Posted by Medusa on October 6, 2003, at 5:02:47
In reply to Re: Using Sessions Better - Need Advice, posted by DaisyM on September 28, 2003, at 18:41:03
> "if it is taking longer than 5-6 months
<snip>
>then the client isn't working hard enough
>outside of the sessions."That's just mean.
I have mixed experiences with the long-term/short-term therapy thing. In the long-term approach, I was very frustrated by the lack of practical coaching. In many ways, it felt like it had no connection to the daily challenges I had to face in the real world. I wanted to live outside my head a bit, and talk therapy did not bring me any closer to that at ALL.
But I needed someone to sit with me and listen. Nobody had ever sat with me and listened, and believed what I said. This is what the systems therapy (almost always short-term, from what I understand) people are missing.
Last year I had 9 sessions with a short-term family-systems therapist. She usually does about six sessions over six months, and requires a lot of homework in between. I learned a LOT, and she explained some things that talking never solved. After my last session, I had the feeling that she'd brought me very far, but wouldn't be able to help me any more. Her own approach made it easier to end the therapy. I don't think she believed I'd "arrived", but she'd done what she could. She'd also skidded WAY out of control in a joint session with my then-partner, who'd initiated the therapy. He had very little capacity for empathy, and the therapist just lost it with him in one session. Her ganging up with me did NOT make me feel safe - I didn't know when she'd lose it with me. So I had one more session - that gave me the skills and strength to make it through a three-week stay with my parents - and then wrote her a letter while I was visiting my family, and that was it. I might run into her on the street one day, and that'll be okay. But the compassion element is not the selling point of short-term therapy.
>"As much or as little as you can, and breathing
> is good too"...what a smart<<<! :)Yeah, smartypants maybe, but that compassion is so healing. Even for me, just reading a second-hand account of what he said!
> I need to keep things as normal as possible
> for everyone else around me.I hear you. I feel the same way ... and then I end up getting treated pretty flippantly by therapists, and they "explain" that their other patients (whose sessions run over when I'm scheduled, or arrive early so my session is cut short) are in "a lot of pain" or "very sick" or whatever. ???!!! Getting to therapy might have been the only thing I did that week, and showering and showing up in something relatively clean and being polite to the therapist gets me labeled "high-functioning".
> I guess that is why I've started posting here.
I'm glad you're posting here. I tend to post sporadically every few months, and finding your post when I dropped in today was really interesting for me, because I've been thinking a lot about the talk vs. systems therapy approaches.
Speaking of showering and putting on something clean ... ;)
Catch you later.
poster:Medusa
thread:263778
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20030925/msgs/265882.html