First session back only so-so; but email great!

Sun, I've only read your initial post and wanted to tell you an idea/impression I got from it.

Both the session and the e-mail were similar in that it is your impression/feelings about them that are important. What your T felt and meant by telling you again at the end that he had been married 20 years and was divorced, telling you at the moment he did, isn't known. Your feelings about it are though. What I'm saying (badly I fear) is that we often only take from things what we, ourselves focus on and that's not necessarily what happened or what the larger picture is?

I got the feeling that, since the two of you were talking about his new marriage coming up, that he was trying to give you hope, to show or reiterate for you that if it can happen to him it can happen for you, that life doesn't end with divorce? He seemed to be saying to me, "We're the same, we both were married a long time, 20 years in my case, and divorced. But I'm planning a wedding here while you're just planning your divorce; there's more love for you ahead too, doesn't matter how long you were married before your divorce, how good/bad long/short the whole thing was."

He wasn't telling you something he didn't realize you knew, he was emphasizing your similarities, how much alike you all are.

It's not related to divorce :-) but I remember when I thought my T had made fun of me and seriously put me down one week and I spent the whole time before our next session working on that. Since I "knew" my T well enough to know she had never done that before and didn't seem likely to have done it now suddenly (after 25 years :-) I worked to find an alternate "meaning" for myself. I finally found it, that she cared enough she was warning me, begging for me not to repeat patterns I'd had in the past and telling me what disasters could happen if I did. I had only heard her "criticizing" me, telling me about my past behavior that sucked. Fortunately, she was so adamant when she said it that I stopped in my tracks and went slowly forward and didn't repeat my old behaviors that day (and then the next week worked on the insult which seemed to imply I was automatically going to repeat because I was a loser :-)

But what the other person means by what they say truly cannot be understood by us unless we ask them or clarify with them our impressions. I forget that all the time.

Thanks, guys.

almedafan, for me it is like when I go to therapy I want to focus on what is important that day and that moment. If I have successfully dealt with life 3 weeks ago, I don't need to go through that with T. It's kind of like a waste of my therapy minutes. I suspect T was doing that with most all his clients that day, for himself, rather than for the clients. It was a way for him to get up to date on what is happening in the clients' lives, a way to get "back in the saddle again" after his 3 week break. I hope for better next week when we can have a more normal session (I hope) that deals with what is important now, instead of a review session (kind of like those dreaded "What I did on my Vacation" essays we had to write as children).

mckell, my T always emails me back, but we just exchange short and to the point emails (but they are connected too). But the difference with this email is that it was long and contained important information that was not in session. And he didn't answer. So this is new behavior from him in response to new behavior from me. I think it means I "goofed" on the rules/boundaries. But sometimes we have to push the edge a bit to really understand the boundaries. I guess I'm kind of dense since in the last session he talked about how he is not getting paid for all the time he spends on clients outside of the face to face time. My response? I send him a long email that demands his time. I am not taking it personally. I think he would treat any client that way.

Perna, your posts always have such wisdom. Yes, you are right, when T and I were talking about his marriage
I felt he was trying to give me hope when he talked about how fantastic his relationship is with his wife-to-be. I like when we talk about this as it makes me feel really good and hopeful. But when he brought up his previous marriage and divorce, he definitely said he did not know if he had told me that before, and that was the part that hurt, that he had forgotten how many times we had talked about that, how he had used it in therapy to make important points, to draw us closer, to model certain approaches to uncoupling. It just hurt that he had forgotten what had been so important to me. Just another reminder that the therapeutic relationship is so much more important to the client than to the therapist. It's a fact of life, but yeah, it can hurt. I don't need to have him clarify it, as I wrote to alex before. He was very clear that he did not remember and why ask him to restate that? It would just be more hurt.

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But please please please please please give him a chance to respond in session.

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alex, of course I would let him respond. (I picture myself trying to cover his mouth with my hand, "no, don't say anything about the email! ) I would welcome his thoughts. So if what I wrote him in the email is still important (things change rapidly over a week!), I hope
that we will touch on it in session. My worry though is he will be fixated on the upcoming legal meeting, which is later next week.