I am sorry this has been your experience. It is not mine. Not to say that I don't spend a huge amount of time still focused on my therapy and my T. I do. What I mean to say, is that over the 3.5 yrs, there have been changes inside me. My focus on therapy and my T is less than it was, slightly less in time, significantly less in intensity.
As ArtleyWilkins stated, there are others that have felt what you have felt; you are not alone in your experience.
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Originally Posted by cbreeze22
I get it. I like my therapist yet feel the same way. I don't have issues with dependency with humans or anything else, yet here I am almost unable to function some weeks because seven days feel impossibly long. Sometimes there's a crack in her facade and it's clear that it's all an emotional sham, purely business, and largely scripted. I remember I'm being used to build someone's career, used to make her feel like a success, used to fill a slot, and needy and empty enough to pay for the experience. The few things in my life that are better I don't even want to tell her about, probably out of some sick fear that it'll mean I'm well enough to not see her anymore.
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I think I see it as a both, yes it is a treatment (medical??) and because of that there are some actions a therapist does to facilitate that treatment the way they feel would be best. As a treatment, it has a business element - at minimum they are providing us a time slot to talk to someone that in best situations, you don't see any other time - they know only the you that you present to them. Same is true of us, we know only the them they present to us. I believe that how authentic it is will vary depending on the T and the relationship. There have been a few cracks in my image of my T; is that a crack in a facade that she is trying to maintain or a crack in the image I created of her in my mind? I tend to lean more on the crack in the image and possibly a stumble in her carrying out the job duties of a therapist. For example, if she displays a momentary response of anger about something; is that a crack in the facade or a stumble in the job duties I am paying for - that the time is to be about me and how whatever I'm dealing with impacts me and my life? (oh, I do believe in not owning these stumbles and making it be about the client is one of the biggest mistakes a therapist can make. For me, this exasperates the facade element of therapy and erodes all trust in the relationship.)
I believe that my T is genuine in wanting to keep my time to be about me. I believe she works hard at monitoring and managing her responses to what I say such that we are able to keep open whatever items I bring to session and provides what things she thinks will help improve my mental health and my life to the best of her ability. I know that not all T's are like that. So, there's that element as well in other people's experiences that impact that facade nature of therapy. It can very much feel like a facade, even for me. I think it takes faith, trust, and belief in a therapist in order to accept that an intervention is not a therapist being fake but a set of behaviors, a procedure, with a desired outcome of healing/helping. I guess, right now I'm seeing the concept of intervention/facade/performance element of therapy no different than taking an antibiotic for something only to find that whatever you have is fungal or resistant to that antibiotic. We go, we show up, with their help we do a procedure called therapy... the outcome? Well, did we have a skilled enough provider to match our symptoms to the right set of procedure steps? Lots of times, that's hard to know when changing one's neuropathways can be a slow process and so many outside factors are involved.
I believe her when she has acknowledged caring about me, loving me, and liking me. Mind you, when I am in a ruptured state with my T, I tend to have much less belief in our relationship, less trust in her authenticity, and see much more of this as black/white business.