I wonder about my therapist...

Every so often, I wonder what my therapist is like outside of the office. I only have clues to work from, such as the way she dresses or a glimpse of her crossing the street, laughing with her co-therapists. I know that she broke her foot once and had to wear a boot for a long time. I also know she has a friend, K., who has a baby. Aside from those two small glimpses of her personal life, I have absolutely no knowledge of who she is as a person.

I know I’m not the one who’s supposed to be analyzing her, but once in a while I notice something about her emotional response or body language. Once I walked into her office, and I got the sense that she was irritable and exhausted. Her face seemed drawn and pinched, and she had a canker sore above her upper lip. If she was indeed burnt out or tired, her tone of voice and her facial expressions were remarkably composed and never betrayed her.

The first time I told her about my sexual assault, I was very focused on trying not to fly apart or break down in my chair, and I was barely able to look her in the eye, but when I did manage to glance at her face, what I saw broke my heart. I hated myself for being a victim, but her facial expression was devastatingly compassionate. It must have been extremely difficult for her to hear me recount what happened, and watch me relapse into my eating disorders for a period, in an attempt to avoid the trauma. 

During several other subsequent sessions, I saw her eyes glisten with tears and the corners of her mouth twitch, though her voice remained steady. Sometimes she played around with something in her hand, like clay or the edge of her cardigan, while looking at and listening to me intently. Once, I relayed to her a particularly disturbing flashback, and she forgot completely about the tissue in her hand. When we had wrapped up the session, she took off her glasses and dabbed at her eyes with the tissue.

I often wonder about what she does after particularly upsetting sessions. For all I know, she cries a little when she gets home or stands in the therapy room for a bit, blinking and wondering what happened. Or perhaps she just goes and writes up notes about the session. 

I suppose I’m not a terribly problematic client, in that I don’t idealize and then push her away. I don’t argue with her, though I do raise objections if I have some. I respect that we are therapist and client, and I have rarely felt anything beyond friendliness and compassion for her. I know that she is a person too, and if she happens to say something that irks me a little, I try to put the offending remark aside. I understand that she meant to lighten the situation up a little, because I tend to be a bit serious. I think she implicitly understands that I did not take whatever she said well, and adjusts her tone to be more serious in following sessions.

I have had a few moments in session, especially regarding how I cheated on my ex-boyfriend in the past, where I felt she was asking extremely difficult questions and judging me for what I had done. I was very upset at her indeed and vented into a journal about how guilty and ashamed I felt. Yet a part of me recognized that even though I felt like I was being interrogated and judged, perhaps I really wasn’t. She never said, “I don’t like what you did,” or “Perhaps you shouldn’t have done that.” I was in a highly emotional state during those sessions, and deep down I suspected that I might have interpreted what she said in a negative fashion, looking for any opportunity to confirm that I was a bad person for cheating. Transference in action. 

Just a few thoughts on my therapist and my relationship with her.