Posted by crushedout on July 29, 2005, at 14:27:04
Dear Ms. Lott,
I read your book after it was recommended to me on this site a couple years ago when I was in the middle of a therapy that ended up being rather destructive for me. It is a very valuable book and thank you so much for creating it for us.
I don't know how to formulate this question succinctly and I also think I already know the answer but I'd be interested in hearing any thoughts you might have given your breadth of knowledge and experience. I had a therapist who crossed boundaries with me by telling me details about her personal life (including problems with her husband), telling me she was attracted to me (although she said we could never act on it -- I was openly in love with her), and I guess the worst violation was when she made and gave me a mix CD with some romantic songs on it.
I actually loaned her your book to read (she'd never even heard of it) and she read it slowly, told me it made her feel bad about stuff she had done, and also said she didn't agree with you entirely. (I can't remember why exactly -- this was a long time ago.) Anyway, after 2 and a half tortuous years, I finally got a new therapist and left her. This was about nine months ago. My new therapist has much better boundaries and is much better at helping me understand my transference and kind of keep it in perspective.
But I still think about the old one a lot and I promised her a letter explaining why I left. (She had no idea, if you can believe it. She thought she had said something to p*ss me off in the last session.) I know I don't actually owe her this letter, but sometimes I want to write it, either for closure, or to teach her something, or to perhaps strike up a nontherapeutic relationship with her (friendship? lovers? something in between? I'm not sure). I recognize that some of these reasons may be good and others not so good, so I'm not sure whether to do it. I think about it (and I still think about her) all the time.
Any thoughts on this? Advice? I've written many letters that have never been sent and I've talked about this with my new therapist also. She kind of leaves it up to me and tries to explore my motives and what I see happening. But I'm still always left in a quandary.
Thanks so much for being here.
crushedout
poster:crushedout
thread:535316
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20050725/msgs/535316.html