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Old Dec 16, 2010, 07:03 PM
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Ygrec23 Ygrec23 is offline
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Member Since: Apr 2010
Location: Florida
Posts: 2,853
Quote:
Originally Posted by Yesterdays View Post
Just wondering if any of you have a hard time making eye contact in therapy when you're talking about personal things. A lot of times I'll get really emotional and feel kind of humiliated and not want to make eye contact. Usually I'll stare at some object in the room, but it seems to make it even more awkward (I have a hard time talking about my emotions, especially since she's a new therapist and I don't know her very well). Anyone else in the same shoes or know how to break the habit?
Why break the habit? It's a completely acceptable manner in which to protect yourself while marshalling your thoughts and reflecting on your emotions. A significant percentage of people who have no need to go to therapy do it while giving lectures or otherwise seriously think (and seriously talk) about serious subjects from which they'd be distracted by other people's eyes. Eye contact (to me) is valuable when you're first making contact with other people, whether in your profession or when you're making friends, or even when you're trying to reassure some old friend or relative who's talking with you about one of their problems. In a situation like therapy, where any half-decent T knows exactly what you, the patient, are dealing with, I don't think there ought to be any pressure to make eye contact. In the therapy situation eye contact for many people is terribly distracting and keeps them from the kind of deep self-communion on which progress in therapy is based. Of course, when T and I are talking about the time and day of the next appointment or any such kind of trivia we're looking into each other's eyes. But I don't do that when I'm talking seriously with her and I don't feel the slightest pressure to change my ways. Take care!
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Ygrec23
Thanks for this!
Gently1, jexa, sittingatwatersedge