Posted by Daisym on April 6, 2007, at 11:24:09
In reply to Re: feedback on letter to T? » Daisym, posted by gazo on April 6, 2007, at 9:38:41
Schema therapy has been around for awhile and I think its roots lie way back with Winnicott and the "good enough mother" theory. Attachment theory, mutual regulation...basically it comes down to finding a way to be interdependent with people in your life. Often, very often in therapy, this starts as being dependent - emotionally at least, until you can find balance. Because so many of us come in strongly independent it feels really scary to connect to someone and Lord help us, to want that connection. It sounds like your therapist is willing to work with this process, but the "I don't want you to become dependent" comment throws me a little. I'd bring it up and ask he what he meant. My therapist kept calling out ways I avoiding needing him and he made himself super available to me -- and now I know I need him, but there are times when it feels more balanced. (Not always for sure, sometimes it kills me to be separated from him.) But this is a long term process - years, not months, and many people can't stay in therapy that long, so avoiding the dependency, because there isn't time to work through it, can be smart.
Someone very wise on this board told me a long time ago that therapy would begin to work when I started to trust that my therapist knows how to do his job. I am one of those people, like you who reads everything, I work in human services and next week I finish a fellowship in ECMH. So I'm learning all kinds of theraputic theory and technique. I started out wanting to make sure he didn't do anything "to me" that I didn't recognize. And then I wanted to fix myself so he didn't have to. And then I wanted to avoid all the typical client mistakes and boundary crossings so that he would like me and not leave me. It was exhausting to be so hyper-vigilent.
He put up with all of it and would even talk theory with me. Yesterday was a bad day for me, I had a hard session and we ended up talking on the phone several hours later. He said, "I think you have a hard time feeling happiness because your mother didn't mirror your expansive states for you. So you have no internalized structure for regulating positive strong emotions - the fall back response is "ack! I don't trust it."" I grinned and said, "ah, I love it when you talk therapy to me!" He laughed...but he is right. The reason I'm telling you this is because if you tell your therapist how much you know and what you read, he might be able to incorporate it into your sessions. AND, he can help you watch for tendendies to fix yourself and take care of him.
I don't know if this makes sense, I hope it isn't too much about me. I just see myself a little in you and hope to help. When is your next appointment?
poster:Daisym
thread:747258
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20070406/msgs/747512.html