Im sorry to have to disagree with you here claritytoo. Here in NY therapists are not ....obligated....to work on something or ...obligated...to assist someone who is working in a book.

here in NY treatment providers make treatment plans with the client when the client first comes to them, it is from that treatment plan that the therapist works from, most therapists are capable of bending that developed treatment plan if they think its in the best interest of the client but its not an obligation that they do what ever their clients want them to do...

example my treatment plan for the next 6 months says my therapist and I are working on my parenting issues as it pertains to my having post partum depression.

if I ask my therapist at this moment to help me on the chapter in the courage to heal that addresses memories and I ask my therapist for help on this she is not obligated to work on that book and my child sexual abuse memories because right now my treatment plans say we are working on my post partum depression which is a depression women get associated with pregnancy and child birth, not child sexual abuse.

my therapist if she .....chooses ......to can if she .....wants ....to say sure I can help you on this. but she does not ....have....to.

and even if I find a book on post partum depression and take it to my therapist again shes still not ....obligated...to work on that book with me.

you cant make a person do what you want just because you are paying them...unless the situation is hiring a prostitute here in NY lol sorry my sarcastic mind is active at the moment.

therapists don't have to work with someone just because they are being paid, and therapists dont have to work on what a client brings in.

another example when I was working on my child sexual abuse issues I had brought to a therapist a particular book. she didnt think that book was right for me but she could not forbid me from reading and working in it. all she could do was decide whether she wanted to work with me in it. she chose not to help me with that book because she felt I wasnt ready for it and it wanst a book that fit what she was trying to work on with me..

When I told her I was reading it. she said good just pace yourself. a week later I asked her a question about the book and she said "if you are going to work in that book pace yourself." and asked me a question that had to do with my treatment plans. a week later I had another question about the book. this time she was more blunt by saying I understand you want to read this book but thats not what we are working on in here. if you continue to avoid discussing what we are supposed to be working on, i have no recourse but to terminate with you. then she pulled out my treatment plans and said heres the plans we made together a couple months ago, this is what we are working on, I suggest you take this home with you and call me when you are ready to get back to work.

Two weeks went by as I thought about it and decided ok lets get back to work. this book was a great distraction and great reading material but its not what the mode my therapist wants me to use with her.

later on i had another therapist who asked me if I had ever used that book, when I told her yes I did it on my own because a therapist would not help me with it she said i can tell, you have incorporated some of what that book was about in to your life but unfortunately it doesnt fit there. we have a lot of work to do to undo the damage that book did and get you back on tract of doing things in a way thats best for you and your problems, books are great at giving blue prints and adding unconscious habits. but just because a book says this is how things are does not make it so. Books are wrote for many reasons, some of those reasons is for making money, so whats in them has been edited many times over until the sentences give the reader what ever the writer was trying to do, whether thats to manipulate the readers mind for entertainment, financial gain, education...

now lets get to work, instead of thinking of this problem the way the book tells you to think, tell me how this problem is with in you, what symptoms tells you this, who says......

it is so hard to read something and work on something the way a book says and then undo that damage to work on things the way a person is meant to..not according to how a books says things have to be done, but how a persons own body and mind needs to do things to heal.

and I have to admit sometimes I did bring material to my treatment providers as a way to distract them from working on the harder issues I wanted to avoid and onto working on the things I didnt avoid, basically self sabotaging my healing.

sometimes treatment providers can refuse one way of working with a client and use other techniques/tools. some use books some dont, some use recordings some dont, some use talk therapy some dont, some use DBT others may use CBT....

there are no hard rules that say a therapist must do what ever the client says just because the client is paying them.