Posted by red house on October 6, 2007, at 9:26:14
In reply to Re: What to do when . . . ?, posted by purplemyth on October 5, 2007, at 21:57:46
thanks, purplemyth, for your message and for sharing about your experience. i think you will probably ultimately feel better to share with your T what you found, even if the short-term of doing so provides discomfort. i have found that sharing what i learned or what i've done helps to diminish the shame i feel about what i've done or the feeling of keeping a secret. but it's still really hard to do.
i did end up telling my T what i had done and what i had learned. what i had done was not terrible really, at all, in and of itself, and was about public information that was accessible to me. and my T was pretty clear that given the internet, boundaries are a little different. but what i learned about was something that she wouldn't have shared with me and therefore was crossing a boundary for her. and i knew that as soon as i uncovered it; she acknowledged that what i knew was something personal and an experience that had been very painful for her. i felt really really bad for bringing it up, somehow as if i was hurting her to have to bring it into her conscious thoughts (it was a while ago that what i found happened).
and i also fear, very much, that we can't really go back to the way things had been in therapy. i feel like my violating her boundaries will hang thick in the air forcing her to be more cautious and reserved. i should be punished for what i did, i feel.
she said clearly that she wasn't mad at me, but that i had crossed a boundary, and even if she understood where the need came from for me to seek out information, she wanted me to stop doing it, and to work on being direct with her about what i am needing and the feelings that lead to the urge to go looking for info.
and she was very open to talking about how what i did and what i learned impacted me, which only made me feel enormously guilty that she was being present for me and available to listen to me despite my violating her boundaries. it seems really bad, wrong, and disrespectful to need her to listen to how i feel about a traumatic event that happened in her life. what right do i have to have a reaction to something that happened to her that i shouldn't even know about in the first place?
anyway, these are some of the things that have been floating around in my head this week . . . i fear it may take a while for me to repair the damage that i have done to my own ability to work in therapy.
thanks for listening (reading) . . .
redhouse
poster:red house
thread:785395
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20070929/msgs/787231.html