Posted by pegasus on July 21, 2004, at 10:56:36
In reply to Re: T questions-Joslynn, posted by Susan47 on July 20, 2004, at 20:26:32
Oh my, you are brave. So, you're interpreting his blushing and struggling as confirmation of your conclusions? I'm thinking maybe it could also have been that he was angry and defensive - feeling unjustly accused. But I don't know him as well as you, and you're probably right about your conclusions.
So, to be brutally honest with my reaction:
You know, on the honesty issue, I think a really good therapist can *be* honest when they are supportive and accepting. It's part of the training to learn how to accept and support everyone. My old therapist once mentioned how in his training they would struggle with how to feel compassion toward difficult people, and one instruction was to reduce the client's age in their imagination until they could see them as innocent. He said sometimes they would have to reduce the person to an infant to get back in touch with that compassion. I would worry that anyone who really still struggles with that - to the point where their clients can see it - would have a hard time being an effective therapist.
On the other hand, it does sound like you've asked him to try to put on a carefully arranged mask for you. You didn't like it when he was showing all of his honest reactions, right? And then in this scenario, you gave him some pretty big challenges to maintaining that mask by making a rather uncomplimentary - and probably right on target - interpretation about him. So it sounds like you're feeling ambivalent about the honest reaction versus stone faced thing. Or maybe just about the way *he* uses both of them. Am I way off target there? I'm just spinning a long story from the short explanations that you've given, so I could be making it all up.
pegasus
poster:pegasus
thread:366576
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20040716/msgs/368585.html