Quote:
Originally Posted by Trace14
I think there's some reason Therapists don't console during session we just have to find out. I think when we do it will give us a better understanding of their perspective too.
|
Sorry you felt bad about crying. Her silence might have led you to feel things in connection to the fact you made yourself vulnerable.
You asked-why therapists do this-
Maybe not in your case here, I'm not sure, but I think therapists are silent when they are trying to exercise holding or containment. If that's what she was doing, she might have not been good at it or messed it up, or maybe used that intervention at the wrong time. Psychodynamic therapies use this a lot.
When using containment, a therapist serves to absorb your emotions, which often helps with self-regulation and increases your capacity to withstand emotions/ego strength.
These are just excerpts from random sites, but the concept is everywhere and often consistent.
Quote:
The importance of “containment” as a means of providing a sense of safety for the client to explore feelings that may otherwise be experienced as overwhelming and confusing cannot be under-estimated. Containment is often about “holding” the alarm, confusion and pain of unfamiliar or overwhelming feelings.
Containment may be described as the capacity of one person to stay with and psychologically and emotionally hold the distress of another person in such a way as to allow it to be coped with. In the words of Patrick Casement in his chapter on key ‘dynamics of containment’ “… what is needed is a form of holding, such as a mother gives to her distressed child. There are various ways in which one adult can offer to another this holding (or containment).
some reflections on containment
|
The history of this concept goes way back; here it explains about not reacting:
Quote:
|
Containment is similar and yet fundamentally different to holding. Bion's theory of containing originates from the idea that the infant projects into its mother feelings that are upsetting, fearsome, painful or in some other fashion, intolerable. The mother in turn feels the emotion herself, and is able not to react to it, but instead to contain it and give the child back the feeling in an adapted and contained form to the infant, so the child can repossess it and reintegrate the emotion as its own.
|
Quote:
Containment and holding are inextricably linked as in order to contain difficult emotions and then return them to the client in a manageable fashion, the feelings must be “held” by the therapist – s/he holds the pain, anguish, confusion and demonstrates to the client that these feelings are in fact tolerable after all. Containment may be described as the ability of an individual to “stay with” the suffering of another being, whilst psychologically and emotionally holding the anguish in a way that allows the emotion to be survived by the bearer.
https://www.ukessays.com/essays/psyc...-winnicott.php
|