Posted by estrellita on December 8, 2007, at 22:36:58
In reply to Some random thoughts for a Saturday...., posted by Maria01 on December 8, 2007, at 11:57:40
(fyi, I haven't read any of the follow-up posts.)
It sounds like you've been making a lot of comparisons in your mind - you and your therapist, you and your therapist's daughter, etc. I think we all do that to some extent, but why? Maybe you could make that a point of discussion in future sessions - not so much the comparisons themselves as why you feel driven to make them, and how doing that has been affecting your life. (I have definitely been doing this with my new therapist - he's younger than me, seems to have his ish together much more than I do, graduated from a better university than I did, etc. - but I have to remember that thinking about those things isn't going to get me anywhere. And I definitely don't know much about him, so he may have huge problems and insecurities of his own - it says MUCH more about me than him that I imagine him to be perfectly happy and successful.)
Also, what if you think about the "caring" aspect from her point of view? I remember saying things like this to my previous therapist - e.g., "you only say you care about me because I'm paying you to say it," blah blah. And there is some truth to that. But what if I was the therapist, and had a client I truly cared about? How would I feel if, when I told them that, they refused to hear it and instead told me I only care because my role dictates it? It may be true that part of the role of a therapist is to care about us, and it may also be true that some therapists come to care about some clients in a more personal way as well. So even though it sometimes feels easy to be cynical about the "care" a therapist professes to feel for us, maybe sometimes we should give them some slack and believe that it's true. If it doesn't feel like something that's genuinely true, bring that up with her.
Finally, are there other people in your life that you genuinely like, respect, or otherwise feel positively about who are different from you in significant ways? Why is it so hard to believe that someone so different from you in certain ways could really care about you? And again, it goes both ways - I'm sure there are people in your life that YOU care about but who are very different from you in certain ways. I know what you mean about comparing yourself to people who are married, have kids, etc. - but we all know that marriage or kids are NOT a means to happiness - it's possible that married and/or children-ed people are sometimes jealous of OUR lives. We have independence, flexibility, our own living spaces, spontaneity, and room for lots of other things in our lives that those who are coupled and kid-ed don't necessarily have.
I know none of this is easy, and for me the therapeutic relationship makes issues like this even harder to deal with sometimes. I saw a lot of my own struggles in what you wrote, so my post is partly a response to what you said, and partly a response to my own worries about similar things. I hope it helps you. Above all, I would suggest being as honest with your therapist as you possibly can. This can be so hard to do, but personally I find it the best way to build trust, allay fears/anxieties (there's less of a subtext running through my mind during sessions), and confirm to myself that this particular therapist is truly one I want to be working with.
> I'm so tired of studying for finals; no wonder the youger students do well in school...they have the stamina for all this stuff. Onward:
>
> I know on a rational level that my
> T is genuinely caring. I don't think she'd be in the profession if she didn't have the capacity to care about others. She does a lot of work on behalf of domestic abuse, and also provides services for veterans of the Iraq war. Here is what I'm having trouble with: How can she care about me, beyond the obligatory therapeutic caring? My life is so differennt from hers. She's been married forever to a professor at one of the colleges here in the Bay Area, she has a daughter(read my prior post..angst) and most likely a coupla grandkids.
>
> Me, well, I'm single(got divorced a long time ago when I realized that marriage is suffocating), and I don't have kids because, well, I'm just not a kid person and it didn't seem fair for me to have them if I'm not a kid person. Kids drive me crazy. She is hopelessly optimisitc, and I'm more pragmatic. In other words, two different planets altogether. In the big picture, it's no big deal...but since she is psychodynamic, the relationship and the capacity to care on a genuine level is paramount. I like the psychodynamic approach..it's more real and relatable.
>
> Part of me wants to tell her if she's caring about me because her role dictates that she care, then not to bother(it reminds me of the classmates who would say to me "I'm only being nice to you because the teacher said so. Otherwise, I don't like you and never will"), because I don't need someone caring out of obligation or pity, kthanks.
>
> For example, how can someone like her who has a kid genuinely relate to someone like me who doesn't like kids or want them? How can she, who's been married to the same guy since the dawn of time relate to me, who is not a big believer in marriage? The list goes on, but you get the gist. Monday's hour will be loaded...I've got the daughter thingy to deal with, and I need to find out where she stands. Personally, I think she just cares because her role dictates it. Call me cynical, but that's the way I see it.
poster:estrellita
thread:799515
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20071204/msgs/799664.html