Posted by fallsfall on February 5, 2004, at 9:22:14
In reply to Question for gg., posted by alexandra_k on February 4, 2004, at 19:05:28
My first therapist was CBT. She taught me lots of skills and coping mechanisms. She taught me how to look at what was happening and see what the different parts of it might be. She taught me how to tolerate distress. She taught me how to express what I felt. She taught me to identify thinking patterns that were simply not true ("because I missed one question on the test I will never be a good engineer"). She taught me how to survive through the emotional storms. She taught me that people can care, and that people can care even if I think that I'm not a very nice person.
The things I learned from her are invaluable. But, I do a lot of reading, and I knew that I wanted to get deeper into WHY I end up with all these self-defeating patterns. I asked her, and she did try, but it just isn't in the theory of therapy that she subscribes to to do what I needed done.
I now see a Psychodynamic (self oriented) psychologist. He is very good at going into the why. We do a bunch of transference work (whereas my CBT therapist once said "Why are we always talking about our relationship???"). I feel like this approach will help me to FIX what is wrong, rather than just learn to COPE with what is wrong. So, for me, at this time, Psychodynamic is better.
I do wonder, and worry, what would have happened if I started with Psychodynamic. I use the skills I learned in CBT every day to tolerate what comes out of my Psychodynamic therapy.
I think that each client, at each moment in their therapy, has innate preferences for one type of therapy or another. Usually, I don't think that they know what those preferences are. Eclectic therapists, in theory, would switch to whichever mode was more helpful at the moment.
There is no right answer. It depends on who you are, what your issues are, how you think, how you solve problems, who your therapist is, how you relate to your therapist, and what your goals are. At least, that's how I see it.
poster:fallsfall
thread:309476
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20040131/msgs/309687.html