Posted by Tabitha on May 1, 2014, at 17:17:59
In reply to Re: Post therapy observations, posted by baseball55 on April 30, 2014, at 19:09:17
> I sometimes worry about keeping myself unhappy in order to have something to talk about in therapy. But fortunately, my therapist is very pragmatic. If I'm unhappy, she is - how to live with it, how to counter it, how to accept it. So when I'm feeling okay, I cut back the frequency of sessions to every other week or so.
Yes, I often felt this way. When I was doing well it felt there was nothing to talk about. Sometimes I'd dredge up some small annoyance, just to fill the air, then after talking about it, it became a much bigger annoyance. So was it a big annoyance all along? Or did airing it in therapy make it grow?
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> I also still see a p-doc every month with whom I did therapy for six years. Usually I see him for half-an-hour, but recently, with a lot going on in my life and separating from my husband, I've been seeing him for an hour a month. But he also is very much - what are we doing here? What are the goals? What is the endgame? He sees me monthly kind of grudgingly because he knows I am too attached to him to quit entirely.Interesting. Mine would try to set goals for me, but I kept failing to meet them over and over, then we'd just go back into "emotional support" mode.
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> I wonder about therapists who will see someone a few times a weeks for years on end without having clear goals or a clear endgame in mind. It seems to encourage people to cling to their problems in order to have something to talk about in therapy.
>Yes, I do think it created a rut where I was the person with problems and she was the helper. I feel more independent and capable since stopping. I do eventually move past things and sometimes even grow as a person. In therapy if that happened I felt credit had to go to therapy, and it was proof I needed continued therapy.
> But maybe I'm being judgmental. We're all different and have different needs.
Agree. If it felt good and helpful to me to be using so much therapy I'd probably still be doing it. No judgement to anyone who benefits from it and can afford it. Actually I'm in no position to judge anyone who feels stuck in a painful therapy relationship either!
poster:Tabitha
thread:1064984
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20140310/msgs/1065058.html