I wanted to share a bit about the fifth and final therapist I saw last week. I just pulled this out of my journal instead of rewriting it. Probably not as cohesive or coherent, but oh well. I did change the names, though, except my first name. My real name is really common. You could probably guess it. It is so common that I really don’t even have to worry about identifying myself if I write it here, but I changed my last name anyway. Gosh, a lot going on about names here.
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So I felt pretty excited Friday afternoon after meeting with the last aedp therapist because it seemed pretty good and also because the outcomes with Alice and Jack had been good. I felt wiped out, though.
So I haven’t talked about Andrea. I was pretty satisfied after I left her, but still wanting to think it over, like not getting too excited about the new car and wanting to sleep on it and wait 24 hours before getting caught up in it and buying it right away. Now that I have continued to feel pretty good about her as possibly my future therapist, I am suddenly having some reservations. Sigh. Of course I am.

The reservations-----

She is not a psychologist or anything above LICSW.

She is not on the aedp website.

She didn’t ask me how I felt as much and in the same way as the other two aedp people did.

Her Psychology Today listing does not mention aedp. Granted, that listing looks old, but still.

Her cheeriness and confidence might really be pushiness and used car salesmanishness.

She is a bit jokey.

The potentials----

She is a bit jokey.

She kept up with me very well. Like if she got confused, she caught up and asked the right questions. Like not pretending she understood. I went fast, but not as fast as with the first one, and she kept up, and, like the others, figured out that my blank childhood was a big deal especially with Mom. Probably they all luckily picked that up from the piñata cartoon, although I didn’t show it to aedp trial therapist #2. Before I showed the piñata cartoon to Andrea, I said I’d explain it first, and so I started explaining it and she asked for clarification…if there were two piñatas. So I was like “No, it’s a two-headed piñata” and chuckled, and then we both joked about "the standard two-headed piñata,” of course.

When I started talking about Jack she was like, Who is this man? Like she wanted to know his name or something. So I said I wouldn’t tell her and she was like What? So I said it was for his own protection (because people are always shocked about a therapist who won’t call his clients by name, and I feel like it identifies him too much in a negative way). When I told her about how he wouldn’t call me by my name she asked if he called me Ms. Jones or something, and I told her the name horror story. When I was saying that it was his tradition to not call people by their first names, she was like, “That’s not his tradition…that’s his…thing,” and she did the circling index finger gesture at the side of her head indicating that he is a bit, um...has issues.

That was cool. There was a whole theme with names from beginning to end. So at the beginning she saw my intake sheet and was like Your name is easy! And I glanced casually at the clipboard and said, “Yeah, it’s my witness protection name....don’t worry about it.” All dry and mysterious. She got it.

She had a dog. A therapy dog, I guess. Hmm, maybe that’s just what she calls her dog who wants to be near her. The dog is old, she said, so she will just greet you and then just sleep nearby. Turned out to be accurate. Different anyway. Never been to a therapist with a dog. The office is in the basement of her home. Not super basement-y. It’s pretty nice considering the windows are not that big. Well, maybe it is not quite basement level, now that I think of it.

Anyway, back to the names. I told her that Jack led me down the garden path with his HIPPA reasoning about not being able to say my name and then how he asked a couple times about how to pronounce my name. She was like, Your name is Susan!

Then at some other point I was joking that she could call me a different nickname each time I came if she wanted. Like Jonesy.

Then at the very end she gave me a card with the appointment time on the back. She had written Susan, see you at 5:00 on Friday 2/28. So when she handed it to me I looked at the back as I was getting ready to go and she asked “Is that how you spell your name?” So I was like “Yes, that’s it.” And then she goes “I’m just kidding!” and laughs. So it took me a second as I watched her laughing to connect that she was mocking Jack and his “struggle” with my name. I was so surprised. She got me on that one.

She literally offered me candy. Think of the piñata symbolism! But the candy was already out on a little table when I got there, so it is not like she picked up on the piñata thing and did it on purpose.

I talked about my concerns about just telling her all these stories and us running out of time. She said “I won’t let that happen.”

Earlier I was concerned about something else, like overwhelming her with all the stuff about Jack and Alice and stuff, or something… not at all sure that was it…but she said again, “I won’t let that happen.”

She had planned for extra time because it was a first session. I seriously felt no rush, even though I was worried about it. I felt like she was completely comfortable with the time.

She really tried to book me for the following week even though I couldn’t meet at the time she will have open for me if I continue with her. This can go in the desperate and hence reservations category (see above) or else here in the potentials category.

She handed me a bottle of water when I came in and sat down, and told me that if I like tea, then next time I can have that.

She said that her sessions are 50-60 minutes.

She asked me if I met with Jack once or twice a week.

Her office was nice but not too nice.

Her face was nice. I can, and have been, still picturing it, for some reason.

When I mentioned Jack and the love hate discussion I had with him on Thursday, I said something about how he had some hook in me, and she said that we would look at that at some point, because there is a reason I picked him and stuck with him and felt that hook. Well, that’s my paraphrase of it. Loosely translated.

She said that she liked me and wanted to work with me. This can also go above in the reservations category.

She explained that she thought it would be important for me to do the aedp and connect with her and also the IFS so that I could connect to my parts and have a connection to Self. That both were important for me, she thought.

She said something about mothering, and me not being used to it.

She said something about having to work out boundaries together and that we would go slowly. I think she actually meant MY boundaries!

She said stuff about attachment.

In the initial phone call she had asked me about trauma.

OK, I guess after all of that I feel pretty good about her again.

Last one. Her name is Andrea. Dad’s name is Andre. Huh? Maybe?