Quote:
Originally Posted by Jaybird57
Okay, I'm going to admit this and I don't mean it as a slam against anyone who has responded here on this thread because I think everyone has been wonderfully honest and up front about how they feel. I just wanted to comment on how our mental view of therapists as being perfect and untouched by the trauma of life possibly makes us close doors on important connections . . . doors that we might possibly close or cut off in other relationships we attempt to foster.
I get it that people are put off by SI and they want the person treating them in psychotherapy as having their, you know what, together. Anyway, I find it so sad that all of us on this forum talk about resenting being judged by others sooooooooooo much. There have even been discussions about how we resent, worry, angst about our therapists judging us. And yes, sometimes they do! Yet we admit freely that we'd judge the person who is willing to work with us therapeutically. I get it that if the person is an idiot who has no concept of how therapy should be conducted or she allows her personal issues to interfere with our therapy that we would immediately get out of the situation. But what about the skilled and compassionate therapist who demonstrates the ability to BE THERE with us in our pain, confusion and anger about getting well? There are so many ways that we could tell that the person we made an appointment with is poorly trained, mentally unstable or unmotivated and uninterested in our issues. I guess I'm saying, isn't it okay to stay with a therapist who went through hell and got through to the other side? It's pretty typical in addiction services that this kind of life experience makes for a better, more clinically aware therapist. Wrong?
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I wanted to respond to this and the aspect of judgement that people are showing on this subject.
I think it depends on your reason for going to therapy as to whether you could accept seeing old scars on a therapist. For me, and a lot of people on this board, we came from backgrounds of neglect and very often as vulnerable children we were made to be our own caregiver and be caregiver of our parents. We grow up feeling responsible for everyone else's happiness and neglect our own because we've never mattered to our families. We slip into the caregiver role almost unconciously and some of us still try to do it with our Therapists ( a good therapist doesn't allow it.)
Therapy is a chance for us for one or two hours a week to concentrate on ourselves, to learn about what our needs are and have them met without distraction. In order to feel safe to do that, some of us need to be able to believe that our therapists are super strong, don't have problems, aren't tainted with similar problems we feel we are because if we get a mere sniff of vulnerability from our T's it shakes the foundations of the therapy and it's no longer a safe place and we feel untethered. We also simply slip back into caregiver/rescuer mode with our t's. It's kind of like being a little kid and believing you're safe because you mommy is there and she can save you from anything. You need to feel that with your T too in order to let yourself be vulnerable so you can heal.
So I don't think it's a case of being judgmental for the sake of it, or holding therapists to an unattainable level. No one here has said that t's shouldn't have problems. Just that they don't want to be reminded of them in their own therapy. And I think that's ok.
Some people are ok seeing scars or knowing the T's history and indeed it might help them and others don't want to know and that is ok too.