When therapy is effective, what does it feel like? What do you feel like?

[JustShakey]

It feels Very Uncomfortable, but not unbearable either. Exciting in a way, but not easy. A bit like a roller coaster that you want to ride but are terrified to get on at the same time.
It's about pushing your comfort zone, so if you're not at least a little uncomfortable, you're not doing the work.

I don't consider therapy effective or successful until a good termination has happened. Therapy can seem like it is going well and then you can go through a horrible abandonment and all the "good" you thought you were getting goes away.

So I guess I have no idea.

[SkyscraperMeow]

I think that therapy is working when you feel secure and calm.

I don't think the grasping, anxious, need-filled reports that so often appear on this board are anything like good therapy. People file it under 'attachment' and think it's healthy. It's not.

Attachment, I have learned, is one of those words that can mean almost anything. Healthy therapeutic attachment is where you hold a therapist in positive regard and can get good work done. Anything more than that is pathological, in my opinion and should never, ever be encouraged.

If you find yourself so dependent on a therapist that you experience serious disruption when the therapist is unable to fulfil your desires / needs, then I think you're in a therapeutically dangerous situation and need to dial it down. I think therapists which encourage close physical contact, fail to maintain healthy boundaries and / or allow their clients to become dependent on them are unethical.

When I first started coming here and reading about therapy, I was frankly horrified at some of the stories I saw. I was terrified that I would end up feeling the same way. I don't. I don't think (or fantasize) of my therapist as my mother, or my lover or even a friend. She's my therapist and I'm comfortable with her and I trust her. If she goes away for a while, that sucks, but it's not the end of the world. If we had to discontinue our sessions, I would be saddened, but I'd move on to another therapist.

I think that's good therapy.

I think a lot of therapists accidentally (or perhaps even knowingly) encourage people to become hopelessly dependent on them, addicted to them, needful of them in entirely inappropriate ways. I don't think that's therapy at all. I think that's just a path which always ends in tears.

Just my two cents, YMMV.

[JustShakey]

I just wanted to clarify my earlier post. It is not the therapeutic relationship that I find uncomfortable. It's the work itself. The relationship provides the security I need to do the work. I don't worry (much) about my T leaving me and I don't usually miss him either.

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content, looking forward to seeing your therapist, not self harming.

Wonderful.

Originally Posted by SkyscraperMeow

I think that therapy is working when you feel secure and calm.

I don't think the grasping, anxious, need-filled reports that so often appear on this board are anything like good therapy. People file it under 'attachment' and think it's healthy. It's not.

Attachment, I have learned, is one of those words that can mean almost anything. Healthy therapeutic attachment is where you hold a therapist in positive regard and can get good work done. Anything more than that is pathological, in my opinion and should never, ever be encouraged.

If you find yourself so dependent on a therapist that you experience serious disruption when the therapist is unable to fulfil your desires / needs, then I think you're in a therapeutically dangerous situation and need to dial it down. I think therapists which encourage close physical contact, fail to maintain healthy boundaries and / or allow their clients to become dependent on them are unethical.

When I first started coming here and reading about therapy, I was frankly horrified at some of the stories I saw. I was terrified that I would end up feeling the same way. I don't. I don't think (or fantasize) of my therapist as my mother, or my lover or even a friend. She's my therapist and I'm comfortable with her and I trust her. If she goes away for a while, that sucks, but it's not the end of the world. If we had to discontinue our sessions, I would be saddened, but I'd move on to another therapist.

I think that's good therapy.

I think a lot of therapists accidentally (or perhaps even knowingly) encourage people to become hopelessly dependent on them, addicted to them, needful of them in entirely inappropriate ways. I don't think that's therapy at all. I think that's just a path which always ends in tears.

Just my two cents, YMMV.

I'm a bit offended by this. Having grasping, anxious, need-filled reactions come out in therapy, I feel, can be very telling about a person's underlying issues. I think it's quite normal to feel intense responses to your caring therapist when your 'normal' is abuse and neglect. Many of us aren't in a place to 'dial it down'. I've switched therapists and had the same issue follow me to the next person. Going through, not around, is the ONLY way out.

I do see the diminishing of grasping, anxious, need-filled feelings as therapy starting to work. Being able to take in the care, knowing it's real, and looking for it and giving it to others in our lives is growth.

Starting with the first appointment —the much dreaded spring cleaning I never got around to. I don't know. It was okay.

As therapy progressed — This hurts. A little calm before the major storm. What the ^#+*am I doing this for? I love her! I hate her! Another major storm. I don't need her! A quiet moment...I don't want her in my life! This is torturous! My life will always be awful! Then a longer calm before a small storm...a triple major storm hits, but it was shortened with a major and longer dose of calm. I notice the mean critical voices don't come around as much. I'm learning to ignore those bullies. Ahhh, I'm feeling good! Then I notice those suicidal thoughts that rented space side by side with my every thought is just an overnight guest every once in a while. Good times that were illusive after the moment they happened hang around a bit longer. They then purchase the rooms vacated by the suicide squad. Calls to and from family and friends are no longer a chore. The good times are a part of me. I can take them in, reflect, smile and remember. The bad times they're there, also. But I am able to spring back into action a heck of a lot quicker than before —being all about the turn around time for me.

Termination — I felt I was now able to do the job of keeping me safe and secure. I know where to go: within myself, family, friends, or seek professional help if and when I need it. I am happy to be interdependent and that is good enough for me. There is truth to the saying, " No Man is an Island," unless he is connected to a tombolo.

There are many ways to do therapy. I healed it through the much maligned touchy-feely type therapy. I got lucky. But for so many people it has gone wrong, and I don't recommend it, because there are very few professionals that are solid enough to handle it themselves. But, if you can find one to work with; have at it!

When the positive results of my own therapy started showing, it was very comfortable and calming. I felt a natural decline in my need to go as often as I was handling life as it came. We never had a formal "termination," but rather, a natural transition from consistent sessions to only sessions occasionally.

[LindaLu]

It must differ for everyone, but for me, it's demonstrated by results in daily life. Good therapy is happening when I can apply a new technique or mindset -- as instructed by T -- to a recurring problem and arrive at a better outcome, or at least more acceptance. When feelings of shame and embarrassment are gradually replaced with self forgiveness. When feeling personally vulnerable and observing others being vulnerable brings about thoughtful engagement instead of being a trigger for fear/disgust.

I like how tw4me described the adventure. For me it feels very empowering, most of all. The first thing I noticed was that I no longer needed the sleeping meds I had been on in order to fall asleep/stay asleep at night. The next thing I didn't even notice, but my mom and my sister did, at a family gathering I was milling around socializing with everyone with my head up and looking people in the eye and carrying on conversations instead of mumbling one-word replies when asked a question. They both mentioned it to me after the fact and I was like oh? it hadn't even phased me at all. about 9 months into therapy, I got a new job - I was so miserable at previous job, saw no way out on my own, then even the beginnings of my blossoming self-esteem hard won in therapy was enough to put myself out there and get a new job. I am SO happy where I work now. I started writing poetry again (I had stopped like 20 years ago or something with the loss of a significant relationship), which eventually led to self-publishing my first book of poems (t was so proud when I told her!) I worked through issues from the past and was able to truly forgive my father for the bad stuff, it took a little longer to forgive my mother but I worked through that too, I still had quite a complex regarding her that did not resolve until only very recently. (maternal transference is a bear and a half!!) Most recently, I feel like half my sessions are spent recounting to t this example and that example that are proof that this therapy stuff really works! My relationships have gotten better and stronger over the course of therapy. I have discovered passions inside of myself and have put myself out there in the world and made new friends who share the same passions and have been getting together with them regularly, egad I could literally go on and on..... I'm in the process of terminating therapy right now, I guess that's why so much is coming to mind to answer this, because t and I have been doing some reminiscing. Therapy has been the absolute best gift I could ever give myself.

[ragsnfeathers]

I don't see how it's possible or desirable to avoid transference of one type or another. The same with staying secure and calm. I just started psychodynamic therapy a couple months ago and I didn't come in secure and calm. If therapy is working I assume I'll get to that state at least significantly more often than I am now but it takes therapy working first.

For example, lately I've been pushing my comfort zone and it unearthed a lot of turbulence I've been hiding from. Friday in therapy I figured out a central reason for what happened with my life and for the turbulence. In the process I became aware that my non-logical, feeling part was reacting to the T as if he was mocking me underneath his open, calm, caring exterior. And you know what, that was what I was paying for. Today all the dysfunctional old feelings are back but now I get to step outside them and be compassionate with myself for having them.

I like my T but I don't atm have strong attachment needs in therapy and I see part of my work in T is to be able to relax enough so that my turbulent feeling side feels safe enough to experience this, know it's okay, and "know" that I can be accepted even when I'm difficult and vulnerable and messy. Then come out to a feeling of calm that's actually secure.

I think that therapy is tricky because it isn't so much of a relationship as a meta-relationship. Meaning it's a constructed relationship, with a lot of the same elements of all good relationships but constructed to help the client safely work out things in a way they can't in an actual relationship. Like a relationship laboratory maybe. The problem is the therapy relationship when it's working smells like a real relationship and it takes a lot of skill to keep it real but at the same time keep it meta. This is the therapist's responsibility and one reason we (or our insurance) pay them well. Therapy with my ex T wasn't working because, even though she had the skills and we clicked, it slid out of a meta-relationship into an actual one and didn't get back. Therapy with new T is working better in large part because he's better able to handle this.

So when therapy is working for me what does it look like in the middle? It looks like turbulence, but it also looks like there's an adult in the room who's empathic to my turbulence but not caught up in it and who I can trust with it, that they care but don't take it personally, and who I can trust to know what to do with it so I can relax and work though it.

Well said ragsnfeathers. I wish I could express myself half as well as others here do!

[ragsnfeathers]

Trust me, you do.

[JustShakey]

Rags, you put it perfectly, thanks.

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