As you no doubt know, these are very difficult questions to answer without knowing a great deal more about the status of your rapport with this patient and without knowing at what stage of her therapy she is at and without knowing many other things about you own feelings and associations. So what I have to say below are no more than ideas to share with you and should not be thought of my explanation of what I know or even believe very confidently to be happening. Operating on the asumption that you feel rather lost and worried, as appears to be the tone of your message here, I wonder if you might not be feeling the patient's own feelings by projective identification. If so, that undertanding could be a basis to broach the subject indirectly, if you decide to do so. What I mean is you may suggest the possible interpretation that her phone message behavior may be an enactment to try to convey to you an experience she cannot put into words--that she has been feeling lost and worried about something, perhaps her therapy. She could be revealing that something that happned between you both was experienced by her a boundary violation by you and she is demonstrating what this feels like with an encactment. It could be, that is, a possible expression of her concern about losing hope of improvement if she does not feel any safer than you now do. It should go without saying that this interpretation is a hypothesis that, if prsented for disucusion by you, would be preseneted as tentative and open for revisions of any sort.
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