consultation T?

Distancing yourself from your T is not commonly considered a productive way to engage in therapy.

Your focus on a plan presumes that you have engaged enough in the process of therapy for your T is understand what the problem is.

And it reminds me of the zeitgeist at Big University here. Lots of energy gets spent on developing the "Strategic Plan." They bring in consultants. They assign committees. They have numerous meetings and vote several iterations of the Plan. But it's really just an excuse to avoid doing the work that is theoretically described in said plan.

I do appreciate your points of view around skepticism of therapy and therapists. I think it's important for clients to be empowered as part of their therapy and to be reminded that we are in the driver's seat, not our therapists. I'm not at all telling you not to continue repeating your point of view whenever you feel so inclined.

But I do think you should consider turning some of the skepticism towards yourself, your attitude, and your engagement of therapy. It might be a useful exercise for you.

Anne

I think s/he needs to understand it more. It is a big part of what therapy is. Also s/he can observe your expressions and body language. That might help him/her understand a lot of different things.

I do, I just do not post about it here.

I think the t asks misc questions in order to elicit something, is the term my T used. I have described how on PC all of a sudden someone will open up in our "group therapy" sessions, and T says that is a skill they try to teach young analysts. He's like, they should come here for training, we sound like we're pretty good at it! It's a team effort.

So, stopdog, you know I looooove my T, he's as cute as two beans! But you have never expressed any FEEEEELINGS towards any T. Given what Chopin recently said (in thread "Answer") about the effectiveness of treating therapy like a business r/s, what if you were to treat therapy as a different type of human r/s? My T and I pretty much "play house" (not "House"!), because my own house was cold and I was alone. The therapy room is warm and cozy and someone is there for me who loves me and we can play dolls and share feelings and if I feel bad he helps me, and if I feel good, that's okay too, although I don't think we've gotten all the way THERE yet, it's still kinda scary. My T says it is the r/s that heals.

The room is whatever YOU need to make of it. Again, as was said to Chopin, why are you giving T all your power? I was going to suggest you find ANOTHER T who is the sort of person you just LIKE - the person you would sit next to on a crowded bus and feel safest with, SOME sort of bizarre criteria! OR you need someone very NOT touchy-feely, someone very by-the-book, someone very analytical - I know people in my town who are like that, and they probably know others who are like them across the country, it HAS to be a club of some kind! Seriously, I met two here and it turned out one trained the other, I just thought it was the other way round. PM me with your city/state and i'll see if I can get a ref for your consult at least, if you like. We SO want this to work for our sister.

I don' believe the therapist has power over me. I believe the therapist has knowledge they are withholding. Or maybe I just hope they have some knowledge they are withholding. I would rather the therapist be a b***ch than incompetent. The therapist is not touchy feely and I often do not completely despise the therapist. Thanks for your offer

I still think your therapist has a general idea of how to help, which you could call a plan. I think s/he has to ask lots of questions that do not have a specific, immediate purpose because s/he needs to get to closely understand how you are when you are acting the way you normally act most of the time, not just when you are thinking about solving the specific problem you came to therapy for. I think you just aren't able to understand yet. That doesn't mean to try harder to understand logically because there is more to it than logic. Continuing to turn your skepticism on yourself and continuing to go along with the therapist's ideas seems like a good idea. I think you just didn't do enough of that yet.

I don't think a consult would be likely to help but I don't think it would hurt.

I find this statement interesting. What is your emotional reaction when you consider that the therapist is withholding something from you? Are you embarrassed that they know something that you don't? Do you feel ashamed you're not "getting it"? Do you feel hurt that someone is not giving you the help that you need?

I want to state right off the bat that I have never been in consultation with another therapist regarding my current therapy. I have, however, sought consultation in several other matters - none of which proved to be of any benefit whatsoever.

In my opinion, it might perhaps be more beneficial to discuss your questions with a professor of psychiatry/psychology. The answers might be more theoretical in nature, but one thing you could count on for sure - academics have absolutely no quandry at all about commenting on anything and everything.

Thus, I strongly suspect you would leave with something.

On a broader note, I guess I would wonder if there could be any answer that would satisfy your desire to know.

Seems to me that questions that start with "why" are often followed with "okay, but why?"

The potential to head down a rabbit hole could be something that followed from any sort of inquiry.

Don't know.

I do hope you will keep us posted when pursue this. It is a very interesting concept.

I feel angry, but I would rather her have it and not share the knowledge with me than her not have the knowledge at all.

Perhaps How does this meandering, no clear plan help instead of why?
I have gotten info from others at the university where I teach - brain scan stuff, neurobiology etc. and that has been useful in broader ways but not for the actual is what is going on here usual and the way it is supposed to go (no plan, both of us meandering around not knowing what is supposed to be happening, neither of us knowing what sort of stuff I should talk about that will help, repetitious questions etc.).

Why would you think this? Is it the way they all do it? If it is true, why does the therapist not tell me this and explain the general plan? I have asked. (I do not expect you to answer why the therapist does or does not do something - this is more rhetorical). Why does the therapist not tell me why she asks the same questions over and over despite my having given a precise and concise response the first time? I ask this directly, and she responds there is no reason.
Hopefully a consult will be able to help clarify this. This is a bad week to get other therapists to call back but I did cancel the next appointment so perhaps I can set something up during the time I do not see the current one.

Because it's the way therapy works in my understanding.

Yes I think so. Isn't that the impression you have from what you learn on PC and what you read?

I'm going to say some things about your questions even though you said you're being rhetorical. If you gave concise answers, it may not have been very helpful for your t to understand you. More open, communicative answers (longer answers) might be more useful to you and your therapist.

Your t might not answer your questions about why if you ask them too often and your t doesn't think logically understanding the answers to endless questions will help you. Your t might think these questions are leading down the rabbit hole a previous poster mentioned.

Maybe it will help you feel more comfortable. I don't think it's likely to help much, but I hope it does if you decide to spend the time on it.

I think that even though you're really intelligent, you tend to ignore emotions and feelings a lot more than most people ignore them. Maybe you are afraid of letting yourself pay attention to them if bad things that happened to you in the past hurt your feelings a lot. You might have forgotten about the things that happened and just unconsciously kept the habit of being afraid.

Anyway, since you don't seem to have thought about feelings as much as other people, you might be slower to understand feelings and to make inferences about feelings than other people who are as intelligent as you. So I wonder if it helps you when people explain feelings and emotions in simpler terms. People might assume you understand the feelings and emotions better than you do since most people as intelligent as you are understand them better.

I don't think the feelings and emotions you need to understand to "understand" therapy can be entirely "explained." That leads down a rabbit hole of endless questions. But maybe having a little more explanation will help you feel comfortable, even though it can't ultimately answer your questions. Maybe a consult t will give you a little more explanation, I don't know.

Don't know if this will help you or not, but I've had a tremendously difficult time admitting that I have feelings. The only one I would really acknowledge was anger. It did finally get through to me that even though I said I didn't have other feelings (scared/sad/bad/glad), it didn't mean that they weren't there. I was just ignoring them. And I was pretty darn good at it.

I have them, I just have no idea why they matter.

What does it mean for feelings to not matter? It doesn't make any sense. They are your primary experience. How could anything matter if that doesn't matter?

It's my understanding (and this is totally new to me so it's worth exactly what you're paying for it ) that since we're human, we have feelings. They exist and affect our lives, and that's why they matter. They're there and need to be acknowledged. Feelings drive a lot of my destructive behavior because many of my coping strategies are things I developed on my own as a child. They helped at the at the time, but cause me issues as an adult.

Here's a copy and paste straight from my T:

The better we are at labeling and communicating about feelings, typically, the better we are at coping with them.

Being “Healthy” means being able to feel something while at the same time being able to manage impulses (behavior) through use of reasoning (thinking).

I think I remember you said you get agitated after your sessions and often feel the need to punch things or hurt yourself? That could possibly fall under managing impulses.

I have never considered them to be my primary experience. They exist and I have come to believe I cannot eradicate them entirely, but they are not particularly useful to me.

It doesn't make sense to me that they aren't your primary experience. I think that's part of the definition of what feelings are. If you don't pay attention to your smaller, immediate feelings very often, you might not be very aware of them though.

Without feelings, who are you? Do you mean you never feel tenderness towards a baby, you don't feel anger at injustice, you don't feel sad at seeing suffering, you don't feel fear when faced with threat, you don't feel excited about an upcoming fun event, you don't feel relieved when you've gotten through a challenge, you don't feel in awe at the beauty of nature, you don't feel surprised when something new and different comes your way, you don't feel compassion to a person or animal suffering, you don't feel grateful for the good things in your life, you don't feel confused when things don't make sense, you don't feel alienated when you're all alone, you don't feel disappointed when your hopes are dashed, you don't feel disgusted when you encounter that which is disgusting, you don't feel frustrated when things don't go your way, you don't feel suspicious when a stranger knocks on the door, you don't feel proud when you've accomplished something new, you don't feel grief at loss, you don't feel satisfied after enjoying that nourishing meal, you don't feel enthusiastic about anything, you don't feel nervous when someone forgot to pick you up, you don't feel......????

So, explain to me - who would you be without emotions? A machine? Or dead?

But you do admit they exist. But you want to eradicate them. really??? Never the opportunity to feel love, bliss, joy? Never to be part of the human family and know sorrow, dread and pain? You want to leave your humanity behind? really?

Sky, you are awesome.

Not to speak for stopdog, but part of ME wants to answer this with a big YES.

I've been sitting here trying to figure out why. I think because it would eradicate any chance of me coming into contact with the vulnerable/fear/helpless feeling. And I so desperately don't want that feeling. EVER. I'd be willing to give up all of the good to not have any of that particular brand of bad.

That's too bad... it is making me think you probably had experience with some pretty awful feelings that make you want to avoid them, and not a lot of experience with good feelings that inspire you to look forward to them. I hope it gets better for you.

I understand. I do. When I first started therapy I asked my T why we needed to talk about emotions. I said I don't trust them and they hurt. I asked that question many times at the beginning of therapy.

Now I understand that life is not life without emotions. We go to therapy in order to learn to handle the painful emotions. It's tough and it's scary and it hurts like h*ll but in the end it's worth it.

I realized that by hiding from and denying the painful feelings i had, I was also preventing myself from accessing the positive, the good. I told T the other day that NOW I understand what people are saying when they say they FEEL joy at the first flowers of Springtime. I used to appreciate them intellectually but now, finally, I FEEL a joyous emotion. It's exhilarating.

So, yes, I get it. But if you want to live a life that is full and meaningful you probably need to get dirty and mix it up with those very difficult feelings. I'm facing them now and it is hard but I see myself moving towards a more satisfying life. Hiding away is constrictive and deadly. I know. I do know.

My God, you sound exactly like my husband, even your syntax and word choices. Are you sure you aren't my H in disguise?

It's a compliment. I love my H.

Haha. I actually almost wrote in your thread that maybe I was your husband and just did not know it.