Posted by fallsfall on October 20, 2003, at 20:21:35
Sometimes things are clearer in the middle of the night.
3:30AM. My dog gets up and checks the water bowl in my room. It is empty, so she goes into the bathroom and drinks from the toilet. I listen to her drink, but I’m too tired to get out of bed. I call to her to stop, but she doesn’t. What a failure. I can’t even give my dogs water when they need it. I have found the bowl downstairs empty a lot recently – I haven’t been filling it on time. So probably the bowl downstairs has been empty for a long time. Who can blame the dog for going for the toilet? She stops drinking (she drank a lot). I finally wake up enough to get up and fill the bowl. Both dogs have long drinks. I refill the bowl. What a failure. I need my therapist. I get his picture out hoping that looking at it will fill the need until I can see him. My head hurts and I drift in and out of sleep until 6. (When I get downstairs in the morning I find that there is water in their water bowl downstairs. The door to my bedroom was open, she could have gone downstairs for a drink of clean water – but the toilet was closer.)
So, let's see. I NEED my therapist because my dog drinks out of the toilet?
I buy a book at a yardsale (95 cents) on career choices. I'm not sure that I can go back to my old field when I'm ready to work full time, so this seemed like a book that could be handy. It is based on the Myers-Briggs Test (that determines what your personality type is, and then you can match your personality to jobs that will work well for you). I chose the type that seemed best for me and read that section. It lists all the characteristics of that kind of person and as I read them they all seemed to fit. Then I drifted into the next type’s description (related to the first type) and everything still seemed to fit. But it wasn’t supposed to. Those things should have fit less. So I’m trying to read, but it really isn’t making any sense. I’m getting confused. I am reading the words without understanding the sentences. I get frustrated. I can’t even read this book and make sense of it. How incompetent I am. I get depressed and start thinking about my therapist. I need him to make me feel better.
I NEED my therapist because I can't make sense of a book on career choices?
Revelation: I become needy when I feel incompetent. Desperately needy - the world will end if I don't take care of this need. I expect/need my therapist to “fix” me so that I am no longer incompetent (make me think better so I understand things, help me understand the environment so I can work more perfectly in it). He can’t do that. Because I can’t be perfect (this is still a very hard concept for me). What I really need is for him to let/help me see that what I am doing isn’t incompetent (isn’t a failure).
When I told my therapist about this, I prefaced it with a statement that probably everyone else in the world already knew this, but I didn't. So would he please not tell me "Duh!". That way I wouldn't feel incompetent.
poster:fallsfall
thread:271255
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20031011/msgs/271255.html