Posted by lucie lu on October 30, 2008, at 14:46:34
In reply to Re: poor wording » lucie lu, posted by Wittgensteinz on October 30, 2008, at 11:40:19
Witti,
The phrase that made me wince was saying that "it actually made me feel sorry for you," as if I didn't already have a great deal of sympathy for you. So thanks for letting me off the hook ;-) And I didn't mean so much stopping my posts, just stopping loading up your thread with my posts! (Although I should be working because there is a lot to do this time of year, but that is my bad and not yours.) But thanks for your kind words.
Since you bring them up, there are still a couple of things that I thought of before but didn't go into. The first is your question of how to get such warmth from your T? Well, you can ask but even if he agrees in principle, it sounds like you just cannot get something from him that he cannot give and remain authentic with you. But you can have your cake and eat it too - you can keep your T and get the warmth from elsewhere. Either your pdoc or someone else whose job may not be to understand you on such a deep level (and after I read about some of your history I can see how such a deep understanding would be such a precious thing to you) but just to be empathic and supportive. Maybe Daisy can comment more on this, but it is clear that babies need the different sorts of interactions that they get from different important people in their lives. Father might be stimulating, bouncy, playful, exciting, and Mother, soft, comforting, nurturing, soothing. Baby needs both and behaves quite differently with the parents. I originally hesitated to go into this because I could see you'd had some very painful experiences in this area, but I really think there is a point here that is worth making. So the fact that you need, and receive, one important set of interactions from your "Dad" (T) doesn't mean that that's all that you need; nor that he has to meet all of your needs; nor that he is the only one who can meet your needs. Given what you describe as your family history, it is not difficult to guess where some of those ideas might originate from. Anyway, why not look for that "softer" interaction from someone else, just for what it is - comfort and empathy? And get the other from your T.
It is possible, particularly when you have such a background (I know from my own experiences as well), to have such low expectations of having your needs met that you conclude that either you have none (or not the full range), that even if you do you can live without them, or that you are simply unable to have them met by other people because of some limitation within yourself. So maybe to pursue this angle would be therapeutic in its own right (and then more to analyze with your T as well).
The other thing I wanted to raise but didn't because it still seemed very hazy and vague in my mind is whether there is not only countertransference that is potentially interfering with the analysis but perhaps some sort of enactment going on? This is not really my area, but I just had that feeling when I first heard the story, and the feeling came back again with your subsequent posts. It is almost like there is an unacknowledged sub-plot to the interactions you've been having with your T. I can't be more specific than that, so I'll stop here.
Thanks again for the kind words.
Lucie
poster:lucie lu
thread:859655
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20081018/msgs/859951.html