Crash test dummies

Reading thru some of the threads here, i feel like being in therapy is like being a crash test dummy. One, its kinda optional. The crash test dummy isnt really travelling anywhere. Then, let us also assume its somewhat volitional - the dummy can quit whenever he wants to.

So, he keeps crashing into a wall. Sometimes the t is the wall, sometimes the t is the vehicle.

Change the metaphor. Being in therapy is like WATCHING yourself as the crash test dummy and trying to learn from the experience. Until the crash test dummy can meet the wall in a vehicle and all remain intact.

It seems to me like some people see it more like a fight between two crash test dummies?

Hmm. Not sure the metaphor works for me. I see crash test dummies completely at the whim of the person who sticks them in the doomed vehicle with no choice in the matter, no ability to speak for themselves. A test dummy has no option to quit because he is mindless and completely powerless to do anything about his fate.

I've never felt powerless in my therapy. I've never felt at the whim of my therapist. They have always given me a voice and options on how to proceed.

I don't get the analogy either. But if it works for you - great.
One of the most interesting books I have read somewhat recently (like since 2000) was Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers by Mary Roach who in one of the chapters was how useful it was to have donated bodies used in crash research.

A good way of describing destructive transference enactments I would think. Though the idea would be to stop treating yourself as a crash test dummy flinging yourself at the same ole wall over and over.

And now I've got that one song from that nineties band stuck in my head...

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I think I felt much more like a crash test dummy in my real life before I started therapy: completely powerless and voiceless, stuck and trapped in this "vehicle" with no escape. Therapy helped me find my voice and the power to control the steering wheel. No longer a silent, powerless "dummy"; no longer powerless; no longer at the whim of the people who set out to harm me.

I like your analogy okay, hankster, but I would mention the car a bit more often My life is the car that keeps being smashed into the wall by the dummy who is allegedly "driving" it only, as a dummy, not very well. Eventually, with therapy (therapist is a car designer and overseer/critic of the crash testing, Ralph Nader if you will) I learn to manage my life and self better/smarter so when a crash happens the life and dummy can recover to crash another day.

Yeah thats how i mean it.

For me - I see myself as the car designer and overseer and the therapist as the wall with therapy as the car.

Ha ha - youre not gonna trick me into asking who's the dummy!

It is a regular crash dummy - unless the therapist volunteers.

I can see that too. However, out in the "real world" there will be other walls that won't be oriented or made like the therapist so your car won't serve you as well in those situations? Sounds like you would have to swap out the walls as well as the car designs and that makes for too many combinations for me. If you only want to have one car, you'd have to end up with a tank?

I think if the car can handle the therapist wall it will do better in real life. Therapy is like the super dooper horrible test course that if the car can negotiate - it will handle the outside course just fine.

I remember an inspector morse episode where he was going through a hazardous driving course - I see the therapist as that hazardous course wall.

Okay, but if we switch the analogy to horse racing :-) some horses prefer the grass and some the dirt. Some do well in muddy conditions and some don't do well in those circumstances at all. So just because you have a thoroughbred horse that does well at steeplechase racing; a long, arduous, cross-country affair where the therapist is a barrier followed by a water pit [The steeplechase is a 3000 meter track race consisting of 28 barriers and 7 barriers followed by a water pit. The water pit is 3.66m long. Each lap the runners hurdle four barriers followed by a water jump. Barrier heights for men are 0.914m (36 in) and barrier heights for women are 0.762m (30in)], that horse is going to come in last against quarter horses in a 402 meter sprint?

I would never run a horse into a wall.
I also would never let them near a therapist. I like horses.