Posted by raisinb on February 4, 2009, at 11:43:59
In reply to Twice a Week., posted by Recently on February 4, 2009, at 10:37:59
I switched from once to twice a week after about 2 and a half years of therapy. It is something completely different, as Dinah said. I like it more--it's enabled me to have a much deeper relationship with my therapist.
Freud, who often saw his patients five or six days a week, used to talk of the "Monday crust" that he had to break through after a day or two off.
I think I used to have a "week's crust." I noticed I used to be traumatized, sad, or rejected, or full of love or longing after sessions. Then as the week went on I'd eventually get angry at her. This is how I learned how often I used anger as a defense mechanism against self-hatred and vulnerability.
I am angry much less often at twice a week. And when I am, I can differentiate between justified anger at a crossed limit and anger as a defense.
I do have a caveat, though. When I first started going twice a week, it didn't take long to enter a suicidal depression. It was the longest (3+ months) and worst I'd ever gone through. It was absolutely awful and I think it was in part a consequence of that twice a week therapy.
As I look back, though, I realize it was a developmental stage. That depression was a kind of break in myself. I emerged a substantially different person. Sometimes I look back (it was less than a year ago that it started) and can't even understand the person I was before it.
What I'm getting at is that going twice a week moved me deeper, more quickly into something I think I needed to go through anyway. And might have been inevitable. I am glad it happened now because it pushed me to change in ways I didn't think possible. But it wasn't any picnic.
So my advice to you is that more therapy will definitely have an effect--and a good one--but perhaps be prepared for it to be harder in some ways.
poster:raisinb
thread:877971
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20090129/msgs/877981.html