Posted by fallsfall on January 31, 2005, at 13:41:37
In reply to Feeling good, posted by fallsfall on January 28, 2005, at 22:02:05
Thanks for your responses. It feels like it is so seldom that I have something "good" to report from therapy. I'm more likely to have "productive" or "helpful" things to report, but rarely do things feel "good"...
Today's session was a whopper. I had had a pretty good weekend. I was feeling good, had accomplished a bunch of small tasks.
But I had gotten very angry at my daughter after a "discussion" we had (I wasn't angry at the time of the discussion, just afterwards as I was telling friends about the discussion). And I was angry at a software company for their poor service. And I was confused by a friend's sudden shift on a problem she has been having. And I had a detailed dream about going somewhere with my husband (we've been separated for 5 years), and his car ending up in the shop so we couldn't get home, and me ending up slumped in a heap on the floor unable to get up to get home.
As I drove to therapy I couldn't decide which of these things to talk about. Each one seemed important, and as I thought about each one and started down each path I could tell that there was interesting stuff in all of the topics. So I told him there were 4 topics, and I gave him summaries of all 4.
As I finished the summaries he asked some questions about the dream, and what I thought it meant. As I talked, I pulled in parts of the other topics. So I wasn't just talking about one of them, I was talking about all of them at the same time. And I could tell that the things I was angry at my daughter about were things that I was angry at myself about. And what my friend was (probably) doing is something that I do myself (though I really don't like to admit it). And that my anger at the software company was also anger at myself.
He would ask me a question about something and I would answer in relation to one of the other topics - because they really all were just one topic. I said stuff even when it was embarassing to admit it. At one point I had an insight into what I really want in life and started to cry, but by the time I got to the end of the sentance I was no longer clear on what I wanted to say - I think that was an unconscious insight that couldn't stay around quite long enough for me to express it.
We jumped around a lot, and I'm sure he had trouble following what I was saying. But he let me go on, and I do think that he understood a lot of the connections.
So I'm thinking that this must have been close to free association. It wasn't the randomness that I usually think of when I think "free association", but it sure wasn't clearly and logically laid out, either! I learned a lot - an awful lot.
At the end he said something encouraging about how I was describing my feelings today (something I'm really not good at at all).
I wonder if I was "freer" with him because I was feeling confident because of last Friday's session??
poster:fallsfall
thread:449459
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20050129/msgs/450618.html