It started with a dream. I dreamt that I had brought a huge grocery cart full of groceries from Whole Foods with me to therapy. The contents of the cart had to be worth over $1000. At the top of the cart were three baguettes. When, in the dream, Igor saw the baguettes he said, “Why did you get those? They will make you eat fast.” Him saying that kind of bugged me and I wanted to explain to him that I eat slow but I knew he was taking info from a past session and so there was no point in trying to explain it to him. But, I was upset that he was misreading something fundamental about my temperament.
Then in the dream Igor and I were sitting on an ottoman. I grabbed the back of his hair because I wanted to feel how thick his hair was. I wanted to feel his substance. I was afraid he would interpret this action as erotic and it wasn’t.
So, I tell Igor the dream last Thursday. He asks for my interpretations. I tell him that I think it means I am bringing something valuable, nutritive and wholesome with me to therapy. This is a lot of groceries and they are really expensive. I think it means I bring a lot of good things with me to therapy. “It’s not like I bring a big trailer load of dirt or trash. I am bringing fancy groceries.”
“And, what about the baguettes? What kind are they?”Igor asked greedily.
“The French kind. You know the long and thin ones. The kind you can only get in France. ” This image seemed loaded with symbolic potential. Igor was blinded by the bread and ignored what they might mean to me.
“Well, I wouldn’t be telling you not to buy those or warn you not to eat them quickly. I love those. I would eat those fast. French bread is the best and with jamon…..mmmmm. I love the jamon.” He said it with far away eyes. His face indicating that he was no longer with my dream but dreaming of far away French bread.
I found myself thinking, ‘where the hell is he going with this?’
“Did I tell you that I have a sister who lives in France?” Igor asked.
“Uh, no.” Again I wondered what the clinical value of this information was.
“Yeah, she lived in L.A. and didn’t like it. She hated L.A. and she moved to Paris and got married and she adopted a child and she is very happy. She loves Paris and would never come back to L.A.”
“Nice.” I said. But in truth it felt anything but nice. He knows how I am hurting about baby and living in L.A. He know how much I love Paris. It felt sadistic. I shut down and didn’t want to talk about the dream anymore or even Paris. I felt as if he was trying to make me depressed. If he has been paying attention to my body language or my affect he would have seen how the story of his sister affected me. He didn’t.
He spent the rest of the session asking questions about what He-weasel does for a living and then he wanted me to explain the difference between north and south New Jersey. I answered his questions and was simultaneously pissed that I was paying $200 to talk about He-weasel’s job.
Almost immediately upon hearing that we might have been moving to NJ, which sadly we aren’t, Igor asked me what would happen to us( meaning me and Igor). That was his first reaction. Let me tell you that there were MANY clinical issues to explore when the possibility of us moving away from L.A. arose but he wasn’t interested in any of them. He wanted to know if he was still going to get his $800 for me. I left the session feeling hurt, angry and pissed( and then I went to see Away We Go).
Since the session I have had several dreams in which I feel that I am being attacked by something from the outside( attacking masculines) who don’t get me and who misunderstand me and don’t listen to what I am saying. In one dream I was in a high rise building and I heard a lot of outside noise and I went out on the patio and I saw a bulldozer that was supposed to be picking up debris and instead I knew it was going to destroy me. I flipped it the bird and went inside. Hmmmm…..I wonder what that could be about.
I really want to break up with Igor.
