Couch 215: The Overcoming Couch

I dont know if you have them over there but we hve pigface in our desert and Sturts desert pea
Swainsona formosa - Wikipedia

I had my first zoom meeting today! it was fine. It was a lot less stressful and less painful than meeting in person. And all the good stuff was there.

Google your_state native plants. I bet you'll find a bunch of resources on gardening in the desert.

Thanks, Chihiro. Dr. T and a friend also asked me about what prompted me to email him, and at first I wasn't sure. I had to think about it some. And I realized it was a case of, I was really struggling, so reaching out to someone in the past who had made me feel safe.

It had struck me earlier in the pandemic that it was a perfect excuse to reach out to him (I did email ex-T), but I hadn't felt desire to. I think something with the riots happening just sort of broke me and pushed me over that threshold.

I ended up emailing him Wednesday to say that it bothered me that he'd BCCed Dr. T on his reply, saying I wished he'd just been upfront about it. I said that "thinking of it charitably," maybe he was just trying to look out for me and/or avoid possible liability in doing that. But it also gave me the sense that maybe he wasn't OK with my emailing him. And if that was the case, to let me know, that he could be honest, I could take it. I haven't heard back and don't know if I will.

It's funny, I shared that email with Dr. T today. I felt awkward reading it aloud, so I emailed it to him, and he read it on his phone. I warned him that it was long. When he was done reading it, he said, "Your definition of a long email has really evolved." He said when he finished reading it, he was like, "That was it?" Because it was only a few paragraphs. And my "long" emails in the past (like 2 years ago) were much longer.

He felt what I said was fine and that I was being very generous in my interpretation of why he'd done that. Which led to an interesting discussion, but anyway... I said I wasn't sure if ex-MC would write back, but I was OK because I'd said my piece. He said he suspects he'll reply because I asked a specific question, that he might just be taking time to figure out his response. I said he'd likely reply 5 minutes after the end of session with something distressing (he didn't). So, we'll see. If he doesn't say anything, it's OK, and I'll take that as a ghosting version of "don't contact me again." But he's replied to every other email I've sent him since terminating, so....

With whom did you meet?

The apartment complex losers dinner club. Im sorry - i didnt mean to imply it was t. I should have been more forthcoming.

Sounds fun. I have enjoyed my zoom happy hour friends calls-but do you really call yourselves losers?

No. Just i do. And another friend who came to the dinner like once (many years ago) and left early.

The meeting has an agenda, but the leader doesnt end it. Thats not cool. I had to go pee, so i just said goodbye after it went past the zoom scheduled hour.

Eta - cass elliott and pat paulsen were on carol burnett rerun tonight. I loved pat paulsen sooooo much!

Yesterday T and I somehow found ourselves in an excruciating conversation about jealousy and physical attractiveness and I’m still trying to wrap my head around it.

I’m in a therapy group with K, another one of my T’s patients. She’s quite pretty. I was talking with T about how it’s weird and complicated to be in group with K, and he asked me, “complicated how?” After getting through the surface-level stuff (e.g. it’s really weird to hear when she’s furious with him for doing the same kind of thing to her that makes me furious when he does it to me) I spat out that sometimes I feel a little jealous of K and how pretty she is, and I feel afraid that T likes working with her better than me because of how attractive she is. (I HATE how utterly juvenile and petty that is, but unfortunately that seems to be how I feel.)

I dunno, do y’all care if your T thinks you’re attractive? Would you be weirded out or jealous if you knew one of their other patients and that person was super attractive?

@chihirochild

I know one of my T's other patients and it's a huge trigger for me. They have DID and their body is objectively good looking too. It triggers not a romantic jealousy but this sibling rivalry kind of attachment pain. Especially whenever they would talk to me about T (unsolicited), how T was happy to see them etc etc even after T said several times we shouldn't talk about each other to T. I would get intensely triggered. Whenever they weren't doing well, I would worry and tell T, which T had to keep telling me to stop too.

I care, so I get it. I know for me it's partly that Dr. T is an attractive man around my age (7 years older), so some of it is just wanting someone I think is attractive to also find me attractive. There's a bit of erotic transference that sort of waxes and wanes, too.

And there is a bit of jealousy around other clients. I can't recall if I shared this on here when he said it, like a year ago. But he said that he's found with clients he thinks are really attractive, he finds himself being more distant from them, I think in the sense of making sure he doesn't treat them differently because they're attractive. I said, "So I guess that means either you don't think I'm really attractive or you're less distant to other clients." To which T replied, "Or I'm a good actor." Wasn't sure how to take that...

Oh, also either as part of that conversation or around that time, he also mentioned his two "young, blonde interns who were athletes." He may have said "attractive" in there as well, I forget, but he at least implied that he thought they were attractive. But like why did he feel the need to mention that they were blonde? I wanted to be like, "Hello, you're talking to your early-40s, brunette, non-athlete female client right now--not your guy friends!" (Incidentally, his wife is also a brunette.) He hasn't mentioned anything like that in a long time, thankfully, because ugh.

Anyway, I think if I knew a younger, more attractive woman was one of his clients, I'd feel jealous. With ex-MC, I recall one time that he was walking a younger, relatively attractive woman who was dressed in a very low-cut top back to the waiting room before he retrieved us, and I felt this pang of jealousy. I also wondered if she had ET and dressed that way to be seductive (or maybe it's just how she always dresses).

Thanks y’all.

The funny thing is that for my own patients, I don’t care how attractive they are—that doesn’t matter one iota to me. Like a parent, I love them all, and they’re all special to me in their own weird and unique ways. I wonder if T feels this way about his patients too, or if the therapist/patient dynamic is so different from the doctor/patient dynamic that it doesn’t really compare?

I do know that it feels nice when T says that he likes me and likes working with me, or that he thinks about me between sessions. It makes me feel like I matter, or something?

I feel so bad right now, on top of everything else going on, I got up to go to the bathroom early this morning and didn't see diabetic cat laying in a weird place between my bed and the bathroom and I stepped on his leg. He howled miserably and went under the bed. I feel terrible. He came out, then went to hide in another room, and now is hiding in my closet, and he won't eat. We're taking him to the vet this morning I'm scared that I broke his leg. He's walking on it, so maybe that means it's not broken, but the fact that he won't eat scares me. He's 13 we think. He also peed on our bed yesterday, a big area, which is also not normal behavior, so something is going on with him again. I'm so worried.

Hugs, Artie. I hope your cat is OK... I doubt the leg is broken if he's walking on it, like you said, but the pee on the bed seems concerning.

*curls up on the Couch, whimpers*

I don't really worry about T thinking I'm pretty, but I am jealous of another client... I googled T's name and found this other woman had thanked him in the acknowledgments of her book, and when I saw her picture I recognized her from the waiting area. So now I worry that she's smarter and more interesting than me (and I think she is also younger, which makes it worse).

Yeah t had this gorgeous fat woman leave his office one time before my session, and im like, "thats not the kind of fat i am." Anyway, long story short, its like anything else in therapy - its what is in the clients head. There is no universal rule about how it affects the t, so that you are entitled to omit mentioning that "universal" portion of your feelings! Dammit!

No - I never wondered or cared what the therapist thought about me. I am a late middle-aged lesbian and the two I hired were old straight women. I did not find them attractive and there was no reason for them to think me to be or not be.

The vet was really crowded, took longer than usual. Plus they're doing curbside service so you have to wait out in your car and the come out and get the cat and go out and in with paperwork then the vet comes out and talks to you before they bring the cat out. Anyway Rascal's blood sugar was horrible today, in the 500's (yikes!) and she raised his insulin dose, so now he gets 2 units twice a day. She said there was no signs of trauma to his leg from me stepping on him this morning (whew there) and that his back legs seeming progressively weaker the last couple week she would say is diabetic neuropathy. She said it can get better over like 6 weeks and it's important that he stay consistent with his diet so they can adjust his insulin around it. I'm shocked at his blood sugar being so high, but relieved that I didn't seriously hurt him this morning. As soon as we got home he went and hid in the closet again.

I have a tendency to project my feelings about things onto other people, so I naturally assume that others find me unattractive. What I lack in physical attractiveness I feel I make up for with intrigue. So attractive clients don’t threaten me. Interesting ones do.