strange thoughts about killing ants

Last week when we had our big legal meeting, T brought in an armload of flowers for me and my H that he picked from his garden. (I wrote about this in another thread.) I still have them in my house. T laid these flowers on the big legal table at our meeting. As we assembled them into vases, a number of little brown ants scurried over the table. They were going all over. Since T had brought the flowers, he said he would take care of the ants. He killed them one at a time by squashing them with his finger. This went on even after we started our meeting--when another ant would come out of nowhere, T would get it. There was something kind of disturbing to me about T killing the ants. I am a lover of animals, plants, any living thing. I am the type who finds a bug in the house and carefully carries it outside. Yeah, I've killed bugs in my life, but I don't do it lightly. Anyway, seeing T kill all those ants so readily was somehow at odds with the man I have imagined him to be. I know that is stupid, and they are just ants, but I didn't like seeing T killing stuff!

To top it off, I have had this fantasy a number of times that I am an ant in T's office. If you are a Star Trek fan, you may remember the Deep Space Nine series. In it there is a character named Odo, who is a shape-shifter. He can assume the shape of any creature or even inanimate objects and then people don't realize he is there. He might be a rock, or a bird, or an ant. Anyway, I have had this recurring fantasy that I am a shape-shifter and can stay in T's office by posing as an object or animal. I think I just find it comforting to be in his presence and want to be with him more than my 50 minutes a week, and this would allow me to. Also, I am curious about what he talks to other clients about. This fantasy was more common earlier in my therapy, when I was really attaching strongly. In my fantasy, I most often change into an ant, and hide on T's desk underneath papers or behind his computer. I deliberately didn't choose to be a fly, as they buzz around and can annoy people, and I was worried T would swat at me and get me. So I chose to be an unobtrusive ant. And now I see T in real life killing ants rather cavalierly. It makes me not feel safe anymore to be an ant in his office.

I know, I know, this is so pathetic and dumb. But I just can't shake the image of T squashing the ants with his finger.

I don't think it is pathetic and dumb. I used to be an ant killer and then I went to this talk on virtue ethics...

Virtue ethics is this theory whereby 'ethical people' are people who exhibit certain virtues (such as virtuous character traits of kindness, compassion, truthfulness, courage etc etc etc). On the virtue ethics picture of what it takes to be moral moral education should consist in fostering those virtues.

The thought is that you can teach your children to be kind and compassionate by such things as... Teaching them to treat the little creatures with wonder and respect. When you see an ant say 'oh look at that isn't that amazing' and then find out more about the wonderous nature of ants on the internet or from books etc in order to teach your children to have that respectful nature towards living creatures.

But... Some people aren't raised in such a fashion. Mother might go 'ugh and ant how disgusting' or one might see people casually squashing them... Often such a thing is unthinking...

I sympathize a great deal with your finding his doing that to be altogether to casual and... Slightly disturbing (or rather more than slightly disturbing).

Perhaps... You could talk to him about this? It might be... That he has never thought of that before... And that... You could educate him in the appropriate attitude towards living creatures ;-)

not pathetic it is actually a good point really and being an animal lover like you said the whole bug crushing thing hit a nerve anybody ever see men in black with WILL SMITH any how there is this gaint cockroach ok who takes over human body well goes to a pest killer shop and all of a sudden a whole bunch of little cockroaches come out the guy behind counter squashes them then big HUGE cockroach squashes the guy cuz they his family could you imagine the bugs fighting back and we shrink attack of the gaint ants runn lol

Yeah, I think that would be rather disturbing... especially if you had thought about being an ant =( I told my t last week i wish i could be a fly on the wall when she talks with my MD.
I don't know how i'd approach that if i were in that situation. I might have wanted to go over and stop his finger prior to the squish - but might not have been able to stop t.
maybe you can bring him a card "ants are ppl too".
hugs, kiya

I think this would have bothered a lot of people. I'd definitely bring it up in session so you can work out the feelings.
I like to think of my t as being gentle and ethereal like an angel. It would be hard to see her do something like that but maybe it would help the relationship progress--t is human, t and I can disagree, t isn't perfect and I don't have to be either etc.
I hope you can work this out!

Thanks, everyone. I am not going to hold T's ant killing against him. He was in kind of an awkward situation, a formal legal meeting, and he had brought a slew of ants onto the table with his flowers. I think he was trying to clean up his "mess." It was still kind of disturbing, but I'm OK.

It brought up some other stuff for me, like how two days before the legal meeting, I went to see my psychiatric nurse practitioner, and there was a large fly buzzing around the room and it was quite distracting and annoying. She opened up her window but it wouldn't fly out. So we just lived with it. That was OK with me, as I have memories of when my husband was still living with me, he would get very annoyed at flies in our house, and take a rolled up newspaper and stalk them through the house. Then "whap" he would go loudly with the newspaper, striking them from where they clung to the wall, and they would fall to the floor, dead. There was some triumph in the hunt. It was violent. So I liked that my PNP just let the fly buzz around and didn't make a big deal about conquering it and killing it.

Then 2 days later comes the legal meeting and my T was killing ants. I think it reminded me of my H and freaked me out a bit. I don't like my T to remind me in any way of my H. Because he's not like him at all.

Epilogue to the ant story--

At therapy today, the first words out of T's mouth were about the ants. I couldn't believe it. I hadn't really intended to bring this up as there is so much else. He said how he couldn't believe all the ants from the flowers he had brought to the meeting. I commented, very neutrally, "you squished them with your finger." He said, "I know, I feel bad about that," and he truly looked remorseful, as if it really did matter to him. So I felt that bit of dissonance I had experienced go away. T did respect living things. He talked about his wonderful garden, from which the flowers had come, and showed me slides of it on his computer. He also showed me some photos of birds he had taken in his garden. I came away with that feeling that T did have a love for animal and plant life. So I guess the ant issue is resolved.

(((((((((sunrise)))))))))

oh good that you are feeling better around that and had it resolved. kiya

lol. thats awesome! he must have noticed the look on your face and / or remembered it and understood it in hindsight. that is so cool :-)

what was cool, too... was that while this got to you... it didn't throw you completely.

:-)