Posted by fallsfall on March 6, 2004, at 9:56:36
In reply to Re: JYL » Dinah, posted by tinydancer on March 6, 2004, at 1:49:10
I have also experienced the "this person must be angry with me" syndrome. For me, it came full force as transference with my first therapist. I was sure that she was angry, annoyed, disappointed and that no matter what I did, I couldn't find the "magic" thing to make her happy. My whole life started to revolve around trying to find a way to stop her from being "mad" at me. This was excruciatingly intense for 5 months, but had probably been going on at a lower level for more than a year before that.
When I switched therapists (because this transference was so painful and she didn't/couldn't deal with it), it was only a matter of weeks before I fell into the same transference with my new therapist. That convinced me that it had been transference with my old therapist - why else would I feel Exactly the same way with my new therapist? He handled it in a very open and effective way. We talked in detail about how I felt that he was mad, what I thought he was mad about, how I was trying to remedy the situation, what in his behavior was leading me to think that he was mad. He then told me as openly and honestly as he could that he was NOT mad - that my perceptions were not accurate. Since my previous therapist had also told me that she wasn't mad, I had a hard time believing him. But he persisted and was able to convince me that he was being honest with me - that he truly wasn't mad. We've gone through this a couple of times now, and I'm getting better at being able to believe that, even though it seems that way to me, that he honestly isn't mad. Sometimes he is able to show me how he sees something from a different perspective than I do, so I can understand better why he truly isn't mad. I am making progress. Now, when I feel like he's mad at me I try to think of other possibilities (what could his different perspective be?). Knowing that there are reasonable explanations that would explain his behavior that don't include his anger allows me to take the incident and put it on "hold". I am able to decide that there is "reasonable doubt", and this allows me to not freak out because I think that he's mad. At our next session, I ask him about it - sometimes this is very hard. And he tells me what he is really thinking and feeling.
Through this process, I have learned that my perceptions are not always accurate, that my therapist is much less prone to being angry than I thought, that it is worth checking things out before going into my "frantic efforts to avoid abandonment", and that my therapist is more than happy to work this through with me as many times as I need him to.
Maybe you can find someone in your life (therapist or another who will be honest with you) who will share with you what they are really feeling when you think that they are "mad".
poster:fallsfall
thread:320672
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20040303/msgs/321085.html