Posted by Dinah on August 26, 2008, at 17:11:38
In reply to Re: It really doesn't matter, posted by fleeting flutterby on August 26, 2008, at 13:49:33
I'm sorry I disappeared. :( I've been feverishly working on another deadline. I think at least this time I got a bit of insight as to why I'm always feverishly working to meet a deadline. Now to figure out if there's any way to use it.
It's interesting that different people feel differently about it. I've actually met with my therapist in nonstandard places when necessary, and it's never made a huge difference.
I think that for me it's a contextual difference, not a place difference. The bubble of the therapy room is transportable, but the context needs to stay the same. Nobody is the same with all people or in all places. That's even more true of therapists than most people, I'd think.
In that room, he's fond, indulgent, and totally focused on the relationship. In that room, I'm open and vulnerable. If there was a quiet garden at the back of his office, we could maintain that context. But this would involve going outside his office. The context would be different and so would he.
As a minor example, I forgot my purse in his office last week. I of course couldn't leave without it, so when I was nearly down to my car, I turned around and returned. By that time, his next patient was there, and he was walking around checking his mail or whatever. As I walked in, he calmly and professionally asked if he could help me. And I answered as I would if I had left my purse with my hairdresser, although I added a joke about it not being freudian. He wasn't my therapist/mommy in that exchange, and I wasn't his therapee/daughter. The context was different, the relationship was different, and we were both different. And that was as it should be.
Given enough time, I'm sure we could work out a functioning out of office relationship. I even had a bit of that today, since I wasn't at all myself, having been up all night, and working. It was more chit chat than therapy. The couple of topics we discussed brought home again how totally different we are, and how little we'd have to do with each other in the real world. That was tempered by the warm acceptance and amusement with which we greeted the reminder. But it wasn't my normal therapy, and it wasn't my normal therapist, and while it may have been an amusing interlude on a day that was pretty much shot to heck anyway, it wasn't therapy.
He's going away for two separate trips in September, but probably back to back, so that he'll be gone two weeks and I won't see him for nearly three, if it works out that way. And he doesn't see that as a problem.
Therapists!
poster:Dinah
thread:847432
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20080826/msgs/848457.html