[pachyderm]

There have to be some, don't there? To compensate for the disadvantages?

Well, if your therapist is a bit dense, or does not "get" it sometimes, you start to (are forced to) rely on yourself a bit more. You find that it is possible to live (and make progress) without your therapist! You have no choice! Those are advantages, aren't they? If you survive, I mean...

[Fuzzybear]

No, pachy, if theres one thing I cant stand, its a dense T

[Perna]

My T was not a native English speaker so there were times she didn't understand what I said; and I found that helpful, having to word things "simply" enough instead of convoluted like I tend to. Breaking things down to their basics.

Also, having to explain things a couple different ways until I hit on one that she could understand. She was dense though and had excellent English but we both had weird quirks to our wording of things (me convoluted :-) so concentrating on the communication was extremely necessary at all times.

When I was disappointed because she didn't understand something I also was able to realize she had tried to understand it, had listened hard and well and that was truly what I wanted; whatever story I was telling was just a story but I wanted mostly to be listened to and contact made with me; to heck with the story, one story is as good as another, I have a million of them but he quality of contact is what I was after. So, if the story had been understood all the time then I might not have gotten to that other level beneath it where I felt that I was cared for and understood.

[chaotic13]

When I wrote out a detailed disclosure of my past, I gave my T explicit instructions on how NOT to handle this letter during our next session. My T for whatever reason totally ignored my request and did exactly what I did not want to happen. The fallout from this was significant. The fact that I went back and faced this breech and actually told her I didn't like what she'd done was important. She didn't directly apologize for it, but she clearly heard me and seems to be more considerate how when discussing things I write. We still have yet to fully discuss the contents of the letter; but because of this breech and handling the aftermath our interaction has improved.

[happysappy]

Well I hope some see some advantages because ALL T's are not perfect. In fact they have a lot of the same issues that we do.

[Kiya]

yeah, pachy, i have learned that in a crisis, t cannot help me - obviously i am still alive, so i must have pulled out some skills.
i don't even want to go back to her now... but i guess if i look at it that way....

[sunrise]

I think if they were too perfect, we wouldn't have any ruptures, which lead to great growth.

Also, if they were too perfect, we might feel too "comfortable" in therapy and not do any of the deep and painful work that discomfort and unhappiness lead us to do.

[pachyderm]

This morning I am thinking of the disadvantages...

That she is not a superhero. She is normal. It helps me be realistic with expectations and not put standards on her that are unreachable and then in the end be "failed".

[pachyderm]

> An MSW will be mine in a year's time!

Hmmm. Someone who pays attention to when to use "an"... !

[chaotic13]

Because of the 1 hour time restraint miscommunications take months to fix.

[Dinah]

Absolutely. My therapist has his strengths and weaknesses. Offsetting his many fine and useful qualities is a weakness in interpretations and insight. He's not one of those therapists who says something that leads me to sudden understanding.

The advantage is that if one of the people in that room is going to have a brilliant insight, or tie two topics together, or something of that sort, it's going to be me. I find a lot of advantages in that. Not least of which is that I'm reasonably stubborn, and probably accept my own brilliant insights better than I'd accept his. But also it forces me to think for myself. Sometimes he thinks I may be on to something, sometimes he points out the holes in my theory. So he is involved.

[pegasus]

Show me the perfect person, I'd like to shake their hand!

I'd rather have a flawed T anyday.

The disadvantages of a less than perfect T having a perfect patient-- that's my T's dilemma.

I really think most of the trust in my relationship with T has come as a result of ruptures. Our first one was a big one - to the point where when we were working through it he said "wow, I suck!" lol. When he makes a mistake, I get to learn how to confront someone (something I'm SO not good at) and to state what I think happened and what I need. And he always, ALWAYS owns up to his part in it. And then I trust him more. If he was perfect, I'd probably be the same shut down person that I was when I first walked in his door.