Couch 198: All the Countries Couch

Ok, if we are forcing a choice.. the desk chair if it had to be on the couch then I would be all the way by the door blending into the arm.

I think we should write a guide to office setup for therapists. Chapters would include:

Setting Up Your Office for the Avoidant Client
Setting Up Your Office for the Attached Client
Setting Up Your Office for the Traumatized Client

And so on.

And I loathe pillows. I have to move 5 or 6 from Info’s chairs when I go there.

His sofa has 3 pillows. Two that obviously came with the couch and one colorful, smaller one. I sit with one of the bigger ones on my lap as a barrier and it regularly comes in handy when I want to hide my face. Sometimes I'll pull one of the other pillows next to my leg to form a nice little pillow fort.

It's like I want him closer but I want to keep him away too.

L has this one giant furry pillow on the couch. It's really soft though. Sometimes I lean on it usually I don't.

Oh geez I'm talking present tense again

That office setup is odd. That room is too narrow. I guess I’d choose whichever seat let me face the therapist most directly.

When I met with the ex’s t alone, I sat on the couch across from him, but when I met with both (ex and his t), I made sure to go in first and snag the chair by the door so the ex wouldn’t try to sit on the couch next to me. I actually dreamt about the seating the night before.

I played with that roomstyler thing on lunch and made L's office on it. That was fun.

I wonder what the attached set up would look like.

Depends on whether the attached client gets to choose or if the T gets to choose. Personally, I want them sitting at a 90 degree angle next to me. Not close enough to causally touch, but if we reached out, we could touch. If it's a T, they might choose to sit way away...lol...unless they understand and are for attachment.

Right now, L sits too far away from my liking. But it's not her office, and the room is big. It would look weird if she was closer to me. T is also far away in her new office. When she was in her old office, I actually asked her to sit closer to me and she obliged.

I'm wondering what the traumatized client set up would look like.

I only touched the pillows my T has in one session, when I was particularly stressed. Then. I held it and stroked the fringed tassels the whole time. Haven't done it since.

Oh wait, there was one other time--when I realized I had a stain on my shirt. T knew I'd be self-conscious about it, so suggested I hold pillow in front of it. So I did that.

There's a table between the couch and L's chair so she's too far away to touch but if we both lean in I can hand her a paper across the table. (If I printed up my dream writeup that week)

Also in session yesterday...

He brought his dog. Coincidentally, on Wednesday I had asked him how much money he wanted to bring his dog with him again. He said he brought her because he was leaving to go out of town for work straight from his office, not because I asked him to. Anyway, I ended up telling him that I had been wanting to ask him to bring her again for a long time and the reason was because I wanted to be able to touch something that's not inanimate. This eventually led to the conversation about me sitting further away than others do. But before we went down that path, he made a comment about not usually being able to get the need for touch met in therapy. I felt a little stab of pain when he said that. First, I've never asked him to touch me in any way and I doubt I would. I have felt the desire for him to touch my hand or hug me before though. I'm not sure how I'd feel if any of that actually happened, but I still have the desire for it. It felt like he was preemptively shutting me down when he said that. I don't know how to feel about that.

Also, once we talked about how I wanted him to sit closer, he said he would roll his chair over, but the dog was in the way. So I got to pet the dog, but I didn't get to sit closer to him. That made me kind of sad too. Couldn't he just move the dog for a minute to move the chair?

More drama with my new house. Floor drain backup in basement now includes raw sewage so I'm in a hotel until at least Tuesday, which is when the plumber with the camera can come in and diagnose the problem. Previous plumber snaked out all possible lines and appears to have angered the whole system because now it's gotten worse. So sad and angry that I can't even cry.

Seating discussion seems to have moved on, but I would opt for the couch cushion right in front of the chair.

(This is the setup I would like, but it is made difficult by the layout of the room where we meet, as below.)

That sounds awful and frustrating. I hope it can be fixed quickly and completely.

Thats where i drag in the old fashioned loveseat, where the two people sit facing opposite directions. Hey i think ikea or somebody like that has started making one.

Its their delaktig loveseat.

Thanks for the new couch una! I think this pillow is appropriate.

My Ts office set up is awesome! He has a chair for like every type of client. Then in the space where he does more interactive therapy stuff they are office chairs and I can usually ask to move either my chair or his chair to where I am comfortable.

Butterfly, that is gorgeous! Thanks! It matches a new couch cover they have at ikea, but i cant post it!

So... adult protective services came to do a wellness check on me because of my son. They left but said they were going to look into options but they didn’t take him... he asked for ER and then took off because he wanted to be arrested... thankfully the farmers by me were plowing and trying to keep me posted... but it still ended up being a 911 call and we are at the ER waiting on a psych evaluation. I got heat exhaustion and want to lay down SO bad.
While I was driving to the ER I had a flash of T hugging me. It was so real I almost got into an accident and had to pull over until I could stop crying and catch my breath. I’m a little... OK totally... weided out by it. I know I turn to T for comfort but to have it happen like a flashback while driving was crazy! And now I want a real hug.