Quote:
Originally Posted by starfishing
Some of this is very individual, some is modality dependent. In my case it's been helpful to talk about my feelings about my therapist and our relationship because a) it helps my therapist make sense of my reactions to the things he says, and b) the way I relate and react to my therapist gives useful insight into some patterns in how I relate to people in the rest of my life. But that's also a big part of how my therapist works, and he's encouraged me to talk about how I feel about therapy and about him. I don't know how it would or wouldn't be helpful with a therapist who works differently.
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This is basically how it works for me too. Additionally, I have found that specific feelings or fantasies that come up are useful in therapy because they point a gigantic arrow at places where I didn't get what I needed in my emotional development. I didn't exactly understand that part of my history until these feelings started surfacing in therapy. Before that, I thought that I was a bad child and my parents had done the best they could. So understanding those feelings toward my therapist was key to opening up a bunch of things in my life that I needed to talk about, understand, and grieve.