Posted by Dinah on December 26, 2003, at 23:01:56
In reply to Re: You know what might be interesting? » Dinah, posted by mattdds on December 26, 2003, at 20:01:24
Ok, let me try one. Mind you, my therapist is by no means a analyst, Freudian or otherwise. He's not at all a blank slate. Perhaps someone with a more classically trained analyst could provide some examples there.
Scenario 1 (using the relationship between therapist and client): My therapist and I are having a disagreement. I'm upset that we are angry with each other. From a cognitive behavior standpoint, there's plenty of ground that could be covered. I'm quite probably filtering and overgeneralizing, possibly catastrophizing. I might be assuming that if my therapist is angry with me right now, he'll always be angry with me, and if he is angry he doesn't like me, and if he doesn't like me I must be a miserable wretch of a human being. I might be thinking I "shouldn't" ever be angry with someone I care about, or they shouldn't be angry with me. A CBT therapist might go over my irrational thoughts with me, carefully countering each one, perhaps with a whiteboard for emphasis (sorry, Bell, but I like that whiteboard image). He might assign me homework to see other instances in my life where I might have the same sort of thoughts. He might also teach me some behavioral steps that can keep my arousal level down.
My therapist would more likely take a different approach. He would probably admit to being frustrated or maybe even angry, while telling me he also still cared for me. He would tell me it's ok for me to be angry with him. That our relationship was strong enough to withstand some anger. He might ask me about how my parents felt about anger directed towards them, or how I felt about anger from my parents. He might ask me about other relationships in my life and whether or not they had withstood anger. Perhaps he finds that when I get angry with people in my life, the relationship doesn't survive. Maybe he finds that anger is so painful to me that I disengage. Now he can talk about what I lose in life by not accepting anger as a part of a relationship. I might have told him stories that could have gotten to this point, but the immediacy of the therapeutic relationship gives an example that is still emotionally charged and that he can use to greater effect.
In effect, his interaction isn't that much different than a CBT therapist in outcome. He's shown me that he can be angry with me while he still cares about me (overgeneralizing and filtering). He reminds me that our relationship has withstood anger in the past and can withstand it now (catastrophic thinking). By admitting that I was perceiving his feelings correctly, he validates my reality, but in talking to me about what the feelings mean, he points out to me that while my perceptions are correct, my assumptions might not be. He not only gives me permission to feel angry (shoulds) but he also places my original should thought in context. In the past feeling angry has led to this or that, so I got the idea that I shouldn't be angry, but that feeling angry doesn't have to lead to this or that. That here is a relationship where it hasn't, that there could be other relationships where it wouldn't.
He doesn't tell me these things, but he gets me to realize them through experiencing the moment. It's not a didactic experience, it's an experiential one. And it takes longer, yes, because at the beginning of our therapeutic relationship he couldn't have used our relationship as an example. I wouldn't have *felt* that what he was saying was true because I wouldn't have yet experienced it.
But to some of us, the felt experience has a far greater effect than the rational understanding that a thought or idea isn't true.
poster:Dinah
thread:293462
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20031221/msgs/293656.html