[shakespeare47]

One of the biggest issues I have as an INTJ is just the subjectivity.

It's just way too subjective a "science" for me to give much support. A lot of times, I felt like it was just a confidence game... "trust me, I'm an expert in these matters... "If you would only listen to me and my method, of course you'll see improvements" "not everyone listened, and they are still having the same problems". "It works, just try it and see". "misc negative story designed to manipulate you into listening".

There was a time when a particular therapist gave me a personality test, and told me "you probably won't want to listen to the results, but it's a valid test". LOL. Was he for real? Valid in whose opinion?

Do therapists understand that some people really care about objective standards? If the therapist really wanted to convince me it was a valid test, he would have told me something about it. How long it had been around, whether or not it had been written about in peer reviewed journals. etc. etc. etc. As it is, I got the feeling he thought I was a sucker who would believe whatever crap anyone happened to tell me.

[stopdog]

I find its subjectivity problematic, but more than that, I get irritated when they (and other clients) blame the client for it not being useful.

I honestly have to say that I used to be one of the most rational people on this planet. I needed numbers, facts, proof, theories, reasoning,... more than anyone. I wouldn't say I turned into the complete opposite, but therapy did really change this part of me.
It is simply not a human characteristic for people (and all the things they do and feel) to be objective, for we have a brain and a heart.

I'm actually glad therapy isn't an objective science. Otherwise it would mean that things HAVE to work for you, just because you're a person, a human being, without keeping in mind that you're an individual, with your own thoughts, your own values, etc.

But I do agree with you that statements from therapists, like the ones you mentioned, are crazy. They go straight against treating the client as an individual.

[HazelGirl]

There is actually a lot of therapy that has been incredibly well studied. And you know what they have found? The #1 predictor of whether therapy is successful is the relationship between the client and the therapist. So nothing else matters as much as that. Your mistrust is in the small things, when in reality, it's your relationship with your therapist that will be the most beneficial aspect of therapy. Do a little Googling on therapy and therapy methods and you will find which ones are more studied and which are less. It's not an exact science, but as a fellow INTJ, I have learned enough to know it is a science (more along the lines of meteorology than physics).

[guilloche]

Hi Shakespeare47 - I wonder if your T is perhaps just not a good fit for you? There are T's out there that actually CAN explain a bit more about the research/validity that goes into treatment. I had one previously that was involved in the local universities (teaching and also doing research), so he was very on top of that sort of thing. (He was a phd level, I'd guess - but am not sure - that those at the master's level don't focus on research, and maybe that's some of what you're running into?)

By the way, test "validity" actually means something... you might want to google around, or look at a "research methods" text book. I believe (iirc) that it means that test itself has been tested for a few different things... things like: does it actually measure what we think it measures.

Here are a couple pages that talk about it at a high level...
Validity and Validation - Psychology Terms
Test validity - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I think the issue is that most Ts don't care about the research side of things... that's just not their interest/speciality. They may be using techniques that they learned (which were researched by the people who developed them) - or not - but if they're not really mentally oriented towards research, they may trouble discussing what research supports a particular intervention....

Just a thought... it's first thing in the morning for me and I didn't sleep well, so hope that's helpful and make sense... feel free to ignore if it doesn't!

[pbutton]

I am also an INTJ. My therapist has voiced his understanding that things need to make sense to me. He works very hard at framing things so that I see how they can be usefully applied.

[shakespeare47]

My current T is okay so far. My beef is with therapy in general. It's talk therapy. I'm more into hard science and what can be proved. Not manipulative story-telling.

In my last session, I told my current therapist that I identify strongly as an INTJ. We've only had 1 session after a 5 year break.

I should also explain that I've seen 5 therapists (including my current therapist) over a 24 year period. And my comments above are in reaction to those 24 years. I didn't see any one therapist for very long... The longest I stayed with it was 5 years ago when I stuck it out for over a year. Then I quit abruptly. Now I'm back with the same guy.

[pbutton]

Generally when I start to feel therapy is too random and frou-frou for my taste, I start looking at the facts. The fact is that I HAVE changed, for whatever reason. Something is working, even if it's difficult to pinpoint exactly what is driving the change. The relationship is changing me in ways I find beneficial.

[Petra5ed]

Hello, I am also an INTJ. I understand what you are saying, and unfortunately that's just the nature of therapy. And sadly it's the nature of most things really. You could see a psychiatrist and get medication, that is a kind of "science", but even then it's a crapshoot if and how that medicine will work for you.

I've decided that the best thing about being an INTJ is our ability to be objectively open minded, and that we will change our "opinions" to honor what is true above all else. Keep this in mind when you approach therapy, take the mental stance that you are investigating. You are after all! Whose advice ever would you just take on its face? And as you investigate, continue to remind yourself these two things 1) as an INTJ these emotionally subjective discussions with your therapist are going to be awkward and out of your comfort/experience zone and will not be easy and intrinsically you will want to run from them 2) respect that many millions have studied these subjects, it is not all hokey BS, people have poured their entire lives to studying counseling theory etc.

Probably the biggest challenge you'll face is finding the right therapist. It took me quite some time. The trust thing you're talking about is exactly why, you do need to trust the person to a large extent. For it to work, ideally you want to find a person you think with a decent amount of confidence can help you and knows more than you. Very likely this will be a person much older than yourself and one with multiple decades of experience. It sounds like the therapist you have now unfortunately is not that one for you. Just remember, therapy is talking to a person for an hour. Who that person is makes literally all of the difference in how your therapy hour goes. I've been very fortunate to find a therapist who I think is extremely intelligent and that I trust. He wouldn't try to prove the validity of anything to me, I'm not sure how he does it actually but all of the conclusions I've drawn in therapy have been on my own, I've not been talked into believing anything.

[Perna]

Life is subjective? We think/feel we have control and can make lists and detail how our day is going to go, etc. but then life interferes in such a way that if we have ignored working on our subjective skills (not rational is not the same as irrational) we tend to end up in therapy, a subjective "science" :-)

I "turned into" an INTJ from an adjacent type. I worked for 2 successive agencies/companies who administered and were professionally trained to score the Myers-Briggs (different from one's book reading/online self-scoring) and it was fascinating to me that INTJ was what my husband is, a major influence in my life. Pick your therapist carefully, they may have more influence than you realize

[shakespeare47]

^ Sure, life is subjective. But, when I'm seeing someone who I hope can help me through some issues... I'm not looking for someone who will tell me manipulative stories and/or get me entangled in a confidence game. (you have to learn to trust... I'm an expert... this works, you just have to give it a chance..., etc, etc, etc.)

I'm also a skeptic and a rational thinker. When someone tells me something, I'm usually thinking something like "but, how do you know? or "what makes you think so". The alternative seems to me to be the type of person who just buys into whatever is being promoted without using any critical thinking.

I'm also quite comfortable asking anyone, therapists included... "are you sure about that?".

[pbutton]

When I get too caught up in my INTJ-ness, I find it useful to remind myself that the other personality types and ways of doing things aren't wrong, they're just different from the way I would prefer.

Or perhaps embrace the part of INTJ where we "know what we don't know" and allow that the therapist knows a lot more about what seems like a random, disorganized mess to us.

[stopdog]

I find seeing two helps me because it is like my own little experiment and I can keep track of it. They seem to have no structure (and the first one I see, because she likes to torment me has told me she has no structure) so I made one up and I see how it works with both. The first one fails quite a bit which saddens me because I hate to think I chose a stupid one. I brighten up when I consider that she may well not be stupid but simply a wily ***** who is messing with me so I must become even more vigilant.
I am INTP so perhaps the difference in P and J makes that sort of thing more fun for me.

[shakespeare47]

@pbutton

Or perhaps embrace the part of INTJ where we "know what we don't know" and allow that the therapist knows a lot more about what seems like a random, disorganized mess to us.

Thanks for that. Sounds like a good policy. 8-)

[NowhereUSA]

Originally Posted by shakespeare47

^ Sure, life is subjective. But, when I'm seeing someone who I hope can help me through some issues... I'm not looking for someone who will tell me manipulative stories and/or get me entangled in a confidence game. (you have to learn to trust... I'm an expert... this works, you just have to give it a chance..., etc, etc, etc.)

I'm also a skeptic and a rational thinker. When someone tells me something, I'm usually thinking something like "but, how do you know? or "what makes you think so". The alternative seems to me to be the type of person who just buys into whatever is being promoted without using any critical thinking.

I'm also quite comfortable asking anyone, therapists included... "are you sure about that?".

idk. i consider myself a rational thinker (and lover of science). i guess my t doesn't tell me manipulative stories or play games. like, we just chat. he's a dbt and that's been studied as effective by science. i'll roll with it. sure it doesn't work for everyone, but there's some level of science surrounding it.

my t also doesn't think he has magical answers. and i've never heard the words 'i'm an expert' even tho dude has his phD. i guess in this case, we both have a goal - get me healthy - and we'll look at different methods as needed. he certainly hasn't had a problem noting that while dbt has helped me cope in a way that's not self-destructive, it also hasn't solved my depression.

maybe that's why he's an ideal t for me. he's constantly looking at his own assumptions and mine, challenging and willing to put it to a discussion. it is subjective and yet at the same time, it doesn't have to be me putting blind trust in him. i do trust him after years of therapy because he has demonstrated trustworthiness.

how do we know what we know? epistemology and all its wonders lol.

[someone321]

"It's just way too subjective a "science" for me to give much support. A lot of times, I felt like it was just a confidence game... "trust me, I'm an expert in these matters... "If you would only listen to me and my method, of course you'll see improvements" "not everyone listened, and they are still having the same problems". "It works, just try it and see". "misc negative story designed to manipulate you into listening"."

Your T has really said all of it? I wouldn't like something like that neither...
Btw. I've just made the test and it looks like I am also INTJ (67%, 12%, 50%, 44%) but I wouldn't find it as a problem...

[shakespeare47]

^Not my current T. I'm talking about my experiences with 5 counselors over a 24 year period.

Originally Posted by pbutton

Generally when I start to feel therapy is too random and frou-frou for my taste, I start looking at the facts. The fact is that I HAVE changed, for whatever reason. Something is working, even if it's difficult to pinpoint exactly what is driving the change. The relationship is changing me in ways I find beneficial.

This is what my T points out to me at irregular intervals, when I question whether the therapy works. I'm not a big fan of Myers-Briggs, because I see it as trying to force something that is essentially unscientific and unclassifiable (human personalities) into categories based on vague science. It's interesting as general broad descriptors, though - I tend to get INTJ or INTP depending on the day, but I work with quantitative science, and one of the reasons I work well with my T is that he talks to me like an academic, very rationally and applying a lot of logic.

[Perna]

Originally Posted by shakespeare47

I'm also a skeptic and a rational thinker. When someone tells me something, I'm usually thinking something like "but, how do you know? or "what makes you think so". The alternative seems to me to be the type of person who just buys into whatever is being promoted without using any critical thinking.

My rational/critical thinking told me my therapist had seen lots of clients before me, met and studied a zillion cases/people probably and was "good enough" at it to make a good living from it. When she said to me, "it works, just try it and see" I had no reason to disbelieve her own experience with all these other people and could not see how her telling me that if it was not her experience would benefit her? Objectively, what I was doing was not working for me and I obviously was not very good at thinking up something that would work or I would have tried that and it would have worked?

What makes another person think something is true/not true is not as interesting to me as what makes me think it is true/not true. My response to someone else and what they say is often more interesting to me than what they actually say. I love the scene in "Runaway Bride" where Julia Roberts finally tries eggs all the ways she can find to try them to see what kind she does like instead of going with the automatic/knee jerk, "I don't know"/"I don't like that"/"it won't work for me" when one hasn't tried something. How much sense does that make?

I made fun of a work friend because she bought popular weight loss/exercise pills off TV before that brand was banned :-) Now that I think about it though, she was curious and wanted to try them, there was a money back guarantee (which she got) and knows for a fact they do not work (for her :-) I'm just there with my general knowledge that things like that don't work and are a waste of money but I have never tried any of those things, I'm just, as you say, a "skeptic" so make value judgments for myself on some things based on my interest/general knowledge. I argued with this same friend who believed in horoscopes too when I was taking a college astronomy course :-) but feel I had more specific knowledge than she had and she was not being skeptical enough.

I think that is the crux -- knowing when to be skeptical because you believe you have specific knowledge that says something positively will not work for you and suspending the skeptical self and getting curious instead when you have no information of your own.

[shakespeare47]

When I've brought this up before in other forums there are those who think I couldn't possibly get anything from therapy with my attitude....

But, I think it's okay to have a healthy skepticism... 24 years ago, I knew there was something about therapy I didn't like... and the first counselor I encountered may not have been the best (hint, she tried to help me to "recover" some memories..it was 1989, after all ), but I couldn't quite figure out what is was I didn't especially like.

I think I'm in a unique situation in that I first got involved with therapy during the recovered memory craze.

But, I suppose I can give it a try again, with experimentation in mind. Maybe it would help to see my T as a friend who is trying to help me see life and my issues with a different perspective.

[UnderRugSwept]

I recently discovered that I am an INTJ, and I feel greatly relieved because it explains a lot of my reactions and how I tend to be more rational (when other people around me have been more emotional, and I did not know why I wasn't).

One of my Ts did testing for many years (including Myers-Briggs) and said that most Ts are both N and F, which makes sense if you think about it. He also said that the test does not work for everybody who takes it: as in, they might fall in between types.

Anyway, I do not hesitate to tell either of my Ts if something seems completely (or partially) inaccurate in their analysis or statements, and they both appreciate that.

For me it is not enough to tell me that something has worked for other clients; I want to know why they think something will work for me specifically and whatever issue we are working on. I have found that the thinking part of me strongly overrides the emotional and I do think this has made therapy more difficult for me.

[missbella]

I entered therapy a true believer , exited unsure of my sanity and in retrospect felt a dupe for buying in. It was all seat-of-the-pants. Even pretending to understand me was a boilerplate performance. One therapist was a bully Dr. Phil without the insight, another was a faux-clairvoyant using now-discredited NLP technique. She's now out there, still licensed, using energy healing, balancing patients' brains with magnets.

[Xenon]

I consider myself a skeptical person, and I agree that it can be healthy. (I'm INTP, myself). I think it's perfectly reasonable to expect a therapist to back up what they say, to give reasons how what they do works and what reason they have to think so. If they can't or won't do this, if they give me some, 'I'm the expert and this is how it's done so you should just do what I say' attitude, then I figure they're talking out of their *** and/or don't respect me enough to let me make my own informed decisions. Both of these are deal breakers for me, and should be.

I do think there's a place for trying things out if you're not sure of them, simply because it's a soft science and while reason and evidence are still important in deciding what's reasonable to try, you often can't make an airtight case the way you might in the harder sciences. I think of it as something you can't really have solid certainty about. But you can still decide whether it looks reasonably promising, enough to give it a try. I've decided for the time being to keep my skepticism and doubts with me while still trying things out. There's no proof either way, so I might as well do something different.

[shakespeare47]

Sometimes I wonder if therapists understand the difference between the truth... and their version of the truth.

Or between the truth and their opinion.

All too often, when with a counselor, I was reminded of the old joke about Freud. It's said that if he would accuse someone of having issues with his father, the person might object, but Freud would then just accuse the person of being in denial.

[Xenon]

Originally Posted by shakespeare47

Sometimes I wonder if therapists understand the difference between the truth... and their version of the truth.

Or between the truth and their opinion.

All too often, when with a counselor, I was reminded of the old joke about Freud. It's said that if he would accuse someone of having issues with his father, the person might object, but Freud would then accuse the person of being in denial.

There was also a joke in the series In Treatment, about how psychotherapy is the only situation where "the customer is always wrong."

In seriousness, I think it's possible for a therapist to make suggestions and challenge your thinking, while still being aware of their own fallibility and open to hearing you out.