Week III: May 12 - 18
There’s single therapy of 45 minutes three times a week and on the other 2 days short visits from the therapist, which last about 5-10 minutes. Very important here: Daily contact with the therapist. This week Mrs. B. is on vacation and I have only two regular sessions with Dr. S.
I talked to Dr. S. before very shortly, he seemed nice, but I’m curious about what kind of therapist he is and how we are going to communicate.
It turns out that Dr. S. is the ABSOLUTE opposite of Mrs. B. He talks very quietly, very slowly and makes a lot of pauses. He is a tall and slim guy, probably around 40 years old. He always wears a dress shirt with stripes, the sleeves rolled up, blue jeans, dark dress shoes. He isn’t married and I’ve heard that he plays baseball, which is kind of unusual around here.
He isn’t engaged in the conversations as Mrs. B is, he lacks interest and he doesn’t excite me. I guess work has become some sort of routine for him. He doesn’t move much, he just sits and looks, rarely showing any emotion. He asks the same questions I was asked by Mrs. B. the first week, yeah, I understand, he has to get to know me. He tells me all the stuff I’ve heard over over again, that I have to slow down, that I should take my time and shouldn’t put any pressure on myself. Yeah, I know. I leave the first session without any new insight.
The second session is ever more frustrating because I can’t follow up where Mrs. B. and I have left last week. I get the impression that he doesn’t listen closely enough and that we talk at cross purposes. He has already put me into one of his shrink categories and he clings to it, whatever I say. This makes me feel stressed out because it feels like there’s no progress AT ALL this week. I know that it’s not his fault, I know that it doesn’t work out with every therapist, it’s just we don’t match very well. With the sessions being so slow and repetitive I do really feel unproductive, as if the whole week is some kind of a deadlock. The other therapies don’t start before the end of May and somehow I don’t feel that I’m making the most of my time here, not yet. I should have more patience, I know.
