What seemingly random things will your T not disclose?

Lol! I always wonder this when I ask them questions. For example, I ask them their favorite color. Why does there have to be a discussion? Do they think I'm going to decorate my house in that color? Why isn't it a simple, innocent, curious question?

Or birthdays. I don't understand why they won't tell me. It's not like I'm going to throw a party for them. Hell, I won't even acknowledge it if they don't want me to. They get to know my birthday, why can't I know theirs?

Yes, exactly! Glad you understand. Some of it seems to me like basic human connection stuff. I understand some boundaries, sure, but others seem really random.

I know the therapist's birthday, but only because C put it on the calendar and I asked her how she knew. She didn't ask. She said she went to session and there were some pretty flowers, which she commented on. The therapist said they were from the other therapists because it was her birthday. I know how old she is, too. Sixty. Oh, and I know the name of her hometown and it sounds awful and boring. It has a name that sounds like... hmm... Dirt Slope. Seriously, it sounds grim.

I don't even know what I would ask if I did ask questions. Probably something reflecting my self absorption. Like top 10 times I pissed her off. Susannah's Greatest Hits.

A matching set of pets haha. Apparently my exT and I were both buying cars around the same time and I bought a Mazda because of the 2 second hand cars I was looking at the Mazda was the best mechanically turns out T bought a Mazda too which triggered a conversation about why I bought a Mazda. I didn't work out that maybe he thought I bought one because he did until weeks after when I saw him drive in.

LT asked, "So do you have any pets?" He said, "We have a few" but didn't specify."

I don't see his answer as "vague" at all. "Do you have any pets" is a yes or no question. He answered with more than a "yes," with "a few". LT could have simply asked, "what kinds of pets do you have?" I don't see this as difficult nor does it have to be the tortured ones that you presented. It's a lot easier to ask a question than be annoyed you don't get the answers you want.

In interviewing, this is called a follow up question. I believe this is very much how "neurotypical", or people with good communication skills, talk to each other. IMO it is better to ask a follow up question if you want to know something, as opposed to assuming a person doesn't want to answer. It would be great if everyone told us everything we wanted to know about whatever we want to know, but IME the truth is that we often have to ask. Sometimes people seem to be reluctant, but it is not often because of the asker, but because of the person answering. Sometimes they have to figure out how open they want to be, or how they feel about answering the question, or probably a few other things too.

At least in my way of doing things, I get the answers to the questions I want. If someone tells me no, I respect that and don't keep asking the same question. But my T has never refused to disclose anything I've asked, some of which has been personal with follow up questions, and a lot he discloses on his own. I know a lot about him and much of that is a result of my positive communication skills. But this is consistent with my experience in the world-- I like asking questions and my friends and loved ones like having me ask them. There's a big difference between learning about someone and being intrusive; and general interest in another person versus nosiness. I think people, including T's, can tell the difference. I see little reason for a T to refuse to disclose something where the client has a genuine interest in it and when they ask specifically in a straightforward way. My point is that communication requires effort on the part of the asker.

Having been trained in journalism (and having worked in the field), I certainly know how to ask follow-up questions. But generally, "Do you have any pets?" isn't replied to with "yes." Someone might say "I have a cat" or "Not now, but I used to have a dog" or whatever. He knows me--he knows I want specifics. He could have just shared. I took his reply as being that he didn't want to share. With the stuff about his going out of town, I've very specifically asked about that before and explained why it would make me feel more comfortable/safer knowing where (in general) he was going. He still wouldn't say. There have been other things I've pushed him on, and he's declined to say anything else or said something like "That's one of my boundaries." So I got the sense the pet thing was one of those. I also didn't think it was a big enough deal to spend a portion of a session on. Because he's on vacation in early July, maybe I'd bring that up again and just ask if he could give me some really generic sense of where he's going. Not sure pet thing is worth the time.

My T has always answered my questions - but then again, I ask very few questions. I've been with her nearly a decade and I don't know a whole lot - she prefers to keep the session about the client. It works for us, I realize that every dynamic is different and it may not work for others.

The therapist would never refer to her older daughter by her name. She disclosed a lot and she would talk about her 2 daughters. She always called the younger daughter by her name but whenever she spoke of her older daughter she would always just say “The teenager”. I knew what her name was but she just would never call her by name.

For example: “ In a few weeks I’m taking a road trip with my kids. I know that (insert younger daughters name here) and my teenager are probably going to argue the whole time.
“Jersey. I have to move our appointment to later in the day. My teenager has a thing at school I have to attend.”

“Jersey I’ll be with (insert younger child’s name here) at the doctors tomorrow but text me if you need anything.”

So yeah..she would never call the teenager by her given name when talking to me. But always called the younger one by her given name. I even met the younger one once. She brought her to the office because she was home from school sick that day. Set her up in the back room with snacks and a pillow and an iPad while she did her sessions.

This is really interesting and seems kinda random. Ex-MC would refer to his daughter by her name but then would just say "my son" (the younger one). Finally, after a few years, he mentioned his name...which was the same as the guy I dated in college.

Yeah. I never understood what that was about but I never bothered to ask why she doesn’t say her name. I already knew her name. I thought maybe it was because the teenager had social media accounts or what not and the younger was much too young for that stuff. Then I also thought maybe the woman just really didn’t enjoy having a teenager. Those are hard years. I mean if I was my mother I would have killed me during my teen years. Haha.

Very early in therapy with former T, he mentioned his son's name, as "my son,-----." He had also referred to his wife by name. Neither of these were in response to any question from me. But he has always referred to his daughter as just "my daughter." I found that a bit odd. Made me wonder if we shared the same name. Although I rarely meet anyone with my name, it was a more popular choice in the 50's, so it could be possible. And it wasn't that he didn't disclose other personal info, both during therapy and after. I rarely asked him direct questions that would solicit personal info. But I can't think of anything else he's been steadfastly avoidant about revealing. Odd.

Current T offers far more info about her family and life than I care to know!

When is her birthday, not even the month! Her favourite colour. I've asked, yeah...

Exactly omg... T knows my birthday, it's in my EHR record. And the only thing I know about her birthday is it's in "the first half of the year".

She knows my full name because EHR and I don't even know her full name.

But LT, youre not doing journalism, youre doing therapy. And to address Annes example, i would say, it looks like shes prepping a witness! ("Only answer the question you are asked!") But i would guess a t has been prepped / trained the same way, to thoughtfully and carefully only answer the question he is asked.

This is not a typical conversation. Your presumption of (his) boundaries is something to be explored. I was the same way, and it can come off as rude in typical conversation. My parents didnt want me to ask ANY follow up questions, so i assumed the rest of the world didnt either. Thats not normal, unfortunately. Normal would be helping us to recognize what is NORMAL give and take in a conversation, and what IS getting too personal. Maybe thats what attracted us to journalism, permission to ask?

I agree with the above. Part of the reason why therapy was not truly therapy-like with my second T was that the sessions were a lot like normal conversations, I would say >80% of the time. I certainly enjoyed them as the T was a very good conversation partner, but so are many other people in my life, and paying for that and calling it therapy?! That T managed it much better in email interactions. But even in normal conversations, some people are just more generous with information than others. For example, I tend to be on the minimalistic/frugal side with personal info when I talk with colleagues, clients, in most work-related interactions. My thinking is that a lot of that info is usually just not relevant there and it can easily divert the talk and turn it less productive when there are time constraints. I think it can be a form of art to find a good balance in this, not to appear too standoffish but keep the focus. As for therapists, what I know is that many do not answer questions because they want to use it to explore why the client is interested in that piece of info instead. For me personally, that can turn quite annoying if excessive but it can also be interesting, why do I want to know and why am I preoccupied with it, even with the fact that they are not so generous? I've learned interesting things about myself and good ways to draw people out that way, not so much in therapy but when interacting with people in everyday life (especially one who was my romantic partner for a while) that tend to be quite minimalistic (often also avoidant at least somewhat). One thing I've found is that people who tend to give one-liners as answers are often more than willing to reveal more but they do need follow-up questions and the other person to engage them more because they rarely do that by themselves. I've also learned that I am actually good at the engaging and it can be mutually quite stimulating, even just for the sake of figuring out how to do it effectively with a specific person. Of course therapists can remain quite resistant to this as they regulate their style on purpose, but I still think one can learn from these situations about own communication strengths and weaknesses.

The other points in this thread suggest that the issue is not your professional training or competence, which I'm sure you are terrific at. I find it difficult to believe that you can't see the problem with your assumption about how people "generally" reply. This is something you have clung to before ("this is how people are supposed to communicate") and I think starting out from such problem assumptions is going to mess up communication with others.

Your attitude that "he could have just shared" removes any responsibility you have for asking for what you want to know, rather than feeling entitled to receive it. Exactly how difficult would it have been for you to ask a simple question, "what kinds of pets do you have?" Seems much simpler to me than blaming your t for "not disclosing."

Point is, you could have shared more of yourself by asking a question. Communication with your T's and the problems surrounding that have been a repeated theme in your therapy. It seems like mostly this centers around what you get back from T.

My experience has been that if I want more intimate, satisfying, and less conflicted relationships, I need to look at what I put out there and what I can do differently. Those are the things that I can control and changing them does change the way people respond to me.

If you want your relationships to be different, you have to be different. This is a concrete example of something small you could have done differently. Maybe it's not worthwhile at this point to do it differently, but IMO understanding that you could have done it differently and that it might have made a different makes sense to do. Your mileage may vary.

In fairness he just may not have followed up with "I have a dog/cat/snake" because he didn't wanna talk about himself in your session.

Lots of good stuff in here about how people have interesting variations in conversational engagements with other people. One of the things I've seen change over the course of my nearly 10 year therapy is examining how and what my T is engaged in. If I drone on for some time, I often get a response that translates to "I hear you." Which is normal when I don't leave the other person a lot of room to engage with me. He shares more deeply with me (though his self disclosure is not so much about facts but about the nature of his own experiences in whatever domain we are in) when I am more open and vulnerable with him. Observing how what I communicate gets what kind of response has been a useful but mostly un-talked about part of my therapy. Sometimes his responses seem more eager and sometimes they seem more reluctant, but there are many variations within those two categories. With friends or loved ones outside of therapy, reluctance has sometimes been about a kind of disbelief that I'd really want to know about their experience in the past, or they are unsure whether it's really okay with me to talk about this thing. My T's carefulness in his responding sometimes feels like reluctance to me, and I have to check my reactions to this.

I also think T's ask that question "why are you interested in knowing" not as a roadblock to disclosure, but because the motivation underlying the question reveals something about the asker. This probably is more complicated when there are transference/obsessional issues involved. There is a difference between asking a question because you are generally curious about your T as a human being as opposed to asking a question to feed a desire to know more about his life. I think T's will answer the first one but not the second.

My T has never asked me why I wanted to know, but maybe that's because over the years there has been an increasing natural and conversational flow between us, as opposed to the earlier years where I talked and he responded. But I don't think this is about the loosening of boundaries or a de-professionalization of the therapy itself, but reflects that the way I engage with him now is different than I did before. I notice a similar kind of change in my close relationships-- a more open kind of communication, with less conflict and greater intimacy.

Maybe he just isn't a big pet person and going into details just isn't his thing. Like me, I could discuss my dog for hrs to anyone but some people are just like, ya I have a pet.

Anyway with long term T, nothing really. I could have probably got him to tell me details of his sex life if I tried, he was very open with me. The only thing he never wanted to tell me was what part of something I wrote, made him cry, he admitted he cried but not over what.

With Baby t and T3, I asked both of them not to share stuff with me and openly told them I didn't care but sometimes things came out in stories thankfully it was very little. I think Baby T since he is more chatty would have shared more if I allowed it or asked... T3 is very stoic and I doubt he would share much at all and honestly it's the best choice ever. So much better for me mentally not getting involved emotionally with them

This is spot on and well put. I also could take a few things from this.

I also agree with most of what Anne said above. In addition to those observations, what came to my mind is another theme that is somewhat recurring in your stories: on the one hand wanting to know exact rules and behaving properly (out of fear of rejection), on the other hand a tendency to push those limitations (at least a wish). I think you have pointed out yourself that it might relate to your upbringing and relationship with your mom. Of course an inquiry about pets is a very mild example but perhaps a meaningful example. I actually have the impression, based on your posts, that you practice that art of not being intrusive (so respectful) but sometimes challenging (taking risks) quite well, maybe the only thing is that it gives you discomfort at times and a form of ambivalence. Thus, perhaps a question I would ask myself is why communication tend to bring out such discomfort and unsatisfied feelings? But I actually think it is pretty normal and everyone experiences them in some forms - would a more profound awareness of its normalcy help you accept it? I certainly don't have the impression on this forum that you are not a good communicator and I know that part of the reason I like to respond on your threads is because I feel you have a quite pleasant balance between providing a lot of "meat" about your therapy and an ability to handle people's responses very respectfully, without overreactions and extremes. I would be quite surprised if your T did not enjoy interacting with you, in part, for the same reasons. But maybe next time just go ahead and ask what exactly you want to know - I don't think there are any real risks with that in your therapy.

"Do you have pets?" versus "What kind of pets do you have?": the ultimate battle between casual conversation and achieving the ultimate intimate connection. What a world.

... And by that, I mean what a convoluted nonsense. Therapists are capable of having chit-chat conversations like the rest of us. Unless he is an absolute idiot, LT's question was an invitation to talk about pets. When the waiter asks, "Are you ready to order?", do you sit there like a lump and just say "Yes", or do you tell the poor soul that you want burger and fries, no pickles but with cheese?

Is the rest of the world communicating on a whole different level from me?!?

I agree that "Do you have any pets?" can be understood as an invitation for the other person to talk about their pets in greater detail. But as someone said above, this is therapy and not casual conversation. The therapist might be trying to focus on the client, rather than deliberately withholding information. Of course, LT could just ask her T why he didn't answer the question more fully.

I'm reminded of the scene in Parks and Rec when Leslie meets with a political consultant and asks some normal small talk question, and the consultant says something like "You're paying me $200 for this hour, do you really want to spend that time talking about the weather?"

I know, everybody is out of step except you!

But LT is TELLING us its not a simple question, because she DID take it to mean she overstepped boundaries. In the words of The Little Prince, its the meaning she gives to her little rose. No?

Actually - the first woman kept trying to get me to engage in chatting with her because she mistakenly thought it meant we would bond. Those guys need to be a lot clearer about what they are doing at clients with this sort of crap.