Quote:
|
It's not a question of deserving, it's a question of healing so that we become free of those needs, originating from childhood injury, that prevent us from living our highest potential. Acknowledgement isn't "just"--it's an integral part of healing.
|
I do not believe that people will ever be free of those needs. There are only transitions in the ways in which are needs get met in life. As children our parents meet our needs, and as adults our lovers and friends meet our needs. I'm not very convinced that people really get less fragile as they get older, and I'm not sure that therapy will ever be able to make anyone need less. I think the best it can do is help someone understand what they need, meet the need in therapy if possible, or find away to meet the need elsewhere.
Quote:
|
I think assuming what others should do is idealistic and out of my control. To expect others to address emotional injuries from our individual pasts is an enormous burden to place on anyone. Few relationships can bear such pressure. Most importantly, I don't believe that we can often make use of others' help until we are healed enough to accept such help clearly.
|
I disagree strongly. This is not idealistic in the least, but simply away of understanding what humans are really capable of. People are emphatic. A huge part of the brain is dedicated to empathy, thus suggesting that people are very capable of understanding one another emotionally. And I do not suggest that single relationships make up for traumas, but that a network of relationships can help to deal with the pain that is caused by trauma. It is also absurd to think that we cannot accept or utilize help until me are more healed. I'm not really sure how you would explain the therapy relationship. Going to therapy is in it self choosing to accept help, and people frequently enter therapy when they are at an absolute low. There seems to be a subtle binary here in the way that you think about the mentally well and the mentally healthy. You imply that the mentally healthy are capable and perceptive, while the mentally ill are incapable and confused. I can hardly say that this it the case among the many mentally ill friends that I have had over time.
Quote:
|
It interferes if it prevents me from becoming fully aware of the need and learning what meaning the need holds for me. If it is fulfilled before such awareness, then I remain unknown to myself. Fulfillment after such awareness is fine, but isn't always necessary.
|
This is an awfully analytic way of understanding this. I see no reason why someone might not become aware of need when it fulfilled. I would also contend that there is a difference between covering over a need because we don't know how to fulfill it, and actually coming to a place where it is safe enough to feel the need and have it met. And therapists refusal to fulfill a need just so the client becomes aware of it is cruel and entirely absurd.
Quote:
|
I'm not assuming anything about the culture. But I don't believe that people acting from unrecognized injuries and distorted thinking can be effective in cultural change. I believe that one has to heal the self before one can spread healing beyond the self.
|
I have to say that this is one of the most painful parts of your response. You imply here that my work in feminism and other movements is entirely not worthwhile simply because I am not sane or well. There are countless people who participate in social movements and work to make the world better who struggle everyday from emotional injures. In fact many people who are in these movements are in them because they have suffered some form of emotional distress or trauma. You further imply that person who are part of movements such as mad studies, or anti-psychiatry, or patients rights movement, are particularly incapable of being effective. You further imply that there is some state of well, pure, empirical thought that people can gain access to once they are well enough. Besides the fact it is simply ridiculous to think that persons will ever have access to such a lofty level of pure thought, you privilege people who are capable of making "progress" over those who are not.
Quote:
|
I suppose I could have spent my therapy time and resources railing against "the culture" but since my efforts could be far more effective spent addressing my individual healing, that's what I chose to do. I didn't look to therapy for solutions beyond what therapy can offer. I used therapy to heal myself so that then I could go out and pursue cultural change in the ways best suited to my talents.
|
I do not think that is a futile, empty, or untherapeutic for me to try and understand why it is that therapy exists in the first place. Understanding the way that things work in the world has been a profoundly healing experience for me. It is important to me to name the things that prevent me from getting the things that I need and to work with other people to change the structures that harm so many. Here again you imply that I am unable to help unless I heal myself. I see my emotions and my trauma as deeply connected to my political and academic work. There is never going to be some clean perfect capable me that can suddenly be so much more effective. I go to therapy because I want to be with someone who appreciates and understands the emotional world. I go there so that I can be heard, and so that I can work on the things that hurt, and the ways that I hurt myself. But I do not go there to become perfect, or so that I can become an ethical or competent agent of cultural change. I would also like to point out that there are people who have dedicate their whole lives to changing cultural reactions to emotions and madness, and that those people's work is extremely important and worthwhile.