Psycho-Babble Psychology | about psychological treatments | Framed
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I'm such an idiot

Posted by mair on October 24, 2006, at 22:08:56

I have one more session before my T breaks for 2 weeks while she has a second round of breast cancer surgery. And assuming everything goes well, we'll have another 3 weeks or so of sessions before she starts taking periodic breaks for chemo. Before I met with her today I had been thinking about her situation alot (it's hard not to) and the one thing I was clear on, in my own mind, was that I didn't want to be a person who had to process any of this with her or the person who had to ask her alot of questions about what was happening. The last time we talked about her cancer, I got the sense that she was really sick of talking about it. I've also been feeling like I owe it to her to hold myself together while she's going through all this. (you know, the low impact, low maintenance patient) A huge fear is that I'm going to start deteriorating for any number of reasons and not only will I not have her to turn to, but I'm going to feel incredibly guilty/ashamed about getting depressed while she's away.

So today she started out the session by wanting to know how I was feeling about so many impending breaks in our therapy schedule. And I sort of hemmed and hawed and said I really didn't want to talk about it, and she pointed out to me that generally before she goes away on vacation, for instance, we always talk about how I think I'll do while she's gone. I started to realize that she wasn't necessarily issuing permission to start processing why she was going to be absent and that I probably could answer her without working the conversation into a discussion about her cancer. But as is so typical with me, I just kept backing myself in a corner and told her I didn't want to process any of this with her. It seems that when I make these sorts of pronouncements (about not wanting to talk about something), I'm never able to get beyond it at least in that session. I get like a stubborn child and the longer I hold onto that position, the harder it becomes to open up. When all is said and done, I've probably made a much bigger deal out of nothing all because I tried to avoid answering one question.

We eventually moved onto a safe topic which could be discussed in a very surface way, but after I left her office, I felt horrible. I've made something more difficult when I want everything for her to be easy (at least the things I control).

Mair


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Psycho-Babble Psychology | Framed

poster:mair thread:697494
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