I told my therapist today that I think she’s bored of me. If not bored then at least wondering if her time (paid for, of course) could be better utilized with someone else who needed it more. She laughed. I liked her for that. And that she did not, reflexively, try and convince me to the contrary.
She didn’t even ask what made me think so. Or what I felt that made me say that. I’m sure the questions would have crossed her mind. Or, at least, be surprised if they didn’t at all. I’ve been led to believe – via popular media representations of therapists, of course – that such questions are de riguer for them.
This renewed my respect for her. That she could suss out and eliminate what I most certainly didn’t or couldn’t have meant and that she left it to me and the rest of the session to open up and speak about this – if it were something that was pushing up inside of me. In which case, the question(s) she didn’t ask were, rightly, unnecessary. I mean – if I led with something like that, I was likely to follow up. Right?
And if I didn’t, then there was nothing underlying what I said. Or at least nothing interesting for a therapist who’s known me for over two years, to care about. Enough to try and elicit via a question such as – “What made you say that?”. I felt grateful to her for that. And, as might seem strange to some, appreciated.
I’m going to say this clearly and directly ~ I felt fond of her. As if she somehow ‘knows’ me. And is likewise fond of me.
Maybe not ‘knows me’. Or maybe she does. Better than I do. In some aspects. Who knows? I mean, it’s kind of impossible to determine what you reveal of yourself, guarded or unguarded, to someone else with a frame, that you haven’t considered or imagined, to their view of you that you have no access to. And will never have.
And you’d be signalling I’m stupid and unimaginative AF if you assumed anything about what the other saw and, therefore, what they thought of you. Which you could not help but respond (or react) to by “correcting” that perception of theirs. This is all in your head. Not theirs. You get the point?
And you’d be telling them – in your “correction” of their “mis-perception” of you, all assumed, of course – by you – how you think. About them. I’d like to think this, somehow, relates to the psych concept of projection.
It’s daft, when you think of it, to reveal more of yourself, that you’d be better off nobody knowing, while trying to actively get them to re-jig what you assumed someone else made of what they saw of you. Already.
Back to what I was saying though ~ I felt fond of her. I felt recognized. As what/who? I haven’t the faintest idea. And it doesn’t matter. This isn’t an identity issue for me. I know how I am. I think she does too. As to the ‘who’ – who cares? Once again, you’d be dumb to try and assert who you are instead of limiting your attention to how you are and how that comes across as.
tu-whit tu-whoo
The point is that I wanted to be able to say* that I liked her and that I felt fond of her. Without qualifying either statement. If I scroll up, I see that that is exactly what I did. But when I scroll back down here, I see that it does not dilute my sense of why I said that and how.
I’d like to think that this qualifies as a start.
- There’s more to this. Later
Satyre 