Does your T instruct you?

i see what you are saying, ATAT, but people generally show up to therapy (that isn't court-ordered) because SOMETHING is wrong, something is bothering them that they can't seem to fix on their own. My T has NEVER implied i am broken and need fixing. Really, it has been me that has been "I don't even know why i am here!! I don't actually believe i am depressed. I am fine!" To which she has said "Velcro, I think you are depressed, and need help," but that is ONLY because I was so adamant against it/in denial (still am). She also prefaced that statement with "I usually am not so direct, but..." She knew I needed to hear that it is ok to not be ok, if you know what i mean. She wasn't saying I am broken, and doesn't go by that philosophy anyway. She said if she could just "magically fix" people, she'd be a millionaire, but she can't. She can't tell me how she got better (she had an ED when she was younger), because she knows that won't be how I feel better.
I agree with you on this
I sort of blathered above, but my T has always sat back, and let me lead whatever comes out of my mouth that week. We have spent 7 months on me not really believing i am depressed or should even BE in therapy. She does not seem annoyed or upset by this, even if I am, and she doesn't portray an air of superiority, like she is just sitting aroudn waiting to help me. What she does say is that she isn't going anywhere, despite my fears that I am awful and annoying and frustrating, and that as long as I am willing to show up, she is willing to listen. She doesn't expect anything else. In fact, I expect much more of myself than my T does!

With each of my therapists past and present having strong perspectives and opinions, I find it necessary to view their advice through the prism of those perspectives in order to make any of it useful, which doesn't really allow me to blithely receive anything they tell me as instruction. None has been as well-versed or as objective as I would have hoped about the complications of what comprises my mental health profile either; unfortunately this just seems to be a reality of how therapy works for me that I've had to accept, and perhaps for them it alters their approach towards me, because I don't think they've been afraid or hesitant to instruct me. My relationships with them just naturally evolve as more consultive than instructive, more collaborative and co-driven than a classical teacher and student relationship might be. I suppose I look at them more as consiglieres of sorts; they share their observations and assessments, and I take them into consideration -- viewing them, as I said, through the prism of their perspectives, biases, etc. That's the best I'm personally able to get out of it.

If they've instructed me then I've also instructed them, because the information sharing is two-way .. but I really don't see it as more than sharing and collaboration.

I agree with this sentiment. I think my T might share her observations of my experience, but ulimately, it is up to me to accept what she is saying, or not. Most often, not...and she is ok with that. I think she probably learns something from me, though I am not sure what. She seems very open to whatever comes in the room, and doesn't try to sway where we are going one way or another.

Jajaja—thanks for this! Your posts always make me laugh. You have a way of crystalizing (haha) and clarifying a point that makes me a little jealous. Yes, I think the essential difference is noninterference—pure, active instruction can involve interference (I’m thinking trying to teach little kids how to hold a pencil, and half of them grab it full-fist like they’re about to stake a vampire—you’d step in and correct their grip). This is different than imparting information, supporting, guiding, and all that “fluffier” instruction that happens in therapy, when it happens at all.

I like that you bring up the point about hard technical skills. I know this wasn’t something I appreciated in my T at first. They spend so much time reflecting and nodding and doing that therapist thing it can be easy to forget that this person (presumably—hopefully) actually does have a ton of specialist information and education on human behavior, psychology, mental illness, and the like.

Anyway, glad as always to talk to a fellow learning-lover. Though glad you don’t experience therapy this way—I don’t think it would be especially therapeutic to have session after session focused primarily on the subject (or, god forbid, the therapist) instead of you, the client.

I should have asked ATAT what types of things one DOES learn in the context of therapy and how they differ from things one learns outside of it. Because, again, it’s often not that different in my experience. Maybe that’s because I’ve never really felt instructed in any topic as vague and amorphous as “life.” I receive psychoeducation on living with a mental illness, which I may do with as I will. I have a different perspective expressed to me on a particular relational issue, which I find interesting and provocative if not always correct. I am recommended and taught particular strategies for coping with particular feelings, which I always at least try before discounting.

I’ve often had the same “ah ha!” moment when information on my difficulties clicks as when I finally get the pattern to the verb conjugation. I experience the same sense of accomplishment when I successfully change a tire as when I successfully change a bad habit. I’ve never felt instruction in either case was inherently offensive.

I’m sorry you’ve had such awful experiences. I’m sorry you’ve felt that nasty implication. I can see therapy being very painful and disappointing indeed for someone who doesn’t want instruction or advice.

I like 'consultive' as a descriptor. That might be more accurate than 'instructive' for the total picture of therapy. I think it's important, too, to take things with their contextual grain of salt--view through the 'prism of perspective,' as you so nicely put it. I've found contextualization of this sort invaluable, and one of the most helpful things about therapy. Example--

I suffered for years with panic attacks and funny turns of the 'nothing is real--I'm not real--this is a dream--oh god' variety. And I really wish someone with a background in trauma and a perspective informed by psychology had introduced me to the terms "dissociate," "depersonalization," and "derealization" before I signed up for graduate level courses in radical skepticism and epistemology...

But nobody did. And so the advice to, you know, go for a walk or do a grounding exercise seemed (and was) completely useless until I finally (with my therapist) understood that this sort of advice was informed by a psychiatric model--that the problem maybe wasn't best viewed through an academic lens and that's why it hadn't responded to philosophic inquiry into the nature of reality and our knowledge of its existence.

I'm sorry you haven't found your T's advice/information as well-versed or objective as you'd hoped. I guess sometimes you have to cobble together the total picture yourself using all the different perspectives that have been made available to you. Thanks for this!

The rest of you, excuse the off topic. I'd also recommend a well-cast stage version of Durang's "Beyond Therapy." (The movie didn't work.)

This sounds really funny! I've never heard of it before--thanks, missbella!

And thanks to WalkedThatRoad, too. I love Six Characters (though it's been ages since I read it). As for Beckett...I have to be in the right mood...

If I was going to pick a play that I consider to be like the therapy I see
it would be more Tom Stoppard-ish - Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead sort of thing:

The Player: We're actors! We're the opposite of people!

and

The Player: We're more of the love, blood, and rhetoric school. Well, we can do you blood and love without the rhetoric, and we can do you blood and rhetoric without the love, and we can do you all three concurrent or consecutive. But we can't give you love and rhetoric without the blood. Blood is compulsory. They're all blood, you see.
Guildenstern: Is that what people want?
The Player: It's what we do.

Which is a step up from what it could appear as if Edward Ablee-ish Whose Afraid of Virginia Woolf.

Hey, actor's are people too!

They are? Have you ever eaten with one?

Haha, thanks for that, SD!

Hasn't really been awful in general. Most therapy I have done has been thoroughly inconsequential.

But even when the model of advising, guiding, instructing wasn't overt or particularly problematic, the experience was still largely me expressing things, and then having those things interpreted and fed back to me, sometimes in a "corrected" form. A basic assumption of therapy seems to be that the client is suffering due to some internal failure or inability to see clearly, rather than due to their life situation.

This was never what i needed and indicates a faulty diagnosis. What I needed was connection and understanding. I got that here and there, but it was never fully authentic or mutual.

Yes, my therapist instructs me. But there is no reason to feel shame about it. Handling mental illness is hard and it's better not to do it alone. Who better to help than a professional.

I'm glad to hear that, in a way. At least, I'd take 'inconsequential' over 'awful' any way.

Yeah, that sounds like therapy--having things reflected back at you. Though I've never really seen those two things (suffering due to distorted vision and suffering due to life situation) as being mutually exclusive. That is, I've always sort of been under the impression that most (if not all) distorted vision was directly due to a difficult life situation. That difficult life situations have this tendency to distort vision. And since life situations can not always be changed--and even when they can therapists aren't in the business of directly making that change--then the best anyone can do is try to change the way they think about the life situation.

But I'd probably feel differently about the matter if I felt that all my problems were external--caused by things outside my control--and that my vision was clear.

I don't have much experience with therapy in a general sense--I've only ever seen the one therapist for the one year--but, in my limited experience, I know that if I'd been looking for connection and understanding without the instructional aspect, I'd have been mighty disappointed. So I can see it being difficult to get what you, personally, need from a therapist.

Thanks for this! I'm glad you bring up mental illness--I think it's around this issue that my T has been most actively instructional. He's certainly never claimed to have special knowledge about 'life' in general, but life with a mental illness? Let's just say I needed psychoeducation, skills for coping, information about the illness. And, indeed, who better to help than a professional.

Thanks again!

I'm with you. But maybe what therapists or others in helping professions fail to consider is that a person can have distorted vision and various neuroses and also be aware of it. What drives me nuts is the presumption that a suffering person is a blind person, and also the presumption that a layperson is somehow less capable of insight than a therapist.

I went to see an MD last week who I saw a few years ago. She is unusual, works with trauma, is very spiritually based, focuses on emotional stuff primarily. She operates like a therapist at times. Already after one visit she is giving overbearing interpretations of my internal conflicts. And I can see that it is partly about her. She needs to be in the role of guru and adviser, whether I need it or not.

Wow. That MD sounds like a real treasure Yeah, some people need to be needed. I've met people who go over and above the call of duty, jump at any opportunity to 'save' someone else in a move that really is about their own narcissism. Can't say I cared much for them, and I can't see them getting very far as therapists. Sounds like a recipe for burnout. But, as I said, I've actually only ever met the one therapist, and he'd be a terrible guru. Way too much work.

Yeah, I see your point, and I think it is pretty insulting to assume the client is somehow inherently less capable of insight than the therapist. That makes it sound like the client could never learn to be insightful--that the client wouldn't have insight even without the stress of a difficult life situation--because they're somehow constitutionally incapable of it and that fundamental incapability is what's causing the suffering in the first place.

That, to me, is quite a different animal than the idea that stress, trauma, and mental illness can make it more difficult to have insight or be objective in the way one sees oneself.

This latter point has been more or less explicitly stated in my own therapy ("I think [the trauma] had an effect on the way you see yourself") and implicitly implied at other times ("And how much of what you're feeling right now could be caused by your discontinuation of the medication?") but pointing out the occasional blind spot is different than saying you, the client, are blind and will never see so I, the therapist, will have to be your guide dog for the rest of forever.

The problem I've faced is that I've never come across a therapist who was in a position to diagnose or fully understand my own so-called mental illness. They interpret my depression, anxiety, etc as purely a psychological/emotional phenomenon that I can either overcome or manage with the right behavioral and cognitive modifications.

But the brain is a physical organ. I have been diagnosed with some conditions that can affect it (via inflammation, toxin overload, nutrient deficiencies, etc). So therapy (also psych drugs) as a purported treatment might entirely miss the point. I guess this is somewhat tangential, but it's another reason why instruction in therapy has been problematic for me.