I feel a little stuck. I have this client whom I have been seeing since the beginning of my internship and I feel like we have hit a plateau in our sessions. I don’t know if to take is as if she has gotten better and is coping better now with the breakup of her relationship but I feel almost robotic when I speak to her. I feel like I am struggling to prompt her and she is just there answering questions and not really deeply getting into things. I mean, I think that she has definitely progressed. When she first came in she came in with this attitude like she came to therapy because it was an option that was there and that her insurance covered. She did get to a point when she was able to express her grief and show that she is not as well put together as she comes across.

I don’t think this is a bad thing. I think she is now well aware that her feeling of loss and the way she is coping is related to her relationship with her father. She has made a few comments surrounding this issue but will not stay there long enough to really explore what’s going on with her and her dad. I don’t know, although I feel like this is the underlying issue with her, sometimes I think that maybe its just me trying to make sense of it all. I mean, what else could it be, I think.

To me it is somewhat obvious that she is having all of these same pattern intense relationships and she is only 23 years old. What is she looking for in these men and why does it seem like she is just never always happy. She has even admitted to always having something to complain about in all of her relationships. Her relationships with her boyfriends are all she really likes to talk about. She does make reference to her school and her work and feeling stressed out about the amount of work she has and the amount of tests she has to study for, but at the end of the day, its seems like she is in this quest to find approval in all these guys. I think it is almost like the approval she is looking for in her father since she did make a comment about never hearing from her father that he is proud of her.

On a similar yet different level, when I asked her if anyone’s has ever treated her nice she said yes but she doesn’t seem to stick with those guys. It almost seems like she wants to be the guys who may not necessarily be so nice, but will one day change and treat her good. I know it sounds cliché but this is really real. Another thing that I have noticed about her is that she constantly complains that this guy stares at other girls and that he “makes” her feeling ugly but he has complemented her in the past and she has been unable to tolerate his complements. I guess this is typical when a person is not used to hearing praise. It is almost like its undeserved and something that needs to be worked on hard enough before you get it. I think this is why she works so hard and why she is a perfectionist, although she has realized that perfectionism is not necessary and has reflected on it long enough to accept that she may make mistakes every once in a while.

I don’t know, my supervisor says this is normal sometimes in therapeutic relationships. She said perhaps she’s had a slight relapse and feels like she’s above it all and doesn’t really need “therapy” because she is “smart” enough to handle it. She keeps coming though. I figured that since she is still participating, something has got to be working for her. Besides, it’s almost a good thing if it is true what my supervisor says because that way I know that I haven’t eased a dependency in her.