Posted by mair on March 14, 2005, at 9:52:08
In reply to Visit to pdoc (long), posted by daisym on March 12, 2005, at 23:34:06
When I see my pdoc, she always asks me how T is going. Although I've been seeing her for several years now, she sounded shocked about a year ago when I told her I was going 2x a week. Of course it made me feel defensive. It also makes me feel defensive when I start telling her some (very little) about therapy and realize that the issues I'm struggling with in particular, are the same issues which were plagueing me the last time I saw her - maybe 6 months before. I think I'm the slowest study in the world and it's hard for me to accept that my own snail's pace is ok. My pdoc has never been open with me about what she might be thinking about me and therapy. I think this is better although I tend to infer her unspoken opinions. If she said the kinds of things to me that your pdoc said, it would have freaked me out in a major way, because I'm heavily invested in my therapy and like you, I worry about my T getting sick of dealing with me. No one likes to think that the very thing they're working so hard at and spending so much time and money on might be counterproductive.
I don't think your pdoc is telling you that T's don't like clingy clients. I think she's telling you and SHE doesn't like clingy patients. Whatever dependency you have on your T right now has been fostered by him, I think, in a very deliberate way. I've always thought from reading your posts for quite awhile, that he's really tried to encourage your dependency, my guess is because he thinks you need that attachment to feel comfortable telling him your stories. So he's in the best situation to talk to you about clinginess, not her.
Also, with regard to the complications of your life, you could look at it as your pdoc does, that your life is too complicated for you to deal now with intensive therapy. Or you could look at this as being a situation where, with all of your life's complications, you at least have one arena, therapy, where the focus is on you and where you're not trying to meet the needs of everyone else.
I would be very honest and open with your T about what your pdoc said about clingy clients and why you worry about this so much. I think harboring those fears in silence for so long, retarded my therapy by impairing any opportunity I might have to strengthen my attachment to my T. Bringing those fears out in the open with my own T has helped lessen them tremendously. I still struggle with them sometimes, but I'm so much more secure in my relationship with her than I used to be, and I think a lot of that security comes from not constantly thinking that she's looking for ways to jettison me as a client.
Mair
poster:mair
thread:470309
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20050305/msgs/470823.html