Couch 237: Social Rules

Thanks, Lost.

And you're right that Zoom is better than no session at all. And I do like that it's an option, if I'm out of town, weather is bad, or I'm not feeling well (or have been exposed to Covid). And we did generally well on Zoom, too.

I've realized that part of why I'm upset, too, is that also the check-in texts are gone now. Even if I explained to him why they helped me and he said it was fine to keep doing them, I would feel bad about it, knowing they were irritating him, even if it was just "mildly," as he put it in his email.

It also doesn't help that he told me to feel free to respond to his email, so I sent a few paragraphs yesterday morning. I wasn't expecting a long reply, just some sort of acknowledgment, as he always in some ways acknowledges my emails (unless it was simply me saying "thanks" for one of his), usually in the mornings, and always within 24 hours. And he sees some clients on Sundays, so it's a workday for him.

So I hadn't heard back as of 2:30 today, which was like 30 hours after I sent it. I at least wanted to know if he read before my session tomorrow (as I explained a couple things), so I sent him an email just asking him to confirm he'd seen and read it. He replied within a half hour, said, "I did, sorry for not confirming."

That's just not how he generally is. I'm trying to tell myself he's just been busy this weekend, but of course I'm concerned I have further annoyed him, both with my email response and follow-up. I guess we'll see tomorrow...

I just hope it goes OK because H has hip surgery Tuesday, and I'll need to be mostly in charge of D (driving her to/from school, making dinner, doing all the chores, etc.) for a week or two while he recovers. So I don't want to be stressed about therapy, too.

Absolutely.

You have 'bigger fish to fry', even though therapy is important too.
Therapy shouldn't be an additional source of stress.

Wishing you and your H all the best in dealing with this period of time.

Thanks, Lost.

My experience of therapy is that it is an additional source of stress. It is stressful to reveal yourself and be vulnerable. It's horrible to acknowledge your needs and it's unbearable when those needs go unmet. It's painful and confusing when your therapist has responses which you don't like. When you are working within the relationship, I can't see how it's not stressful at least some of the time.

I think I have said this before LT, but he doesn't sound like he works relationally. My therapist can be pretty brutal about her responses to me, but it is within the context of how we are relating. So she might say she is irritated by me (she has said more hurtful things than that), but she would contextualise it by talking about what was happening for her. Ultimately, we would look at what was happening between us that caused her response and, more importantly, mine. Does he do anything like this or just tell you his response (good or bad) and leave it there? Does he attend to your part of the interaction?

It is very surprising to me that he doesn't appear to have a distinct modality. Maybe this is different in the US and maybe it's different with psychologists, but how are you supposed to know if his approach suits you if you don't what his approach is? Theoretically, at least.

(Also, I don't want to paint my therapist as a golden therapist because she most definitely isn't.)

Covid memes! Sad but true.

Comrade, in the U.S. it is not uncommon for a T to claim that they are "eclectic" or to claim mastery of or the ability to work from 4-6 (or more!) therapeutic approaches. (Psychology Today has a section that features profiles from therapists advertising their wares. Good for a laugh sometimes.)

This, of course, means they are mediocre (at best) at any of these approaches. Most of these Ts did not even take a full course in any one of these therapeutic approaches in their master's program, I'll wager. (EMDR training is done after the degree so that's a bit different. If they have that certification, they can't fake it.)

Being eclectic is wonderful if you're truly well- trained in multiple modalities!

But if you're just using a mish-mash of "a little bit of this and a little dash of that," well... you're not helping us to understand anything about whether the approach is effective, or for whom or under what conditions it's effective. That is not helping to further the profession.

And even if it is helpful to clients... perhaps it is... unless you take meticulous notes about exactly which components of Model A you used and did not use along with exactly which components of Model B you used and did not use... and so on for however many models you say you're proficient in... how can you ever replicate that success with future clients who present with a similar problem?

TL;DR I agree that the client should know what therapeutic approach a T is using. That should at least help them to find a T who uses a different approach (or the same approach, if their T retires) if necessary. Unfortunately, the norms in the U.S. don't support this except possibly among those doing true psychoanalysis.

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Water can be a symbol for our emotions... I tend to think of lakes or oceans in dreams as being symbolic of my deeper emotions. But of course the dreamer knows better than anyone else what their dreams are about How interesting though, esp the alien ships landing next to your floating house. That would be fun to play with in an Active Imagination, maybe sitting down with the aliens, sharing a pizza, and talking about Life!

.... then again I may just be thinking about pizza cuz I'm eating some right now, went and picked up a thin crust pineapple and green pepper pizza after work, and just poured myself a glass of strawberry moscato. dinner of champions and all that.

T's being eclectic - yeah, L thinks of herself that way. She told me one time when I first started taking psych classes and was identifying tactics she was using as being this that or the other - she said those are just the ones that worked, that she'd tried other stuff that didn't land and I didn't recognize those. I have a feeling that she's not particularly well trained in those that "didn't land" or whatever. Nobody is good at EVERYthing, right?

Agreed on therapy being an additional source of stress in general. Sometimes, it's a place to release stress, but other times, it adds on to it. Like you said about being vulnerable. And talking about painful topics.

And no, he's not really a relational therapist. He describes his modality as "eclectic," like a mix of a few of them (I wrote this before seeing Mobius' post!). I do think it's more common for T's in the US to not have a specific modality, at least from what I've heard. Where they say they tailor it to the specific client.

I wouldn't say he really works like your T does. He'll tell he his feelings. I'll talk about my feelings. But I feel like the "look at what was happening between us" piece isn't there so much. He'll say that he reacts to others in his life--both clients and outside of therapy--in similar ways. (In fact, he told me Friday that he's more patient with his clients than with people in his outside life.)

I don't think he examines his role in things as much as he probably should as a therapist. Like, no supervision, meets with a consulting group like 6 times a year or something. But also on his own, like I don't know that he was sitting there thinking, "What might have been going on there with LT, is she triggering something in me that I'm reacting to? And am I triggering something in her?" Well, the answer to that second question is "yes," but I don't know if he asks it of himself? Like I think he sees this, from what he said in the email, as "This is only 'mildly irritating' to me, why is she reacting so strongly?" That's not a direct quote. But he did say: "In truth, you seem far more annoyed by my annoyance than I was annoyed by the texts."

In my reply to him, I told him: "Perhaps my tone came across wrong, but what I was experiencing was not annoyance, but intense fear, sadness, and shame, with my abandonment/rejection fears being strongly triggered." I imagine we'll talk about that tomorrow (he didn't reply to that email, just confirmed he'd received it when I asked).

But anyway...you make some good points, and thanks for sharing how your T works.

That's funny! In my intake form with Dr. T, I said something like, "I've tried CBT, and it doesn't really work for me, like my brain overrides it, so please don't push that on me," and he found it amusing. To his credit, he hasn't really pushed any of those techniques (he's mentioned things on occasion, but that's all).

Oh, yeah, Info calls herself "eclectic."

Or maybe that should be elk-lectic in her case.

Though she does have certification in EMDR, and she's not even good at that.

Speaking of whom, she's off in Africa on a church mission, so it's just me and baby-faced grief counselor the next few weeks. I scheduled a one-off session with Visa because I want to talk about something hearing-related, which is what she's good for.

Yeah, I think I'll call the grief counselor Baby Face.

I have no idea what my dreams are about. my t used to ask what the emotion was in the dream but there generally wasn't any. My t wasn't really any help with dreams and generallythe dream interpretation webiste suggestions don't resonate either.

I knew pretty much zero about the whole therapy thing before I started.... I sure wish I had found this forum before I started with L, instead of like a year or so in! As helpful as therapy was overall, I would probably not have elected a Jungian T if I'd had any clue about just how open-ended it was going to end up being.

This is the yummiest Moscato I've tried yet. "Tropical Moscato combines premium Moscato from Italy’s famed Asti region with 100% real fruit to make a wine that bursts with all-natural flavor. Slightly sweet and lightly frizzante (as we say in Italy), Tropical Moscato is made without any added sugar or artificial flavors. It’s 100% real fruit." I've tried the Strawberry and the Passion Fruit ones so far. I know it's like the kool-aid of wines haha but it's perfect for a week night.

I hate it when my therapist prefaces something with "I don't know how this will be received", but at least he (sometimes) warns me before he says something that's likely going to trigger something negative for me.

Yesterday it was how he's worried that I rely on him and that without therapy how empty my life might be. (I'm paraphrasing because I don't remember how he phrased it and that's the most neutral phrasing I can come up with right now.) So now I feel really pathetic because I don't have people I can rely on for support and have basically no friends. He did say that it's okay that I rely on him, but is it really? He asked me what I was looking for in friendship and I couldn't answer him. I could only think of what I'd want in a romantic partner which made me feel even more pathetic. I have a lifelong history of difficulty making friends and at my age it certainly doesn't get any easier. I don't want to talk with him about my loneliness after this exchange even though I'd emailed him about struggling with it between sessions. An email which he didn't respond to, which felt pretty crappy given the subject matter. I pretty much want to just ghost him right now.

"Since my hair turned mostly white / gray, it's not as frizzante as it used to be, but it can still work up a good curl."

Eta - elklectic!

Definitely high in vitamin c!

I bought some D3 online. Not sure what effect it is supposed to have.

Living where I do you'd think I get enough vitamin d from the sun but my dr told me to start taking it too. Now if I could only remember to do so every day!

My T once asked me what i wanted from a relationship and after i described it he said it sounded like i wanted a butler it was then i realised that i probably wasnt like other people

My mother used to call me her butler.

I finally got new glasses - I found out that I need to wear them for distance now in addition to for reading and my computer! I don't get along with those new-fangled progressive lenses, so got two different pairs of bifocals.... haha now I know I'm getting old I have a pair of computer/reading glasses and a pair of everything else/reading glasses.

I think both women advertised themselves as eclectic/psychodynamic. Basically none of them know what will or won't help someone. At best they stab and hope.

Towards the end of my time with my exT thats kind of what he said but sidnt use the word 'stab"

I think my T was just tired of me and wanted me to just go away.

LT, I don't think meeting for group consultation once every two months (why even bother?!) or a lack of a supervisor to turn to are at the core of the problem.

For me, I would have difficulty working with your T because, at his core, he does not seem to be a person given to self-reflection. He only seems to own his part in things when you force him to in some way... whether by you confronting him or by the size of your emotional response. I'm perhaps too given to reflection, but I'm not sure I could work with a T who needs to be prompted to do it.

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