High IQ and Therapy?

Paradoxically, we were instructed to express our emotions detachedly by narrating them, as in...."I felt anger when you swindled me out of my deposit." They wanted us to negotiate the world this way. It seems like they thought talking like robots was a desirable social skill.

PS. When one co-therapists shrieked "I feel anger" when I wanted to terminate, I found it absurdly comical.

To give them the benefit of the doubt, it does help to try and express/put into words what you are feeling emotionally in order to get in touch with those emotions. In the therapy process it can provide a mechanism to delve into the deeper issues.

Still though a therapist shrieking "I feel anger" would be enough to send me packing. Unless of course it was part of the demonstration/encouragement of how to use/make use of the technique. Dunno...

I would have burst out laughing. And I would never talk like that no matter what a therapist said. It is completely ridiculous.

It sounds like they wanted you to express emotion, not stop using your intellect. It is possible to do both - there are plenty of highly intelligent people who express emotions.

No that is not correct. The woman did want me to stop.

I am sure there are plenty of people who do both - more power to them if they find it useful for them.

Yeah, for me, absurdity is an emotion. I feel absurdity when therapists instruct me to talk like an android. Beep...beep...beep.

In my case, my emotions are generally not unexpressed, therefore re-enacting those particular emotions for a therapist's benefit provides no release for me, and feels more like a mockery to authentic process than anything genuinely supportive. I always had trouble with the kind of trauma therapy that involves delving into all kinds of detail about the trauma in order that the therapist could attempt to get me to release what is theoretically unreleased, when my trouble is clearly not repression, and the disinclination to show emotion on demand cannot be assumed to be indicative of a psychological block or resistance though it seems to so often be.

There are always going to be situations that demand the kind of creative thinking that can't be taught in textbooks, that live on the perimeter of well-known psychoanalytical dogma, and clients with an especial ability to think critically are certainly going to make for a more complicated process for therapists to contend with, bringing more pre-existing consideration to the process. Having potentially educated themselves to the extent that they've already run themselves through just about everything that a therapist thinks to attempt to run them through. Potentially having the kind of intelligence that has already allowed for a deep reorganization of thought patterns, so that's what left and what's needed is beyond what's generally offered and assumed by therapists to be helpful. This just seems logical to me, and happens to be my personal experience.

For the things that I went through, things a 4 year old should never have to see and process, it is not insignificant that I never entirely lost my mind a long time ago, and it's overarchingly only been the result of work I've done on my own from my earliest days of living in libraries and cross-pollinating knowledge, that I have emerged with relative sanity (along with what was perhaps a configuration of genetic code particularly lucky for enduring my environment without totally going off the rails). I didn't want to do it on my own, but at the time my situation did not provide me with any other options. I love the help of a contributor when I can find one able, and there have been a few, but people who can or who choose to relate to the breadth of my thinking are simply few and far between.

I'm sure all that will sound pompous to some, but it's just the truth, which certainly doesn't suggest that it's the truth for everyone; such is the array of experienced reality. Anyway, I felt spurred to write. You know how I get.

I've met at least one, who, although he didn't say it outright, did lead me to believe that was what he thought.

I don't think it makes any sense. What would be the alternative? Just blindly follow any emotion/intuition that pops into one's head?

I do think there is an assumption that intellectual=unemotional=bad. In reality, an intellectual/analytical person can and should deal honestly and rationally with his emotions, because it is rational to do so.

Sounds manipulative to me.

I've been there. I think I avoided dealing honestly with emotions for a long time because they were difficult to deal with.

There is evidence that not dealing honestly with emotions can cause problems. For example, if totally unemotional, isn't decision making problematic? Why choose one way of living over another? Wouldn't living on skid row be just as good as living in a nice house that was paid for?

Edit: From the transcript of Julia Galef's Straw Vulcan talk I linked yesterday.

Exactly.

I see I am not making my position clear and am being completely misunderstood. Your response is not addressing what I am trying to say. I will bow out of this thread. However no one here can declare whether another is dealing honestly with emotions or not and how I approach it is certainly none of your business. I read your article and disagree with it.

I was responding to your comments in post 271 and post 261.
What did I misunderstand?

What in the article did you disagree with?

Sorry my reply is so late.

My T does not give me a hard time for being intellectual and analytical. She just wants me to also recognize my feelings because they are a part of me and when I don't acknowledge them, they stay buried and I guess you could say that they....slowly try to destroy me from the inside out.
I don't think that everyone who approaches life in an intellectual way needs to acknowledge their emotions. There is no one thing that works for everyone.
I will step out on a limb and predict that my T would say something similar.

((Shakespeare))

Therapists often regard analytical thinking as "black-and-white." Since they are generally fuzzy thinkers themselves, they take a dim view of this.

Madame T was constantly trying to "inject some shades of grey." I did not like that one bit.