Posted by littleone on November 28, 2004, at 15:39:10
My T really threw me for a sixer on Friday. I mentioned earlier about how I overheard his address and I did tell him this. Except I was really stupid and said it in the first sentence or two of my writeup. It takes me a little while to work up the courage to sneak peeks at him while he's reading my stuff, so I didn't actually get to see his expression when he read it. But he handled it well. He gave me some analogy (that I've totally forgotten now) but it basically came down to the fact that he is there to help me with my life, not become part of it. He also said that talking about obsessions often takes the heat out of them, so it sounded like he was going to raise it again in future.
Then a few sessions later, I gave him some more stuff on my autobiography (that's a whole other thread in itself) and one of the questions was about what you would do if you had millions of dollars. One of my many answers was to give him a retirement fund. After he read that write up, he started on about the helping with my life, not becoming part of it stuff again. I had assumed it was because of this retirement fund comment.
I started getting really antsy and didn't know where he was heading with this not-being-part-of-my-life stuff and had a big spew at him. I mean, of course I know he's not going to be a part of it. That's not the problem. It's more that I want to live life vicariously through him.
So I had my spew and he kind of sat there and thought for a while and then he laid his cards on the table (so to speak).
It turns out that he wants to switch to a more experiential approach with me and start playing cards with me. I was thrown a bit off balance by that and at one stage he kind of likened it to play therapy with kids.
So now I'm starting play therapy. Have any of you done this before?
I must say that I am both thrilled and terrified by this. Thrilled because no one ever wants to play with me. Not now or growing up. I love to play. I feel like a little puppy wagging its tail so hard it's whole back end is wagging. But terrified because I know that is one of the few ways guarenteed to let my defenses down and let him in.
And terrified because I know I'll get hurt out of all this. His comments about not being part of my life were actually about this. He said that it can confuse some people. I guess because he would feel more like a friend than a coach. He said that there are some people he would never try it with because they would get confused over it all. I kind of got the impression that I was on the borderline and he was trying to figure out whether to risk trying it or not.
So anyway, I'm telling him all these thoughts, plus more. But I wanted to know if anyone else "plays" with their therapist.
poster:littleone
thread:421409
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20041123/msgs/421409.html