[atisketatasket]

In your personal opinion, is therapy more of an intellectual or emotional endeavor? In other words, does the healing or the work or whatever you want to call it stem from intellectual processes and interaction or from emotional processes and interaction?

This is in your opinion, and I want to know which you think predominates (or should ideally predominate). Yes, I imagine both intellect and emotion play a role, but which do you think is more important? That's why the poll choices are limited.

The question comes because I read this in the Handbook of Contemporary Psychotherapy: "psychotherapy is a mutual exchange between patient and therapist, an emotional endeavor in which both parties must be able to feel and experience one another's humanity" (p. 195).

Personally I don't see why there can't be successful therapy that is entirely or almost entirely intellectual, in which data is processed and absorbed by client and therapist alike.

I treat it in an intellectual way primarily, so I chose that, but really it can be both, so if that option had been available I would have chosen it.

[justdesserts]

I have spent my entire life intellectualizing my emotional experiences. Therapy is where I am able to experience emotions that I've never allowed myself to feel before.

We were just discussing this in therapy Friday!

It doesn't matter how much I grasp my life experience(s) intellectually ...

Until I work through the emotions connected with them, there will be limited forward progress!

[SingDanceRunLife]

I voted for emotional. Intellectually I know things. Most things that we talk about in therapy, but I have to get there emotionally. Like with my OCD. I know intellectually that washing my hands 3 times is no better than washing them well once, but when I get stressed out and my OCD flares up, I can't see that because my anxiety is in the way of that so my knowledge is just pushed to the side.

[ruh roh]

Emotional, for sure. If I could have worked this all out intellectually, I would have been able to do so by now.

[precaryous]

I'm going to vote "emotional" for me.

When I started therapy with current T, it was just to obtain a release from her to have my surgery. It was more of a single goal/focus event. If I had just needed her for that time-limited goal...therapy might have been more on the intellectual side.

But we discussed other issues and we decided to continue.

I started therapy thinking it would be intellectual. I had no idea that instead, it was going to be an emotional thing, not through choice, it just is.

[Partless]

It necessarily involves both, given how our mind works, but the change happens at emotional level. An extreme example of this is orthodox psychoanalysis, where seems intellect is the enemy in the session. But even with the opposite end of the spectrum, something like Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, it's really still about emotional change, except that unlike psychoanalysis, here cognition and intellect is seen as useful but only in the sense of helping us get at the emotions.

[Lauliza]

For me it's emotional since that's where I need the most work. I can grasp situations intellectually, but sometimes my emotions still took over in ways that weren't healthy. Therapy is the only place where I could work on regulation my emotions successfully.

[stopdog]

I find it adversarial. She has not been useful for why I went, but she is not a completely useless foe. I have learned not to walk into her traps quite as often or not as unaware that it is a trap. Surely, like Cato and Clouseau - that practice is useful to me and helps hone my skills.

[1stepatatime]

I have spent a good part of my life rationalizing, being logical. In therapy I'm learning to FEEL, to not judge my feelings ( that part is still hard), to face very painful feelings that evoke emotion. So for me definitely emotional.

[1stepatatime]

Originally Posted by Pfrog

We were just discussing this in therapy Friday!

It doesn't matter how much I grasp my life experience(s) intellectually ...

Until I work through the emotions connected with them, there will be limited forward progress!

This holds true for me as well!!

Both I'd say for me, but primarily emotional.

[unaluna]

Emotional. Per my t, human children need a parental type to help them make sense of their feelings. Then and only then can these feelings be associated with the corresponding intellectual thoughts and properly stored in memory. And growth can proceed from there. Maybe like deadheading a flowering plant? If you dont deadhead - if the plant / child isnt attended to - then you kinda leave it up to chance how that plant is gonna grow.

[magno11789]

I think it is emotional. I know logically most of the stuff we discuss in therapy, but my emotional brain doesn't always want to listen to logic and or maybe the logic doesn't always want to listen to emotion.

[velcro003]

Originally Posted by ruh roh

Emotional, for sure. If I could have worked this all out intellectually, I would have been able to do so by now.

Pretty much.

[Bipolar Warrior]

I'm in therapy to learn how to express my feelings, and try to get rid of some of the very painful emotions I have lived with for so many years. I want to replace them with healthy ones. Part of that process is understanding why I am the way I am and feel the way I feel, to go back in time and try to figure out what happened to me that made me so self-destructive, but ultimately it is emotional growth I am working towards.

People always tell me I think too much. I analyse everything. I overthink things, which leads to self-abuse and self-destruct. I feel like I deserve to be miserable. I feel like I'm supposed to fail. I have so much self-hatred, and that's why I went to therapy. I needed emotional intervention.

[Argonautomobile]

I treated therapy as primarily intellectual in the beginning. It was easy and safe and interesting. I got to have a nice conversation once a week about Big Ideas. As I got more comfortable and self-aware, less likely to intellectualize as a defense, we moved into emotional territory. Which was scarier but ultimately more helpful.

So I voted "emotional," though I don't think there's anything wrong or UNhelpful in treating therapy as a primarily intellectual endeavor. Just sort of depends where you're at and what your problems are.

[Out There]

I voted emotional. One of my things is to rationalize , analyse and evaluate rather than ' feel ' ( and my field is science so I do it even more ). So I'm working on feeling ,or trying to , although I do enjoy the intellectual side.

[Miswimmy1]

I think it's both - it increases emotional intelligence. It allows me to engage with my emotions. Recognizing my emotions is the first step in addressing them, and often I address them with tools that are a result of the knowledge that I've gained.