[atisketatasket]

A comment on another thread made me wonder about this. That poster pointed out that there is a stage in therapy when clients often become frustrated with the process, even to the point of thinking it's all a giant con game. Meaning it's a stage you have to work through, kind of like the stages of grief.

So I wondered about stages in therapy. Googling gets you lots of therapists' perspectives, most of which have to do with the "healing" part of therapy - like, 1) presentation of problem, 2) admission that change needs to happen, 3) change, 4) termination. They vary, but stuff like that.

And that's all good in an ideal world, but what about stages of attitude/emotions towards therapy from a client perspective? Not necessarily talking transference, attachment, etc. here (since I do not think that they are really stages), but more like this. I would characterize my own stages so far, in seven months, as:

1) Reluctance (overlaps with Stage 2)
2) Hope (that this might actually help)
3) Resolve to get down to business (the current stage)
4) (possible new stage) Increasing irritation (overlaps with Stage 3)

Have you observed any such stages in your therapy? This isn't a question about opinions of therapy, or the therapeutic relationship, or your feelings towards your therapist, but your own attitudes towards therapy itself.

[1stepatatime]

I have been in therapy for almost 3 years with the same T. I find it interesting regarding my feelings throughout this process. So...here's how its been going for me. ..
Stage 1.. reluctance, uncomfortable to open up
Stage 2... learning to very slowly trust t.
Stage 3... becoming more comfortable discussing topics.
Stage 4... feeling irritated, insecure at times as this process delves deeper, no turning back tho.
I'm at stage 4 right now, not sure what the next stage will bring!

[stopdog]

I started out skeptical and I remain so. The stages I had were ask therapist about how therapy works, get rebuffed by therapist who said she could not explain, read a ton of textbooks and took classes on the subject, still think it is hokum but figured out a way for the woman to be somewhat useful. The way the woman is useful is in no way the way those people write about themselves or in their textbooks. My frustrated stage was trying to figure out how what the woman was doing was in any related to why I was there. It never became clearer.

[unaluna]

Hmm.

Age 21 - 51 : think t is a douche.
Age 52 - 54 : hit bottom. Get fired for millionth time. Move back in with mom. Hide in attic.
Age 55 - 57 : think t is a douche.
Age 58(2010): realize time and money is running out. Start saying yes to t.
Age 63(2015): Gets easier after mom dies. Just knowing shes not gonna come around and pee on my parade. Guilt is an awful legacy.

[Rive.]

I don’t know that I necessarily agree re the ‘stages’ idea. I think it depends, to a certain extent, on clients’ attitudes.

Some embark on therapy already (without any prior direct experience but merely preconceived ideas) thinking negatively about it. Throughout their ‘journey’ they keep the same defensive/superior attitude. Thus, no stages would apply here. More an avoidant attitude that strives to be proven ‘right’ by judging any- and every- experience as such. And merrily casting aspersions on the therapy experience.

Besides, there might be a mix of elements at any one stage, so how to summarise any one stage. I most certainly wouldn't be able to define such clear-cut stages.

I apparently made progress but I've been going so long. It's such a slow process

I've been with this T for 12yrs. I can't put my experience into stages.
The thing is. If a T really isn't up to the job, then it would feel like a big con.
My struggle is with my history.

[ruh roh]

There's definitely a progression, but I can't fit it into stages. Mostly, for me, there's a lot of circling the drain (core issues), interrupted by current day crises that link directly to the core issues, more circling and sinking, crises...

Somewhere in there, my therapist's responses and steadiness help me make sense of it, and also provide some support that feels very solid. I don't know what comes next. Probably more chaos and coming up for air. It's a very long, tedious process, but there are days when I can see/feel small changes, and that's what keeps me going.

[stopdog]

Perhaps this is like the stages of death that Kublar Ross talked about and people took to be definite and distinct stages that people move through rather than shifting from sometimes bargaining and sometimes raging and sometimes accepting (though I believe she later clarified she had not meant it the literal way people took it). Perhaps the stages are not, for everyone, clearly delineated and never to be revisited. Layers versus swirls.
Sometimes it seems more to me to be emperor's new clothes than others. Sometimes it seems more like religion in the way it is talked about (Faith for example being like therapy's "the process" which they all talk about but never define in anything but the most nebulous of ways). And so on. The thing for me that has changed is that I am not as frustrated constantly because I no longer give the therapist free rein. The thing that has not is I still do not understand what the woman is trying to do when I do let her speak. Some days I am more able to just ignore it and other days it still annoys me.

[atisketatasket]

Stopdog is right - I did not mean a linear progression (hence all the overlaps in my first post). Nothing is that simple. You can advance a stage, then slip back, you can be in two stages at once, you can go in a spiral and revisit each stage periodically.

Given that, though, what are the stages for you (for want of a better word)?

[junkDNA]

i started out testing my T, testing his care, testing if he was supportive, testing his limits. i did that for a while. T said that the therapy process was so hard for me because of my previous sexually abusive T. i fought the process, refused to change things in my life. i spent a long time being miserable and wanting to stay that way. over time these behaviors lessened and i started talking to him more and expressing my thoughts and feelings without acting them out in various self destructive ways (ED, not taking meds, SI). after my T and i left the residential treatment program that we met in.. i started really trusting my T, looking up to him as a father figure and feeling love for him in that way. i eventually told him about it and he said its normal and that he was touched. these days i find myself preoccupied that he is going to die which is probly abandonment fears. my dad died when i was 10. since i see T in a paternal way (which might be weird cuz hes only 10 yrs older than me) i guess my fear of his death is related to my dad. the next steps i want to take is become more stable... stable enough to handle talking about trauma.

[vonmoxie]

I've seen two tracks occur in my start-to-finish therapist relationships to date:

Therapist A:
1.—Develop Trust
2.—Develop Understanding and Mutual Respect
3.—Share Wisdom (that's on both sides)
4.—Healthy Graduation on both parts due to having gotten all that can be gotten, done all that can be done together, and knowing all that can be known from the connection, which was plenty, with what I got out of it still being relevant for me decades later.

Therapists B/C/D:
1.—Develop One-Way Trust (I have to trust, they never do)
2.—Develop Very Little Understanding (it's like they are talking to some other person most of the time, some fairly erroneously imagined person that they've decided I am)
3.—Sharing from one side only (mum's the word from them, and my words are meaningless because they don't allow themselves to actually know me in a meaningful way)
4.—Termination occurs after more than fair chance being given by me, concerns expressed, etc., due to my having a better than average ability to assess what possibilities do and do not exist in a situation despite whatever other issues may exist for me. My biggest problem is actually not bolting sooner when I realize things can't well pan out. I seem to be quite severely afflicted with loyalty and faith in human nature, qualities that in these situations can end up being more detrimental than not.

[SkyscraperMeow]

Great thread ;D

For me it has been:

Stage 1: Start therapy. Get confused and annoyed because I don't know what's going on.
Stage 2: Observe that therapist powers down like a robot at the end of each session and offers the most banal of solutions to what might seem like superficial issues, but are actually much deeper rooted problems. Become hugely frustrated and hurt because I am paying through the nose for someone to not understand me at all.
Stage 3: Tell everyone who will listen that therapy sucks and is a scam and is awful.
Stage 4: Leave therapist. Find new one.
Stage 5: Find new therapist quite different, much warmer, much more interested in deeper causes than quick fixes.
Stage 6: Do therapy with new therapist. Therapy is hard, and hurts a lot sometimes, but I feel like he cares and I feel supported and I feel that maybe I will be better off for this.
Stage 7: To be seen...

[BudFox]

For the handful of Ts I saw in years past there really was no progression. After the initial awkwardness, it was mostly indifference on both sides. Then I'd just stop.

Then with a T last year it was something like:
- long period of slowly testing the waters
- increasing connection, trust, vulnerability, intense feelings
- emotional enmeshment
- dependency, obsession, chaos
- termination, abandonment, crushing heartbreak, powerlessness, humiliation, betrayal, profound disillusionment and despair

With Ts after that it is was basically over before it started. Still think it's possible to find someone who can help, but seems rather remote. Have seen the fragile edifice behind the facade.

[Coco3]

It's been over two years that I started therapy, and I finished about six months ago. I think the stages have been something like this:

Stage 1: scared, uncomfortable to open up
Stage 2: learning to very slowly trust T and opening up more
Stage 3: feeling like T is going to reject me anytime now (transference!)
Stage 4: learning T doesn't reject me, no matter what I say or do
Stage 5: getting comfortable with T, feeling more equal
Stage 6: getting attached
Stage 7: feeling ready to end therapy
Stage 8: grief
Stage 9: doing well

[Bipolar Warrior]

(2013) 1. Start seeing private therapist. Immediately feel comfortable.
2. Talk about my core issues in order to build a foundation for the therapy process.
3. We delve a bit deeper into my emotional archives, start to talk about my family, my childhood, etc.
4. We continue down this road rather comfortably.

(2015) 5. Start seeing therapist/mentor assigned to me by university. Find this therapist kind of scary.
6. Talk to private therapist about concerns re: uni therapist. Find uni therapist very intense.
7. Begin to realise that uni therapist is not actually scary at all.
8. Uni therapist helps me so much, teaching me what seems like an endless amount of things about my own personal scripts and my self-destructive behaviours.
9. Realise that maternal transference is happening with uni therapist. Very unsettled. Talk to private therapist about this. Cannot talk to uni therapist about it.
10. Start using things I learn from uni therapist in sessions with private therapist to explore it further. Private therapist's office feels like a safe place where I can also talk about my transference and try to understand it somehow. Still struggle with this.
11. Admit to self that I love my uni therapist. Terrified by it. Grateful for private therapist who is very kind but also very neutral so I don't have to worry about anything when it comes to her.
12. Uni therapist is the best. Love her. Cannot make myself stop loving her. Very overwhelmed by it. Private therapist helps me cope with it. Realise I am terrified of having emotions that are this strong at all, do not understand why uni therapist has to make me feel these things. Angry with self for feeling them. But she helps me so much, so won't ruin it by saying anything, and think maybe I need to learn how to manage emotions anyway? I don't know. It's very hard.

This process is different for everyone, obviously, and it would have been very different for me if I hadn't started to see a second therapist this year. I don't feel like I can separate the two different therapists into different processes or whatever, and how I feel about one of them has affected the work I've been doing with the other one, but I don't think it has been in a negative way. My private therapist is great, but it was very comfortable with her. She didn't challenge me much. When I first started seeing my therapist at university, I was challenged, and that changed everything. I really needed it. She is also my academic mentor, meaning she is supposed to help me structure my time as a student and with my assignments, but I take the things I learn from her and discuss them with my private therapist and it has made all the difference. Uni therapist is straight-forward and reads me with incredible accuracy, and I can take that to my private therapist who has a much more gentle approach, and the combination works for me.

What complicates it is how "loving" and "nurturing" the university therapist is. It is possible that she's doing that whole "re-parenting" thing with me, but it's very overwhelming. I hope it is a stage, so I can get past it and move on! I can't feel like this forever, surely?

[ruh roh]

This is sort of a tangent, and hopefully the OP doesn't mind, but for those whose answers include a testing phase...what does testing look like? Specifically, what have you done to test and what were you testing for? I ask because my therapist said it might be worth trying to find ways to test her trustworthiness, but I have no idea what that means. I'll ask her this week to explain more, but if anyone has examples, I'd love to know what testing looks like.

[atisketatasket]

Originally Posted by ruh roh

This is sort of a tangent, and hopefully the OP doesn't mind, but for those whose answers include a testing phase...what does testing look like? Specifically, what have you done to test and what were you testing for? I ask because my therapist said it might be worth trying to find ways to test her trustworthiness, but I have no idea what that means. I'll ask her this week to explain more, but if anyone has examples, I'd love to know what testing looks like.

I don't mind, I'm curious myself. Have at it.

[unaluna]

Originally Posted by Bipolar Warrior

.

What complicates it is how "loving" and "nurturing" the university therapist is. It is possible that she's doing that whole "re-parenting" thing with me, but it's very overwhelming. I hope it is a stage, so I can get past it and move on! I can't feel like this forever, surely?

I told my t this week that i thought about how he would handle certain chores in my apartment - like he would just get things done! I had a half hour to kill the other morning after breakfast, and i used it to straighten up a shelf, and it felt very t-like. But your post here also made me realize that i am feeling very affectionate towards him. I keep picturing those mother-daughter outfits that were popular in the 1950's - no, my mother wouldnt wear one with me. I remember asking and i remember her reaction / rejection.

All that is to say, yes, maybe this IS a part of our reparenting. But once they teach us to walk our own path for our own good, that path will lead away from them, not circle back to them.

[BudFox]

Maybe the most critical stage is "rupture/wounding". Can the T come good on the implied promise to suppress their needs in favor yours, i.e. admit to a mistake and repair it, even if it is unpleasant to do so? Or will they throw you under the bus to preserve their self image?

[unaluna]

Originally Posted by BudFox

Maybe the most critical stage is "rupture/wounding". Can the T come good on the implied promise to suppress their needs in favor yours, i.e. admit to a mistake and repair it, even if it is unpleasant to do so? Or will they throw you under the bus to preserve their self image?

Rupture/repair doesnt mean what you imply here. Dont want to confuse the googlers.

[BudFox]

Originally Posted by unaluna

Rupture/repair doesnt mean what you imply here. Dont want to confuse the googlers.

I don't follow you.