Posted by DaisyM on February 6, 2004, at 17:00:34
In reply to I spoke about this board today, posted by Dinah on February 6, 2004, at 11:04:42
>>>>He also tends to think that clients who obsess about sex, or in my case dependency, are trying to avoid real therapeutic work. I disagreed with him on that one, as my take is that those obsessions are part of the client's problems and thus grist for the mill. For example, I now see him as a secure base, but it took years of obsessing about abandonment before I was able to do that. And I think that *is* therapeutic work.
<<<<I have a friend who is a retired Therapist and she thinks the same thing. When I talk about fears of abandonment or being overly dependent, she always asks, "and how much time did that take away from the "real" issue?" I agree with you though. It is part of the issue, because if you can't establish trust how could you ever get to any "real" issues. Plus this type of thinking assumes that the client already knows what their issues are.
I hope you know you are special - both to your Therapist and to us here. You Therapist must think so after all this time. Emotional engagement is not something I've thought about a lot because I just expect it. And then worry about it!
I think most of us wonder if our Therapist's EVER think about us between sessions. I feel like I had that questioned answered this week. On Monday we talked about using a workbook for writing assignments but my Therapist couldn't remember the name of the book he wanted to recommend. He said he would get it for me, if I wanted him to. I gave a pretty low key, "that would be great" expecting him to forget about it. He had the name of the book by Wed and he had checked to see if one of the local bookstores had it. (they did). So, I guess they *do* think about us too.
poster:DaisyM
thread:310138
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20040206/msgs/310255.html