Posted by fleeting flutterby on April 13, 2009, at 10:27:29
In reply to Re: What is your T. to you??, posted by SLS on April 11, 2009, at 4:37:33
> For me, a psychotherapist is simply a fellow human being with the education to teach and repair minds. I have never felt that they were, or needed to be, a surrogate for someone else in my life.<<
---flutterby: Wow! really? You don't have a void in your life from your childhood or young adulthood? a void that needs filling or corrected.....
I'm thinking...... maybe I don't need a surrogate- anyone either, and that's why I struggle to "bond" in that way. Maybe I am trying to force something that doesn't need to be *shrugs*... can a therapist be, like you said,--"a fellow human being with the education to teach and repair minds"..... and just that?...----Hope I don't cause trouble here... but.... well, I tend to be more emotionally "male" than female, I think(though physically I am very female- love flowers and the color pink and soft toy animals, am petite frame) I just don't know if I can "bond" to a therapist in such a close emotional way. I bet most guys that go to therapy see the therapist as like a mechanic, or dentist-- someone that is there to help fix something that isn't working right...... most guys, I venture to guess, don't look for a father figure, mother figure or hopeful lover figure..... they keep that part of the emotional bonding out of this interaction.... at least that's how it seems to me. So many females seem to obsess and fantasize about their therapists.(I have never done that) Yet, males seem to think of it as a classroom -- with a goal to reach and then to get on with their own life. I wonder if females are in therapy for longer duration than males because they can't bear to sever the "bond" they have mentally developed.... a sort of dependancy...
----I don't think most males want to depend on another person for themselves to be OK. that's very much how I feel too. And yet I know my life is less than what it could be.
> Although, my psychotherapist might appear to me to be acting as a parent, sibling, friend, or whatever I need at that moment, I understand that these are not really professional roles that the therapist is taking on (unless done so purposely as a therapeutic tool), but, rather, those that might represent where I am emotionally. I don't like the idea that the therapist is somehow constructing a formal role for either of us other than what is the doctor-patient relationship.<<----flutterby: I see where you're coming from-- thank you. Yes, I see now, everyone has their own "comfort" level as to the therapeutic relationship-- that makes sense. Most males(not all) tend to be more on the realm of the logical-- "doctor-patient" whereas-- most females(not all) lean more towards the emotional-- "father figure", "boyfriend; infatuation" type relations.
It's hard for me to find where I am......... the logical feels too distant and yet the emotional feels too close.....
ugh....thank you for replying,
flutterby-mandy
poster:fleeting flutterby
thread:889620
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20090328/msgs/890330.html