[pachyderm]

Does your therapist suggest to you that if you did x and y and z that your life would be better?

No advice, please...

[sidony]

No not per se. He sometimes asks me what would happen if I did x, y or z. I tell him what I think. And sometimes I experiment and then report back to him on how things went. So it's not really a direct suggestion, though he's giving me things to think about. And I work out whether or not they're helpful (most always).

Sidony

[Dinah]

My therapist has said that the biggest challenge in my life is to reach out and develop social relationships. Or something like that.

I pointed out that this didn't sound nearly as appealing to me as it sounded to him, although I had recently found a group of people I enjoyed getting to know.

He said "I know", in that smiling and compassionate way he has.

Then we let it drop.

I don't think it matters much what he'd like for me. It's interesting, since it shows me what he's thinking. But he's not going to push me into it.

[Perna]

Only in the sense of logical follow through. It was explained that given my boss and how he hadn't changed and wasn't likely to, I could change jobs or I would probably end up severely depressed. I didn't want to change jobs right then but having the dichotomy helped me adjust myself to protect against the depression, to quit some in relation to my boss, to disengage from that.

Nah. He'll say 'you know I'm not one to give advice' but he has given me advice once. When I asked him. And it wasn't really terribly directive... I said I wasn't sure how to best support my bf with respect to going to his fathers funeral or not going. And he said... That I should ask my bf what he wanted me to do ('cause I was trying to work it out and figured he wouldn't want me to go).

I guess he tries to help me lift judgments if I'm doing that. Maybe that is kind of directive. I guess it is a mutual goal, so thats ok.

Do you feel like your therapist is overly directive?

[Kiya]

probably.... but i don't think i was present. i hope she has a plan, cuz i sure don't

Nope. The only time he has really said so is when it comes to suggesting couples counseling. He said to me, "You know I don't give direct suggestions, but...." Otherwise he does not have "plans" for me. We just sort of go with the flow and see where our conversations lead.

[ECHOES]

Plans? Well to help me feel better.

No my T doesn't say to do this or that. We talk about feelings and perceptions that are connecteed to 'doing'.

But sometimes they like to sneak in a different way of thinking about something by their magical "I wonder if..." or "I wonder what it would be like if... ".

[sunrise]

No and yes. He does let me lead on "the journey," and I get to pick the topics for therapy, etc. But if he sees a particular problem I am having, he does do interventions or suggest them, based on professionally what he feels can help. (Like he will suggest we do some EMDR for resolving past trauma.)

Since the time I came to him, I was struggling with the divorce issue, he has helped me with that, and made very sure he doesn't tell me he thinks I should get a divorce or he thinks I should stay married. He knows it is my choice, my decision, and he has explored that with me. When he gets countertransference with me, and it is on this issue that it has happened (when I think he so strongly wants to tell me to "ditch the guy" based on his own feelings about his own marriage that ended), he will tell me of the countertransference and try to maintain his appropriate therapeutic position. I like that he admits to me this struggle but I also respect very much that he fights it off and has helped me explore rather than told me what to do (as a friend might). I do have plenty of friends/family willing to tell me what I should do about my marriage, and this again points out to me the uniqueness and value of the therapeutic relationship, that I can depend on him not to tell me what to do.

If I keep acting on my anger and other intense emotions I feel like he plans to terminate me, but I know that isn't true. I think his plan is to help me deal with my emotions in a more constructive way.

[MissCharlotte]

Well, not exactly like that.

But he has pointed out things he thinks I should try and notice in given situations. And he says things like, if you blah blha blah you might not feel so lonely. But he doesn't try to impose plans, at least not overtly.

Hmmmm, good question because actually he is pushy and I am stubborn so who knows?

hahaha

[sidony]

</font><blockquote><div id="quote"><font class="small">Quote:</font>
pinksoil said:
Nope. The only time he has really said so is when it comes to suggesting couples counseling.

</div></font></blockquote><font class="post">

Oh that reminds me: Actually T did bug me to join his therapy group. I finally did. But in general he doesn't give direct advice though.

Sidony

</font><blockquote><div id="quote"><font class="small">Quote:</font>
Soliaree said:
If I keep acting on my anger and other intense emotions I feel like he plans to terminate me, but I know that isn't true. I think his plan is to help me deal with my emotions in a more constructive way.

</div></font></blockquote><font class="post">

Sol....

Me too! And I have only known mine for a couple of months.

I have plans. Does that count?

[splitimage]

Yes and no. I think she generally knows where we're going and kind of helps guides me through an issue, because she knows I have trouble expressing myself emotionally. Lately though she's really been pushing me on social stuff. I'm really shy and think people won't like me, so she is always telling me that I should invite people out for coffee and stuff like that.

--splitimage

[Kiya]

t keeps saying to me "I really think you ought to be in my forgiveness group - but you're not ready for that yet.
***fel the barbs coming out through my flesh***

To face repressed memories and work through them is a definitely 'plan and goal' for us in therapy. She knows if we can face the memories, feel the emotions, etc, that a lot can be better.

[chaotic13]

My T has made a few suggestions only after I've said I wanted to do something.

She has repeatedly said, 'you can choose to re-shelve your past but it is going to keep resurfacing unless you deal with it.' Unfortunately, she hasn't been very clear about how exactly one deals with it. With regard to this particular issue I wish she would just say, to deal with your past you need to do x,y,z. Then I could decide if I want to do it and just DO it already. But for some reason she is not forthcoming with even a general plan for how to "deal with it".

[pachyderm]

> Do you feel like your therapist is overly directive?

My therapist continually interrupts my attempted train of thought with "suggestions," that indicate how I should be doing things better, or with comments or thoughts of his own. Of course, everything he does is "for my own good." This is a particular problem of mine, in that I am unable to cope effectively with this kind of thing. I find most, if not all, mental health "professionals" indulge in this kind of process -- they always know best, since they are the professionals, and, after all, you have come to them for help and should accept the "help" that they offer. It is unnecessary for them to listen to you, because they know best.

Actually, they cannot let you be in trouble at all. They have to "correct" it. Who is the "parent" here? I feel that I have to cope with everything, them as well as me. I no longer have that amount of strength.

This therapist also does the group that I am in, and he does a similar thing in the group with other people there. I am not able to effectively cope with this, and the other people in the group largely do not see that this process is taking place, it seems to me. They accept, or do not have problems with, his suggesting what they should do in order to improve their lives. The fact that none of them are succeeding in actually carrying out the suggestions seems not to have occurred to anyone. They do not expect anything else.

I just started to look at a book: Please Understand Me by David Keirsey and Marilyn Bates. I am having a lot of problems trying to deal with the contents of the book itself, but the introductory material struck me extremely forcefully. In fact it made me almost cry with frustration and fear and panic, for NO ONE does this. I quote from the book:

If I do not want what you want, please do not try to tell me that my want is wrong.

If I believe other than you, please pause before you correct my view.

Or if my emotion is less than yours, or more, given the same circumstances, try not to ask me to feel more strongly or weakly.

Or yet if I act, or fail to act, in the manner of your design for action, let me be.

I do not, for the moment at least, ask you to understand me. That will come only when you are willing to give up changing me into a copy of you.

I may be your spouse, your offspring, your friend, or your colleague. If you will allow me any of my own wants, or emotions, or beliefs, or actions, then you open yourself, so that some day these ways of mine might not seem so wrong, and might finally appear to you as right -- for me. To put up with me is the first step to understanding me. Not that you embrace my ways as being right for you, but that you are no longer irritated or disappointed with me for my seeming waywardness. And in understanding me you might come to prize my differences from you, and, far from seeking to change me, preserve and even nurture those differences.

Now many here will tell me to offer this to my therapist. To tell the truth, I have given up trying to get him to see me, or change him in any way (!). And I do not think anyone in the clinic would hear me if I try to explain what is happening. I no longer have the strength to cope with the objections they will bring up. People in our "mental health system" are not about the process of listening to people, but to changing them (all for their own good, of course). After all, they know best. Why otherwise would we be going to them for "help"?

I am about to quit the whole thing. I do not see any viable alternatives. Evidently I have been looking in the wrong places. But I do not know where to look for any safe place. That includes Psych Central.

[ECHOES]

pachy, I don't know what kind of therapy you are in or what your therapist's orientation is, but to me this sounds like it could be my description of the difference between a CBT kind of therapy and a psychodynamic/psychoanalytical therapy.

I had years of CBT then REBT and while some of it was helpful (but no more helpful to me than a self-help book), I find psychodynamic/psychoanalytic psychotherapy to be something so different and so much more personal. I feel listened to.

It sounds like you are understandably frustrated. I hope you can find someone who could work better with you if this one isn't what you want.

pachy... i DO hear you.. especially the part that said "...To put up with me is the first step to understanding me" That is central to me too and a lot do not understand

i dont know about how things go with your T or group, etc but i agree with your observations. Some of this is by virtue of well intended help..people doing all they know how to, being *themselves* in their attempts to help... no matter how misguided, and no matter how far off the mark they are in understanding you... thats a sad truth.

some of it is bound to be communication issues... i have plenty of them... do you find that you present a reasonable idea people just either look at you funny or react in a way that seems inexplicable to you? Notice the lack of suggestion on how to change that.... and it would be changing the action not the person btw

i am so sorry you feel so alone and out of range with everyone who is meant to help you...

echoes is right... a different approach may be better for you. i generally try to suggest a client work things out with a T when possible, but this sounds like an obstacle, mainly a detachment and indifference toward the T.... if you feel as you described then he cant help you

and i am really uncertain now... i want to help, but i don't want to do what you said these others do... i hear a lot in what you are saying, but i don't know if you are asking to have that feedback or not.... ??

What you are struggling with... Sounds precisely why Linehan tried to modify CBT into DBT. She says that often therapists are working hard to change change change their clients when often what is needed is acceptance. She tries to explain acceptance in a way that CBT trained therapists can understand. I have to say that my experience is that some of them pick it up but that the majority do not. But still... Maybe worth a read.

I'm sorry. I wish the world wasn't so sucky sometimes :-(

[pachyderm]

JelloFluff and Alex: thank you for your posts. I am not in a CBT or even DBT therapy. I guess you would call it psychodynamic. But maybe it really has no strictly defined label. It is with a LCSW. I think regardless of label it depends on the particular therapist/patient interaction.

In the course of posting this, and thinking about it later, I learned something! At least I think so. A lightbulb (compact flourescent) came on. Harry Stack Sullivan speaks of it as being a consequence of some kinds of things that happen in therapy: the patient/client becoming confused! That is certainly what happens a great deal of the time with me! And now I think I understand what is happening and why. Wow. It is very, very simple. It is like a computer (me) getting contradictory information. In particular, the words said (by the therapist) do not match the feelings that he broadcasts by his actions. And I am not picking out what real emotions those are, and sidestepping the words.

THIS is what makes the difference in therapies of all kinds: whether the therapist is clear enough in his own mind about what his thoughts and feelings are, so that his (her) words match the realities, rather than being coverups or justifications for his own confusions. I am not trying to condemn here, just to actually understand!

Deity! I hope someone here gets some increased understanding of what I am trying to say.

[pachyderm]

I want to add something to my post: what I hope is another piece of the puzzle. I seem to be learning stuff; I hope maybe some more of you may also.

In October of last year I downloaded from the Internet an article that fascinated me, even though I cannot understand much of its detail. If you are interested in or feel you can understand something of the intersection of mathematics and neurobiology, you might download this Adobe Acrobat Reader document:

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science...g=search&amp;_
coverDate=09%2F30%2F2003&amp;_sk=996739990&amp;view=c&amp;wchp=dGLbVzb-zSkWz&amp;md5=ff562bf72991de705dadf3fd5fc8a179&amp;ie=/sdarticle.pdf

I think you will have to copy and paste this URL into your browser, and reconnect the two parts, if you want to get the article. I could probably have done better in getting it.

Maybe it would be better to go to http://www.sciencedirect.com/ and search for an article "Is there chaos in the brain?..." by Henri Korn and Philippe Faure.

Basically what I got from the article is that the "hard-wiring" of the brain may be such that it displays the ability to compare present experiences with past ones very, very rapidly. I have read in other places about how this could be an effect of the detailed modes of operations of neurons themselves, in how they "fire" in response not only to incoming sense messages but also to whether other connected neurons are also firing. This enables an organism to remember events in proportion to how significant they were found to be.

In particular, if you have very traumatic experiences at one time, then your brain may, if it sees something that appears to be similar now, react very forcefully and rapidly to signal "danger, danger, maximum alert, panic, panic panic!" The article speculates that this may be an evolutionary advantage to an organism, in that it allows it to react very rapidly to new stimuli and identify them as being similar to ones that it is already familiar with, and react to them strongly. But it also has the disadvantage that it may react to something strongly but mistakenly!

In my case, I suspect that I react to my own therapist's hiding his thought processes (from himself as well as from outsiders) because that is one of the absolutely typical things my mother did. She never admitted actual, genuine thoughts. Coupled with that was the fact that she was liable to punish and beat us children on the basis of her own mistaken perceptions. So when I see someone without clear awareness of their own emotions I fear that they can also beat and punish, maybe without limit.

It is sometimes called transference. Or counter-transference... Or just plain learning...

[Friday]

My therapist wants me on drugs to balance me out, readjust my unrealistic goals of my self and get me in the habit of reaching out and asserting what I want.