Fantasies?

Does anyone else's T work with fantasies? I don't necessarily mean sexual fantasies, but it could be included.

Yes we do, I think fantasies are really important and can tell you a lot about what you need or don't need.

Really. Therapist use those? Someone would have a field day with mine as I live in daydream land almost all day. When I go for my daily walks I put music on and off I go into another reality with my in different roles and T is always in them.

I’ve brought them up to therapists, but we never really discussed them. IMHO they are important and about what is lacking IRE. They should be discussed.

Of course. Yes, fantasies can provide a lot of rich material to work with. Therapy is about your inner self and who you are, who you are meant to be, who you are growing in to, how well we are connected to ourselves.....our inner voice and imagination has so much to do with all that.

If you don't discuss your inner world, fantasies and dreams how does anything get done or change?

Yes, we work with fantasy. She encourages me to describe my murderous and other violent imaginings. I get the impression this is to validate the spectrum of my feelings and to dissipate the charged nature of my darker desires. It's a fine line between that approach and encouraging that which should actually be discouraged. I find it useful because there is a nugget of reality in the fantasy and the images stay with me. We don't work with sexual fantasy, I would not be comfortable with that. I find sexual fantasies disgusting, both mine and those of others.

Yes, we work with fantasies. This was much more when I first started. There's been a significant reduction in the violent ones. I was not able to really talk them or sexual fantasies. Letting her know that the violent images were plaguing me, was helpful in and of itself. She would validate the thoughts and feelings.

She's encouraged or accepted me allowing myself to act on some of them - ones that are some form of self soothing or self acceptance that I felt was in appropriate due to age or something. I believe this has been a valuable step in building trust between my parts - in my older self to accept my younger self and my younger self to feel safe to exist and interact with other parts of myself. By sharing these fantasies/urges/instinctual desires with her, I was able to get the experience of ... I guess that unconditional positive regard that was needed for my older self to see how it should interact with my younger self in a compassionate way.

I mean I had nonstop fantasy’s when I was a teenager of being sick a lot and getting various medical treatments and surgeries and having a therapist be worried about me. Now as an adult that is actually happening to me so I don’t actually fantasize about it anymore. Just the part where she gets worried about me.

That depend on the modality the therapist uses. I never had a therapist ask me about my fantasies. I have had CBT therapist, IFS, Ego State, EMDR.....not one asked.

L and I discuss my fantasy of her being my mother and tucking me into bed. We also discuss how I wish there was more touch (placing her hands on my check, rubbing my back, etc.

You are quite right, I have had CBT therapists before that have never enquired about my fantasies or imagination.

Current T does psychodynamic, existential, humanistic, cognitive and transpersonal modes of psychotherapy..he's the only one that's worked for me.

Yes, we talk about them and sometimes T1 just seems to know them. We also share fantasies both ways. Usually with mine I get so far with it and then I get lost and want to know what he would do... usually he tells me what the normal response is when a child has that need, sometimes he tells me what he did for his kids and sometimes he makes up what he would do just for me. Other times, usually at the end of a hard session he will share his fantasy of what he wishes would have happened for me. These discussions have really enriched our work... and there have been a few odd times when he has been able to fill my fantasy or come close.
Being tucked in is not one of mine but if I shared what you posted I can hear him responding “well, I have a blanket, if you want to lay down on the couch I can lay the blanket over you and we can talk or you can just rest”.

L reciprocates my fantasies. She, too, wishes she could tuck me into bed, rub my back, etc. We both know boundaries and ethics won't allow it. It helps me deal with all the unmet needs.

I have an ongoing fantasy of sitting outside on my covered patio with L, watching a thunderstorm together. We've talked a little about it, and how I've begun to realize that it comes from a young place in me. Also we do a lot of dream work, in which I do Active Imaginations (a la Jung) - going back 'into' a dream and interacting with it in my imagination. I've gotten a lot of really good insights this way. I guess that's kinda like working with fantasies.

I've told her when I have fantasies of acting out in anger towards her or other people.