Posted by Nadezda on October 20, 2008, at 16:54:44
In reply to Re: My T story » Kath, posted by Morgan79 on October 20, 2008, at 12:16:13
Hi. I may have this wrong, but the impression I was left with was that you're waiting two years in order to be with your ex-T.
This concerns me greatly, as it seriously may prolong and deepen the damage, not only the "therapy" you had with him, but possibly deprive you of several years of your life, which will be on hold. Plus, there is no way of knowing if at the end of two years, there's really any future for you and your ex-T.
You may believe that you'll be with this man after two years. But you're at a time of life when you can meet many people and form many different types of bonds, and gain a great deal of experience. I feel very strongly that losing out on this because of the questionable commitment of someone who's already violated your trust, as a therapist (and who, on top of that, is the department chair in your department at school--a further level of power that required his utmost care in his relationship with you), is a very real risk.
Even if he is available after two years, if you were to have more experiences, you yourself might realize a lot more about him and the relationship, if you were to go on with your life-- things which, if you wait for him, you won't have a chance to learn.
This seems to me to be a very compromising situation, which could possibly do you a lot of damage, beyond having a badly miscarried therapy.
I know this is difficult, but we all need to take the reality of transference a good deal more seriously than I think we seem to. We also need to take much more seriously the fact that an hour with someone is quite different from a whole run of days and the daily existence with someone. I sometimes feel that we pay lipservice to transference-- But I think it's hard to see around the experience we have in the room, to consider quite seriously that the person we see as infinitely kind, attentive, and thoughtful is not so wonderful to his wife. I hope this is understood as supportive and not critical of anyone. I just think it's quite understandable that we do-- and it underlines why the responsibility is much more on our T to take the role of the one who oversees the boundaries of the relationship, and who safeguards our interests in that sense. Yes, we have some responsibility too-- but not one that is comparable to that of our T.
Nadezda
poster:Nadezda
thread:858382
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20081018/msgs/858467.html