[mixedup_emotions]

Do you have set goals in therapy? Or even general goals in therapy?

My T and I talked about a few things yesterday - some good things, some struggles. Due to my financial situation, we are going to start bartering so that I won't need to pay for therapy while I'm in this predicament. On one hand, I'm thrilled because that's a huge weight off my shoulders - financially and emotionally. On the other hand, it adds a whole host of other concerns and pressures....

One of the concerns I posted about earlier - with the idea of T helping me out as far as reducing fees - was that I would feel pressured into working harder in therapy so as not to waste his time...time that he could be using with someone else and getting paid for it.

Although I didn't mention that concern to him (I named a few but told him I would send him the list I came up with), he did say that maybe it would be a good time to review my goals for therapy and to come up with a list.

If I take my emotional self out of it, I think I could come up with a list....but my fears about all the things I need to address gets in the way, and I FREEZE. Pen will NOT hit the paper. Fingers will NOT hit the keyboard. *sigh*

So, I was wondering if you could share some of your therapy goals to help ease me into this.....



I know that trauma processing is something I need to explore....but I avoid it like the plague. I'm not quite sure what my goals would be as far as trauma work goes because I don't allow myself to 'go there'. *sigh*

[LadyShadow]

Well the idea of goal setting was foreign to me. I could never figure out what I needed to do or what goals to set because there was SO MUCH I was unhappy with. So, I would just give up and shut down. Do you experience this?

My advice (and how I got through it) was small goals that addressed what I WANTED not what other people or my parents, friends whatever thought were good.

Here they were:

Boyfriend (I needed one I was too lonely and lost)
Job (needed some stability and money)
Hot Body (this weight issue from these meds were making me miserable)

Those were my basic goals. I attacked them all differently. Went on several dating sites and put myself out there more for the boyfriend part, went back to a business school for 9 months (short term cause who am I kidding I hate school) to get a job, and the Hot body part, well Im cheating (Im not really working on that)

So I have two out of three now, two years later after setting those small goals and I feel so much better.

Thats they key. Set WHAT YOU WANT. Not what your therapist might like or approve of. My therapist was kind of worried that I wanted a boyfriend as a part of my goal setting because he said I needed to work on myself first. This is true, you do need to work on yourself and love yourself before you can love someone else. I just work differently. I need someone to help me see the beauty in myself because I will never see it on my own.

Well I hoped that helped. Didnt mean to ramble, but goal setting is a great idea.

Good luck to you and you can friend me and PM me anytime if you want to talk

[unaluna]

I set goals, about every year, and maybe revise in 6 months. it's a general goal, a way of looking at life, or a way of being. right now, it's that I AM losing weight, but boy it took a few years to get here. it took a year of having a goal of just taking better care of myself, nutrition wise, first. other ways, too - nothing else was going to interfere with my feeling good, so it's like, now that I am losing weight, I know how to handle having an execpected slice of birthday cake. look at me, i'm perfectly clam!

[stopdog]

My bigger goal is to stop feeling fear or anxious when I know in reality there is nothing going on. I am fine and I know it, but feel dread anyway.
The short term goal is to leave an appointment and not go home and smash myself for awhile to end the frustration over the pointlessness of the appointment.

I just started with a new T and next Thursday we are going to talk about goals...

Top of my list is that my self esteem/self worth is not based on how my H does or does not treat me... (can you say codependent?)

[scorpiosis37]

My T and I have never sat down and made a list of goals. I'm super type A and I have a ton of goals related to work, so I think the last thing I need is another "list." However, reflecting on the topics we discuss in therapy, I could probably extrapolate what I'm working on:

1. Overcoming a somewhat distorted body image. I'm a size 4 or 6, so I know logically that I'm not overweight; My T keeps telling me that I'm "small." Yet, I still FEEL big much of the time. Growing up, I was considered bigger than my younger sister, so I just have it ingrained in me that I'm "big." Especially now that I'm dating someone who is thinner than I am, I feel even bigger. So T is working with me on seeing myself as I actually AM.

2. Processing my childhood; reflecting on the way never having a mom has affected me and the ways I can go about accepting and/or fulfilling the unmet needs that I still have.

3. Showing more affect. I'm fairly open and have an easy time TELLING the people in my life what I think, how I feel, what my childhood was like, and so forth. However, the WAY that I tell them seems a little disconnected; I don't really show affect when I talk about how I feel. So I'm working on showing my emotions more.

4. Being willing to stand up for myself even it means having to engage in confrontation. I've always hated confrontation, so I've always tried to avoid it. However, this means that I've often done myself a disservice. So, now, I'm working (successfully) on politely but affirmatively standing my ground. And it's working!

5. Asking for what I want or need. I absolutely HATE imposing on others, so I would rather do everything for myself or go without. However, that means I'm not allowing the people in my life to give back to me the way I give to them. And it actually bothers them! They WANT to be given the opportunity to help and to do nice things for me. So, I'm learning how to ask and how to receive.

[lostmyway21]

I never sat down and made a list of goals but we have a lot of goals and talk about them evey session. We talk about daily goals, weekly goals and long term goals. Before the end of session he reinterates what my goals are until the following session.

Some are as simple as reaching out and making contact with family and friends when I'm isolating. One this week was going down and taking my fdny exam before it closed. Long term goal is to save up enough money to get an apt. Another long term goal was to finish school and get my EMT license, which I accomplished. Another constant goal is stability and containing my impulses to text and email him all day long.

We have A LOT of goals. Long term and short. It keeps me making progress.

[sweepy62]

As of right now my goals are in limbo i am going through a rough emotional rollercoaster but i am sure i have goals i just dont know if they are doable

[autotelica]

We set goals at the very beginning. The ones I came up were vague and not very realistic. ("I want to be normal!") So we went with the list that my therapist came up with.

1. Make at least two friends.
2. Feel more connected to emotions. (no more "robot" feeling)
3. Be more assertive.
4. Stop having suidal thoughts/thoughts about running away.
5. Improve my self-esteem

This was four years ago. I have made significant progress on the bottom three. I still feel quite detached, but I've come to accept it as something I'm at least not doing to myself intentionally. The last has been a bust. If anything, I'm more withdrawn and hopeless about it than I was before therapy.

I feel a little embarrassed that I haven't done better at tackling it, especially since my therapist always says she knows one day I will. But since I have made improvements on the other fronts, I don't feel TOO bad.

[CantExplain]

I am already far too goal-directed and my T is teaching to be more spontaneous.

[Miswimmy1]

I am absolutely spontaneous and bouncy (for lack of better words). It's one of my best features and one of my worst flaws lol. Anyhoo... My t and I have never sat down and laid out goals. When I met her, I was almost nonliving. OCD, ADHD, depression were out of control! So my goal was to just not be in such a bad place. The next thing we knew was that I had to get back to school. So we worked on that for a while. Now im in school. So we kind of take it as they come. We focus on needs as they arrive.

[lostmyway21]

Oh here was my goals I'm supposed to accomplish for my next session on Monday:

Go back on meds.
Email him and let him know how job meeting went today.
Be happy. (lol)
Limit texts this weekend!!!... and save my thoughts for our two daily emails.

See pretty simple stuff to keep me in track. He threw the happy one in there because I've been horribly depressed.

I think I may be too much of a people-pleaser for goals to be really meaningful... I could easily see myself pretending to have met goals of improving my sleeping habits or being more open to my H or feeling less depressed, just to make T pleased with me. These are my own thoughts, we have never discussed goals as such. We have identified some areas to work on, but not set goals for them.

[Perna]

Here's a good page about a therapist's "goals" for healing attachment in children:

http://attachmentandtraumaspecialist...services/goals

I don't know how your therapy works; how concrete your goals can be (and I like concrete goals if I have some; they should be measurable and time-oriented, etc., "in one year I will have a million dollars", "in one year I will be able to start a conversation with a stranger") and how much you know about your trauma. I think we start off pretty vague ("I was molested when I was 10 and didn't like it") and, because we won't look at it, can't really do anything with it. Getting closer to your trauma might be a good goal, so you can see what exactly it is. If the doctor didn't look at the gaping wound because it was "ugly" s/he wouldn't be able to clean and sew it up, deal with it?