What the Heck is Psychotherapy?

Therapy isn't like going to the doctor for a quick fix. You are not going to get some great advice or be prescribed a magic pill that makes you feel all better. It just doesn't work like that.

It is a place where you can examine things in your life more fully, and through this process, gain more control over problems that exist currently in your life, or that will come up in the future. Ultimately the hope is that therapy will impact your life in such a way that is meaningful to you - which is the "cure" of psychotherapy.

Therapy is called the "Talking Cure;" a name that can be a bit misleading. It is a process of self-discovery, self-exploration, self-challenge and personal growth. A lot of therapy isn't about talking, its about feeling, thinking, and doing -- trying new things out, learning new ways of living and making different choices.

You work with a therapist to learn new skills and ways of being, then apply them to your life. You may come to a therapist because you are having trouble in your life, maybe something just doesn't seem right, or maybe things are really out of control.

Either way, it is a therapist's job to work with you to explore and learn more about what is happening that makes you uncomfortable today, help you to solve your own problems, and learn to grow as an individual, couple or family. What you can expect from therapy is personal growth and improvement in areas of life that are unsatisfying to you.

Personal growth is the end result. The growing process is what is so painful.

During therapy you will grow. You will learn new ways of looking at things. You will learn new ways of thinking about things. You will learn how you typically look at the world, why that is and alternative ways of viewing things. You will learn how to cope with life difficulties more effectively. You will learn ways of responding and acting that work better for you, or how not to allow other people's viewpoints undermine your views.

Therapy is a tough thing to do. A therapist asks you to explore very personal aspects of yourself that are often painful. They are known for encouraging clients to "sit with their feelings" - this is a basic therapeutic strategy used to help clients learn more about themselves by learning to listen to themselves more.

Sitting in sadness, anger, anxiety, fear, or despair isn't a fun thing to do. After doing this in therapy, it is common for a client to feel vulnerable and want some distance from the therapist.

This is natural and self-protective. It is a healthy and natural response to experiencing pain. This doesn't mean it is time to leave therapy; in fact, just the opposite. It means you are doing some of the major work of therapy and are in the middle stage of your treatment.

http://www.therapist4me.com

[Suratji]

I love this. Thanks

[PTSDlovemycats]

Thanks Squiggle!

[Can't Stop Crying]

"Sitting in sadness, anger, anxiety, fear, or despair isn't a fun thing to do. After doing this in therapy, it is common for a client to feel vulnerable and want some distance from the therapist."

that is so where I am at right now!

Originally Posted by Can't Stop Crying

"Sitting in sadness, anger, anxiety, fear, or despair isn't a fun thing to do. After doing this in therapy, it is common for a client to feel vulnerable and want some distance from the therapist."

that is so where I am at right now!

Me, too! I hate it with a passion. But after reading this, I understand better that it is a normal and necessary part of the healing process. It does make me feel like I wasted a session. I mean, I am paying her to let me just sit in her office? Can't I just accomplish that at home?

Maybe we can, but there is something powerful about allowing your therapist sit with you.

[SpiritRunner]

Originally Posted by Squiggle328

Me, too! I hate it with a passion. But after reading this, I understand better that it is a normal and necessary part of the healing process. It does make me feel like I wasted a session. I mean, I am paying her to let me just sit in her office? Can't I just accomplish that at home?

Maybe we can, but there is something powerful about allowing your therapist sit with you.

yes there is, and you are not sitting alone, but with someone who sees and respects the pain in a way others cannot do, are not trained to do.

[ECHOES]

I don't sit with my feelings in therapy.
I do this outside of therapy, and I do feel alone. I am alone. And this aloneness is awful but also reminds me that it is true. That there is no one who can do anything about it but me. No hugs, or nurturing, or anything else can change or relieve enough. There is no rescue. There is only accepting that this is how it is.

[Liam Grey]

Thank you for posting this good read.

[Protoform]

Originally Posted by Squiggle328

Sitting in sadness, anger, anxiety, fear, or despair isn't a fun thing to do. After doing this in therapy, it is common for a client to feel vulnerable and want some distance from the therapist.

Does that include the pain experienced as a result of unrequited romantic feelings toward the therapist (transference) or is that something else?

[SpiritRunner]

Originally Posted by ECHOES

I don't sit with my feelings in therapy.
I do this outside of therapy, and I do feel alone. I am alone. And this aloneness is awful but also reminds me that it is true. That there is no one who can do anything about it but me. No hugs, or nurturing, or anything else can change or relieve enough. There is no rescue. There is only accepting that this is how it is.

I have often felt this aloneness and you are right, it is true and it is awful. It breaks my heart......I want to learn to be with my feelings in therapy more because at least I can have the comfort of someone else sitting with me then while my heart is breaking.
It's breaking now.....and I don't want to sit alone with it!

[Protoform]

I wish someone had answered my question.

[Waitfornot]

Protoform I wish someone would also as I was awaiting the answer. Sorry I can't give one.

[ECHOES]

Originally Posted by Can't Stop Crying
"Sitting in sadness, anger, anxiety, fear, or despair isn't a fun thing to do. After doing this in therapy, it is common for a client to feel vulnerable and want some distance from the therapist."

Originally Posted by Protoform

Does that include the pain experienced as a result of unrequited romantic feelings toward the therapist (transference) or is that something else?

Yes, that too. It is something to work through with your therapist, providing you have a therapist who recognizes and works with transference. It can't be worked through by avoiding it though.

[pachyderm]

Psychotherapy is not defined. Certainly not well-defined. That is why it "works" sometimes and not at other times. Because what is going on in therapy differs from therapist to therapist, and mostly people do not pay enough attention to the differences to know why sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. I claim that the differences are knowable, but that few pay enough attention to know. Mostly (as I see it), sometimes a T knows how to listen, and sometimes not. Listening to what the other person is saying, and not what he or she "should" be saying. Listening and being willing to accept the painful, and not wanting to shut it off.

I am glad that this thread came back up. It has some very good information about psychotherapy!

[sittingatwatersedge]

maybe you could say that psychotherapy is

when a person can relate the most horrible incidents in their life without batting an eye, with no emotion whatsoever
and through the therapeutic process comes to be in touch with those feelings, and relives the horrors, with all their accompanying emotions,
so that on some future day, the same person can acknowledge the same horrible incidents in their life without batting an eye.

T said this is an unjust capsulization; the person at the end of the process doesn't suffer from suppressed pain, doesn't have to expend energy keeping the lid on suppressed emotions.
That's true.

[pachyderm]

Originally Posted by sittingatwatersedge

maybe you could say that psychotherapy is

when a person can relate the most horrible incidents in their life without batting an eye, with no emotion whatsoever
and through the therapeutic process comes to be in touch with those feelings, and relives the horrors, with all their accompanying emotions,
so that on some future day, the same person can acknowledge the same horrible incidents in their life without batting an eye.

But what is it that the therapist does that makes it possible for the client to do this?

[sittingatwatersedge]

among many other things,
** creates a safe space where anger can be expressed, questions can be asked, things can be said out loud that can't be said anywhere else (remember the thing about we don't tell the T things so T will know what happened, we say things so that we may hear ourselves speaking the truth about our own lives);
** records the incidents, the insights, the dots, as it were, to show later how they connect. Which the individual may miss, or may forget, or gloss over, or even deny.
** Keeps things on track; doesn't allow getting stuck.
** in some therapies, helps the person to self-acceptance by modeling a non-judgmental reception of the facts (etc etc)
** by challenging the comfort zone, as another PC person admirably put it;
** In some therapies (such as trauma), provides a stable, trustworthy relationship to help the person re-learn a worldview in which there is such a thing as trustworthiness and stability. I;ve heard it said that damage done in relationship has to be healed in relationship.

[sunrise]

I do sit with my feelings in therapy. It has been my lifelong habit to be a "good" coper and that meant pushing things away that were uncomfortable, or not even recognizing them, and getting on with life and being functional. In therapy, my T has encouraged me to let those feelings come, to "sit" with them there, in his presence. His encouragement helps and also his validation that it is not childish or non-functional or self-indulgent to let the feelings come. Outside of therapy, I have felt some of these things but can tend to push them away for the sake of my functionality, or I have felt them (multiple times) and yet those wounded places haven't healed. In therapy, I feel and sit with my feelings in relation to another human being. Yes, he encourages me, makes a safe place, etc., but beyond that, feeling in relation to someone else is somehow healing. I don't quite understand it, but it is. So I think his sitting there while I do this is pretty important, even if he doesn't say much.

Originally Posted by pachyderm

what is going on in therapy differs from therapist to therapist

Yes, I very much agree. And also, it differs from client to client, even with the same therapist. So ideally, that specific therapist and that specific client co-create the individual therapy that enfolds (and hopefully heals). When the therapist is too inflexible and treats all clients the same (not being a good listener would be included in this), then his/her work is not as successful. There is a similar role for the client--when he/she has rigid expectations of the therapist and can't enact some degree of letting go, trusting the process, etc., then that give and take dynamic between the two doesn't develop and this impedes creation of healing work. At least for me, it's very much a collaboration.

[laceylu]

does sitting with your feelings mean that the T brings out a bad feeling and then just sit there and watch you deal with the pain? I am not sure what this means.

[pachyderm]

Originally Posted by laceylu

does sitting with your feelings mean that the T brings out a bad feeling and then just sit there and watch you deal with the pain? I am not sure what this means.

I think it means that you sit with the feeling, as much as you can tolerate to do so, and try to investigate what it is all about. A skilled T would try to help you with this process.

Originally Posted by sittingatwatersedge

** by challenging the comfort zone, as another PC person admirably put it

What does "challenging the comfort zone" mean?

Originally Posted by Squiggle328

What does "challenging the comfort zone" mean?

A good therapist will not let us continue with old thoughts and behaviors we are "comfortable" with if they are not in our best interests. For instance, I am the queen of repression. It is what I do easily and without thought, but my t challenges me each and every time I do this so that now I have gotten to where I use repression as a coping skills less and less often.

They would not be helping us if they let us continue old patterns that really aren't working for us, even if we "like" them.

[sittingatwatersedge]

Originally Posted by Squiggle328

What does "challenging the comfort zone" mean?

I can only give an example from my own experience. I have come to a point in therapy where I can say, this is a core belief of mine (an unhealthy one), whereas before I could not even name it without shuddering and tears

so now after all this time, I can say it.... and now T wants to talk about where it comes from, and I find huge resentment building over being asked to talk about all that. This is fear; the subject is not safe.