Posted by Dinah on August 2, 2008, at 17:25:53
In reply to Another thought, posted by Daisym on August 2, 2008, at 17:03:07
> Acknowledging the humanness of our parents and their mistakes does not make them all bad or take away their love and their good intentions. These are pieces of the puzzle of who you are. So while guilt is understandable, it is often misplaced. Therapy is a safe place to say all the things you'd never say to them because the truth is they did a "good enough" job and loved you. You don't want to hurt them - you want to work on the truth of how their choices shaped you.
Daisy, I really love this, and think I'll bookmark it. I always take back half of what I say about my parents, for the very reason you mention. My mother now is not really the mother I had then, and I guess I'm afraid of being unfair to *that* mother, the good enough mother.
> I'm also struck by the comment of wanting to do therapy one way and the therapist wanting to do it another. While I really believe in client directed therapy, I think we are also paying the therapist for their expertise and their help in pacing and in looking at stuff that we might not want to look at.
This hits home too. :) I definitely know that I exert a lot of control over the course of my therapy. And that I don't necessarily trust him to know what's best for me. I still don't know how to view that. I'd be inclined to say that different levels of control and trust work better for different clients. But that might be a wee bit self serving of me. Still... Is it really a good idea to have that much faith in anyone to know what's best? Is it really wrong to trust our own instincts more than we trust theirs? I can't help but think it would be the worst sort of stupid to trust my therapist that much. And I guess that rubs off on my attitudes towards the concept in general.
poster:Dinah
thread:843520
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20080727/msgs/843764.html