Posted by Lonely on January 2, 2005, at 22:21:34
In reply to Re: how did you define your therapy goals? » ghost, posted by fallsfall on January 2, 2005, at 21:36:06
I agree that these are good points and good ways to get started. Oh, and thank you for putting them out there! I might very well try tackling them a bit with my T.
I think that part of what bothors me is that there is no immediate solution to the things I would like to be doing such as working in my profession. Several things have happened that have hampered it ranging from financial to advocates dying or moving away to slow market, to hubby who has brain damage and is not dependable, etc. Probably the only thing I could "work on" in relationship to all this is my sense of value and in 5 years of therapy that just went down hill. Also, I find therapists tend to project their own professional issues and perceptions on to me. ie... a client is one person who comes to them. For me a client is a large organization, usually a corporation, and I'm not dealing with their personal issues but rather their professional issues. But, the word "client" seems to trigger something in an LMSW's mind and one therapist sniffed, and rather arrogantly told me to ignore the phone calls and not let them make demands on me. Yeah, sure. Therapists can pull that bologna but in a very highly competitive corporate environment I can NOT. Also, I'm shy and self conscious - those are classics no doubt for people going into therapy and there must be a myriad of treatments for it but I've never found one that helped per therapy. Just a real world advocate and practice in non threatening situations is the best thing. But an LMSW with a Mary Miller background is sure it's getting into one's childhood. Bull.
But, again, I think you did a good service to all of us by putting those items out there; I guess it's less threatening to me and I feel more comfortable carrying it in to my T. Best to you!
> Everyone is different. Only you can know what you need from therapy.
>
> My goals today (to get back to work) are very different from when I started (to stop driving my best friend crazy with my dependency).
>
> I used to go in with an agenda (though I think the previous poster was right - it was Miss Honeychurch, and KK? who did the great threads on agendas). But neither of my therapists thought my agendas were helpful. Because my agendas meant that I had already role played the whole session, and I already had expectations about what was going to happen. So I try not to plan too much. I usually figure out how to get started (i.e. brief chronological update since last session or jump into the issue from last session or introduce new topic) so I don't sit there with my mouth open for 5 minutes at the beginning. But if nothing strikes me before hand as something important, I try to go in without an agenda. And I tell him what I'm thinking about. Some of our most valuable sessions have been the times when I haven't had anything in particular to talk about.
>
> But agendas and goals aren't really the same thing.
>
> I guess to figure out what your goals are you might try completing these sentances:
>
> I would be happier if ...
> I wish that I could ...
> Most people can ..., I wonder why I can't?
> I get really uncomfortable/unhappy when ...
> I think that I'm different from everyone else because I ...
>
> I guess the bottom line is to try to figure out what kinds of changes you would like to make that would make your life better. Those can be your therapy goals.
poster:Lonely
thread:434398
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20041228/msgs/437032.html