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Originally Posted by Etcetera1
Anyway, what I liked the most in your post was the part about the third option. I feel like my giving myself time to process and self-reflect on my own about the experience unhindered by a therapist that I can't get enough mutual attunement with, that was a third way for me too. It may take a while to get to the end of that third road, but it's worth it, where you don't have to go by theoretical ideas from therapy about building safety and trust, but instead you get to figure out yourself and listen to your actual instincts and emotions about it. That kind of thing has meant a lot to me.
I have a question too: where you mention you require your T to be vulnerable with you. So there are therapists that use their own very different framework from what's usually a guideline (about the therapist not disclosing too much, not enmeshing themselves)? So like there are therapists that are willing to make themselves vulnerable like that? I'm just asking because I'd like to hear more on this in general
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I love that you are finding your own third way. And yes, what you said about figuring out yourself and listening to your actual instincts and emotions...that is such powerful stuff. It's coming to trust ourselves, in a way, which is even more important that coming to trust our therapists.
As to your question...yes, there are therapists who will allow themselves to be vulnerable (still with boundaries, of course, just in a different place than the more traditional approach). Those with a feminist or multicultural theoretical orientation tend to self-disclose more, allow themselves to be known more, and are more open about their vulnerabilities in order to lessen the power differential (not that it is ever gone entirely). I would not say me and my T are "enmeshed" at all, but he shows up human in the room and I would call our relationship more "real" than I've had with any other therapist. For example, when I ask him how he is doing, he will be honest and tell me. And I know a lot about him, including political beliefs and his thoughts about religion (because in feminist therapy, the belief is that the personal is political and our identities and worldviews always matter).