Posted by Rzip on December 5, 2000, at 23:20:27
Hi everyone!
I just read a very intriguing article in the Spring 2000 issue of "Psychotherapy: Theory/Research/Practice/Training" (Volume 37/No. 1). The article is titled "How patients coach their therapists in psychotherapy" by J. Bugas and G. Silberschatz of San Francisco Psychotherapy Research Group.
The just of the article is that insightful patients come into talking therapy with an internal list of pathogenic beliefs about themselves that they want to see disproven. The way that the patients does this is by acting out or verbalizing those beliefs in a testing format. Subconsciously, the patients want to the therapist to validate the pathogy of their beliefs. For instance, take me for an example...psychologically, I can not deal with long-term social interactions. Subconsciously/unconsciously, I get frightened when I get to know someone too long. I want to end or sabotage the relationship. For instance, I saw my last therapist for one-year (once every three weeks or so)...then, I started seeing her less and less until finally, I came up with a genius plan to terminate therapy. Unfortunately, my former therapist bought into my acting out and FAIL the test. Upon hindsight, she should have at least picked up on the relationship discomfort issue with me, and address it prior to our termination.
Anyway, the point is that an integral part of therapy is those subtle tests that we give our therapist in the hope of assisting them to help us disprove our "pathogenic beliefs". But more importantly, I think for the economic and therapeutic sake, the path to better mental and physical health is to actively train ourselves to be more insightful. How: practice, practice, and more practice.So, now you try it...what recent test have you gave your therapist...and did he/she pass with flying colors (or not).
Don't know how to start?
First ask yourself,
1) Is anything bothering you in relation to your therapist or therapy session?
2) What stories have you told your therapist and what were their reactions.
3) And most importantly of all, according to the article...do you still remember what stories (history) you told your current therapist in the initial interview session? According to the article..."By coaching at the beginning of therapy, patients directly and indirectly convey to therapists how they would like to work with them." It is widely known that the interview session (1st session) is the most important one.And why am I asking they questions...because I just started with a new therapist where I have to pay for each and every session (from my own pockets)...so, my main concern of course is to get "well" as soon as possible. Set goals, attain them, and get out of therapy and enjoy the real world. Ha! not so easy at all since I still internally believe (according to the stories that I spill to my therapist), I still believe that people who leave/abandon me died/do not exist anymore. And that is how I deal with the emotional side of termination. No wonder I do not like long-term relationships. Why put myself through the strain of emotions? Right? You know, I still feel so very bad about my former therapist situation. In fact, I have been contemplating not going back to my current therapist after the Christmas break from school...just so to protect myself from termination of therapy again. My current therapist is pretty alert...he picked up on my discomfort of long-term therapy right away since I have been telling him about not really seeing any reasons to continue therapy. Oh! He gave me a list of reasons all right, threw my initial list of reasons to start therapy playfully and tacticfully right back at me :-) But subconsciously during the day, I still catch myself thinking up ways to terminate therapy once and for all...hence my poll at Psycho-Babble Open. One thing that I can be proud of as a result of therapy is that I consciously notice that I am getting more insightful, more wise. Not as blind anymore. But, I still run into trouble...ah! I guess I still need to see my therapist. Hmm...I actually really like my current therapist. We get along really smoothly and he is young and cute? Actually, I don't know if I can say this, but it is seriously the truth...my new therapist is supposed to take the place of my fasination with Dr. Bob. It is starting to work somewhat. Like I do not feel as anxious or livid with energy as before logging into this site. The only problem is that now I have a male figure that sits right across from me and I have no where-else to hide. Ahh!
So, the more you practice being more insightful and self-aware, the faster you get "well" and attain more control over your source(s) of happiness in life. Hard work through.
- Rzip
poster:Rzip
thread:3464
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/social/20001117/msgs/3464.html