Posted by Dinah on October 18, 2007, at 9:29:42
In reply to Re: Therapist away for just a week » Dinah, posted by Daisym on October 17, 2007, at 23:02:34
:)
I too sometimes appreciate the ability to feel pain concerning connection. It means I'm connected. Since I'm not always, and since it feels better to hurt than to not care, I have very mixed feelings about feeling loss.
I can't imagine my therapist ever calling me without my calling him first. But I'm sure to the eyes of others the therapeutic frame seems awfully bent.
Maybe sometimes with long term therapeutic relationships the relationship just grows in a pattern that doesn't fit the traditional rigid frame. It doesn't mean the boundaries aren't there, or that they aren't ironclad in their own ways. We probably both would like things from our therapists that they just don't feel comfortable giving while keeping their therapeutic boundaries. In my case, my therapist has enormously firm boundaries - and so do I. If he inadvertently strayed across mine, I'd likely tell him, or at least shoo him away. If I come close to his, he'd likely be more gentle in asking what getting that would mean to me or something silly like that. But he says (and in such a way that I'm inclined to both take offense and believe he means it) that I don't come anywhere near his boundaries and that he really appreciates that in me.
I once told him that he was giving me too much credit. That I challenged the emotional boundaries constantly in the therapeutic space. That I constantly pressed for him to be real, to care about me, to say what he's thinking, to feel more than he's feeling. But he said that was appropriate challenging of the boundaries. That that was what I was supposed to do.
I'm not entirely sure if that's true...
poster:Dinah
thread:789497
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20071009/msgs/789929.html