Posted by Wittgensteinz on January 13, 2009, at 4:31:57
In reply to Is it supposed to be all about the relationship?, posted by Looney Tunes on January 12, 2009, at 20:01:13
I think the style varies with therapist, therapy type and the needs of the client.
It sounds like you have great difficulty in trusting the relationship and fear of abandonment. These are big issues and will directly influence your relationship with your T. It seems like these issues are so big that they perhaps are a boundary to other 'less pressing' issues. Can I ask how long you've been seeing your T? Also, does he initiate topics or ask questions, steer you toward/away from certain things? How does the session play out? You ask these questions, he answers but does he ever interpret why you need to ask him this time and time again?
Could you not ask him this yourself? Why do the sessions always go this way, what does it mean, is it good that they do? I think you are testing the water with him, trying to find a way to trust he won't leave, and maybe when you feel a little more certain of that, you will be able to move along other paths, talk about other things. Of course, it's likely that trust and abandonment will be recurring themes in your therapy.
I can relate, I have these problems too - severe trust issues, largely because of the way I view myself. Something small can completely disturb the trust I have in my T, then I can't really think about anything else. If there's a way to twist something around to support my fear of trust and abandonment then I will do exactly that. That said, I do talk about many things in therapy - past, present, and how these relate to me and him in the here and now.
What I've seen is that in time I've learned to take some distance from my fears. I can say "of course my reaction is to think you just want to get rid of me" rather than saying "you want to get rid of me", and then maybe relate this fear to something real I experienced in my past, and then the session goes on from there. Getting to the root of it alleviates the problem somewhat.
Witti
poster:Wittgensteinz
thread:873606
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20090109/msgs/873706.html