Posted by Dinah on July 15, 2004, at 17:02:11
In reply to Re: Wanting to quit again, posted by JenStar on July 15, 2004, at 11:36:33
Ahhh, but you're new to therapy. :)
And another thing that it's hard to understand is that long term therapy and short term therapy are completely different animals and the relationships are not at *all* similar. Long term therapists use techniques that encourage dependency, but not necessarily for self aggrandizing purposes. Long term therapies *use* the therapeutic relationship as a tool for change.
My therapist, for example, is quite uncomfortable at the positive transference I have for him, and always tries to spin it into something about our relationship rather than about him as a person. But it is that positive transference that is responsible for a lot of the positive change.
There's quite a lot of literature out there about the different schools of therapy and the theoretical models of change that each employs.
And unfortunately a therapist's job isn't always to be supportive. And firing a therapist you've had a good long term relationship shouldn't be done quite as cavalierly as terminating an apprentice. You have to weigh the relationship as a whole. And you also have to really consider whether what the therapist (who has always been helpful in the past) is currently doing what is best for you, even if it doesn't feel good, or if the therapist has missed the boat, but the relationship can be salvaged, or if the therapist has missed the boat and will never be able to get back on, or if your entire experience of the therapist's helpfulness accrued over a long period of time was incorrect. It's more like divorce than firing a worker you've only known for a few weeks.
It's always difficult to determine whether the pain that arises in therapy is part of the process or if it's unnecessary pain. I've fired brand new therapists in minutes, if I don't think it's a good match. But if my current therapist were to suddenly start causing me pain, I'd have a hard time to determine whether this was healing pain or destructive pain.
poster:Dinah
thread:366359
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20040703/msgs/366603.html