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Re: He's leaving ****triggers**** » ElaineM

Posted by Dinah on July 27, 2006, at 0:19:52

In reply to Re: He's leaving ****triggers**** » Dinah, posted by ElaineM on July 26, 2006, at 20:32:52

> > I can feel my therapist starting to act like a therapist now in ways that highlight that he wasn't acting precisely therapist-like before.
>
> Does it bother you that you can recognize the difference now? Do you think you get more from how he is now? If you do, do you ever resent him for being different during earlier times? [please don't answer these if they are difficult questions. I'm not really sure of your story, but I sense that you find the T-relationship subject quite painful(?) So feel free to "pass" on them if it's too hard]

We went through a rough patch after both our lives were uprooted by Hurricane Katrina. He'd be the first to admit he wasn't his best, but he'd also point out that it didn't affect most of his clients the way it affected me. I'd probably say that was true. I know him so well after all this time, and rely on him being the same. When he wasn't I got frantic. Plus he wasn't overly dependable or stable in that time period. His life is more settled now, and he can be a therapist to me again. I'm not sure everything will ever be the same, but it's better than it was the last many months. It's a huge difference, him being the more put together therapist keeping his needs out of the room, and what it was. I like it much better this way.

I guess it's not really his fault. None of us have been at our best for this past year.

>
> >...but I think I'd forgive him anything, and I mean anything, to keep a relationship of some sort.
>
> Then you can understand. (((Dinah)))
>
> > But I hope I would also seek out a truly therapeutic relationship even as I held on to a nontherapeutic one with him.
> If that makes sense?
>
> It makes sense. Do you mean if you held the wish for more in your heart, while only seeking out the professional relationship? Or do you mean for both to be possible simultaneously? I think both at the same time would be wonderful, ideal. But from what I've been reading from others, I don't think that it's possible. I don't know.

I mean that he fills a need for me that I'm not sure any other therapist could fill. At least I'm relatively sure most of them couldn't. We've discussed it some times. Why I met with rejection from the temporary therapists I saw when he was unavailable during this time, while I meet with acceptance from him. I guess I understand why they behaved the way they did. Somehow when he explains it, it doesn't sound so awful as when they explained it. Maybe because he's not seeing me as they did, he's just explaining it.

But if he had continued to be unavailable to me in a therapeutic capacity, I hope I would have found therapy elsewhere if I needed it. While still clinging with arms and legs and toes to what I still had with him, for as long as there was anything whatsoever, including hope, left in the relationship with him.

He's that important to me.

The really fortunate thing is that my husband understands this completely and isn't threatened at all by it. My husband realizes that they're not in the same sort of position in my life.

So... There's definitely more of a boundary now, and there's some loss in that. But overall it's a gain, since the boundary in therapy protects us as well as them.

And I never really wanted a relationship with him other than forever therapy, and maybe feeling like I'm special to him and that he cares for me as a person.

So yes, I understand.

 

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poster:Dinah thread:669755
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