Posted by Dinah on January 19, 2008, at 9:49:40
In reply to thoughts on this?, posted by raisinb on January 19, 2008, at 9:07:41
I'll speak here as a mom, although my therapist has told me similar things at times.
At times as a mom, the loving thing to do is not to make your child feel good all the time. Sometimes the loving thing to do is to hurt your child's feelings, however much you love your child, to try to prevent larger hurts from those who might not love him. Or hurts that he might bring on himself.
I've held my son and rocked him as I've said something that hurt his feelings but needed to be said. I didn't do it unkindly. I presented it as something that might not have been a wise choice, or that he might not have been educated about yet. Not anymore perhaps, since he's absorbed the salient points.
You don't have to do it unlovingly, or harshly. A spoonful of sugar really does help the medicine go down. If your therapist is hurting you thoughtlessly, or hurting you harshly, I can see where that might be wrong.
And as Daisy said in an earlier post, having a therapist accept where you are now before trying to guide you into a problem solving mode is helpful.
If *all* she did was validate you, you might feel better without getting better. If she never validates you, you aren't likely to want her help in getting better.
So I guess I ask you do you think your therapist says things that hurt sometimes because she wants the best for you? Do you think she tries to minimize the hurt? Do you think it hurts her to hurt you? Does she use a spoonful of sugar with that dose of medicine? Knowing that she might say something that hurts when you're feeling vulnerable *is* scary. But if you can feel the caring when she does it, wouldn't it be more scary if she wasn't willing to do something that she didn't find comfortable either but she thought would help you?
When I was little, I got stitches. I had to have my bandaid changed every so often. I hated that, and would run screeching from one parent to the other alternately deciding it would be better to yank it off quickly or ease it up slowly. I guarantee you that this was just as painful for my parents as it was for me. But they wouldn't have been very good parents had they decided it was too much trouble to remove the bandaid, that it hurt me too much, and that they'd just let me keep the one on.
Maybe you can still keep some control by coming up with a compromise position? My therapist and I have often discussed this. The manner of delivery, the timing. That sometimes I don't want things to be fixed, I just want to be heard. Then he can say stuff later.
And if she is harsh, and doesn't seem to mind, that's another issue entirely.
poster:Dinah
thread:807581
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20080114/msgs/807588.html