Posted by mair on January 1, 2005, at 13:24:07
In reply to Re: Forever therapy - Spoke to my therapist » Dinah, posted by Aphrodite on January 1, 2005, at 9:54:38
Yes, I too feel periodic shame about going twice a week, particularly since I feel so little progress much of the time. I have excellent insurance benefits, but my frequent therapy expenses and of course all of the other normal medical expenses of my family put us in the category of those who actually receive more in benefits than we pay in astronomical premiums; I feel pretty guilty about that as well. I loved the analogy about the chiropractor; it would probably work for dialysis too - any chronic illness where the symptoms need to be managed. I've read insurance company statements about how they shouldn't have to pay for long term therapy because the return doesn't justify the cost - eg: it doesn't necessarily lead to a cure. Well I've always bought into that with my shame, and I continually struggle with the issue of why I don't get better faster - why the process is so grinding and slow for me. And for me it seems worse because I don't have a history of childhood abuse to point a finger at, nor do I have an extensive family history of mental illness. So, am I just indulging my depression?The problem, I guess, is that drugs don't work perfectly for lots of us and shorter term therapies don't either.
Not too many people know I go twice a week either, not even my long term secretary who is fooled by the fact that one of my appointments is over a typical lunch hour. And when I've told people, I've mostly not liked the response I've gotten. One friend, a psychologist, seemed shocked at how long I'd been in therapy - I don't think I ever even got to the point of telling her I went twice a week. I think she's really a CBT person and looks down on long term therapy. Even my pdoc seemed surprised when she asked and she asked at a point when I'd already been seeing her for a couple of years. I could never figure out how to take her surprise - is she surprised because I'm still such a mess lots of the time, or is she surprised because I'm so high functioning? Nearly all of the time I portray a very different person from the one manifested in my mind. Does she think I should be making better progress? Is she questionning my T's methods? I can read all sorts of things into it.
My T talks about where we've been and where she sees us as headed because she knows the length of the process bothers me. She doesn't necessarily believe in forever therapy for me (at least she's not owning up to it now) and she doesn't steer everyone into longer term therapy. I think it just depends on what your issues are and how those issues can be addressed. A huge one of mine is a fear that to open myself up to other people is to open myself up to ridicule - so even after several years of fairly intensive therapy with someone I like very much, I still do alot of filtering about what i'll tell her and how I'll package it, and at least until very recently, I've done a good job of convincing myself that she and I have no particular connection to one another. Mostly I can't see how to work on this other than in a relationship setting and in my T's view, my own difficulties with the therapeutic process are really the core of my more global relationship issues.
What I've had to sell myself on, sometimes more successfully than others, is that the numbers of therapy visits and the length of time I'm in therapy doesn't speak to much other than that this is the process that works best for me and that when I'm able, in my relationship with my T, to maintain a stronger sense of my own self-worth, I'm far more emotionally stable. It's just too bad that it takes so lonnnggg!!!
Mair
poster:mair
thread:436168
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20041228/msgs/436352.html