Random question - what has been your single best therapy experience?

Here's soemthing I'm wondering about people's therapy experiences...what qualities make a particularly effective or productive session for you? Is it a time when you happen to be very well prepared, did your T just happen to ask a great question, did you have a profound realization, did you get some great feedback? What has been the highlight of your therapy experience and what do you think made it so great? My insatiable curiosity is at it again. I'm trying to break out of a therapy rut by getting some great ideas about what made a great experience for you. I just love reading about what goes on in other people's sessions...

A few factors contribute to a good session, and one that I have most control over is this: When I come in, the real me, without any masks or defenses, and am genuine. I express what's in my heart. The real stuff. For example, I might start a session by saying, "I"m feeling so sad. Just so sad." Not just saying it from out of my head, but it's coming from inside of me, I am attuned to my emotional state and I express it. And then we take it from there. T asks questions to elicit more of my experience. I then talk more about how I feel. And why. And then there's catharsis.
I've also had some wonderful sessions wherein deep insight was acquired. For example, recently I came into the session and checked in with my current emotional state. . I felt anger at the therapist and I expressed that. I blamed her for not having heard me the previous session. I vented. I expressed that I feel not heard, not taken seriously, not seen. At the end of the session, after venting and all, this lightbulb went off in my head and heart and I said, " This intense anger that I am feeling toward you, I have felt this way as a kid, at my caretaker, for not hearing me when I screamed for help." I realized that the intense anger was a historical anger and not proportionate to the current situation. So I felt very good after that session too.

I look forward to hearing others' responses.

My T helped me to look at myself as an "outsider" would. I learned to have compassion for myself--that my past mistakes were not made because of malice or evilness or even stupidity, but because I was doing the best I could under the circumstances at the time. (I felt incredible guilt & shame about causing my daughter to be born a preemie due to my drinking & smoking while pregnant, plus the suicide attempts).

She pointed out the similarities of my feeling that I was unloveable to my husband & my father, who rejected me to the point of introducing another woman as his daughter to all his yacht club friends & didn't mention me. When I went to my sister's engagement party on his yacht, people were like "Who are you?" When I said I was his daughter, they said they thought he only had two daughters--my sister & the woman who had replaced me as his daughter.

I also tested my husband a lot to see if he really was committed to me & would stay with me despite some of my outrageous behavior & rants.

She helped me see why I was starting fights when things were too calm at home. I grew up with a lot of chaos & one crisis after another with my mother attempting suicide & my father having affairs & their fighting so violently that sometimes I had to call the police. I became very focussed when there was a crisis. It seemed that as an adult I would stir up trouble because I was used to it & somehow missed the power of a crisis to focus me on something other than my bad feelings about myself. Still working on the self-esteem thing, but no longer starting fights & running off in the middle of the night (meds for bipolar helped this tremendously, too, since they helped me to think more clearly & not to be so rash).

I quit going to therapy several years ago, because I was stable & doing well. After a recent episode, though, my meds provider said I should go back. I'm just not sure of what my ins. will cover now. The company my husband works for changed policies so, of course, they are not adding services, but taking away. Basically, they are trying to discourage you from going for any medical treatment due to the hassle & how much they don't cover.--Suzy

My best therapy experiences have been those when I've kept trying to connect with my therapist. If I don't feel she understands what I'm saying, not giving up but trying to express what I'm saying another way. If I was angry or had a problem with her, telling her and working with her on it. Accepting what she said as her truth and not trying to change it. When she gets something wrong, giving her credit for trying to understand and paying attention to the quality of her listening. it's that effort that I'm looking for, the connection of two people working together so even if the details are wrong, I still have the knowledge, the feeling of being together working on this thing. I can connect with another.

Interesting reading folks, keep them coming. I really agree about the value of being the "real you" and the importance of establishing a connection which transcends whatever topics may be discussed. Of course, those two really go hand in hand I think. I only find myself feeling truely connected when I relax and let the real me out.
Let me add one more question to the original....did you find, in your experience, that it's the long-term work of therapy that is helpful to you or a few isolated experiences that have contributed the most to your healing. I know some therapies are geared more toward short-term and other toward long-term, so I'm sure the answers are many....I find this all fascinating. Thanks everyone.

my best therapy session I think was the first time that i went with the first therapist that i had. She knew that i was scared because it was my first time. Plus it was the session that a million and a half questions are asked... most are "yes" "no" following an explanation. But she never pushed my to draw out my answers. Also she told me straight out what she saw me as, which was very different from the way that i saw myself. I could take the mask off and just be me around her. Which i think is a great connection to have with your therapist.

I had long-term therapy and I'd have to answer your additional question by saying, "both." I still have my T's words in my head with key phrases that I use now to help myself. I think the "build up" of experiences between the two of us over the year has been most helpful to me, again, the things "shared." Remembering the laughter, arguments, support, admiration for one another's gifts, etc. helps me now even better than a good book. The relationship was alive (which a book can't quite achieve, no matter how good it is or how good the movie is :-) and lives on in me and my life.

I feel as if I sometimes live in my 'own little world...' and I try to describe to my T the dimensions, the rules, the format of this world I live in, I let him in, and my world becomes more real. I talk a lot about my illness, because it is safe to do that with him, I feel being with my T is a place where no stigma is. I ask him to compare my problems with his other patients, and ask the degree of my mental illness. I have gotten to know some of the other patients and feel it is a community of people all coping together. My T has met my brother, my mother, and my father, so when I discuss family problems he has first hand knowledge. My T says he feels like a father to me!! My T listens and always interjects with things that I might helped by seeing but cannot quite see yet. Most of all, I know he cares..do other people feel they know their T cares?

For me it would be the session that I accepted his gift of patience and compassion and trusted his ability to bare a pain that I could not bare myself, and in doing so it gave me the opportunity to learn to tolerate the intensity of the emotion which I had feared so much resulting in a catharsis which transformed my understanding of my whole therapy experience, and is the foundation of the work we continue to do today.

Eva

JonB, I know that you are new to the therapy session, and are using this probably to organize your thoughts and possible responses for your T.

What would YOU imagine to be a really good therapy session for you? You don't have to share it here, as it might be too personal to you, but think about it.

If no one ever knew (and they won't, you know) would it begin with a handshake, would you be drinking coffee together, would it include a few comments about the sports game, what would T answer when you expressed concern over something? If you can picture it for yourself, you can work towards that end, and have some great sessions, imo.

http://myself.psychcentral.net/2006/...lies-part-one/

sky-
Thanks for the suggestion. I've been thinking a lot about what I want to get out of therapy and how I'd like things to go. It's been a long while since I was in therapy and the last time was a crisis situation. Now that there's no crisis and I'm in control I want to get the most out of it that I can. It's really interesting to read what others like or has been helpful to them. And, of course, the voyeur in me just likes to read about other people's lives.