Posted by Tamar on June 30, 2006, at 17:56:41
In reply to Re: This isn't fun any more, posted by caraher on June 30, 2006, at 14:32:21
> Sorry you're not doing so well.
>
> Regarding this latest session I have a question and a semi-suggestion. The question is whether you couldn't start your next session by insisting on exploring the question of your needing/wanting to know what he looks like?It’s a good suggestion. I hope I can do it. I find it very very difficult to say I want anything from him, and whenever I manage to say it out loud he ignores it or dismisses it.
> Perhaps I simply fail to grasp how evasive he may be when it comes to this question, and you really have tried to confront this issue.
It’s not just the issue of how he looks… it’s anything at all I want from him. I suppose ultimately I want him to help me to manage the transference.
> But reading your post I get the impression that your 18-year-old is voicing all these things inside your head and not through your lips.
When I say ‘she’ said it, I mean it wasn’t the sort of thing I would normally say, but my inner 18 year-old is bolder. But it was definitely said out loud!
> What your T says may be true, but he may simply be failing to recognize the degree to which some people find the visual image important to making the connections he says, perhaps rightly, you really need.
I find visual images quite important for most things. But particularly significantly, I have real problems with people’s faces. I recognise people when I’m with them, but I struggle to remember what they look like when I’m not looking at them. Even my parents, kids and husband. So when I try to imagine my therapist, I want to imagine being in therapy with him and looking at him and I just can’t put his face together in my mind. I find it very disconcerting. I’ve told my therapist all this, but he seems to think I don’t need to know what he looks like.
> The semi-suggestion is that your 18-year-old might engage in a single act of misbehavior by taking a picture of him. Then you'd be able to have an image to hold onto between sessions.
I’d like that! I don’t think he would agree to it, so I’d have to take it from a distance when he leaves his office or something. I guess I’d need a very long lens!
> But when you talk about wanting to misbehave in order to get attention I'm not sure whether allowing that one small piece of mischief would really get you what you want. Is it *his* attention you want? Or attention from others, either specific other people or from "people in general?" It would be scary to feel that way, and it would be nice if there were some way to figure out what your genuine needs are in order to meet those and lessen the impulse toward these probably unhealthy desires.
I assume that it’s a throwback to wanting my father’s attention when I was a teenager, since I’m going through a lot of father transference at the moment. I don’t recall being deliberately naughty in order to get my father’s attention, because usually when I disobeyed it was because I disagreed with him. But unconsciously I might have been trying to get my father’s attention. Now I want my therapist to help me handle the things I want from him that I can’t have, and I’m having trouble dealing with what I perceive as his avoidance of it. He either ignores the things I say I want, or he simply tells me it’s not possible. I know it’s not possible, of course. I just want him to help me deal with that.
I’m thinking of leaving therapy, but I don’t know if I can do it face-to-face. I don’t know if I have the courage to walk away. I might send him a letter instead. I keep thinking I’ll try to tell him one more time what I want and need, but at the moment it seems pointless. If he didn’t hear me every other time, he won’t hear me next week.
poster:Tamar
thread:662944
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20060623/msgs/662999.html