Well! I don’t know what to say! I had a big surprise last week. I’d been going to this therapist to deal with my problems related to my feelings about myself in general, feelings of being confused and afloat, problems with interpersonal communication, relationships and so on. I thought everything was going okay until last week all of a sudden she said that besides one person she stopped seeing after a couple weeks because she didn’t like him, I was her biggest theraputic failure ever! I was astonished! She said she didn’t think she was doing me any good! I thought she was. I enjoyed talking to her, could clear my head about some stuff with her, and I felt that I was making some progess (albeit slow) in some trouble areas. She argued (or maybe I being too contentious using that word) that I was bringing up the same problems again and again without resolving them. I responed that part of the problem was that she kept interrupting me and going into all these convoluted personal stories, so by the time I figured out what she was talking about and that she didn’t understand what I was trying to say, I’d pretty much lost the thread of the original conversation. I remembered thinking at times that she seemed to be talking a lot about her own personal problems and maybe I ought to ask her for some counseling fees. Now that I mention this, she also talked about problems she was having here in China, like not knowing how to use her air conditioner, so I helped her with those. All in all, though, I felt that things were going okay. I thought the frustrations and communication problems were all a matter of course.
I decided to bring this up again today, because I thought it might be helpful. I wanted to understand exactly why she thought she was not helping, and ask if there was any information she thought she needed from me so she could be more helpful. I had thought this would be a good idea, but it turned into a big problem. It turns out she thought we should have made more progress. I said I thought I had made some, although I felt like I didn’t really get a chance to say what it was. (It’s nothing gigantic, just small things like focusing on adding to my strengths rather than worrying about weaknesses, and taking initiatives and speaking to people directly rather than being worried about an unclear situation. Maybe these aren’t colossal breakthroughs, but I think these small things can have a postive rippling effect throughout your life.) I asked her how much progress she expected to make, and asked what exactly it would be. I told her if these problems were easy to deal with, I would have gotten rid of them myself a long time ago without seeing a therapist. Apparently she has other clients who have had some sort of breakthroughs or something. She didn’t elaborate, but asked me what my goal were. I’d already written them down and given them to her, and admittedly they are vague. That’s one of my problems — I can’t imagine the future clearly enough to HAVE goals. I mentioned that I don’t like quick change even if it is postive (this is one of the things we were talking about last time), so it seems unreasonable to expect me to change quickly. Of course I would resist it. I don’t think we’ve seen each other all that long anyway. I think we started some time in Feb. 2006, but then had a two month break when I went away over the summer. I was back for like three weeks when she had a family emergency and went back to Australia. She didn’t come back for six weeks or more. Then we saw each other a couple of times, and then she had all these visitors and didn’t see me for at least two weeks. So I feel like we’ve seen each other in fits and starts, which is not great either for making progress, or for remembering things we’ve talked about. I remember hearing that therapists in the U.S. usually see their clients for like a year straight. She said something like I must be getting something from maintaining my problems because I keep returning to them again and again, and I tried to explain that was because I felt that she was fundamentally missing something I was saying, and I was trying to make myself clear. It seems she wanted me to change my behavior or way of thinking about myself, but she didn’t make clear what she wanted me to change or how. She said she wanted me to get rid of my negative beliefs, and I said I didn’t understand how I should do that, or what I should do instead. She got all frustrated and said we’d gone over this before, which I don’t remember at all. I think sometimes things do go in one ear and out the other with me, but I doubt that’s unusual. It seems like part of her job to deal with that and keep reiterating stuff. She said I was spinning my wheels, and again I said I thought this was probably pretty common. I said if it were easy to stop doing that, I would have done it myself a long time ago. She pointed out communication problems we had, and I said I thought these were pretty common, and that I would hope they were something that would be hammered out over time with conscientious, honest effort. She said they were uncommon and we shouldn’t be having them. She seemed to think I should see another therapist.
Well, I was very astonished by all this because until a couple weeks ago I’d felt that although not everything was perfect, it was basically okay, and over time could get better. But now maybe she’s convinced me that she’s right. I DID feel she didn’t listen well, and I thought it was strange that she wasn’t so interested in talking about my past history with me. It seems like she thought I was overly focused on it, but I was trying to use it as something to give her an understanding of where I am NOW.
One ironic thing about this is that it all reconfirms one of the anxieties I’d been talking to her about — what is reality? What are people really thinking? What is really going on? Here I was, thinking that everything was okay, and BOOM! it turns out that the other person has been dissatisfied for a long time. It makes me confused and uneasy. I wonder if I really know what is going on.
