Boundaries and Longing

I've seen people here say they want to protect their therapists from them. I've seen that a lot so it is pretty common. I feel that way too.

What could happen if you don't protect T from you?

You seem to equate "resolve" with "go away." I would say that resolution can take many forms, including clarifying so as to make action effective. I suppose I could have spent my therapy time and resources railing against "the culture" but since my efforts could be far more effective spent addressing my individual healing, that's what I chose to do. I didn't look to therapy for solutions beyond what therapy can offer. I used therapy to heal myself so that then I could go out and pursue cultural change in the ways best suited to my talents.

I do not believe that people will ever be free of those needs. There are only transitions in the ways in which are needs get met in life. As children our parents meet our needs, and as adults our lovers and friends meet our needs. I'm not very convinced that people really get less fragile as they get older, and I'm not sure that therapy will ever be able to make anyone need less. I think the best it can do is help someone understand what they need, meet the need in therapy if possible, or find away to meet the need elsewhere.

I disagree strongly. This is not idealistic in the least, but simply away of understanding what humans are really capable of. People are emphatic. A huge part of the brain is dedicated to empathy, thus suggesting that people are very capable of understanding one another emotionally. And I do not suggest that single relationships make up for traumas, but that a network of relationships can help to deal with the pain that is caused by trauma. It is also absurd to think that we cannot accept or utilize help until me are more healed. I'm not really sure how you would explain the therapy relationship. Going to therapy is in it self choosing to accept help, and people frequently enter therapy when they are at an absolute low. There seems to be a subtle binary here in the way that you think about the mentally well and the mentally healthy. You imply that the mentally healthy are capable and perceptive, while the mentally ill are incapable and confused. I can hardly say that this it the case among the many mentally ill friends that I have had over time.

This is an awfully analytic way of understanding this. I see no reason why someone might not become aware of need when it fulfilled. I would also contend that there is a difference between covering over a need because we don't know how to fulfill it, and actually coming to a place where it is safe enough to feel the need and have it met. And therapists refusal to fulfill a need just so the client becomes aware of it is cruel and entirely absurd.

I have to say that this is one of the most painful parts of your response. You imply here that my work in feminism and other movements is entirely not worthwhile simply because I am not sane or well. There are countless people who participate in social movements and work to make the world better who struggle everyday from emotional injures. In fact many people who are in these movements are in them because they have suffered some form of emotional distress or trauma. You further imply that person who are part of movements such as mad studies, or anti-psychiatry, or patients rights movement, are particularly incapable of being effective. You further imply that there is some state of well, pure, empirical thought that people can gain access to once they are well enough. Besides the fact it is simply ridiculous to think that persons will ever have access to such a lofty level of pure thought, you privilege people who are capable of making "progress" over those who are not.

I do not think that is a futile, empty, or untherapeutic for me to try and understand why it is that therapy exists in the first place. Understanding the way that things work in the world has been a profoundly healing experience for me. It is important to me to name the things that prevent me from getting the things that I need and to work with other people to change the structures that harm so many. Here again you imply that I am unable to help unless I heal myself. I see my emotions and my trauma as deeply connected to my political and academic work. There is never going to be some clean perfect capable me that can suddenly be so much more effective. I go to therapy because I want to be with someone who appreciates and understands the emotional world. I go there so that I can be heard, and so that I can work on the things that hurt, and the ways that I hurt myself. But I do not go there to become perfect, or so that I can become an ethical or competent agent of cultural change. I would also like to point out that there are people who have dedicate their whole lives to changing cultural reactions to emotions and madness, and that those people's work is extremely important and worthwhile.

Depletion, I believe you have grossly misinterpreted my comments in order to fit this thread into your personal beliefs/causes concerning cultural change. That is not the topic Hazelgirl proposed, and so my comments were not written to address those issues except tangentially. I have no desire to engage with you on those topics.

Seemed to me like you guys were talking about unrelated aspects of the topic. One seeing the needs as being literally unfulfilled but maybe virtually or symbolically fulfilled and that being okay; then the other, i am reminded of my brother telling me that all of Gloria Steinem's work is false because her mother was ill and neglectful Yeah you didnt know i was related to a dinosaur, didja?! Which i think is what depletion is saying is b.s., but i couldnt see where she thought fkm was implying anything. I dont see how you inferred anything from fkm. It seemed like more of a old peoples / young peoples way of looking at things. Where old equals one, young equals many; like that.

Anyway this thoughtful thread is one of the reasons i looooove pc.

I really don't feel that I have misinterpreted anything. It is hurtful that you imply that people who are not well can't do good work, and that my desire to discuss my experiences with culture in my own therapy are wrong and misguided. I feel personally attacked by the tone in your post, and you act as if my desire to have more people respond to peoples pain is some how misguided and irrelevant to this thread.

I feel very angry that T's tell their clients that it is not healthy for them to depend up on them and need them, and then when people go out into the world to try and find people who really care about a person's feelings or experiences there are so few people who really want to deal with that and they end up calling these people "needy." Therapists seem to only pathologize clients who have these kinds of needs, and make they feel ashamed of needing therapy to begin with. I believe this response to clients is an iteration of larger cultural tendency to devalue dependency and need. I responded to your post because I believe that you were perpetuating that iteration in the way that you were writing about the topic, and I wanted to point it out and discuss it.

It concerns me that people like Hazelgirl can not get a place where they can express their needs because it is so likely that they will be accused of dependency...even in their own therapy. Your original post bothers me because it makes it seem like there is some right perfect dance that people have to go through in therapy to deal with their needs in the "correct" way. Just being able to say, "I need," is so fvcking hard that I don't think that people deserve to be told "oh, don't need like that," and make sure that you "don't become dependent," and "oh, by the way, therapy is really only about figuring out what needs are there, and discussing that, but this is not the place to meet those needs."

People deserve to have their needs met in therapy, and when therapy cannot meet certain needs they deserve to have friends and family who they can turn to who are there to meet those needs. It is possible, even though you think it is not, to meet needs that are very deep and caused by profound trauma. I know because my H and I do if for one another all the time. And it is not off topic or absurd for me to say that I think that part of the issue with this whole longing problem extends outside the world of therapy, and that I wish that people in general would respond differently to peoples needs.