Posted by alexandra_k on October 5, 2006, at 21:10:47
In reply to New to this site and therapy - have questions, posted by NthnBrazil on October 5, 2006, at 12:30:45
Hey there, welcome to Babble :-)
I found this online resource... So I'll try and construct a bit of an answer of what your t might be up to...
(This is about brief psychodynamic therapy)
> many psychotherapists do their best to put the patient at ease in the first session. Brief dynamic therapists' immediate aim is not to lower the initial anxiety, but to use it to help the patient to break through his defensive wall and to get to the core of the problem as fast as he can bear it. Therefore, anxiety-lowering explanations will be kept to a minimum. Only a minority of patients with excessive anxiety might get blocked and, therefore, unable to work with the therapist unless the anxiety is first reduced.
See the notion is...
Cognitive behaviour therapy teaches you some specific techniques for managing anxiety. Relaxation training (so you can physically relax your body) and stuff like that. Cognitive restructuring (so you can see what kinds of thoughts are causing your anxiety) and stuff like that.
Psychodynamic therapy views anxiety as the result of mental conflict. So the notion is that one has to get to the mental conflict in order to resolve the anxiety. But the trouble is that people have a variety of defences so they aren't aware of the mental conflict. So therapy is about... Getting through those defences to what it is that you are afraid of so that once it is held up to light... The fear kind of resolves.
Your t might be trying to figure your defences and the kinds of anxieties you have.
Are you afraid of losing things?
Are you afraid of contaminating those things?Could be stuff like that...
When you 'ramble' you reveal quite a lot about patterns of thought and stuff like that. Sounds like he is still kind of assessing you and where you are at.
> Now I don't know if I should push to follow my first instinct and switch to a different therapist, or acknowledge that I don't really know how it works and just go with this guy. If it stays the same throughout I feel like I'm going to start having anxiety over getting therapy for my anxiety.
Yeah, I understand.
Some people think of cognitive behaviour therapy as a 'cover up the symptoms' approach. That being said, it does teach you some very specific techniques for dealing with your anxiety.
Psychodynamic type therapies try to get to the root of the problem. The trouble with doing that is that one needs to be able to deal with the anxiety to a certain extent to be able to cope with the treatment.
It might be that your t is still trying to assess where you are at to see where to go from here...
You might be able to ask him to teach you some of the specific CBT / REBT techniques like relaxation and cognitive restructuring. Or... You can find fairly good resources online and teach yourself.
The kind of thing he is doing is... Much harder to teach yourself. I would say... Hang in there. Maybe talk to him a bit about your concerns. Or... They reckon that session 5 is a fairly good indicator of whether things are working out or not. Maybe... See how you go around session 5. If you want to find someone else after session 5 then that might be a good time to do that.
P.S. There is a psychology board here where you are more likely to get a variety of responses by different people. Of course, you can keep chatting to me over here... But it might be nice to introduce yourself over there too.
poster:alexandra_k
thread:692087
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/newbs/20060108/msgs/692228.html