I've read some of Smith's blogs. I agree with him on some things, but I think the whole concept how he portrays it is very idealized/romantacized. One blog entry he talks about the "magic of therapy".
Some of what he writes, like the "magic" feels creepy sometimes. I would rather do the blank slate kind but I don't know how/where it ends and am stuck with how bad i feel about myself. After 7 years. Like I was stripped down to my core, all raw and naked and vulnerable and weak.
So for me, I didn't go inward. I exposed myself. I went bare. Now I'm cold, and alone, left with myself that was essentially made my someone else. I have to take that and transform it but need Ts help. Not sure how to get his help at this point.
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Originally Posted by Calilady
I went on Jeffrey Smith's site (is that his name) and I read so many stories for active therapy clients who have been in pain for yearssssssss. Yearssssss. "I've been going to my therapist for 8 years and it's so painful," doesn't sound like healing to me.
The posts are by far all the same, although there are few people who are on the precipice of resolving whatever they have going on.
Personally, I kinda don't get it.
My case is that I go to strip clubs because I'm a feminine gay woman and I have trouble w/accepting my sexuality and looking at women in real life. So, I get dances from a stripper that allows me physical contact and slowly, come out of my shell. I, however, made the mistake of getting attached to this dancer. I understood that the relationship was over when I stopped paying, but I still couldn't help feel something more for someone I didn't even know. When I told my regular therapist this, she said, "Well, lets work on detaching, not attaching, because this isn't something that is realistic. It's fantasy while allowing you to get in touch with your sexuality." And so on...
So with the stripper, I'm supposed to detach. It's a transaction and I shouldn't be tied to it emotionally as nothing can come of it and I don't even really KNOW this person.
Yet, when I told my T about my attachment to her, she encouraged it. Why? Nothing can come of it. Naturally, I want more and she can't offer it to me, even if she wanted to. Our relationship ends when the transaction is over. There's a time limit, just like with the stripper.
So one relationship is discouraged and the other is encouraged?
All it caused me was pain and that's on top of the fact that she didn't get it. I recently caught her in a lie when she said she was going out of town that same night because of a death in the family and wouldn't be in town for my session the next morning, and there she was, in town the next morning as I pulled out of a gas station. I can't begin to tell you how betrayed I felt. But how little did she feel? I looked forward to my appointments, while I was nothing but an appointment to reschedule so she could have a 3 day weekend.
That therapist who wrote that "Attached to your therapist" book does say that when the client goes inward, it's probably a lost cause because the "inner child has gone underground." That's the only time he discourages detachment...but for the life of me, I haven't found many good stories in comparison to the bad ones.
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