Posted by Klokka on September 10, 2004, at 21:44:17
As you might know, I saw my pdoc for the first time after a five week break this past Tuesday. The session went much better than I expected, thankfully. There was one thing my pdoc asked, though, which has got me more than a little confused.
One thing which has come up repeatedly in therapy is this sense I have of being somehow inherently... well, the best way I've been able to articulate it thus far is that I feel like, at heart, I am something like a sideshow freak: contorted and fashioned so that I cannot help but be flawed, and people may tolerate me for a while or maybe even be interested, but how could they stay once they really knew me? I don't know exactly how to put it, and I'm not sure my pdoc knows quite what I mean either. Anyway, whenever I've brought up the theme, he generally will say that he doesn't see the thing that I fear I am.
We talked about this a bit last session, and he said that he didn't think I came across as obnoxious, annoying, etc. as I claim myself to be. He saw how I have a pattern of wanting to be close with people but always being disappointed somehow, but didn't see why this should universally be the case. I tried to clarify what I meant, but wasn't too successful. Then he did something rather interesting; he asked me to be annoying with him.
I ended up saying "Well, you know, I'd really rather not. People tend to LEAVE when I get annoying, and that hurts, and I may as well have somewhere to complain about it, right?" And that was the end of that. But I really didn't know how to respond! I see my annoyingness (it isn't just that, but that's the part he focused on so I'll use that word in this post) as something so inherent to who I am that I can't just turn it off at will. Maybe the setting of therapy makes me less likely to act that way and it isn't so apparent, but all the same I've been in it so long and said so many things which would, at the very least, give my pdoc a pretty good idea of how deeply vile and flawed I am, so I'm absolutely mystified as to how he could go without seeing it, if indeed he does not see it. (Right now it seems most logical to me that he's lying... but I may as well look for an alternate explanation.) The only thing I can think of is that in therapy I can, in theory, be completely honest and don't have to worry about holding it all together - that I have to do this otherwise sometimes makes me feel and act awkward. I don't think that that accounts completely for it, though, so I don't know what to think.
Wow, I think I've confused myself just by writing this. I just found the question odd and figured I'd post. Any thoughts? How would you respond if your T asked you something like this?
poster:Klokka
thread:389435
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20040905/msgs/389435.html