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What I need from a therapist alliance:
1. Adult conversation with someone who is not particularly ego-driven.
2. Someone with the ability and inclination to respect my statements and assessments at face value, even when they don't agree.
3. Reciprocal knowledge sharing, especially where information relevant to my own mental health is concerned.
Do I get this from a therapist? Rarely. I find I'm better off identifying for myself what psychological intelligence and trust exists in the world around me, and communing there. Perhaps there has been some luck involved. Mostly just keeping my eyes open though, for indications of common experience and understanding. A very few of my friends know about my worst traumas and concerns, but they have been infinitely more helpful in bearing knowledge of them than my therapists have been.
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“We use our minds not to discover facts but to hide them. One of things the screen hides most effectively is the body, our own body, by which I mean, the ins and outs of it, its interiors. Like a veil thrown over the skin to secure its modesty, the screen partially removes from the mind the inner states of the body, those that constitute the flow of life as it wanders in the journey of each day.”
— Antonio R. Damasio, “The Feeling of What Happens: Body and Emotion in the Making of Consciousness” (p.28)
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