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Therapist away for just a week

Posted by Dinah on October 15, 2007, at 21:38:25

Only one missed session. I saw him today and I'll see him next Tuesday. I even have been thinking I don't really need to see him twice a week when I'm doing ok. So I feel really silly that it is bothering me.

He says it's more than one missed session. It's also my missing knowing he's available to me. I can call him when he's away, and he'll answer when he can. But that's not the same as knowing he can probably squeeze me in if I need to see him an extra time.

I wandered through topics all related to him leaving in today's session. He didn't see the thread, and I had to point it out to him. I talked about caring more than I was supposed to, so that I would be bound to be hurt and it would be all my fault. And I asked what the place he was going to was like, and while he thought I was trying to distract him by talking lightly, I pointed out that I was trying to be able to picture him being somewhere when he wasn't here.

He started out seeming tired and disengaged. But by the time I left he was laughing and helping me create the bonding session I needed.

I mentioned the formality of his emails. I think maybe he was afraid I was asking if I could email him, and he was relieved to find out that I was just remembering the long time when he was gone and our only contact was email. And his emails made me feel like he more gone than just his absence did.

I pointed out that he signed his name with his first and last name. And that it wasn't likely I knew too many of his first names coming from his email address. He got all therapist-like and said that he liked to be professional in his emails with clients. That if he was addressing his wife or family he might sound more like he does when he is talking.

My therapist is not always wise, I fear, to say that particular sentence on the eve of his leaving.

I plaintively protested that I was not "a client", I was "*Dinah*, whose therapist/mommy you are". He smiled and said I sounded like Yoda. I pointed out that I wasn't presumptuous enough to say I was "Dinah, his therapee/daughter".

It was nice to make him laugh like that. :-)

In the end, he promised to sign his emails the same way he announced himself by voice, with just his first name, if we ever email again - so that he won't seem so unlike him.

And we discussed the preferred terminology of client, patient, counselee. I told him I preferred therapee, because therapy was a sacred relationship, not at all like a typical professional/client relationship.

I apologized again for being silly, but he said he liked that I cared about words, and knew that it really did matter *how* you say things, since the meaning can be totally different.

I'm glad I'm not mad at him when he's going away. I'm glad he's not mad at me as he's going away.

I wish he weren't going away.

Stupid professional education.

 

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Psycho-Babble Psychology | Framed

poster:Dinah thread:789497
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20071009/msgs/789497.html