Posted by Adia on October 7, 2003, at 10:24:49
In reply to Re: confused about what is good...may trigger*****, posted by Dinah on October 7, 2003, at 10:09:35
Hi Dinah,
been reading the thread this morning and I just wanted to say that I too feel that we all have different needs and short-term therapy wouldn't have worked at all for me...I've seen my therapist for 3 years and it took me those 3 years to build trust and to be able to start talking...I wouldn't have accomplished anything in less than that, and I still have a long long way to go, but what truly helped me so far is to know she would be there no matter what, no matter what I told her, no matter what I did. That she would stick by me...Just as you shared.
I needed those years to build trust. And the relationship I build with her and that safety and trust makes all the difference in my life.
I can't see how short-therapy would help me..I may be wrong but to be helped mostly in crisis or to be able to function doesn't feel I would be solving the real underlying issues and the crisis would always come back and inside I would be just as hopeless and isolated as I feel sometimes.
I feel that for me the way to change or to live a better life, is throught developing a trusting relationship (for the first time in my life) and being accepted and heard. I would panic with all that goal-oriented thing and fix-it thing as soon as possible. I prefer to go at my pace and know that my therapist will be there...
as far as money goes, I don't feel it is that I am making her rich. I feel she cares about me (and her patients) as human beings and that she just has to make a living but that she loves her profession.
i can't think how short-term therapy would work..maybe it does work when you want to have some insight on some very specific issue, but I can't think how that can help you change or feel more whole, or enrich your whole life.But as you said we all have different needs..
just my feelings...
Adia.> Well, since I've spent eight years with the same counselor, obviously I don't agree about the superior value of short term therapy. I put the poor guy through hell (ok Dr. Bob, you said I could say that) with minimal change for the first five years. Brief therapy would have been useless for me, because therapy for me *started* in year six. I tested him, I challenged him, I quit several times, I insulted him, I had him wondering if he shouldn't refer me out. And I am ever blessed that he didn't. Because his sticking with me for five years while I was a hellish client, and learning and growing as a therapist along the way. His letting me see how I affected him, in the most therapeutic and non-exploitive way possible. And most of all, almost all of all, his being there, session after session, getting mad, working things out, but overall treating me well even when he was angry and I was obnoxious, most of all JUST BEING THERE (I can't emphasize that enough) was what worked for me in therapy.
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> After five years he had earned my trust, and I started to work with him. If he had given in to his now admitted impulse to refer me out, it would have shattered my trust in future therapists forever. Instead, he tought me that trust doesn't always end in pain. Usually, but not always.
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> Social workers might not learn psychoanalysis, and they shouldn't. Psychoanalysts should. And today's psychoanalysts are unlikely to mention penis envy. But psychoanalysis still has it's place.
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> And my therapist isn't a psychoanalyst. But long term therapy was right for me. It wasn't harmful. It may have made him comfortable financially, but it wasn't a scam. I don't change quickly. I don't change easily. And short term therapies (by which I mean shorter than several years) wouldn't have made a dent.
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> But... everyone is different.
poster:Adia
thread:265278
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20030925/msgs/266323.html