[stopdog]

Article on attachment I found referenced on another forum for those interested in such.
If the therapist tried talking to me like in the examples at the bottom, I would either burst out laughing or demand to know why she was talking to me like I am a slack-jawed half-wit. Or demand after I stopped laughing.

The Neuroscience of Attachment | Linda Graham, MFT, Resources for Recovering Resilience

Don't have the focus to read the whole thing right now, but I scrolled down to the examples. Yikes! If my T talked to me that way I'd crack up too. Those responses don't even sound human. Thank God my T is more original and real than that. Sounds like Stepford wives responses. Ick.

[Leah123]

Thanks for the laugh, talk about stilted and artificial sounding... ironic giving the topic is connecting authentically. Reminds me of the corny lines written on one of my admittedly favorite shows, Star Trek TNG for the empath.

"Let it come, let it come. It’s OK, I’m right here; it’s been wanting to come for such a long time." HA, this is just.... okay, I'll stop now.

Keep in mind... she is S.F. based, so... it explains a lot. I'm from S.F. so can say that.

[PeeJay]

The examples do not seem humorous to me. But I'm not inclined to laugh at that which I do not understand. I'm more inclined to try to learn more.

The examples seem like the therapist is focused on physiological reactions to attachment injuries or trauma.

I'm glad that there are therapists out there who are intelligent enough to go deep on issues in a real way, observing and drawing out the emotions that need healing.

In my view, once you get to talking about emotions and memories that trigger a response in the body, you are going to a deep and powerful place within. I would only go that deep with someone I really trusted or knew for a long time.

For what it's worth, because I can imagine others' reactions, my day job involves numbers, physics and computational science. So, I like it when therapists involve the aspects of neuroscience that appear to be relevant to therapy.

[stopdog]

I am not quarrelling or even laughing at the possibly scientific info on attachment or neuroplasticity. I am laughing at the idea of a therapist talking to me like in the examples. I would not respond well, or attach if you will, to anyone who tried to talk to me like that.

It isn't necessarily what the T is focused on that we find creepy; it is how it is being phrased. Just very stilted and unnatural. I know part of the problem is that it just reads like a therapy "manual" (which is actually what it is I guess): if clients says X; therapist should respond with Y. Therapists hopefully don't work from a manual in front of them; we just prefer they're comments/observations/questions sound like they are coming from a human rather than a textbook somewhere.

[growlycat]

"If your hands had a voice, what would they be saying to us right now?"

generated this mental picture:

…for those old enough to remember…'Sawright!!!

[PeeJay]

Well, that's because something that is happening in a moment between two people, with all the nuance, doesn't translate well to words typed on a computer screen.

I've tried to describe powerful healing moments with my therapist on these boards and I always feel a bit dissatisfied because it comes out seeming cheesy.

So like this example sounds cheesy but I can imagine a real moment with a lot more nuance and body language where it could help someone: "Then here we did this deep piece of work about the loss of your best friend in high school, and felt so much loss, so much loss."

[PeeJay]

Ok this one made me laugh in spite of myself:

"When you say you can’t trust your wife any more, is there something underneath? Some sadness underneath…some deep, deep sadness?"

[growlycat]

Honestly, I would be eating out of a T's hand at some of these, as much as I kid.

However, if CBT T said the following "Let it come, let it come. It’s OK, I’m right here; it’s been wanting to come for such a long time."….dang, I'd have an orgasm and die right on the spot.

Some of the suggested phrasing is a tad weird.

[lostwonder]

I've heard very similar things out of my T's mouth. Honest if I'm not busy being a pill and I go with it they seem to encourage something positive.

Originally Posted by growlycat

"If your hands had a voice, what would they be saying to us right now?"

generated this mental picture:

…for those old enough to remember…'Sawright!!!

Sounds like a bad Barbara Walters interview question.

[Leah123]

Originally Posted by PeeJay

The examples do not seem humorous to me. But I'm not inclined to laugh at that which I do not understand. I'm more inclined to try to learn more.

The examples seem like the therapist is focused on physiological reactions to attachment injuries or trauma.

I'm glad that there are therapists out there who are intelligent enough to go deep on issues in a real way, observing and drawing out the emotions that need healing.

In my view, once you get to talking about emotions and memories that trigger a response in the body, you are going to a deep and powerful place within. I would only go that deep with someone I really trusted or knew for a long time.

For what it's worth, because I can imagine others' reactions, my day job involves numbers, physics and computational science. So, I like it when therapists involve the aspects of neuroscience that appear to be relevant to therapy.

I'm not laughing at the intention or modality at all. Just at the language in the examples. The goal is good, relevant: to be attentive to what's occurring, to notice subtle as well as obvious emotions, and to frame the experience, etc., are all valuable and fairly common. But I can appreciate the humor and awkwardness of these attempts to convey that.

Therapy has a humorous side like everything else... her phrasing definitely taps me into it.

[Wren_]

I couldn't follow a lot of the article, but some of the example sayings at the end are similar to things my T uses (and thankfully some aren't) ... those he does use though, he uses in a timely way and it helps and does heal at a level I have no idea how to explain properly. Whereas just reading them without the context of a session behind them they sound ... bizarre

[stopdog]

Luckily I usually try to get the first one not to talk (and as useless as I find her talking to be, she does usually talk this badly), and the second is a bit more of an academic so she does not usually talk like this either. I think she tried once but it went very badly and she really couldn't defend it, so she seems to have stopped. Simply does not work for me. Mostly none of their reflective empathy sort of statements work for me. However the list does help if the first one tries to talk, I can ask if it is because she is trying to do one of the headings of the statements.

Yup. Context and reality would probably de-creep most of these (not all of them; some are just too out there). I just have this visual of the 911 operator reading the directions on how to stop profuse bleeding from a xerox copy in a binder somewhere. I want to scream, "put the damn cue card down and just talk to me like a real person please!"

In fact, I had that experience once. I called 911 because my husband had blood spurting from his leg (truly like a fountain). Bless that 911 operator for doing her job, but she needed to skip a few pages on her cue card to get to where I already was in handling the emergency. It was exasperating to keep telling her I already did that, I already did that too. I wasn't panicked about calling 911 until I realized she was wasting so much time assuming I didn't know what I was doing up to that point.

Therapists who ask creepy questions like on this article would frustrate me in a similar way. Are you really listening to me? Or are you just reading from your college textbook here?

[stopdog]

We recently had to go back to er room after surgery complications arose - and it was very clearly a surgery complication - and the er admitting person had to read the are you a victim of domestic violence card checklist to us as my loved one was being put on stretcher and an odd colored (not blood or even red) fluid was gushing out of surgical site.

I find them more to sound like the therapist thinks the client is an idiot than sounding like textbook. A few of them are so goofy sounding to me,I just can't figure out at all what they are getting at.

[unaluna]

Omg - how can you even read this article? Shes a horrible writer! Run on sentences, repeating words and phrases over and over - even the page format is difficult. And the first word after a numbered bullet point should be upper case. Isnt that what they teach in no child left behind? Apparently somebody got left behind! Stopdog, you read this, then tell me you dont understand my posts? Suddenly im very flattered. I couldnt get past half the first page, sorry! It was too annoyingly written. Call the editor.

[growlycat]

Originally Posted by hankster

Omg - how can you even read this article? Shes a horrible writer! Run on sentences, repeating words and phrases over and over - even the page format is difficult. And the first word after a numbered bullet point should be upper case. Isnt that what they teach in no child left behind? Apparently somebody got left behind! Stopdog, you read this, then tell me you dont understand my posts? Suddenly im very flattered. I couldnt get past half the first page, sorry! It was too annoyingly written. Call the editor.

Funny stuff is at the bottom---just scroll down for some role playing fun!!

[growlithing]

Originally Posted by growlycat

"If your hands had a voice, what would they be saying to us right now?"

generated this mental picture:

…for those old enough to remember…'Sawright!!!

LCM doesn't say stuff like the crap at the bottom of the article... except this one. She asks what body parts are saying. She hasn't asked me individually about it for a long time because it goes nowhere ("what are your knees saying?" "Uh nothing because they are ****ing knees") but she led a group while in patient about it. The idea was to say what each of our body parts were "saying". I actually liked the group... not because of the topic. That was bull****. But she had us lay down on the floor. I almost immediately started to cry because I'm terrified of lying down next to people. She ended up sitting next to me with her hand on my forehead. And I felt very held by her and very cared for. But the topic of the group was ****ing bull.

School T on the other hand would say some of these things. But she's super inexperienced so she might just be parroting therapy 101 or whatever they take.

[growlycat]

In the right hands it can be powerful….in the wrong hands, well, comedy

[someone321]

When I read it, first I just thought - ufff, good that my T doesn't talk in this way because I would just laugh at her... Actually I think that at the beginning she was saying some things which probably were supposed to be "soothing" but based on my face expression and feedback quite soon she realized that this approach is not welcome... But when I think about it more, I think that sometimes my T goes in the same direction but doesn't use so "funny" words, like she wants to know how I am feeling right then, also if I am tense, if I can find a spot in my body which is relaxed even when I'm tense (that actually made me laughing/rolling my eyes) etc...
I recall the paper in which my T also gave an example which simply freaked me out (it was much much "funnier" than those from the above article), so I only hope that I don't dissociate much so my T won't use these methods on me... But I hope that my T knows me too well to try something as silly...

Originally Posted by hankster

Omg - how can you even read this article? Shes a horrible writer! Run on sentences, repeating words and phrases over and over - even the page format is difficult. And the first word after a numbered bullet point should be upper case. Isnt that what they teach in no child left behind? Apparently somebody got left behind! Stopdog, you read this, then tell me you dont understand my posts? Suddenly im very flattered. I couldnt get past half the first page, sorry! It was too annoyingly written. Call the editor.

My guess is that this is a written speech that's been published with minimal editing. It reads as if it was originally supposed to be spoken, but with some sentences combined to make it more like written language. I teach academic writing and oral presentations to undergraduate students, and the first thing I tell them is that a written text and a spoken text are fundamentally different even when the texts talk about the exact same topic, and you can't turn one into the other with just a few minor changes. The lack of proper references is annoying, too - you can't just say "it is hypothesized that..." without telling us whose hypothesis you are presenting, it's not good practice.

The subject is interesting, though. I think it's worth trying to get past the presentation of the material, because the content is worth knowing.

[iheartjacques]

A good article, except for some of the questions down the bottom. Thankfully my t talks like a human being.

Re the examples at the bottom of the page - they make more sense if you've read the article first. I agree with everybody who is relieved that our Ts don't actually talk like this, I would be a bit embarrassed if he did, I think, but in context I can see where the comments and questions actually come from.