Posted by DAisym on June 16, 2007, at 14:20:11
In reply to Re: what is the point of therapy? » DAisym, posted by Dory on June 15, 2007, at 21:22:32
My therapist would say, "I'm going to push you some, OK?" --
You asked, "what is the point?" The point of therapy isn't to make your therapist care about you, it is to learn to care about yourself. One of the most effective ways to learn this is to have a therapist who cares, because it shows you that you are worth caring about. This isn't an overnight process. It took me a long time, probably at least a year, to even begin to really believe my therapist cared about me - as me -- not just in general as a client. You haven't been seeing your therapist very long. There is time for this to grown.
And even if he isn't the kind of therapist to overtly offer support (many don't) try to hang on to the fact that you feel better after you've gone and talked some things out. You are learning about yourself and growing and over time, you will start to generalize to your "real" life more and more.
Sometimes I think of therapy like I thought of school. If I don't take what I need from it, I'm the one who loses. Some teachers cared, some didn't, but there were things being offered that I could learn and use -- but I had to make the effort to learn them. Therapy really does work best when we (try) to remember that we need to speak up and put out there what we need. It might be that we can't have it and then we have help to change what we want and need or to grieve the loss of it.
I guess I just don't want you to think therapy will never work for you because you feel like a therapist can't/won't care about you. First, I don't believe that. Second, this might be your real work - to figure out that you are worth caring about and helping.
I hope I haven't come off as preachy. :)
poster:DAisym
thread:763401
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20070612/msgs/763596.html