Posted by Dinah on May 29, 2009, at 18:23:00
In reply to here's the message she left, posted by raisinb on May 29, 2009, at 14:43:09
My two cents is that you should call her. It sounds like an answer my therapist would give, and he would mean "I'm confused. I don't understand. That's not what I said." He really would be confused.
If she's anything like my therapist it wouldn't mean that he didn't give a cr*p about me. It would be more that the therapy experience he had in the last session was so different than mine, that he couldn't figure out what I was saying. My therapist does tend to get a bit annoyed at those times, but it doesn't mean he doesn't care.
If you've gone round and round on this many times, it doesn't bode well I guess for a satisfactory conclusion. I like how my therapist validates my experience of a session even if he didn't experience it in the same way. I'm sorry yours doesn't do that.
I'd be angry too, in the same situation. I have been. Because it would be so clear to me, and it may even be clear to him in six months or a year, but it is rarely clear to him at the time.
About the only thing I can suggest is that perhaps you are reading what you see as iciness as meaning she doesn't want to be there with her, but she might be thinking and feeling something radically different. It seems odd to me that she would genuinely not want to be with you so soon after a session that was wonderful. So that when you said that, she didn't really understand what you were saying.
Is it possible for you to discuss it with her in totally factual terms? Instead of saying something about her not wanting to be there with you, discuss it in terms of what she's literally doing that leads you to feel like she doesn't want to be there? What does icy look like?
I know those things are not easy to explain. Last time it took me some time to explain why I was upset that he was attentive and professional, since it was all a matter of the fuzzier aspects of perception.
When she's icy, does she fold her arms? Not smile? Use different terminology?
Can you break it down into its component parts and discuss those things with her? Point out what precisely she'd doing that is different and tell her what you interpret those things as meaning? When you assign meaning to them, and comment to her on the meaning you assign, she might not really understand. But if you talk about the factual things that lead up to your interpretation, that's usually easier to reach agreement on.
poster:Dinah
thread:898180
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20090515/msgs/898329.html