did you/do you research or read about therapy and how to do it?

I try not to read accounts of people's personal experiences, therapy blogs, or opinion pieces by therapists, because it's not relevant to my own therapy and it usually makes me angry, sad, and less motivated to move forward in therapy. I do read journal articles and textbooks about psychotherapy, and I have read parts of a few doctoral dissertations in clinical psychology and related fields, as well. In those kinds of publications I am always interested in reading case descriptions. It is certainly not a matter of trying to find out what "they are trying to do".

Ok I misunderstood the last time. I thought you ment researching the T's background, like education and training before you selected a T.

I was a double psych/anthropology major so I had that exposure and back in the day self help books were extremely popular and I read a few of those. Didn't read them to apply to myself. I had exposure to therapy in class and had in classroom training. There was a two story room where the class sat abouve behind glass partitions and critiqued your performance as you took your turn as a therapist. Students took turns acting as the therapist and the patient/client. So I knew methods and the theory's behind it. Still it was undergraduate classes which are limited in information, its not until you reach a master or doctorate level that you get more in depth training. When I started therapy a few years later I never looked into it again. I was lucky with Ts and felt comfortable with how they were approaching my therapy. It was the Pdocs I had a harder time with, they did want to hear anything that was contrary to their own beliefs.

I think therapy is a one-on-one relationship thing so not something one can really learn about or study up on but has to experience and work on together with the other person/therapist.

I quickly realized that I was supposed to be working on me and what I was doing, not what the person behind the curtain may/may not be trying to do, kind of like worrying about how your third grade teacher was teaching you to multiply? I did not "relate" before therapy so my opinions on how to relate to this person and/or reading about how to relate, etc. really didn't. . . relate. "The map is not the territory." Good map-reading skills do not equate to good travel exploration skills.

Ah - I did often question what the purpose of things were in elementary school (I had choices after that in what to take). I did receive a failing grade in some things because I refused to learn them because I saw no purpose. And received no good explanation, if any was given at all. I thought it was worth the trade usually - and I have never once regretted, for example, refusing to memorize the state capitals or learning how to draw/label the bones etc of the inner ear.

I don't see knowing what those people are doing at a client or at all as being in conflict with a client working on why they went. They are not, to me, mutually exclusive.

I don't think the third grade analogy fits well, but I do think it might well matter why I was being taught to multiply in the first place and then I might well disagree with the method the teacher was employing. But I don't see a therapist as a teacher and I certainly believe I as the client get to know what they are doing and why.