Posted by daisym on November 12, 2004, at 17:24:41
I know we've had a thread about talking to friends about therapy before, but I am really curious about how everyone else balances what the world tells them about needing therapy, and how they feel about it.
I had lunch with a pretty close friend today. She knows more than most people about what I am working on in therapy, etc. etc. I told her we had opened up a rough patch so I was seeing my therapist a lot...like 3 or 4 times a week. She actually sort of gasped and shook her head (sympathy?) so I quickly explained how it was keeping me together and all that. Fortunately, she got it pretty quickly and was able to support me going this much, not judge that he was making me overly dependent or anything.
I just talked to my therapist on the phone and told him how uncomfortable this made me. He said this is a very common response because there is sort of a universal assumption that going to therapy "a lot" meant you were "really bad off" instead of seeing it as intense support, or as a way to stay open enough to work through some delicate issues. His challenge to me is to stop struggling against getting my needs met and just sink into it for one month. "Just allow yourself to need me as much as you want for the next month, come often, accept check in calls and just trust the process and our relationship. Think of it as another experiment." It feels like a huge relief to let myself do that, one less battle I have to fight with myself.
But I still feel like it is something I can't share with many people, there is so much value in our culture on pulling yourself together, being strong and self-sufficient. So I don't know if I can handle this experiment for a whole month, even as hard as the Holiday season is. I think I need a support group for therapy. Wait, I have one...Babble!
Thoughts?
poster:daisym
thread:415161
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20041104/msgs/415161.html