Posted by Tabitha on May 3, 2011, at 1:23:27
In reply to Re: Why do we want our Ts to like us? » Tabitha, posted by Dinah on May 2, 2011, at 7:07:15
You know Dinah, I had to read this a couple times to even comprehend it at all. It's like you're coming at it from some angle that's alien to me. I know I'm the oddball on this topic. I think you were trying to comfort me, out of a belief it must be painful to not feel liked by my therapist? I'm not sure.
Maybe I'm just not using the same definition of like as everyone. I take 'like' to mean truly enjoying someone's company.
Anyway, I'm going to blather on about this just for the enjoyment of comparing & contrasting views and trying to sort it out for myself. Pegasus, I hope this doesn't feel like a thread hijack. I can't decide if it should be a new thread or not.
I just don't think it's a problem that I haven't gotten a message that my therapist likes me. I don't think she loves me either, and that also doesn't seem like a problem. I think I'd be a bit disturbed to know her personal feelings toward me! Sort of how I don't really want to know my music teacher's personal feelings about listening to my amateur efforts.
I think she feels compassion for me and she's committed to supporting me. This seems exactly right to me as her feelings, even though I can't understand how she avoids compassion-fatigue.
I've certainly suffered pain over wondering if someone likes me or not. I got quite upset recently when thinking that an old friend whom I idolize perhaps wasn't enjoying our friendship so much, and was keeping it up out of some sense of duty or an abstract idea that longevity=value. This was a big drama/crisis for me and dragged me down for weeks. The humiliation aspect was big there, that I'd been just misreading him and delusional about things. I just don't project this type of longing into my therapy. (I made the same assumption about that case that I make about my lack of likability in therapy-- that I'd been presenting too much sad sack & victim when we talk and had just become unlikable as a result.)
When you talked about being loved without being likable being a form of grace, I realized I see it the opposite way. I think there are people who can love anyone out of a sense of compassion or romantic illusion or just determination. Being loving is so highly valued in this culture! People are motivated to develop that.
I'm more inclined to suspect grace is operating when someone likes me. The reason being, I'm just so significantly unhappy and unfailingly see the negative. I believe it's just really hard to like someone who's unhappy and negative. It's difficult to feel good around them. Moods are contagious. And how can you really like someone you don't feel good around?
As a counterpoint, I have one friend who's quite unhappy, but I manage to enjoy his wit and black humor in spite of it. But I do need to limit the time spent around him or I get dragged down into a worse mood myself. So that's kind of one saving aspect for me I think, that people that enjoy that sort of thing are better able to enjoy being around me. But my therapist doesn't value wit and black humor, so that's not going to be operating there. If anything it's probably off-putting since she values emotional expression & honesty, and humor is always a bit of a dodge, isn't it?
poster:Tabitha
thread:983719
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20110324/msgs/984423.html