Although I am interested in psychotherapy I am by all accounts retired. However once a therapist always a therapist or so the saying goes. I am Chair person of a committee now trying to take over a library and make it into a community library. I find myself watching with interest each personality develop before my eyes. Needless to say I too have to take careful note of who I am in all this different way of life. I thought that I was more sure of myself in group situations but not so, still sometimes negatively suprised by the way people react or respond to each other and me. Of course at the moment individuals are finding their feet and walking on egg shells for fear of upsetting each other. We are in the early stages of forming a group of which can hopefully work together.
Being in a theraputic situation is very different than being in the world of non therapy. I somehow expect people to be more open with what they say and how they behave, maybe in so doing expect too much.
I have found since moving out of the world of therapy that I am the one that sometimes is too open and honest and this frightens people I think. Some say I am direct, maybe confrontative and I am aware that because of who I was and what I did in the therapeutic community I have carried this way of being through to the world. (I was a TA trainer)In truth I am just being myself and don't think too much about that but not everyone seems to be 'themselves' the process we learn to lose which is in TA terms our script I face in others on a daily basis. I am needless to say not finding it easy to break through the barriers and defence mechanism just to feel close to others.
I wonder if I will ever be as close to friends as I was when a therapist, training and group processes joined me with some wonderful people, now there is no therapist to help guide the group process and if and when I take tentative steps to open up the situation I am faced with blank faces.
I fear I have a lot to learn in the world of the retired population with whom I now mingle.
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