Posted by Dinah on September 11, 2009, at 19:37:34
In reply to What does my therapist think of me., posted by Dinah on September 10, 2009, at 9:11:22
I was totally right. And yet because I was right, I ended up being wrong. I can't remember the last time I laughed so much in therapy.
I asked him if he'd be willing to be totally honest with me, and he answered with appropriate caution. I told him what Annierose said, and he really liked it too.
When I asked the question, he immediately did what I said he would. He asked me how I would describe myself. :) I answered like Linus saying "That's it!!!" to Charlie Brown, and am surprised he didn't roll over backwards in true cartoon style. I said "I KNEW IT. I said you'd say that!" and laughed. He was confused so I explained then asked if he wanted to know what would happen next. So I told him about how I would cross my arms and sulk, and he laughed, and wanted to know why it was important to me that I not answer first. I told him he'd cheat, and base his answer on what I said. And that he often framed his answers so as to not damage my self esteem, which he appears to believe is fragile. He laughed and said that wasn't the reason, he just liked me, and so saw positive things in me. I said I knew he liked me, and that was why I was willing for him to be totally honest about how he feels about me.
So he agreed to do it first. He said that the exercise was to use five words to describe my parents, so he'd use five words to describe me. I whispered sotto voce that he probably would need to put at least one negative thing in there if he wanted me to believe him. He fooled around with a pad and pencil and came up with five.
1) Intelligent.
2) Compassionate. He explained that one, so I didn't feel like I needed to correct him.
3) Compulsive. About good and bad things.
4) Idiosyncratic. Or aspergerish or schizotypal. He says he's begun to think aspergerish may be more accurate than schizotypal. I said I preferred quirky, and he made a note of that - literally. (Thank you Tabitha for that view of myself. I like it.)
5) Anxious.
Then.... He asked how I would describe him in five words! I said "I *knew* it!!! I knew you'd ask that!"
Then....
I did manage to be completely honest. Which floored me really. I didn't do five words so much as shorthand for five verbal pictures I drew of him. None of them were all good or all bad, they were mixed blessings, and I mentioned aspects of each. I even repeated the humorous but not really flattering things I say about him sometimes, and he wasn't at all upset and even seemed to enjoy them.
He looked.... Well, he looked like I imagine I look when he makes me feel seen and understood and still accepted. He looked surprised that knew so much about him, and intrigued at the way I phrased things (because I do phrase things oddly), and he said I was absolutely right, and mentioned a bit on why he saw himself similarly.
He said because I knew him, I knew how the session would go, exactly. And I said that clearly I didn't. Because it initially went that way, but then I talked about stuff instead of doing stuff. I asked him if that wasn't much better, and he answered that it was at least a lot more fun. :))
Then I asked about his clinical opinion of me, and why he thought I needed therapy. He mentioned pretty much the same things. That I definitely had OCD, and anxiety, and that I had a tendency to get depressed and manic (well, hypomanic). And dissociative traits. And that whole asperger/schizotypal/quirky thing. That it wasn't any one big thing, but a lot of smaller things added together. He said he thought therapy kept me as stable as I was likely to be. (Ok, I might be rephrasing that a bit. But the idea was the same.)
Sooo.....
Because I talked about it here first, and thought about how the session would go, the session both went that way and then turned in directions I could have never anticipated and wouldn't have dared to dream of. I found out what I wanted to know. And I had fun. And I think he had fun too.
And I know fun isn't the goal of therapy. Goodness knows we don't have it all that often. But if truth can come packaged in fun, isn't that so much the better?
poster:Dinah
thread:916317
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20090907/msgs/916558.html