Quote:
Originally Posted by ruh roh
This is really helpful. Thank you. I wonder if most therapists I've seen have understood it this way, as it seemed they were mostly wanting to keep their lives private than do anything therapeutic by withholding personal information.
I would like to know more about my therapist to gauge how her thinking is about the world and life. (Example: Her own worldview might inform me of how she interprets certain things I bring up that I can't share elsewhere--would she see them as pathological, spiritual, or something else?) As it is, she shares very little and it comes across as hiding. So, your thoughts are interesting to me.
The therapist I saw before this one withheld key things about herself that, had I fully understood, would have helped me decide to look elsewhere. Instead, she moved, and when she moved, she made things public about her practice that she had not before--such as she saw it as a ministry. This was troubling to me and, in hindsight, explained a lot of our disconnect, as we were coming at things from very different worldviews. She could not separate her religious passion from the way she practiced and saw my issues, and yet she never disclosed that to me.
|
It's interesting to me that your therapist withheld key things about herself. I would personally hate that! Although I am not interested in knowing personal, intimate information about my therapist's life (ie. is she married, how many, if any, children does she have, where does she live, what does she do on her down time etc.), I am very interested in her world view, thoughts on illness and death, spiritual thoughts etc. Every question that I've asked, she's answered and she is entirely open to hearing my views. It leads to some lively and interesting conversations. We don't always agree, but I respect her view and she respects mine.
I do think that the "old" psychoanalytic therapy and many therapist's practicing psychotherapy that encourages/fosters attachment for "reparenting" purposes, do attempt to accelerate the transference process. I don't see that in my own therapy. She's up front, answers the questions I have and provides a supportive environment to explore my issues. She even points out her own mistakes or failure to "know what the right answer is"--in other words, she's not looking to be put on a pedestal.
The thing I like about her being non-intrusive with her own issues is that I am totally free to focus on my issues. I'm not trying to take care of her or worry about how what I talk about will impact her because of this issue or that issue that is going on in her life. I have no illusions that my therapy comes even close to "real life" interactions. It's a therapeutic situation, but I do know that I will interact with her in a similar fashion to how I interact in a real life situation and therapy gives me the space to examine the way I interact--the pitfalls and the successes. It gives me the change to decide that if I don't like how things are turning out, I can make changes and adjustments. And since my therapist is willing to own her part in the interaction (something I don't see much in real life), it lets me know what I need to own. This is ONLY how my therapy works and I realize that everyone doesn't experience this. I just love it that it works this way in my situation.