My t has at least twice gone off into a spiel about 'how therapy has limits, how he as a psychologist has limits" and I always hear : I am your therapist so I won't truly TRULY care about you.

I get very upset every time and I have asked him NOT to say the word 'limit'. He forgets.

He occasionally misinterprets something I say and makes it a psychological weird responce. I said that I felt I lost him and then my weirder thoughts started. He said right back at me: when you tell me these things that you consider weird, you feel like you lose me, that I won't like you anymore?

No! Duh! I FIRST felt I lost you and THEN the weird thoughts started. AND I feel relief that you know them. I am not thinking I am going to lose you because I have told you, that is just what your textbooks say, duh.

Oh, I just remembered I also misinterpret what he says, MISHEARING him - so that I hear him say something very psychological. that is when we get tangled up. Like I failed my audition and I was pretty sore about it. And he said ' it is normal to have fantasies about how we are just going to be accepted and welcomed with open arms"

Like WHERE exactly did I say that? And then I brooded over it and thought he meant that it is a fantasy of mine that I could get into this choir. And then I brooded some more (I am good at brooding - I practice a lot LOL) and by now had heard him say that I was unrealistic to even THINK I could get into that choir and by the next time I saw my T, he got a ten minute telling off about how he knows NOTHING about my singing and how dare he suggest it is pure fantasy and not realistic!

He sat there looking a bit down cast and eventually, when he could get a word in edge ways, said "I am sorry - I was only trying to say that we all have hopes that our talents will be recognised. I did not mean what you think I meant at all."

so I had huffed and puffed unnecessarily.

I tell you - he is one PATIENT therapist

More T responses. I am on a roll....

don't you just hate it when they say the thing that gets under your skin and you fight back and yet you can hear yourself just exposing even more exactly how right they are ... ?

I did it yesterday saying how I had had a melt down on Wednesday and how my DH had come home with a cold and his cold was BIG and IMPORTANT but the fact that I was telling him I had experienced mega melt down in a room of strangers was dismissed as me wanting attention from him and actually his cold was more important and his suffering was REAL.

I said to my T that I was used to that but annoyed.

My t said that it was just like my childhood really, that people ignored my pain or told me that it wasn't real and so I must find it very hard.

I said : No, it is normal with my DH. He is ALWAYS like that.I have got used to it and I just stuffed away what I was feeling and got on with looking after him and my kids. but he NEVER looks after me if I am ill. He has been known to leave me for hours and hours when I have flu or am bedridden for real (hip dislocation) ..
and my T said : but it must be so infuriating that your hurt is dismissed and other people's hurt is important

me: no - not really. It is just normal - I am used to it. He just is like that. I just feel that I have to adjust. My pain anyway is from the past and his is in the now. Like he says.

T: but your pain is real in the now, too. And it must really piss you off that he refuses to acknowledge it?
Me: no - stop it! I am used to it! You are annoying me now!
T: sorry - I was just noting that it was very similar to the pain you had to carry as you grew up, both physical and emotional.they told you it wasn't important or as real as their dramas.
Me: crying by now : " I wish he would be a bit more sympathetic."


[urgh - he just kept going on that one, until I got the point. Blooming man, he is too good a therapist sometimes. LOL]

(((((PF))))))

I couldn't admit my attachment to my T for a long time. So, I am wondering if there is a possibility a part of you is checking her out for potential trustworthiness, like, will she be there for me, etc.

And even if you are right and you are truly not attached to her, look at the bright side here: she's getting you to examine your feelings and to potentially stand up for yourself.

My T's has done some things consistently that have bothered me and I have told him. I always try to phrase it from the "I" place. Instead of saying, you're such an idiot for doing that (sometimes I think that) I try to say, I don't like it when .... you do x, y or z. It makes me feel like I don't know what I am feeling or that you know me better than I know myself.

The more you can verbalize what's going on inside you to her, the better your relationship with her will become.

Nice to see you again, btw.



Liese

Something my T tends to say and drives me completely nuts is (mostly) at the end of our sessions.

T always says something in line of 'Thank you for sharing this with me. Thank you so much.' (and then what feels like ten more thank you's).

The way T says it sounds so textbook, like T read that she is supposed to say that. It does not really come across genuine like everything else she says. Plus she says it like I'd just given her a 1mln dollar check; I mean, really T??? (And honestly, I have hardly shared anything with her yet...)

It makes me really uncomfortable because it simply sounds just too fake to me.

Haha. Sadly, yes, that reminded me of last session when I was trying to get her to out the reason why she became a therapist (yes I was suspicious, perhaps in order to push her away) and she cleverly managed to turn it around onto me and eventually made me cry about my own Mother!. So annoying. I wanted to out her on something and she outed me! She's smart. Too smart. Sometimes it really annoys me.

Last session she said something along the lines of 'well, this can never be a normal relationship' and I got annoyed at her because I knew that and it felt like a rejection. I snapped back 'Yes, I know that. Obviously'. I don't like it when she says those kind of things even if they are true. .