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Old Oct 23, 2018, 02:41 PM
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SalingerEsme SalingerEsme is offline
Grand Poohbah
 
Member Since: Jul 2017
Location: Neverland
Posts: 1,806
I vacillate on this . Sometimes we will go a long while in an intense rapport, and then something will happen in which I feel put in my place almost as just another replaceable client. After that, empathy will feel fake and manufactured.

My T and I have wrangled the whole "suspension of disbelief to death", and the idea that therapy is "as if" it is real, not real. When it works, therapy creates real change in the client's real life though and it also promotes professional growth in the therapist's professional life.

I don't think there is much more to hope for than this. The client has to learn to care about real life and the therapist must have.find a true calling for the work for the relationship to fully blossom. That takes a while in some cases( like mine).

There are times therapy feels effortful, fake, and artificial; there are times therapy feels effortless like love , I think in some cases for both people. It hurts when those moments are deep almost more than when it seem fake, bc we pay attention to both the awe of the true connection and fully experience the anguish of its vanishing back into an office space with a doctor and a patient or some such configuration .

Therapy is a very brave undertaking when the therapist is growing professionally and the client is growing personally, and sometimes what is fake is that it is all under control . Overall, it is a relationship that simply can never be a real life one, but it isn't always fake either. (?).
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