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Originally Posted by sunrise
I began therapy a few years ago, in midlife. It has been incredibly helpful to me. I have learned so much. I am happier. I understand myself and others better. I am more comfortable with myself. I learned to "listen" to myself better and recognize what I am feeling. I have improved my communication skills. I have learned to share deeply with another human being. There has been no down side (except for less cash in my bank account!).
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As with Echoes, it is good to hear that someone "older" has found therapy helpful. Unfortunately, my experience was not so helpful. I suppose you could say I learned some things. I learned that one needs to be careful in trusting people, and that I was too inclined to question my own judgment when I should have trusted myself. I also learned that the problems I went to therapy for help with could be worse problems than I thought depending on the situation -- and therapy was a situation where they were bigger problems than in ordinary life. I became much less happy in response to therapy, although I have, over the years, managed to "recover" somewhat (not entirely) from my therapy experiences.
What you say about learning to recognize your feelings is one of those things that don't make sense to me. The way I see it is that all you can do is learn to identify your feelings as categorized in a particular framework. I believe that different languages categorize feelings in different ways, and that there is no "objective" classification. If anyone knows of any scientific evidence to the contrary, I am willing to look at it.
I had been making progress before therapy in improving my communication skills, but I definitely regressed in therapy. Fortunately, I have been making progress again in the past few years.
Learning to share deeply with another human being was not a goal of therapy for me. I value privacy and boundaries. I am not opposed to intimacy, but believe that there is a big difference between chosen intimacy and imposed intimacy. In therapy, and with one therapist in particular, I got imposed intimacy. It was a very negative experience. Since therapy, there are fewer people that I care to be really close to.
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Originally Posted by sunrise
Last week during my session, I was talking to my therapist about how now I would not put up with certain things in a relationship that I had put up with for years in my younger days. I would just say forget that! and walk away, or I would tell the person firmly that was not acceptable. If he couldn't accommodate, I would not get involved with him, etc. I have a much clearer view of what is acceptable in a relationship and what is not. I have begun to learn to set boundaries.
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That is a skill that, in my experience, was a prerequisite for therapy. My lack of skill with setting boundaries was one of those things that was a much bigger problem in therapy than in ordinary life. In my experience therapists seem to be more insensitive to boundaries than most other people I encounter.
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Originally Posted by sunrise
I think sometimes therapists who only practice one approach might get kind of dogmatic and only be willing to deliver one type of therapy even if the client would do better with another approach. That reminds me somwhat of what can be dogma in religions. However, it seems like many therapists these days are eclectic and will use the best techniques for the presenting client.
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I have had therapists who call themselves eclectic but seem dogmatic. I suspect that in some cases, therapists who call themselves eclectic are eclectic in the sense of idiosyncratic -- they have their own theories, which they might have drawn from various theoretical orientations, but which they can be very inflexible in.
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Originally Posted by sunrise
I do think, for me, the most important thing has been my therapist himself and our relationship, rather than his exact approach. He has used techniques from several different schools of therapy with me, and we have had success with a number of them. I did have a therapist before him who stuck more closely to one approach, and our therapy was not as successful. I also didn't have the close relationship with her that I have with my current T.
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