Quote:
Originally Posted by Quietmind 2
Not criticising you, Sarah as I've asked my current therapist a lot if she can relate to my past and current circumstances and the painful experiences in my life.
I firmly believe folks can sense incongruence in therapists and my T does agree folks can sense inauthenticity.
There's also nothing wrong in wanting a therapist with common shared values.
I'm using examples here on how my therapist shows me her shared values even though we're very different socio-economically and in other significant ways.
As she lives in a really nice house with her parents and siblings and sometimes goes to nice fancy restaurants.
As well as certain demographic features as she's got a PhD, and more opportunities I never got, and I'm not university educated.
She doesn't have to personally have experienced what I have and what other clients have, in order to be able to put herself in my shoes. She can empathise and respond with compassion (and not pity, folks can sense it).
She can still relate in important ways because she knows a wide range of people in her professional and personal life. Which of course I don't know details about, due to confidentiality, but she has said stuff on which shows me she understands.
I'm sure there are therapists who only know other middle class people etc.
My therapist has a sliding scale where those who can easily afford more, pay more. And those in financial hardships pay less.
I'm currently mostly unable to work yet don't qualify for even time limited partial state assistance with living expenses. Even as my life savings are almost gone and I've been malnourished as a result. Which of course is depressing and I get suicidal often.
So I'm seeing my therapist for free, temporarily.
Another example, my therapist is Christian and my society in general is full of conservative Christians with certain values which are very bigoted.
Disclaimer: Please know I don't hate Christians, and I'm NOT looking to start a debate and am only using my lived experience as someone with a ton of emotional scars due to experiencing a ton of direct and indirect harm from a particular kind of Christian.
So, I have had justified fears I'll be referred to "conversion therapy" or be judged for my sexual orientation and gender identity. And of course I projected onto my T. Which is probably normal.
My T proved to be safe, understanding my fears and deep pain, and I've been slowly working on my religious abuse.
Some questions. You don't have to answer these. [emoji4]
Maybe that therapist of yours gives therapy at a church in order to help the less fortunate?
Maybe she donates money to charities?
Maybe in her restaurant business, she pays workers a good wage (some places have no minimum wage or it isn't enough to live on) simply because she wants to, instead of accumulating even more money as she knows she's well off?
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I had similar thoughts as in the last paragraph.
When we eat in the restaurant and pay for our meals we help to keep restaurants open (especially during covid when so many lost their business), when we leave generous tip we help restaurant staff. Since she used to work in a restaurant business, she knows that for restaurants to survive people have to eat there! When restaurants get closed all these people lost jobs and it’s not a desirable outcome for staff
When we had a complete lock down and all restaurants were closed, we had a couple open for limited carry out, most didn’t even do that.
I used to go once a week to pick a meal from this one catering venue. During lock down they tried to keep their business open by selling cooked meals on the weekends.
One could assume that I did that because:
I am rich and spoiled and want others to cook my food for me, I am lazy and .don’t want to cook, I have something wrong with my values, I betray my faith because I spend money on picking up food, I don’t understand how other people don’t have what I have, I am not authentic etc
But in reality if I and others didn’t do it, the place would lose their business and people. lost their jobs and they did not. Many people continued ordering food from restaurants during lock down because they didn’t want people to lose their jobs. We had one restaurant closed after 35 years in business because of covid.
I think when we assign motives to other peoples’ actions, we speak from the place of our own bias/stereotype and project our own perceptions of things on other people without really knowing or understanding what’s going on. We all do it at times. But it typically doesn’t do us any good.