Posted by DaisyM on June 4, 2004, at 19:22:33
LGO4 asked me to explain why I thought therapy made you lonely and what the discussion with my Therapist has been around this issue. So I've been thinking about it some more. It is probably very individualistic, like most things, and is probably divided between being lonely for your Therapist and being lonely, period. I suspect that being lonely is also one of the things that brings people into therapy too.
So, I can only speak to my experience. I interact with lots of people each day. I'm married and I have kids. And I'm pretty active in the community, both politically and as a volunteer. But when I was hit hard by depression last year, and entered therapy, I realized how much of my internal life I don't share with anyone. Nobody knew what I had been going through and the more I shared in therapy and the more I've gotten in touch with what is missing, the more I realize that I'm lonely. Not that I'm ever actually alone.
When I've talked about this with my Therapist, he says, "I can see how the work we are doing could contribute to those feelings. In here, you force yourself to open up. We've developed this intimate relationship where your authentic self is being heard and accepted. But then you leave, and look around your life, and you don't seem to have that with anyone else. And it's not like your hurt is only around a few hours a week. You want to be able to talk to someone else about this stuff, to be soothed and cared for, but you don't risk it. At least not yet." He said it was a pretty common feeling to surface when people are in intense therapy, because you are working on such personal issues, you don't tend to share much and never casually. But since it is on your mind a lot, and the feelings are so strong, you feel disconnected sometimes from other people, or from more mundane conversations. He said he has heard lots of clients wonder why other people can't see their pain or notice what they are going through.
And I think that is why therapy "makes" you lonely. You realize how good it feels to share honestly what you are feeling with another person, especially if your Therapist "gets you." Yet there are so few people that we can really do that with. Which is appropriate, really. But in my life, I have set things up to be the listener to most everyone, and I'm finding that really, really hard to change. I am very good at hiding how I feel, and pretending that everything is fine and that I can handle it all. But I'm aware now that I'm hiding myself and I want someone to invest the energy to seek the real me out.
Which is why Babble is so very important to me. I don't feel so alone with all of this when I post, read or babble in open. And I have started to risk a tiny bit more of my internal self in real life.
Maybe lonely is the wrong word. But I think it fits for me. I'd like to hear other experiences and what people have done about it.
poster:DaisyM
thread:353878
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20040603/msgs/353878.html