Posted by Noa on January 3, 2003, at 2:28:32
In reply to Re: Questionnaire for rating your therapist... » mikhail99, posted by Dinah on January 1, 2003, at 11:12:06
Hmm... I have reread your previous posts and am not sure...On the one hand, I wonder if what you are describing as confusion is similar to times when my therapist has admitted he isn't sure why I am persisting with certain behaviors, etc., which I took to be honesty rather than seeing him as confused. On the other hand, with my therapist, I still got a sense from him that he felt competent to explore it and bring his knowledge and experience to the task. And over time, this has been borne out. Are you not getting such a feeling from your therapist?
Still, I know that there are good and not so good therapists out there. A friend of mine was working with a horrible therapist who was making her rather crazy and depressed with her approach, including what I think was arrogance and a failure to acknowledge the real dynamics between them (instead, she made my friend feel she was imagining it all because of her childhood experiences. I believe her childhood experiences were a part of it, but she wasn't imagining the real dynamics in the room). Now she has a better therapist. Thank goodness, because her craziness was driving me crazy, too!
Your therapist sounds anything but arrogant, which is a plus.
As for length of treatment, some of us have more entrenched difficulties. I have been in therapy a long time, and will need to be for a long time. I change very slowly. Although CBT kinds of things make sense to me and are incorporated somewhat into my therapy (over and over again) the real CBT--short term and all--wouldn't work for me.
I have a chronic disease. Chronic diseases need ongoing care. Can you look at it this way?
Does your therapist really sound like Stuart Smalley? Yikes. Are you particulary cynical about any kind of "reframing" statements? Or does he go too quickly into the reframing and being positive without hanging with the negative long enough to help you feel he understands what your experience is like?
If you are angry about his having forgotten something important, that is definitely an issue to discuss directly. How does he handle your feelings and reactions toward him (I think that is often the key to what makes a good therapist)?
poster:Noa
thread:1989
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20021230/msgs/2039.html