The thread discussing drama and therapy seems to have been deleted. I guess all the infighting caused that. So be nice this time guys.

Dang it. I really liked my response to that old thread, which could be summed up as, "I love drama. I dislike unintelligent drama."

Anyway, I came across this in my readings today and I wanted to share. I am so tempted to just terminate on my T because T made a mistake.

But this helps me to be brave and go to the session:

... Some clients try to make psychotherapy into a sort of melodrama: “I took an overdose, and my therapist came to my apartment with the police, broke the door down, and rescued me!” It’s all quite similar to a heroine who, after being bound, gagged, and tied to railroad tracks by the dark villain, is rescued just in time by the hero.

... The psychological appeal of such theatricality derives from the preverbal stage of infancy. At this stage of life, an infant is completely helpless and depends on a parent to rescue it from its basic physiological needs. At first, the mother assumes the most importance—especially for feeding and emotional bonding—and then, as the infant develops socially, the father takes on more importance as a protector who can guide the child into the social world.

If the parents perform their tasks adequately, the child will develop the verbal communication skills necessary for proper social functioning.

For many persons, however, because of the family dysfunction in which they grew up as children, communication wasn’t so much communication as an entangled mass of innuendoes, lies, secrets, and betrayals. And underneath all those innuendoes, lies, secrets, and betrayals that have bound and gagged you psychologically can be found an unspoken desire to be understood without having to say anything. It’s a desire to be rescued from the dark villain—who symbolizes the missing father—by a fantasy heroic father who, in his intuitive perception of your needs, will make you feel loved—that is, special.

Therefore, having suffered from family dysfunction as a child, you now seek healing from your emotional pain through psychotherapy. Yes, the healing process of psychotherapy is a sort of rescue from dysfunction, but it is an unpretentious process based on learning the honest communication you failed to learn as a child.

In fact, your seeing the fantasy you created about your psychotherapist is genuine progress, because it makes things more simple and less melodramatic. Once you let go of the desire to be “special,” you allow simple, honest, non-dramatic human communication to develop. But as long as you cling to the hope of being special, you actually obstruct the psychotherapy and prevent any real psychological change. Why? Because your fantasy of being special only hides your emotional pain—the pain of a child trying to rescue a father from his alcoholism—behind a dream of recovering the mentor, the real father, who never was.

More: Melodrama: Feeling special in psychotherapy