Posted by Dinah on February 4, 2005, at 11:26:24
I thought it was rather dull and empty, because it frankly did not leave me satisfied. Or angry. Or anything else.
My therapist thought it was important work, and that I didn't feel satisfied because he challenged me.
Because I love my therapist and want to please him, I wish to remember this session. So that if we did what he thought was important work, we can build on it rather than starting from scratch.
But I'm having a hard time hanging on to what even he might have thought was important.
We started with why I disliked my job. He focussed on my intense dislike of responsibility. He thought I didn't like taking any sort of risks. I brought up Rod's wonderful descriptor "seemingly fearless vulnerability" and argued that I take immense risks on my own behalf, but fear taking risks that can harm anyone else.
Which led into my increasing reclusiveness, and increasing level of being sort of house - if not bound then at least tethered in some way. Which I argue is my being considerate. I don't go to church anymore because I was scaring those of simple faith in my old Sunday School class once my old Sunday School teacher (who translated for me) was gone, and that the really only option for a Sunday School class for me was my husband's. And while he urges me to go, I know I'd embarass him. And I don't want to do that. He goes to great pains not to introduce me to anyone from work, so...
And I don't do anything school related or related to my son's friends because I don't want to embarass him by my oddness. Or more to the point, because I don't embarass him yet, I don't want him to be judged by me. I don't want my strangeness to interfere with his social chances. So my husband does birthdays and school volunteer work. And I help by laying low.
Which led my therapist to say that his take on me after knowing me all these years was that I hate responsibility but I insist on claiming it for myself when it doesn't belong to me.
That the women of simple faith in Sunday School are responsible for their own feelings of fear, and that maybe God would want me to challenge them. That I might be hurting my son more by avoiding his school than I would hurt him by my oddness. (He pretty much admitted that I was noticeably odd.) That if my husband didn't introduce me to his friends, I should introduce myself.
I accused him of never having taken logic or algebra in school. He accused me of something else that I don't now recall.
I complained that we had gotten off track from talking about work, and he maintained that we were just meandering along the same subject. That we weren't off course.
He got mad and denied it. He later mentioned that he wasn't mad, and I said no he wasn't now, but was before, and he got mad all over again. Said that was life and I was too sensitive to life, and that that was good in some ways and bad in others. It wasn't a bad mad. Just a mad.
Oh, the only part of the session that was satisfying for me was that I spoke my language of movement and gestures rather than words a couple of times and we worked together to translate to words. Because usually I've thought about what we were going to talk about in advance so I have the words ready. But this time I hadn't, and the words weren't available at all. Just the gut level images and colors.
Overall I feel sort of empty about the session, but he thinks it's important so I'm writing it down in hopes that by doing so, or by reading what other poeple have to say, that I will come to realize why it was important. And I will see the good hard work he thanked me for and not the emptiness I see right now.
poster:Dinah
thread:453102
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20050129/msgs/453102.html