WLOH,

Thanks for the reply.

quote:

And this may seem weird but, when I listen to myself talk/cry, I think "I feel really bad for this girl, she deserves help"

Nothing weird about that at all! I think it's entirely healthy and appropriate since we all deserve help.

UV,

I think you bring up a lot of good questions that a T might want to consider before saying yes to recording, the main one being, will this be beneficial to the client.

Like you, I could never record my sessions without telling my T. I guess I have a guilty conscience, but it's also that I value our honest relationship and I'd feel that I was being deceptive. If he'd been recording me without telling me, I'd lose my you know what, so I figure it's only fair to ask before.

And this is not a judgment on WLOF or MacLove by any means. We all have different therapies with different people.

At the moment, I'm hoping he says, OK, let's try it for a couple of weeks and see how it pans out. It if's not beneficial, we can stop it. So, I'll find out more tomorrow.

Russ

Hey Maclove that’s great news. Your T sounds pretty cool.

Am interrupting the thread here, sorry, just something Russ posted that I wanted to respond to.

Wow Russ

quote:

I remember reading about this somewhere once. It's called "inverted transference." The client takes on the position of their abuser or neglector, and makes the therapist the target for their bad stuff.

This comment really had me sitting up in my chair - all sorts of connections buzzing in my brain. It suddenly explains a whole lot of things I’ve been aware of in me which I just put down to ‘negative transference’ operating in real world too not just with a T - but you’ve separated out something really important for me right there in those words.

I’ve been vaguely aware at times of feeing this urge to have a go at people, really let rip at them with all the shit that’s been dumped in my head from day dot and then felt incredibly guilty and frightened and self hating about it. Thinking about it I recognized it’s me wanting to treat people the way I’ve been treated.

(It’s the sort of things pyschodrama and gestalt Ts would have a field day with lol)

But that you’ve put it into words, and also that it even has a label, suddenly makes it… I dunno… comprehensible? Even ok? I think it’s something I’ve been terrified of in therapy - that if I ever went into that mode the therapist would really take it personally, get shot of me, seeing me as an unacceptably bad client etc and so I’ve always been careful to monitor and pre-empt whatever anger/contempt/bad feelings surface. Now for some reason it makes real sense and not some frighteningly unacceptable bad thing about me.

Sorry rambling a bit here, just had to say how much your words suddenly made things really clear to me - thanks for that Russ!

LL

p.s. sorry guys, I'll come back later and respond properly to the thread itself. Hope you don't mind my hijacking for a bit.

Way to go UV! That is great. I'm so glad that your T said it was ok and wasn't upset with you.

quote:

Originally posted by MacLove:
Hi all,

I just got back from my session and I haven’t even listened to the recording yet, but I wanted to post and say that my T was totally accepting, happy, and supportive of me recording sessions.

That's awesome, MacLove. If I have anything to report after my session tomorrow, I'll be sure to update the thread. If you don't mind me asking, what kind of therapy are you doing? Is it CBT or more "insight" based psychodynamic stuff?

LL,

I don't want to hyjack ML's thread, either, but just to address your thought...yeah, I guess you could say it's a kind of negative transference, but at some point it probably makes no difference what you call it. But, there's no question that what I'm feeling is a kind of fundamental, foundational anger/rage that is very, very, very old, and it's directed *right* at him. I mean, this is anger that could burn a hole through the floor.

Russ

quote:

Originally posted by MacLove:
Russ-
It's client centered therapy with a focus on object relations.

Excellent. Sounds like you have a great rapport with him.

Hi MacLove,

Congratulations on pushing through your fear to tell your T you had recorded and wanted to keep doing so. It is incredibly hard work to move against fear, but you did it. Good job!! And I was so glad to read that you had such a great response from him, about the recording, and about this board too. He sounds like a gem of a T.

SG

Thank you, Ultraviolet. I think my T is pretty cool too : )

I went ahead and asked my (new) T today if it was okay if I record sessions. She wanted to know why I want to do this (just curious, not accusatory), so I told her I had recorded my last session with ex-P and that it had been really helpful for me. I "space out" during sessions and then forget what was said and by whom, and then my mind tries to fill in the blanks and it results in a lot of misunderstanding and confusion for both parties.

She said it would be fine if I record. As long as I "don't post it to a blog" or anything. (OMG I would never do that! I can hardly stand to hear my voice myself!)

So just another vote for Ask Your T, they will probably say yes.

Congrats on asking your T, echo!!! I know, I would never let anyone hear the recording. I have a password on my iPod just for that.


One (maybe) negative thing about recording sessions:

For the past two weeks I’ve noticed that as I’m listening to the recording I find things that I can turn into insults, even though he didn’t mean it like that at all.

For example this past Tuesday my T was telling me what ‘gifts’ I have given him. He talked about my willingness to grow and change, and that I’ve gone from a place of chaos and depression to a place of health, and then he said “And all I do in this room is provide opportunity.” UMMMM… I’ve read enough books on the client-centered approach to know that you do A LOT more than “provide opportunity.” Maybe he can trick other clients into believing that but not me. But if I didn’t have the recording I would have never seen that as an insult. And I don’t think he meant it as an insult one little bit. I just turned it into one.

So I said that it’s maybe a negative because talking about things that they said that hurt you is good too… In my experience whenever I tell my T that I didn’t like something he said he has responded with apologies and understanding. And then also I can become more aware of the fact that maybe sometimes I twist people’s words around to make it sound like they are insulting me when they really aren’t.

Echo,

That stinks! I'm sorry she changed her mind. I think I'd be upset about the fact that she said it's a "trust issue" as well. For me, it would make me not trust my T.

I hope everything else went well with your session!

Hi everyone! I`m also nwe here, dont know if i do this right? Think this post was wrongly putted here.. but:

WOw! So cool to record.. I`we wanted to do just that for as long as i can remember.. But i dont have the I-pod things (neither any of the other nice record-stuff)

What`s the worst scenario that can happen really- if you tell him about the recording? (or just ask if its Ok to do it, thats just a frank and honest question. If the respond is positive, then maybe tell him/her you allready done it once.. It`s always better to be honest. Thtas what therapi learned me manye times) After all, if it helps you, like you said, - you learned that he was so gently and warm, - It sounds like a win-win situation to me! What is good for you, is (should be) also for his benefits.. Dont you think?

I did all this "recording" only in my head.. trying SO HARD after every session to remember EVERYTHING (i mean this every single word)that came out of my T`s mouth. Like every word had this huge importance.. (Trying to find out i guess, does he likes me? What is he interested to hear more abaout?) This type of "recording" doesnt have the same funcion: I dont acually HEAR the word, I just "hear" them in my head.. so. I`ll rather grab your way.
Yet: My T knows I have a bit craxy hang up, trying to remember everything we`ve talked about in the session, and also helped me understand that all this effort I make to "hear him" in my head is connected to me wanting to allways have him there, hear his voice etc..

-again pardon my english, it`s so hard to not be able to communicate the way i would like to. Hope you bear over with me-
and good luck with your next session, with-or without recording! Smiler

sorry- this was suddently a very old response.. I cant cope with the speed in here It was ment to one of the first message..