Posted by Lucie Lu on August 6, 2008, at 15:36:58
In reply to Seeing my therapist as a real person, posted by Annierose on August 6, 2008, at 8:18:25
I agree, this is a really good topic to bring up... When I was most embroiled in trauma work and caught up in intense transferential emotions, it felt to me as though my T and I were in a fantasy relationship shaped by my intense needs for love, protection and rescue. As that stage began to ebb, I began to have less need for him in that way and therefore less of a basis for our deep connection, or so I believed, which made me anxious. I found myself resenting his more powerful position in our relationship even though much of it was power I had been endowing him with. These feelings lead to a very uncomfortable ambivalent stage which I am still trying to work my way through.
Most recently I've been trying to see my T and other important figures in my life as equals. For me it's like struggling to uncross your eyes so you can see clearly. Although I am a professional woman with an active life at work and at home, my inner landscape seems a universe away from all that - a land where major life-or-death battles are still fought and where most of the players are anything but life size. I remember my T once promising me that a true peer relationship would bring me closeness that I could only begin to imagine (at that stage). Increasingly, I've been getting glimpses of what he meant, by learning to see important people in my life as peers, without the glow or tarnish of transference.
So while sometimes I miss the halo and sword of my "avenging archangel," I experience my T more accurately now because I am more open to seeing him as just another person. It amazes me that this other not-me person knows me and my life so well. I don't think I'd mind running into him outside, and it seems odd that we never have since we live not too far from each other. I sometimes imagine him buying junk food at the supermarket or wearing outrageous plaid golf pants, and it makes me laugh. Without his larger-than-life status now, I like who my T is becoming to me and sessions tend to have a different flavor. Not better or worse, just different.
Having said all that... I admit to being curious about his wife, I wish he would tell me where he goes for his vacations, and he *definitely* shouldn't be allowed to take three consecutive weeks of vacation.
Lucie
poster:Lucie Lu
thread:844526
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20080727/msgs/844612.html