Posted by fallsfall on December 18, 2004, at 14:35:52
In reply to Seeing a specialist as well as my T? Anyone?, posted by Racer on December 16, 2004, at 20:02:27
At various points I have seen more than one professional. I've been seeing a therapist continuously (well, first one and then another...). I see a pdoc for meds. I have been in 2 "process" therapy groups. I have done DBT skills training. But none of those seemed to be unusual.
Recently, though, I took my 16 year old daughter to a therapist (she was tardy for school so much that she lost credit for an English class...). He decided that seeing just her wasn't going to accomplish anything, so he wanted to see the two of us together. My therapist thought this was fine, and seemed glad to have the help with the "daughter" issues. It seemed like some of what came out of this therapy was for her ("you don't have to protect your mother", "you do have to be reasonable")and some was for me ("set rules/consequences and enforce them"). But my daughter didn't like to go, and started refusing - and I went without her, because I still needed to know how to deal with her. My therapist was still encouraging this - he could see that I was getting stuff out of the therapy, and the therapy was also clarifying other issues that I would work on with him. But there came a time when my daughter's therapist was talking about helping me to adjust to her getting ready to leave home, and my therapist expressed some concern. He didn't want her therapist working with me on that level. As long as it was "How can I get her to school on time" and "How can I get her to pick up her messes", we were fine. So I stopped seeing her therapist (though the option is always there if she gets ridiculous again to bring her back).
I guess the question I would have for you is would the *nature* of ED therapy be different from your regular therapy? Or would there end up being a lot of overlap. (You have both a doctor and a dentist - they both take care of your help, but there isn't a lot of overlap). If there is a lot of overlap, then you might need to choose one or the other.
> but I also feel afraid. Afraid of a lot of things, making a mistake by doing it
*** It would only be a mistake if it didn't help as much as what you are doing now. And I would think that you should have the option of going back to what you have now, even if you did try something else.
> hurting SparklingBright's feelings,
*** This is SparklingBright's problem, not yours. I would think that if you said "Dietitian suggested that I might consider an ED specialist since things don't seem to be going too well. What do you think about that? Would an ED specialist help me? Do you think I need more help than you can give me? Would I see both of you, or would I need to take a break from you? If I needed to stop seeing you to see ED specialist, could I come back to you later?" This would say to SparklingBright that you have a decision to make (based on advice from a professional), and you would like his advice on this decision.
>diluting therapy by seeing two Ts for different things that overlap so much, etc.
>
*** See above> To be very honest, I think I'm also afraid that I'd recover from the anorexia if I see a specialist, but that's something to work on in therapy, ain't it?
*** This is such a hard thing. Being afraid to be better. I've been working on this in therapy for the last couple of months. We have made some progress, but there is still a long way to go. Have you talked to SparklingBright about this?
*** These are difficult questions. Talking about it seems valuable to me.
poster:fallsfall
thread:430484
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20041218/msgs/431291.html