Posted by violette on June 28, 2010, at 18:02:20
In reply to Re: I still love my therapist » violette, posted by widget on June 28, 2010, at 16:06:31
One more thing about acting out: if instead of telling my T of love feelings to work through those feelings, I (probably unconsciously) thought that disclosing love feelings to my T would cause him to like me more, than my disclosing the feelings could be a way of my acting out-unconscious manipulation. (The reason I told him about it was because I don't hold back transference feelings. I do have trouble talking about some past issues more, but am really open with him about my current feelings-especially when they are intense.)
About your other questions:
"Could you explain what you mean by this passage? The possibility of my justifying my therapist so strongly and my therapist justifying being less objective with me due to my background? An enactment between the 2 of us? How is my therapist being less objective? How am I justifying my therapist so strongly? I thought I did that to keep myself from wanting or hoping for "too much". I am really curious. Widget "
I observed that in just one post, you said these 3 things:
"...but reiterated that he had always been clear that he had his professional and personal boundaries."
"Being his favorite patient also is in the context of the type of practice he has..."
"He is a real stickler for following the psychiatric rules of therapist/patient boundaries and I am 100% sure he would never cross those lines."
You just seem quite defensive of him. I know I do that when I'm idealizing someone, and wondered if you were idealizing him, to avoid seeing something else about your relationship with him. It stood out that you said these 3 things in one post-so I just suspected that you, who keep reminding yourself of his professionalism, are trying to block out something that could be negative about his behavior that deep down inside, is perhaps troubling to you.
Although you recognized the defensiveness might be related to dealing with wanting too much, I had just wondered if there was something going on from a deeper level.
What I meant about his being less objective with your therapy because of your background is that perhaps he is not as careful with acting out his CT feelings (and maybe less obvious boundaries-such as emotional ones), because of your therapy-mindedness. He might see you as less vulnerable than non-therapist patients; so-unconsciously he allows himself to bend the boundaries (again, emotional), letting his feelings be part of the therapy-not worrying about an adverse effect.
The enactment - the 2 of you engaging in your feelings as 2 people more that what would be ideal in the patient/therapist relationship. Your T is in some way, obtaining gratification from you, while you are not seeing this by continually reminding yourself of his professionalism and firm boundaries. His being less objective because it is difficult to continually be neutral-and because of your background-he justifies this to himself-probably unconsciously (?) by rationalizing "she is a T, she's not as vulnerable as other patients, etc". As a result, you both are not moving forward; you are stuck and it could be because he is not addressing his CT issues effectively or appropriately. Instead of his recognizing this, he turned it around on you, which (in addition to feeling bad about the vacation) led him to feel guilty. Maybe-also his reaction to your safe place statement was related to this-maybe he realizes he is doing something wrong, or maybe he's not fully conscious about it-rationalizing, again, your background....
I don't know, Widget, these are only possibilities that surfaced in my mind when I was trying to help you sort through it all. It's interesting to me and I'm a bit obsessed with psychotherapy at the moment.
:)
poster:violette
thread:952213
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20100529/msgs/952565.html