Do you want to reassure the therapist you hire?

stopdog · 01:02 PM

It certainly is not racism or any other real ism. No therapist is damaged by my opinion of their profession.
Therapists are trained to be impervious, in my opinion. If nothing else, I have found two are impervious and who have not protested. (The first one objected to dude -but it seemed more because she took it literally "I am not a dude" - I told her I would pander to her sensitivity - although I have thrown in a dudette from time to time with no further protest from the woman)

They set the playing field up, they advertise it as a place to say anything, that social norms are not expected and sometimes they work to set them aside, etc. I see no reason to apologize for taking them at face value.

Also - although some seem to lap it up - others see it as a pathology - writing that the client (often they call the client "patient") is trying to ingratiate themselves or gain specialness or trying to be the best client ever = those people will label clients no matter what - so I see no need to pander to their need to be loved. (This comes from their blogs and books - I am not saying this about anyone)

But you can block me if you don't like reading how I deal with those people. And when I deal with them - they are not real - they are playing a role. The therapists I pay have not objected - why it upsets you is beyond me.

AllHeart · Sep 11, 2016, 12:53 PM

I don't necessarily view the compliments I give my t as being reassurance or positive feedback (as related to the therapy itself vs. telling her how much I love her new outfit or hairstyle). I view it as an expression of gratitude because it comes from a place of being genuinely thankful. I tell her the good things not to reassure her, boost her ego, or anything else. It is done because I want to do it, not because I think she needs to hear it.

awkwardlyyours · Sep 11, 2016, 12:59 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by unaluna

Why the need to exclude someone? Calling them "those people" cost Ross Perot the election, among other things, but that was a biggie. Saying they are not really people, they are trained not to have feelings - it smacks of racism, to be frank. Or any other ism. Needing to have an other to blame, to belittle. Its disheartening. And yes it hurts to read it on here all the time. Because who is next? Who are you coming after next?

I won't speak for ATAT but my take on it (although I've done it, repeatedly) is that there is little straightforward about expressing anything in therapy -- especially about the T relationship.

So yeah, I did thank my former T a lot and it seemed to make therapy go smoother and foster some sort of connection between us (at least in my messed-up thinking).

BUT, the fact that she failed to catch on to what I was doing and let me continue for as long as I did and even appeared to respond to it, hurts like hell -- because, at another level, it felt like she was no different from all the many others in my life who'd also failed to see me and were only okay with me as long as I continued to conform to what they wanted of me.

Even the above insight -- which has taken a year plus and a whole lot of soul-searching and dealing with painful crap -- is barely the tip of the iceberg insofar as understanding my dysfunctional responses go.

And, as things got weird between us, former T in fact started to react to me exactly as if it were a "normal" relationship -- telling me that she was feeling "really picked apart", "ripped" etc. And, at the same time, she'd suddenly say that anything goes in therapy. That dynamic was incredibly confusing and familiar to me -- I felt like I couldn't leave her precisely because we'd hurt each other so much. Basically then, treating therapy and the therapist like any other relationship was fraught with peril, at least in my case.

The thing then that sort of instantly made me feel safe with current T was this -- when I told her the stuff that former T said (about how I'd hurt her), she stopped me, looked right at me and repeated a few times till I "got it" -- "You're not responsible for her well-being". She was the only T to have honed in on that and directly made sure I "got it".

So, all of that to say, I do think there are different standards to be applied to what goes in therapy -- and, it takes an incredibly self-aware client (one who doesn't need therapy?!) to be able to apply typical social behaviors / norms in the therapy context while knowing the complete implications, underlying messages etc of it all.

P.S. I have no side to take on the tone of the forums....so, will stay away from it

ruh roh · Sep 11, 2016, 01:00 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by awkwardlyyours

I don't *want* to reassure Ts but I have ended up doing it -- a LOT with former T before things got really bad between us (maybe partly that's why).

I know it's part of my set of issues -- basically if I even slightly sense (and this is really a deep-seated almost unconscious, although I'm now much more aware if it) response to someone not completely liking / accepting me and being even slightly hostile / irritated / frustrated / impatient with me. It almost feels like an intense physical discomfort for me to not try to placate them somehow.

With former T, right from the first session, I felt like she was somewhat dismissive, angry and impatient with me. It sounds bizarre that I stuck it out and kept going back but basically there was such an intense sweetness in the familiarity of making myself vulnerable to someone like that, that I just couldn't walk away. I also have a history of being involved with women who have severe anger issues (by the reckoning of others) -- so yeah, perfect storm etc.

I didn't though immediately start reassuring former T -- I started doing that when she'd get visibly irritated at my asking her questions about therapy, telling her about stuff I read etc. Thanking her or starting a session with acknowledging stuff she'd said previously -- for a while -- made her much calmer (she'd visibly smile -- a big event!) and not prone to get irritated with me. Of course, I also stopped telling her stuff that seemed to set her off (asking questions about therapy or mentioning stuff I read etc).

We very briefly talked about it towards the end -- she said that she had no idea I had any issues with her in the first few months because I'd thanked her etc. I told her that I'd done so because I thought she was angry at me -- so, of course, she said that was my "stuff" and my dysfunctional / messed-up responses (which I totally conceded of course).

I know exactly how this reads and I cringe even as I say it but here's the thing -- I couldn't have stopped the behavior a year ago because it felt physically painful almost to not do it, given my dynamic with her. And yes, if that's how I felt, I should've left a long time ago but other than my pathology, I also had logistical reasons for not leaving earlier.

Ironically, in leaving former T, I finally feel like I'm much more capable of not getting into a dynamic like that again -- I may never have a perfectly healthy response to others' anger but I know that I can at least avoid ever surrounding myself with intimate relationships which recreate that messed-up dynamic.

With current T then, I'm sure while we'll have some issues / arguments / disagreements etc, I just don't feel like that weird dynamic will ever get recreated -- because, she has a very different (much less reactive to my stuff) personality and way of relating to me which almost has me feeling like I can breathe freely (in a way that it seemed I never could with former T).

So yeah, the short answer is that I don't want to or will reassure every T -- but, I have done so in the past when somehow there seemed to be a neat / perfect dysfunctional "fit" between us which brought out my crappy behaviors in full technicolor.

Thank you for this. I can relate to the need to counteract irritation or what might be anger from a therapist by trying to calm with positive statements--more so with past therapists who would retaliate than with the one I see now. But the fear is still there, not to upset things. Early on, I did not do any complimenting, but then I realized there were/are things I really am appreciative about that my therapist does, and I like to let her know. For one thing, it helps her to know what works for me. For another, she does do an awful lot that is way above and beyond what anyone could expect, and far more than any other therapist or person has done.

atisketatasket · 02:05 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by unaluna

Why the need to exclude someone? Calling them "those people" cost Ross Perot the election, among other things, but that was a biggie. Saying they are not really people, they are trained not to have feelings - it smacks of racism, to be frank. Or any other ism. Needing to have an other to blame, to belittle. Its disheartening. And yes it hurts to read it on here all the time. Because who is next? Who are you coming after next?

Therapism!

I have not said that they are not people, or trained not to have feelings. But I do think part of their job is not to need reassurance. I do not need reassurance from my students about my teaching.

I also think that if a client needs to reassure a therapist, that's more about the client. Therapy is not a normal social interaction.

Eta: and I think if a client does need to reassure, that issue should be explored. That was the point of my question that you were responding to.

awkwardlyyours · Sep 11, 2016, 01:06 PM

Yeah, sorry, I did mean to say that one can definitely compliment, thank etc for genuine reasons. Just that in my case, I wasn't ever fully saying anything from a healthy place (with former T at least) -- it wasn't lies but it wasn't the full truth either.

Sep 11, 2016, 01:13 PM

I don't set out to reassure them. I don't find they seek that or really need it. However, I'm a polite person. I say thank you when someone has done something kind for me, or helped me, or supported me. That's just my good manners and I don't discriminate on who I am polite towards, including my therapists. That would just be rude in my book and completely out of character for me. Like anyone, they seem to appreciate my acknowledgment of thanks for their efforts.

unaluna · Sep 11, 2016, 01:50 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by stopdog

It certainly is not racism or any other real ism. No therapist is damaged by my opinion of their profession.

you said yourself, your t said, heaven forfend i should feel good about my job. Whats that, chopped liver?

Also - although some seem to lap it up - others see it as a pathology - writing that the client (often they call the client "patient") is trying to ingratiate themselves or gain specialness or trying to be the best client ever = those people will label clients no matter what - so I see no need to pander to their need to be loved. (This comes from their blogs and books - I am not saying this about anyone)

except that this is at least the 2nd time youve taken this shot at me. I ignored it before. I am acknowledging it now. Altho of course you dont mean me. It just happens to come up when i post honestly i may not be a lawyer but im not an idiot.

But you can block me if you don't like reading how I deal with those people. And when I deal with them - they are not real - they are playing a role. The therapists I pay have not objected - why it upsets you is beyond me.

1. I dont need your permission to block you - how uppity is that?!
2. I think ive made it pretty clear why i am upset. Historical references and everything. If you dont get it, i guess thats just too bad. I dont think i will be able to explain myself any better.

stopdog · 02:15 PM

I understand that you and I do not understand each other at all.
And no - it really was not a shot at you. It had nothing to do with you at all.
I will do what I can to help with your stated discomfort at my opinions.

I have read books and blogs where some of them talk about being less polite:
http://therapyevanston.com/tag/therapy/

https://www.psychotherapy.net/articl...erapeutic-tool

http://www.safranlab.net/uploads/7/6...erence._94.pdf

Are just a small example

atisketatasket · Sep 11, 2016, 02:01 PM

There seems to be a tendency here to confuse reassurance with compliments or feedback. They are not the same. I don't think anyone is saying it's bad to pay your therapist a compliment, or treat them as human, etc.

(Also I don't understand how Ross Perot ended up in this thread.)

divine1966 · Sep 11, 2016, 02:01 PM

No. I don't see why would I unless maybe she asked?

stopdog · Sep 11, 2016, 02:09 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by atisketatasket

There seems to be a tendency here to confuse reassurance with compliments or feedback. They are not the same. I don't think anyone is saying it's bad to pay your therapist a compliment, or treat them as human, etc.

(Also I don't understand how Ross Perot ended up in this thread.)

I was not being all that distinguishing in the original post - I meant any of them - any of a group of like or similar things.

I did not say it was bad to do any of it. I said I don't give them compliments or reassurance - But I never said it was bad for anyone else to do what ever they wanted to do around the therapist.
I do give the woman feedback. I have only had one situation where the feedback was positive and she mocked it and became defensive. I will not bother with such in the future.

BonnieJean · Sep 11, 2016, 02:10 PM

My t has made it clear that she doesn't need me. She is there to provide the therapeutic relationship, insights, and interventions toward the goals of my healing and growth. I have experienced both healing and growth in therapy. She maintains her role. She holds the safe space for me to take about anything I need to talk about. She provides pretty close to unconditional positive regard.

At the beginning her statement about not needing me was painful. I thought it meant she would never value me if I couldn't help her. (Comes from my childhood experiences) But eventually there was a freeing feeling to have someone accept all my junk and me not need to be concerned about meeting needs.

That being said, my natural inclination is to provide constructive feedback. I've done it often in t. I also acknowledge that in the t role is a human being. It is the role for t to handle both my feelings and hers. I leave t to that.

The relationship has matured and my therapy is more of a project we working on together now.

Fuzzybear · Sep 11, 2016, 02:16 PM

Interesting thread...

awkwardlyyours · 02:37 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by atisketatasket

There seems to be a tendency here to confuse reassurance with compliments or feedback. They are not the same. I don't think anyone is saying it's bad to pay your therapist a compliment, or treat them as human, etc.

(Also I don't understand how Ross Perot ended up in this thread.)

I agree that compliments aren't the same as reassurance (feedback -- depends) -- but, they can indirectly serve as reassurance that all's well.

Perhaps, this is my personal bugbear but I don't think all types of reassurance / compliments / feedback / gratitude etc -- even within the same client-T setup -- are created equal.

The devil really does lie in the details -- the whys and wherefores.

I'd say it takes both an incredibly skilled (and self-aware) T as well as a client who's willing to go to really hard places (for instance, I know for a fact I wasn't ready to do that a year ago and certainly not with former T) to get to the bottom of it and parse it out in a way that's most beneficial to the client and the overall goals of therapy.

So yeah, the only thing I feel comfortable saying about it all is that cliched non-response of a response -- it depends.

I do think though -- and perhaps, my slight frustration is showing up here -- that this discussion like so many others seems to be tending towards taking place in somewhat of extremes (and if history is any indicator, will soon veer into a lot of abstraction and hyper hypothetical scenarios.....or, hopefully not).

ETA: I think Ross Perot ending up anywhere is kind of........awesome (in a train-wreck-y kind of way of course).

ETAA: At least in my case, I am now aware that compliments, expressions of gratitude and other reassurance-type verbalizations can hide aggression, fear (both of the T and attachment in general), anger and a whole host of other not-so-nice things. However, knowing that cognitively (when I'm nowhere near facing a situation that brings about that response) is a whole different ball-game from responding appropriately emotionally. I would be very worried then if a T I'm seeing doesn't get / understand such basic stuff about me (which isn't hard to figure out given my background).

So yeah, I won't remotely dispute those who believe that saying such sort of stuff is just a natural / healthy response -- I totally believe that it's true for them. But, when it's not -- and, it isn't always easy for someone like me to know when it's not -- then things get rather hairy and therapy kinda goes off the rails.

Sep 11, 2016, 02:20 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by atisketatasket

There seems to be a tendency here to confuse reassurance with compliments or feedback. They are not the same. I don't think anyone is saying it's bad to pay your therapist a compliment, or treat them as human, etc.

(Also I don't understand how Ross Perot ended up in this thread.)

Both concepts were included in the original post, so both are being discussed.

It is possible to compliment a person simply to compliment them. Some of us do that just because we sincerely are thankful for the support or help of our therapists, and thanking them seems the natural thing for us to do.

The idea of complimenting them in order to reassure them, like you say, is another thing entirely. It doesn't sound like many of us feel the need to do that.

I have had therapists ask me for feedback, not in order to get reassurance from me, but to get my take on if their approach or ideas or insights were hitting the mark or not in order to make any needed adjustments. I've never had a therapist ask for reassurance, nor have I ever felt they desired/needed my reassurance.

stopdog · Sep 11, 2016, 02:25 PM

As I usually do - I was using only reassurance in the title because otherwise it cuts me off if I try to cover the entire range- I meant it to incorporate a broader spectrum than literally just reassurance.

I meant for it to be a thread about how we each see such things and handle them and why. Not a thread where we criticize how others do it.

Argonautomobile · Sep 11, 2016, 02:37 PM

The original quote that sparked this conversation conflated a lot of similar but (arguably) subtlety different things. "Positive feedback" was taken to mean anything that would show the therapist that their clients' appreciate, value, like, even admire the therapist and what the therapist is doing.

I think the word that stuck out to me most was "like." Everyone wants to be appreciated and valued--that seems like a given to me--and there's a running discussion on here about whether the therapist wants admiration, but "like" is the word clients most use in the inverse situation--we want to be liked by our therapists. We post our own insecurities about whether the therapist likes us. We wonder out loud if it matters that our therapists like us or not.

It truly and honestly had never occurred to me that the therapist might want to be liked by the client--at least, that your run-of-the-mill, good-enough therapist (as opposed to your bad, doesn't-have-their-own-****-in-check therapist) would want to be liked. It just seems odd to me somehow.

Waterbear · Sep 11, 2016, 02:49 PM

When I work I want to know that I have done a good job, don't most people? I can't see why a therapist wouldn't want that too, deep down. The issue for me is whether that want or nerd on their part interferes with therapy. My T has never looked for reassurance or positive feedback from me but I can't see how it can hurt to let her know when what we are doing is working or not or to say thank you once in a while. I think it makes it better for me, and in therapy I think that is what really matters.

atisketatasket · Sep 11, 2016, 02:49 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by stopdog

As I usually do - I was using only reassurance in the title because otherwise it cuts me off if I try to cover the entire range- I meant it to incorporate a broader spectrum than literally just reassurance.

I meant for it to be a thread about how we each see such things and handle them and why. Not a thread where we criticize how others do it.

And it should also be a thread in which those who choose not to compliment or reassure are not criticized.

And I'd like to add: criticizing therapists is not anything like an -ism. -Isms are discriminations against a person for a characteristic that is innate - their race, their gender, their sexual preferences, their age, their looks, their disability - and that they have no choice about. Therapists choose their profession, and with it they assume the positive and negative views of their profession, as do we all.

awkwardlyyours · Sep 11, 2016, 03:00 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by atisketatasket

And I'd like to add: criticizing therapists is not anything like an -ism. -Isms are discriminations against a person for a characteristic that is innate - their race, their gender, their sexual preferences, their age, their looks, their disability - and that they have no choice about.

Also, not to be terribly persnickety (and / or take this thread totally off the rails) but wanted to add to this point because I've seen similar such stuff being said here on PC before -- -isms conventionally refer to institutional discrimination (very different from a bunch of angry anonymous posters on an internet forum).

So, the -ism then becomes a powerful shorthand for conveying the depth of the problem -- for instance then, there are some who prefer to use the term heterosexism rather than homophobia to really convey the problem of discrimination based on sexual orientation (because calling something a phobia takes it in a very different direction than classifying it as an -ism).

(Okay, I'll quit my rant here and not to pile on to the OP who posted about this [my apologies in advance for this] but there's real pain out there of people who deal with a whole lot of crap thrown at them from birth and a bunch of folks cribbing about their experiences with their therapists on an internet forum doesn't remotely compare).

scorpiosis37 · Sep 11, 2016, 03:14 PM

I would not say that I have reassured my T, but I definitely have expressed positive feedback and complimented her. I don't think it was my job to do so, but I wanted to. It came naturally. It came from a genuine place of love and appreciation. I liked the feeling of mutual respect, care, and valuation. It was a two-way street. We complimented one another on therapy-related things and non-therapy related things.

Sep 11, 2016, 04:07 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Waterbear

When I work I want to know that I have done a good job, don't most people? I can't see why a therapist wouldn't want that too, deep down. The issue for me is whether that want or nerd on their part interferes with therapy. My T has never looked for reassurance or positive feedback from me but I can't see how it can hurt to let her know when what we are doing is working or not or to say thank you once in a while. I think it makes it better for me, and in therapy I think that is what really matters.

That's what I think too. It doesn't have to have dysfunction connected to it. (Though I fully realize some do it for people pleasing and other such reasons).

growlycat · Sep 11, 2016, 04:19 PM

Not reassurance per se, but I do like to encourage them when they do something right or helpful. I would not give positive feedback if they are truly not not being useful.
When they are helpful, I want them to do more of the same. Sure I want them to like me but not at the expense of the quality of my treatment

Sep 11, 2016, 04:42 PM

i dont think that i really "reassure" her, but i do give her positive feedback. she has a lot of good ideas, and has been very helpful in helping me save my life, so I thank her often for that . we both give compiments to each ohher, its just how we are.

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