Tag Archives: projection

Dec 31 2009

Therapy Recap 12/29/09 (Late!)

When I went to my therapy session on Tuesday I was not liking J very much. I was doing a lot of projecting and after our session last week I felt that he was minimizing my issues, and being judgmental. That is projection, right? But I’m glad I didn’t say anything this week, because he was very nice. Maybe he really was minimizing my issues and being judgmental last week, and he knew it, so he deliberately tried not to be this week? Or maybe it was just me. I never know.

He started things out by saying he wanted to talk more about my disclosure from two weeks ago. We talked about that and I tried to explain more about it, but it was hard to explain and I even told him it was hard to explain, and he said it was ok. But it came down to me feeling like I have an evil part of me, that I have kept hidden from everyone, and the reason people like me is because they don’t know about the evil part. And I’ve tried really hard over the last 30 or 40 years to not act on the evil stuff, to keep it all as thoughts but not actions. But it’s hard work sometimes.

J said it’s admirable that I have been able to function for so long despite having these intrusive thoughts and urges. Not sure if he was being sarcastic. He also kind of laughed at the issue and then apologized and said it’s in his nature to be light-hearted. Hmmm…..

He asked me if anyone else thinks I’m evil, and said that no because they don’t know about this part of me. He said that he knows about it and he doesn’t think I’m evil. He thinks I’m a regular, decent, nice human being. He said that is his objective opinion, and I said, “Your judgment?” See, therapists do have to make judgments.

J asked me what the payoff is in thinking I’m bad. I couldn’t really think of one, and I don’t think there are any payoffs to having intrusive thoughts and thinking oneself is evil. He said, “Well if you know you are bad you don’t have to work hard to be good.” I replied, “I do work hard to be good, so that theory doesn’t hold water.” I still don’t believe there is a payoff.

He said I often say, “Is that bad?” when I say I did something, and that I seem to always have a battle between being good and bad. He asked what would happen if I didn’t try so hard to prevent the evil stuff from actually happening. I don’t know what would happen, I obviously have never tried.

At the end he said that we can’t control our thoughts but we can do thought inserting. He said, “don’t think about a zebra” and I thought about a zebra. Then he said, “think about a dozen roses” and then I didn’t think about the zebra anymore. I guess I need to think more about zebras and roses, and then I won’t have intrusive thoughts? Except when he told me to think about the roses I had some visions of thorns and the damage they can do. Why would I immediately focus on the thorns rather than the flowers?

And during this whole discussion J told about 10 stories. He is always telling me hypothetical or theoretical stories, and I remember the stories but I can’t remember the purpose of them. For example this week he told me about:

A recovering alcoholic working as a bartender, vs someone who doesn’t drink working as a bartender

A friend who was very rigid in raising his own kids, but is very lenient with his grandchildren

A guy he knew 15 years ago who was 75 years old and has probably passed away by now and I don’t remember anything else he said about this guy

A man yelling at his wife in public and people likely thinking “he is a jerk” when actually no one knows what kind of relationship they have and perhaps they have been married for 30 years and get along really well

People like to sky dive and ride rollercoasters because they want to feel close to death but in a controlled environment.

We were talking about something I don’t remember and he said, “We could get really deep here.”

Sep 23 2009

Therapy Recap 9/22/09

I had to cancel therapy last week because it was the day of the funeral. It’s really hard to go back when I’ve skipped a week. Monday night I could not fall asleep – I think I finally fell asleep at about 3am, and then I woke up at 6:30am. I also had a really bad stomach Monday and Tuesday morning.

The last time I saw J he assigned me homework. I was supposed to write down one good thing I did and one thing I’m grateful for every day. I actually did the homework Tuesday through Saturday, but that was it since my mother’s husband died and things got crazy. I had a really hard time with the homework. The grateful stuff wasn’t bad, but coming up with good things was very difficult. Two of the days I didn’t do anything good, one day I made a donation to my friend Ann’s foundation, another day I bought girl scout cookies even though I don’t want girl scout cookies – I donated them to the troops. I did a volunteer activity one of the days, which I don’t even think counts as good, but I was desperate. I was actually going to go to the humane society and adopt a dog just so I had something to put on the list.

J said that wasn’t really how the homework was supposed to go. He apologized. He said he didn’t intend for me to go out and search for ways to be good, I was supposed to just write down things I did in my daily life that are good. But I don’t normally do good things in my daily life, so I’m a bit confused about what he was looking for. He said in the future he’ll give me more explicit directions. He gave me back my list and I ripped it to shreds. I said it was stupid. Mature of me, isn’t it?

We got onto the topic of my mother. Every therapist’s dream, right? It all comes back to the mother. I told J about something my mother did a few days ago that really hurt my feelings and I wondered why she felt the need to do that, but “that’s what she does.” He asked me to explain and I told him that my mother is very judgmental and nothing is ever good enough. I gave a couple of examples. We talked about my childhood a little, and how my parents had very high expectations of me, and not very high expectations of my sister. I think that is because she was sick as a baby and toddler and she could get away with a lot more. I took on the role of the “good child”, and I was smart and well behaved so it was a self fulfilling prophecy. The better I was the better I needed to be.

J postulated that perhaps my parents wanted me to be this good child because it made them look like good parents. Never thought about it that way, but it makes sense. And to this day I never feel like I’m good enough or meet my mother’s expectations of me.

I know that everyone at some point talks to their therapist about their parents. I feel bad about it though. My mother is a good person, despite her flaws. Everyone has flaws, no one is perfect, and plenty of people had much worse mothers than I do. I do feel guilty about the things I said about her to J.

I did some more projecting during our session, but maybe since I admitted that I was projecting when I sent J the email a couple of weeks ago, he felt more comfortable telling me when I was doing it. He’d say, “You’re projecting again.” I don’t do it on purpose, I swear I don’t!

I have more to say, but I’m so tired. In the ongoing dental adventure I’ve been having, the second stage of my root canal was supposed to be last week, but due to the circumstances I had to reschedule. And now my tooth is infected again, so I called the dentist and he prescribed another antibiotic. I took two doses, and last night woke up in the middle of the night covered in hives. I took some benadryl and finally went back to sleep, but since I didn’t sleep Monday night or last night I’m exhausted. I’m on a different antibiotic now, I’ve taken this one before so I don’t expect any hivey surprises tonight.