Posted by Dinah on October 18, 2008, at 10:52:42
In reply to Too much disclosure is not a good thing, posted by lemonaide on October 16, 2008, at 20:44:47
I think it depends a lot on context. Yes, "too much" disclosure is always a bad thing. But what is "too much" can vary.
I know a lot of times it's useful for me for my therapist to share something from his own life. I might say "Have you ever done/felt/experienced this?" If he thinks it's a useful question to answer, he will give me an example, hopefully one pruned and tailored to be useful to me.
Or I'll ask him how he feels about something. He usually refuses to answer that one until I tell him how *I* feel about it, which annoys me no end when I'm trying to get his actual reaction to something I've said. I think his point might be that it matters more what I think than what he thinks.
Or in our particular therapy, and I suppose with clients like me, he knows that I pick up on his emotions and generally assume that they have something to do with me. So if I feel that he's tired or upset or angry or sad or scared, I'll assume it has something to do with me. If he refuses to say anything at all, I'll just get more and more frantic.
Of course there are ways and ways to do that. I remember once, in the first five years of therapy, he made a preemptive strike, before I even realized he was upset, and told me why he was upset and my silent reaction was "Why did you tell me that? What am I supposed to do about it?" I understand his reasoning, but in that case it was poorly executed. Ideally he'd wait for me to notice something and ask if he was upset with me, or something of the sort, and then give a very brief response. Something like
"I know I'm not myself today and I'm really sorry. I want to be here fully for all my clients every session, but there are sessions when I'm not as present as I'd like to be. Something is going on in my life that's upsetting me. It has nothing to do with how I feel about you. It won't have an impact on our relationship. It won't affect my therapy practice. Everything is going to be ok, and I'm sorry for not being as present as I'd like to be. I'm going to try to focus fully on the here and now, and if I am not here as fully as you deserve me to be, please bring my attention to it."
Which really doesn't disclose all that much that isn't the client's immediate interest.
My therapist has never quite got the hang of that, and I have to ask him leading questions to get him to address the relevant facts. (Therapy won't be disrupted, except for my distraction. I'm not angry with you. I'll be ok. Everything will be ok.)
I really like what Yalom has written on the topic, although I suppose that some might say he overdiscloses.
poster:Dinah
thread:857848
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20081018/msgs/858085.html