It's so annoying how sprint changed the format of the pictures! hate that fucking frame! (not the movie frame, but the white surrounding one). why would they do that? they ruined it.
Anyway, I'm reading about therapy and thinking about my therapist. I'm reading about transference and thinking that I don't think I ever did this with her. I have no feelings to transfer. I can't count the number of times I have cried in front of her on one hand. Why? IT doesn't seem right. It seems like I should go crazy in there. I should be discovering memories. I have hardly any memories that are easily accessible. Sometimes I remember the yard or neighborhood at sunset or smell of summer attic or other random sensory things, but I couldn't write a collection of stories, and isn't that weird? Most of what I say about my family in therapy is second hand from what my sister told me who is a psychologist now (or, starting in May when she graduates) or what my mom told me who is a psychologist and both have wanted to help me and I hang onto facts or ideas that resonate but when I think about it, it seems like another life and another person. Well I would really like to remember for myself, I like the feeling when falling asleep of almost seeing or hearing things. Another thing is how my therapist talks about herself all the time. It's true that I ask her things. Maybe she figures she might as well just answer all my questions. But I wish she would say, "nothing about me, all about you, where were we?" But I can't tell her I wish that. I should though. I should practice being assertive because I'm supposed to be able to do it there in a messy way. Instead I just chat her up every week. I wonder if she's waiting for me (for four years) to get down to business, or if we are slowly and surely handling the business and my expectations are too high, or if she has no clue and is just entertained by me and hearing about the nonsensical gay life I lead. Well she is gay too. Of course I couldn't talk to one I didn't trust in some way and it's true I had a lot of first meetings with other therapists and didn't go back or even up to three or four visits, but only with Val have I kept coming back, so I must like it. I wonder if she is really happy being single and living alone with all her dogs. She swears that she is, but I don't believe her. But I used to always picture myself a lone wolf until the very end, and imagine this peaceful center I would find living out in a cabin or desert somewhere like she does, but now that fantasy solution for my problems has been interrupted by the introduction of love into my life and being alone all the time was getting boring anyway especially after I admitted that weed is no good. And then the fact that Val doesn't have a license, haha. It actually doesn't bother me really, except I think she is avoiding the license test out of fear and if she's not confronting fears, how can she teach me about it? I wonder how anyone can take my mom seriously as a psychologist after getting the stomach stapled. Maybe obesity is just beyond my comprehension, but shouldn't it be like any kind of addiction, and if you can't work your shit out how can you help anyone else? Well, maybe you can. Now she's a whole new person also, with frail shoulders and an angular face, and she doesn't eat compulsively anymore, she can't. So where did the pain go? Well, she's on all these painkillers now, for that and for the knee surgeries. I wish I had access to her medicine cabinet. But then again no, for Mishy's sake. God sometimes my therapist goes on and on about the most practical, boring things, like this week it was ulcers. So I guess I have an ulcer now, it started hurting last week and got worse and worse since I didn't know what it was and kept eating pizza, drinking coffee and alcohol, smoking, eating chips and chocolate, all very bad for the ulcer. On Friday, when the pain was making me feverish, I started taking gas-x and pepto and drinking alka-seltzer but it just kept getting worse and waking me up in the night time. I finally went to a doctor on Monday and had a blood test, so I will find out soon (will they call me?) if it is a bacterial ulcer. Anyways I'm still drinking tons of pepto bismal even though it says on the bottle "do not take if you have an ulcer." It makes it feel better though. So my therapist started taking about her ulcers, and I felt very impatient. why should I care about yours? I can't look her in the eye for extended periods either. She told me once that she is a witch or used to be one, hahaha. I think that's funny.
i think my response to some of yr reflections here regarding yr therapeutic alliance is what it was when we talked about this topic several months ago - that if you think the relationship is falling short of yr expectations, you should tell val this. and that's not to say that it's in her power to have you recover or delve into childhood memories, or to bring you to tears, but the main thing about therapy (i think) is for it to be a relationship where all yr cards are out on the table. ... the whole thing about her dishing about herself, you know ive found this rather baffling - i mean, i dont think there's anything wrong with the use of herself, but it seems to be a little excessive. you know i think you are so onto something when you say you should 'practice' being assertive with her, because that is another thing therapy is made for - to 'practice' and then integrate into real life. some of my greatest benefits from therapy came from doing that, practicing - specifically, having limits set and termination. ... regardless of whether or not youve had transference, id say its safe to say that val's had some positive countertransference towards you! .... and im glad you no longer think being alone out in the woods is the solution. it's not. even people like thoreau and salinger, who have reputations for being such hermits, they weren't really as alone and isolated as people pretend that they were. but now, with me at arm's length, the woods is still an option, only ill go with you. we can have separate cabins if you think it's best. but you shouldn't think you have to go it alone and you won't, as long as you resign to allowing me to accompany you. ... alrighty. it's about that time for me to go be the 'good enough' container to my own clientele.
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