded like things my husband would say to me. I told him that I was afraid he was seeing me the same way that he saw me and that I was scared he was going to start calling me the same names my husband did. Tonight I had some of those phrases running through my head and I started crying thinking of him saying those things to me so I emailed him "please don't ever call me" one of those phrases, I'd rather die first. I know he's not my husband. He told me he'd never say those things to me and I believe him but I still have this fear that he will one day. He was really supportive when we talked about it in session today. I don't understand why I can't stop being afraid he's going to start hating me and call me names like the husband did. It's painful.

(((NP))) if it's any consolation, you're for sure not alone in that club. i know i've done it a couple of times (or more). i hope it ends up being helpful in some way.

oh and heh - it wouldn't be a couch rule if so many of us hadn't done it.... hence the "we speak from experience" part in the couch intro....

We need a "dislike" button for posts like this one. Go Pats!!

Sorry LT!

It's OK--I know there are some Pats fans on here!

MC in a little over an hour. Pocket riders welcome, whether for support or to munch on some popcorn and watch as MC tries to "help me to work this through" (his words) while I fight back against any BS he tries to fling my way (like "I'm not perfect," as he said in his e-mail response to me).

I'm in, LT. <3

My gp should be happy, i just scheduled all the appointments hes been bugging me to make. I even found myself a new fat old man gyn, my favorite kind! I prefer someone who's seen everything, not someone who's gonna judge me.

I'm in- if I'm not too late .

Woooooo!

You're not the only one. I've sent my fair share.

When they say things like "I'm not perfect" or "I'm only human, you know" do they imply that 1) deeps-down they feel held to an impossibly high standard 2) they believe they seem and normally ARE perfect #) that we think they are Gods?
Is that an excuse, humble-bragging, or a passive aggressive stance that you are asking for too much, lol?

I've read a few articles by therapists that have been like "Let me let you in on a little secret - therapists are human too!"
I can't think of anything more nauseatingly condescending and arrogant.

I'm in LT but maybe too late

I told my T that she's not perfect, and she said far from it. I was angry with her at the time because she had said that maybe I wrote about her in the 3rd person in my journal this one time because I was trying to protect my image of her.

My T mentions every chance he gets how a lot of people idealize therapists, and think that this one therapist is their savior who never fails at anything. And of course that doesn't ever happen... so maybe it's just that they assume this might be the image of them that the client has, and therefore they reply as if it were true. Of course that assumption may be wrong.

Thanks for the pocket riders--session ended up going till 2:15, so you still made it in for the last part, Art!

That was...kinda rough. I knew it wasn't going to go smoothly when my opening comment (after we exchanged pleasantries) was met with "I don't understand what you mean," as was my attempt to reword it...May write it up later when I have a little more distance...

I was able to get a lot of anger and feelings out, which is something, I suppose. I got a few "I accept responsibility for that" and "If I did x, I apologize for that" out of him. He mostly seemed to be listening.

The thing that's really hurting out of all of this though is that he confirmed that it was the "I love you" e-mail from December that led him to say we had to reduce contact... After he said that, I said how his response to that had been "Of course it's OK" (that I had those feelings). And I said that, well, obviously it wasn't OK. And he didn't seem to understand that, either...

And he acted like we hadn't had much outside contact before, which is total BS. How he'd only loosened the boundaries slightly, which...I mean, even H argued back against that one.

Near the end, I was saying that I knew I couldn't expect any particular response from him, that I could only control what I said. He asked how I wanted him to feel. I said something (forget what), and he said it sounded like I wanted him to feel guilt. I said it wasn’t so much that…but that I wanted him to feel bad for hurting me. He asked if I meant did I want to know he cared. I said well, yeah, but there was still the wanting him to feel bad about it part. He said he didn’t think he needed to feel bad to mean he cares.

I said, “Well, I hurt H before, and I think if I hadn’t felt bad and felt guilt over that, it would have seemed like I didn’t care.” Then he pulled out the therapist BS line of “One person isn’t responsible for another person’s feelings." Which I called out as therapist BS...(yes, I know there's some truth to it in some ways, but...)

So, yeah, still kinda upset. Kept our appointment for Feb. 5, so will see how I'm feeling around that time. And maybe MC can take some time to reflect in the meantime?

((LT))

Please don't get your hopes up--he sounds pretty entrenched.

It's more of just using that as a blanket excuse for making mistakes, which I feel like is what he was doing. As opposed to examining himself and being like, "Yes, I did mess up x and maybe y."

Like, I work as a copy editor, where accuracy is really important. If, when I get feedback, I was just like, "I'm not perfect! Of course I make mistakes," that might lead to my getting fired. Instead, I examine what I did wrong and take steps not to make same mistake again. Like, 'Oh, I misunderstood that style point," or "whoops, I'll be more careful with Spell Check in the future."