Quote:
Originally Posted by vonmoxie
With each of my therapists past and present having strong perspectives and opinions, I find it necessary to view their advice through the prism of those perspectives in order to make any of it useful, which doesn't really allow me to blithely receive anything they tell me as instruction. None has been as well-versed or as objective as I would have hoped about the complications of what comprises my mental health profile either; unfortunately this just seems to be a reality of how therapy works for me that I've had to accept, and perhaps for them it alters their approach towards me, because I don't think they've been afraid or hesitant to instruct me. My relationships with them just naturally evolve as more consultive than instructive, more collaborative and co-driven than a classical teacher and student relationship might be. I suppose I look at them more as consiglieres of sorts; they share their observations and assessments, and I take them into consideration -- viewing them, as I said, through the prism of their perspectives, biases, etc. That's the best I'm personally able to get out of it.
If they've instructed me then I've also instructed them, because the information sharing is two-way .. but I really don't see it as more than sharing and collaboration.
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I like 'consultive' as a descriptor. That might be more accurate than 'instructive' for the total picture of therapy. I think it's important, too, to take things with their contextual grain of salt--view through the 'prism of perspective,' as you so nicely put it. I've found contextualization of this sort
invaluable, and one of the most helpful things about therapy. Example--
I suffered for years with panic attacks and funny turns of the 'nothing is real--I'm not real--this is a dream--oh god' variety. And I really wish someone with a background in trauma and a perspective informed by psychology had introduced me to the terms "dissociate," "depersonalization," and "derealization" before I signed up for graduate level courses in radical skepticism and epistemology...
But nobody did. And so the advice to, you know, go for a walk or do a grounding exercise seemed (and was) completely useless until I
finally (with my therapist) understood that this sort of advice was informed by a psychiatric model--that the problem maybe wasn't best viewed through an academic lens and that's why it hadn't responded to philosophic inquiry into the nature of reality and our knowledge of its existence.
I'm sorry you haven't found your T's advice/information as well-versed or objective as you'd hoped. I guess sometimes you have to cobble together the total picture yourself using all the different perspectives that have been made available to you. Thanks for this!