Posted by vwoolf on December 25, 2006, at 11:54:10
In reply to Re: 2 Therapists At Same Time » vwoolf, posted by happykat on December 23, 2006, at 15:39:49
Hi happykat, yes, I can understand how you would have conflicting feelings about your t's request, and that is precisely why many t's would have avoided the situation.
Of course that leaves a problem for the development of psychology as a discipline - t's can't talk about what goes on in therapy, because they can't legally use case material without written consent from the client, and when they do ask it mixes up the therapeutic relationship. I don't have any answer to the problem. I just know I would have objected if I was asked to be used in this way.
My story? It was a memoir about a part of my life. It did not talk about my current therapy although it did touch on some bad experiences I had with the psychiatric profession as a teenager but in a very peripheral way. My t knew I was writing it, and I took bits of it in to her when it felt as if I was touching on things I needed to discuss, but I didn't want her to comment on the style or content in any way.
In the beginning I was very careful not to let anyone connect me to the book. It felt good to have been published, but I felt almost cheated in a strange way, because nobody knew what I had done. Then I was asked to give a public reading in a bookstore. After much thought, I turned them down, but I felt sorry, so when a few months later they asked again, I agreed. I selected a very unemotional part. The reading went down very well, people who had read the book came up and told me how courageous they thought I was, and I felt very good about myself. It felt though as if I were reading someone else's words, talking about someone else's life. I couldn't really remember these things happening to me.
Then I was asked again, and this time I went for the jugular. I chose the most difficult, exposing part of the book. Why, I don't really know. One woman in the audience burst into tears and rushed out of the room, and others were visibly moved. When I finished I left without talking to anyone, I just felt I had to run. People wrote and told me how much they had appreciated it, but I felt naked and self-pitying and so exposed and ashamed I thought I would die. It took me quite a long time to get over that. The woman who had run out wrote and said that she hadn't been triggered by my reading because she had been through anything similar, but she had felt that my pain was unbearable.
It's funny. I couldn't accept their refelction of my pain.
Now I don't often acknowledge the book. I don't talk about it, I don't lend it out. When I go into a bookstore it gives me pleasure if I see it on the shelves, but I don't go and look for it. I am very glad I did not put my real name on it.
poster:vwoolf
thread:715149
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20061210/msgs/716306.html