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  #1  
Old May 04, 2014, 09:16 PM
Anonymous100300
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I was scheduled with a new T after my previous T had left the practice because he was moving to another country....

The first session was a typical first session with a new T....although since I had been in therapy before and she had read my prior T notes it was a little more faster moving... I like her well enough.....

The second session I brought up something I had been learning/trying to figure out from a 12 step program and I could see she was excited about the topic.... And her exact words where "after that question, I actually have hope for you"...

well i thought it odd when she said it but I was into this topic and so i pushed it out of my thoughts and continued down the path of my question... I think she wasnt ready to discuss this topic and she had diffiulty helping me see how it related to me and that was probably because she didn't know me yet,etc..since it was our 2nd session and she kept "guessing" and making assumptions... At the end she mentioned 2 very basic things she wanted to work on and not the deep question that i had been wrestling with...

I ended up canceling the next session and havent rescheduled....it just too much like starting over..

In my head...i kept thinking so you dont have "hope" that you or therapy can work for all of your clients? Because she didnt have hope after the first session.... Then why do you take them on as a clients?

Do you think its important that a T has hope? Do you think it is worth asking a new T this question? Would it make a difference to you to know your T does or does not have hope for you?
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  #2  
Old May 04, 2014, 09:30 PM
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No I do not. But if it bothered me, I would ask the woman what she meant. I don't think it is a therapist's place to have hope for me. I can have it, not the therapist.
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  #3  
Old May 04, 2014, 09:39 PM
Anonymous100300
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Thanks SD... I was actually going to ask this as the last question in my OP but then I didn't...

Is it enough that you have hope for yourself?
  #4  
Old May 04, 2014, 10:17 PM
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I think that sometimes the hope can be hard to find, particularly early on when a T knows very little about a client. It is bound to sometimes feel like an impossible task to reach certain clients, to help them see themselves and find that desire to grow and improve. I don't think hope is necessarily automatic just because you are a T, but I do suspect hope is a hope (if that makes sense) for most T's.
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  #5  
Old May 04, 2014, 10:22 PM
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I think a goal is to generate hope for ourselves, but if we've been without hope for so long, we don't always know how to do so, nor believe in the concept. It can certainly be helpful for a T to be able to communicate hope through words and actions. And there were definitely times when I needed to believe in my T's hope for me because I couldn't feel it for myself.
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  #6  
Old May 04, 2014, 10:22 PM
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"Hope" for what?

Hope you get better?
Hope your symptoms subside "enough"?
Hope to get you functional?
Hope to keep you alive?

I really don't get the not having " hope" for the client since the client sets the goals.

I see "after that question, I actually have hope for you"... As " I think I can earn your trust to really help you."

-----------

i kept thinking so you dont have "hope" that you or therapy can work for all of your clients? I think all humans question their ability some times and for therapists I think it involves the client.

Then why do you take them on as a clients? because they know the client needs someone. A person that is unsure they can help is better than no one even if its temporary.

Do you think its important that a T has hope? I think all humans that interact have hope for the other person.

Do you think it is worth asking a new T this question? yes because its already effecting your relationship.

Would it make a difference to you to know your T does or does not have hope for you? as long as they can help I don't care. I seriously think my therapist has no hope for me like most others

Is it enough that you have hope for yourself? yes as long as they're skilled.
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  #7  
Old May 04, 2014, 10:26 PM
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I think sometimes Ts and pdocs do lack hope. Although I am surprised your T said that to you so quickly without knowing you very well.

After the traumatic events of 2000 I was in a deep depression for several years and despite trying numerous ADs I was stuck in a bad state and could not function. I asked my pdoc at that time if I was going to get better or is this as good as it gets. She answered honestly, "I don't know".

Fortunately I have improved since then but at the time we didn't know if I would.
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  #8  
Old May 04, 2014, 11:11 PM
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I've had some pretty cruddy therapists who had no hope for me. I had one who brushed everything off as a symptom and told me that it was an issue of my mental illness. I was also strongly encouraged to apply for SSDI. It really beat me down, to the point of me losing hope for myself.

Last edited by lostwonder; May 04, 2014 at 11:20 PM. Reason: additional info
  #9  
Old May 04, 2014, 11:26 PM
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I would absoluetly not see a therapist who I didn't think had hope for me, or her clients in general. Of course it is important to have hope for yourself, but I think when some people enter therapy they have very little of that, and may need someone else to have hope for them until they can have hope themselves. A therapist must belive that her clients are capable of change, otherwise I cannot possibly understand what would motivate the work. I seriously do not believe that anyone is too far gone for a T or anyone else to have hope for them.

I'm pretty sure that my last T didn't have as much hope for me as I had for myself. I think she saw me as hopelessly broken when I repeated one of my obsessive patterns with her. She gave me no credit for being able to recognize or work on what I was doing, and spoke to me as if I was an idiot who had no idea what therapists did. I think that my T was burned out.

Readytostop, I'm not sure if I would see this T if I were in your shoes. It sounds like she might be burned out, and have good and bad client categories going on in her mind. Personally I would be seriously worried about doing something that would cause me to end up in the bad client category. I would go with your gut on this one. I would look for a T that you feel at ease with.
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  #10  
Old May 04, 2014, 11:57 PM
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Well now i understand why you so mysteriously and suddenly dropped therapy and posted the things you did recently. I kinda wish you had just come out and told us what this b-t said cuz it was not right. I am sputtering mad. She sounds like she has hostility issues and superiority issues. You really take things onto your own shoulders too much when something like this happens. Like granites waldo only different. But at least you do say something here. Me, i just kinda isolate. so anyway now what are ya gonna do about it? I got your back
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  #11  
Old May 05, 2014, 12:15 AM
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I think it'd be a very hard job to do, treating a client you have/feel no hope for.
Ts should believe they can help you in some (even very minor) way.
Cause otherwise, what would be the point?
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  #12  
Old May 05, 2014, 01:40 AM
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Yes, I think so from many points of view.

Back in school, I think both a professor and a TA (both psychotherapists) told us it's important that a therapist has hope for each client and also conveys that hope to the client (well, not necessarily in words, but still ...).

I also feel like not having hope for one or more clients might be a factor in therapist burnout. To me at least, that sounds like pointless work. On the part of the therapist because they could see clients they actually feel can be helped instead or do something else that will lead to some results. On the client's part ... well I think a client's reactions can vary depending on the issue at hand, but personally, while I wouldn't go asking a therapist "do you have hope for me??" if I felt that they didn't have hope and trust that I can change certain things about myself and that I can improve myself and live my life well, when, then I wouldn't see that person as a therapist. I wouldn't believe they could be effective and I just need someone who trusts me and the therapy process. So ... to me, this hope equals trust, really.
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  #13  
Old May 05, 2014, 02:39 AM
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My former therapist once told me that she went to a conference to hear a very well know therapist, and that was one of the questions put to the audience, and she said more than 3/4 of them said no. They did not have hope that everyone could heal. My therapist told me she was so angry about this, and even the discussion leader suggested that those people should seek another profession. If a therapist doesn't start off with each client at that point, where do they (client and therapist) go from there?
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  #14  
Old May 05, 2014, 03:20 AM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Goingtogetthere View Post
My former therapist once told me that she went to a conference to hear a very well know therapist, and that was one of the questions put to the audience, and she said more than 3/4 of them said no. They did not have hope that everyone could heal. My therapist told me she was so angry about this, and even the discussion leader suggested that those people should seek another profession. If a therapist doesn't start off with each client at that point, where do they (client and therapist) go from there?
That is seriously disturbing. No wonder there are so many terrible T's out there.
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  #15  
Old May 05, 2014, 04:51 AM
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My T's think I can improve but they don't know that I will or not. Hope I guess would be a wish that I will improve and feeling like it's possible. I ask LCM all the time if she thinks I'll get better. She says the same thing "I don't know baby girl. I sincerely hope you will because you have so much to offer this world and you deserve to accomplish all of your goals. You definitely can improve. Whether you actually do or not is kinda up to you. We do have a lot of things to work on." School T says something similar.

If my T didn't think I was capable of making progress, why is she wasting her time trying? I feel like a T that doesn't believe in her clients can't be emotionally invested in her work. You have to care about progress in order to be good at anything
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  #16  
Old May 05, 2014, 04:57 AM
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A T needs to believe in herself and what she does. If she has no hope, get a new T.
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  #17  
Old May 05, 2014, 05:47 AM
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I dont have to ask her that, I would not anyway, because it would make me feel kind of hopeless but thats just me, she reasures me all the time of all the qualities I have, and how she is going to help me. She keeps telling me I have so much potential, and its been shut down because of my past, my self esteem, she says she sees wonderful things, so I guess she answers it every other session. I dont like hearing these things, but she wont stop saying them , so I guess I keep listening to them.
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  #18  
Old May 05, 2014, 06:08 AM
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Yes, they need to have hope...if not then the caring professions are not for them I say.
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  #19  
Old May 05, 2014, 06:29 AM
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According to at least one ethics code (American Counseling Association), a counselor must terminate and refer when it becomes "reasonably apparent" that the client "is not likely to benefit" from continued counseling.
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  #20  
Old May 05, 2014, 06:41 AM
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The first year i was seeing my t, i asked him if he believed in me. He replied that he believed in the process. I understood that he didnt know me, i had recently been fired, i was at a low point in my life, he had missed all the good parts! - so i let it go. A few years later, i tried to remind him of our exchange, and he denied saying he only believed in the process. But i still think rts's t needs to work on her own unconditional positive regard. You took home and to heart the message she was sending. Bad message.
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  #21  
Old May 05, 2014, 07:10 AM
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I think this is a really complex question. If I look at my own work as a teacher, for instance when I teach English oral proficiency, I know that some of the students I teach are going to become much more proficient, some of them are going to improve their English just enough to be able to communicate a bit more easily with their teachers, some of them are not really going to improve at all, but may become more confident in their own abilities to speak, and so may go on to improve once they are outside my classroom - and all these students might actually have benefited from my teaching. So what is important here is that I don't apply my own notions of how they ought to improve, and think that a student is hopeless because the improvement is not what I think it should have been. I can tell a Spanish student that she needs to learn how "b" and "v" are different in English, because I believe that unless she knows that, it will make it more difficult for other people to understand her, but I can't say, or think, that if she leaves my course still pronouncing "berry" and "very" in the exact same way it means that the course has been a failure for her.

But there are students I can't help, though somebody else probably can, through encouraging them in a different way, or offering different exercises, or whatever. And we all know that all Ts don't click with all clients. So to be honest, I think that a T who hopes that s/he or the therapy s/he offers will work for everybody who comes to their office is both arrogant and naïve.

Besides, what about those people who genuinely are beyond hope? (Here I am thinking of certain mass murderers, for instance.) Should they be denied therapy because the therapist needs to feed their ego by thinking that they (the T) should only be required to treat those people that there is hope for? As I said, a complex question.
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  #22  
Old May 05, 2014, 09:39 AM
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Yes, I agree with Mastodon. My teaching experience is why I answered this as a T's probably hope to have hope which is very much what teachers and probably most helping professionals experience. It is naive to think I will save every student. That doesn't mean I don't try. That doesn't mean I don't look every single day for that opening, that possibility, that hope. But there are cases, fortunately rather rare, that there is absolutely every barrier, roadblock, obstacle getting in the way of making any inroads. Hope is hard to see, hard to find in those cases. It isn't that I stop trying to find that hope, but hope can be terribly elusive in some cases. I suspect T's experience much the same.
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  #23  
Old May 05, 2014, 10:05 AM
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While at the beginning I think T's have hope for all clients, of course this can of always change. But every client comes in with different diagnoses, issues, stregnths and weaknesses. So I think the issue of "hope" is different for each client. A lack of progress could be due to a client/T mismatch, or a client who isn't ready to make the changes themselves. I wouldn't want to see a T (or, see a client) where after a long time progress is not made. But in this case a I think T's put this on the client when what's needed is a referral to a different T. That could be the "hope" that's needed but I think many therapists won't admit that. Then there are also clients who are very ill and more in need of maintence care. I wouldn't call this a hopeless case but just a fact of some mental illness'. Regardless of the style of therapy (since some are more confrontational than others), I still think it's pretty bad to tell a client you think they are hopeless.

Last edited by Lauliza; May 05, 2014 at 10:19 AM.
  #24  
Old May 05, 2014, 11:34 AM
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Originally Posted by 1914sierra View Post
Yes, I agree with Mastodon. My teaching experience is why I answered this as a T's probably hope to have hope which is very much what teachers and probably most helping professionals experience. It is naive to think I will save every student. That doesn't mean I don't try. That doesn't mean I don't look every single day for that opening, that possibility, that hope. But there are cases, fortunately rather rare, that there is absolutely every barrier, roadblock, obstacle getting in the way of making any inroads. Hope is hard to see, hard to find in those cases. It isn't that I stop trying to find that hope, but hope can be terribly elusive in some cases. I suspect T's experience much the same.
On the second day of school do you have hope for your students? Or do you read something about a student and have no hope for them on day 2 but maybe have hope for the students you don't know yet?

In my example, the T only knew very little from my file (prior T let me know what he was leaving in there) and had one session with me. The 2nd session after I asked a question she announced she now had hope for me... so if I had waited 2 months to ask the question... she wouldn't of had hope for me during those 6 other sessions?
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  #25  
Old May 05, 2014, 11:42 AM
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Did she elaborate on what led her to make that comment after 2 sessions? Could it be related to success rates of clients with similar diagnoses'? Not that that's an excuse to actually say that, but something must have prompted the thought so early on. I would have so wanted to say, "What made you think there wasn't hope before??"
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