Posted by Racer on April 29, 2006, at 12:50:29
I just read your post under DisposableDoll's thread above, and I'm thinking you may have misunderstood what I was trying to get across to you in my post. If so, I'm very sorry it upset you. Let me try to say it a different way, maybe that will help make it clearer?
I was truly not trying to say that you shouldn't have been upset. If you're upset about something, you're upset about it, and that's all. And I am sorry you were upset, whether it was about something your husband did, or something I wrote. I'm not terribly good at emotional support, even if that's what I want to be offering. (And I have to tell you, my feelings get hurt when that's pointed out. Yeah, I wish I had some sort of emotional fluency -- but I don't. Part of my psychopathology, I guess.)
When you wrote that your T had said something you were upset about was "ridiculous," it sounded as though he might be a bit clumsy in trying to get you off the details involved in why this one incident upset you so much, and step back to look at the larger issues underlying it. Trying to say, "you're not *this* upset because your husband doesn't set the table right, you're *this* upset because it feels to you as though he doesn't respect your desire/need for the table to be set properly," or whatever. Those large issues are more important, sometimes, because if you fix the larger issues, the smaller incidents that illustrate them tend to stop. You had said that you liked this T, so this didn't sound as though the therapeutic relationship was the problem. It sounded as though the problem was crossed signals in the communication about this one thing.
My own experience is that if I get bogged down in details, it's because I'm too frightened to look at the big picture. That adds fuel to my detailed listing of the little things, because it's easy to sound angry when one is afraid. My T will often stop me if I start a detailed explanation of why something upset me, to remind me that I don't need a reason. And that's frightening to me, but that allows us to move on to what the detail illustrates about a larger issue.
I was trying to suggest that your T might have been trying to do that with you.
Again, I'm sorry that I apparently hurt your feelings. That was not my intention. The sort of support I am capable of offering may not be a form that everyone recognizes, but it is meant as support.
Peace
poster:Racer
thread:638118
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20060422/msgs/638118.html