You're all so wonderful about answering and sharing your experiences and encouragement. Thanks a ton, it really is carrying me through this. From some of your responses, now I'm wondering if I've given an unfair description of what happened. Now I'm wanting to defend him! He really is a good T in a lot of ways. There's reasons why I'm so attached to him.
Don't worry, Hummingbird, I couldn't give you his number even if I wanted to, because I don't have it. I never felt the need to ask for it, and he apparently doesn't trust me with it now. Who knows, I might call and tell him how much I like his shirt again
That was a joke, by the way. I'm just trying to see the humor in all of this. I think the shirt thing was really blown out of proportion. But ultimately, it is better to have boundaries that are too strong, than not strong enough.Echo, I think it was a joint decision between him and our couples T after we each talked to her separately. I'll find out more when I talk to her on Tuesday.
Summer, thanks for describing your experiences, and I'm sorry to hear about how your P let you down. I've read your other posts about how your P ended things, and it sounds awful. I'm glad you found another T to work through it with. I'm sorry you had to go through it, but your description of how you got through it is encouraging to me.
Once when I was telling my T about how afraid I was of abandonment, he told me he'd never had to transfer anyone. He said one of his patients walked in drunk one day and offered to sit in his lap, but she wasn't transferred. He told me another 26-year old patient had a crush on him, and he helped her through it. This was all to reassure me that it was safe to talk about the transference. I keep looking over what I said or did that was more "offensive" or hard to handle than these examples, but I can't see it. Ultimately if he couldn't help me through it then yes, the right thing for him to do is transfer me. But one of the questions I have is, why are you transferring me, when you didn't have to transfer those other patients? I also wish I had asked more questions about "how" he helped them through it. Maybe then I would know why he can't help me through it.
Last session, when he asked what we should "do" about my feelings (so far, regarding how he looks in that white shirt, or any shirt, for that matter), I said I didn't know what to "do" about it, I thought we were just supposed to talk about it, and the feelings would eventually fade as I understood where they were coming from. He said, "I can actually see that possibly going two ways. It could make them fade, or it could make them worse." I hadn't come across anything in my reading that said it would make them worse, so I didn't know what to say to that.
It is ironic that we go to them to work through attachment and abandonment issues, and they end up being the ones to trigger the pain again. And what is up with not being able to see that? I don't understand how that's possible. But the really weird thing is, I really did want to work on attachment and abandonment issues. This is a golden opportunity to do just that.
Another really weird "coincidence" has to do with a drawing I showed him very early on. About six months before I met my T, I'd met with an old friend of mine to talk about the old feelings I was struggling with about my old boyfriend. At one point, she said I had him on a pedestal. Later I started wondering, what would that look like? So I drew it. In the drawing, I have my old boyfriend on a pedestal with all the reasons I admire him written on the front of it. I drew myself in a few days later, down in the corner, with several words describing how I thought he thinks of me around me (they're all negative).
In one of our early sessions, my T also commented that I had my old BF on a pedestal. I practically jumped up because I had brought the drawing! So I said, do you want to see it? He thought it was great it terms of symbolism. He asked to copy it and put it in my file, and he referred to it several times. Throughout our sessions he said what we really needed to do was find a way to get the old BF down to size, and build me up. That the guy on the pedestal isn't really real.
He also made a weird comment the session after I showed it to him. There was a title on the pedestal with a word in it that happened to be part of his last name. He pointed to it and said "I'd like to see my name right about here". He also said to himself that he would be my "transitional object" as he was setting the drawing down. He repeated in the next session that he'd like to be on the pedestal. He didn't know that I'd been reading about transference, but because I had, I took this to mean that he wanted me to do transference. I had read about how it could be useful in therapy to get to the real issues.
So I took him literally (I tend to do that) and made a pedestal for him. I never showed it to him, but I just did it as an exercise to see if the words on the front would be the same as the old BF's. None of them matched up. When I first tried to talk about transference a few sessions later, he said he'd just been "joking" and he didn't really mean it. That really confused me.
But the point is, I had him on a pedestal too, and now he's not living up to it in some ways. So again, the ultimate goal of the therapy IS being achieved here. The way I attached to him and began to feel about him is similar, although not as strong because there's not the force of an actual romantic relationship behind it. Having to work through the pain of being let down by someone I was depending on and even idolizing. This is exactly what I wanted to work on regarding the old BF. If I knew my T had orchestrated this on purpose, I'd say he's brilliant. But then, he's back up on that pedestal again, which defeats the purpose.
Thanks all of you for encouraging me to keep writing here. I've said to my T so many times, I never have enough time to talk about all the things that therapy is triggering in me. I've never been able to journal until about two years ago, and now I can't stop. It started with "letters" to the old BF I never intended to send, and then it was "letters" to my T (again, never intending to send - it just somehow opens me up to be writing "to" someone). I journal like a mad woman and I want to throw my ideas out there and find out what you think, but I can't do it all in just 50 minutes. He kept saying, that's okay, we'll still accomplish what needs to be accomplished. He was right, again. I'll just never know if it was accidental or not.
I'm glad you don't mind my ramblings. Again, it is probably even better this way. Making new friends is always a cool thing
Thanks a gazillion for being here.SG