Quote:
Originally Posted by feileacan
I've struggled with that a lot and I have accused my T countless time about not caring about how I leave. But recently I understood that this is precisely what therapy is about. No one will change unless they are forced and this is precisely a situation that forces for change because otherwise things are very unpleasant. It forces you to find ways to regulate yourself better, to cope better, to switch better. The T doesn't have any magic means to make you suddenly do those things better. He can only help to create situations where you are forced to learn those things for your own good. This is how change happens and I assume that you are in therapy because you want to change. Therapy isn't supposed to be pleasant, I believe the best work occurs at the very boundary of being barely tolerable. I have learned it from my own experience.
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In a way what I bolded may be true and in a way not.
But it's not at all obvious to me that the only way I will "change" is if I am forced. In things that are unconscious, well, maybe. Since I don't have conscious access to those things I can't say for sure.
I don't see why the T can't explain some of that up-front. Say that it's going to be a role-playing exercise to see what comes up. The feelings, etc., of the client will be real enough. Mine certainly were. The ways it got messy was when it got real for the T, too. Their own issues, their own drama, maybe.
The last T rejected and abandoned me. Triggering, eventually, the memory of that kind of emotional experience from childhood. Complete devastation of any sense of having value. Complete rejectabilty by all human beings. It's been horrible. Even posting on these forums is sometimes a push, expecting to be rejected again. I'm doing it anyway. Maybe I will grow a psychological skin and/or toughen up.
Still think I could/should have been warned. "Trained" even in some way. I don't think they've found that throwing people into water so they will "sink or swim" is the best way to learn to swim. Some people sink. Or stay swamped for years.
That needs to be on the informed consent disclosure. At the very least.