Posted by Tabitha on May 1, 2014, at 19:22:02
In reply to Re: Post therapy observations » Tabitha, posted by Dinah on May 1, 2014, at 17:29:22
> Obviously I agree to some point. And even though I recognize that I was the one pushing for forever therapy, not my therapist, one of my main feelings has been one that I totally blew enough money for an extra house.
I guess I'm moving from kicking myself over how much I spent to holding her responsible as well.
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> My husband said no, that I was way better with therapy than without. And that whatever happens now, he helped me for years. When he seemed to have abandoned me entirely, it was hard for me to believe that. A really bad ending seems to negate everything that goes before.It's great that you got that objective feedback from your husband. The only similar feedback I got was a friend who told me I seemed happier after leaving. But I left the high-stress job at the same time as leaving therapy so it's hard to separate the two.
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> But I don't think my therapist was much like yours. I don't recall him being overly sympathetic to complaining. He tended to be a fixer, and had to work hard at just listening. Even so, he concentrated his efforts on trying to help me view things from a different angle. I'm stubborn, so he had to do it slowly. Yet over time, I found myself saying what he had said to me as if it were my own idea. He'd tell me stories that could be used to throw light on my current situation (and I'd reject them). He'd ask questions that would lead me to think of something from another point of view (and I'd say they were totally irrelevant). He'd make me laugh at myself without ever laughing at me. I sound like an awful client don't I? I don't think I've been so contrary and disobliging in recent years. But it was hard work for many many years.It strikes me that you seem simultaneously more self-possessed and also more open to influence than I was. I suspect being so resistant to his prodding and making it take so very long to take hold was a big part of how you managed to get a good outcome from it. I think with medical treatment sometimes people just give up and pretend something is working in order to please the provider and not create a failure. You refused to pretend anything was more helpful than it really was.
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> Also, like many obsessive people, I would have a tendency to get stuck in my head and twist my thoughts into a hopeless tangle. A therapist helped me keep them relatively untwisted so that I didn't end up with a huge mess I had to fix.
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> I think maybe I can now do that better for myself than I used to. Yet when I'm under stress, I think I may still need that in my life.
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> What would your therapist do?Well that's a great question. In the first few years she did a lot of basic CBT stuff, challenging distorted thoughts, and also just offering alternative interpretations of others' behavior. I had a real tendency to assume people were, well, more evil and spiteful than they probably were. So a lot of it was just educating me in how people operate. I felt that was all really valuable.
There was also a period where I'd come in, go on and on about my troubles, and she would manage to interpret it in a way that gave it meaning, and made it sound like growth. I liked that, even if I resisted thinking all the muck was valuable. Perhaps I learned something from all that. But after a while it felt like she was not teaching me to find my own meaning, but that I was trying and failing to copy her, and more and more it felt like giving up myself.
Then there was a big period where I was fighting obsessive/compulsive behavior, and I'd call her for phone sessions as an alternative to acting out. That cost a bundle but it saved me from acting on the impulses, which would have cost a lot in shame and hurt relationships. So it was worthwhile, although I wonder if other resources like peer support might have worked as well and cost a lot less.
All along there were lots of forays into new protocols like EFT, EMDR, and guided visualizations. Those things took lots of time, didn't seem to work, I didn't enjoy them. Yet I still thought the fault was mine, that if I was more "open" then this stuff would work for me. Over time as I learned that these things don't really have evidence for efficacy, and are pretty much just made up by somebody, and there are multiple reasons why something that doesn't actually work may appear to work, I got steadily angry about being pressured to go through these protocols week after week.(1)
Eventually she gave up on the protocols, and at that point it became just "supportive listening" which is where I felt I did a lot of complaining to little end. I mainly needed some advice on handling my job, which she couldn't give. She later said she had found all the talking about my job to be not valuable. It certainly wasn't. I really needed help though. Just didn't know where to get it.
It was somewhat helpful during the relationship with the spouse-- she talked me down from some cliffs, again related to me thinking people are more evil than they are. So that had value.
We ultimately fell out over my cancer treatment. Just could not even handle the suggestions she gave me on that. Finally thought I do not have time to winnow the little bit of wheat out of this chaff.
It was all sort of like leaving a cult-- the longer you stay the harder it is to leave, because you have to admit how stupid you were for believing and clinging to it and investing so much into it for so long. Although, reading this over, I see that there was a lot of good, especially at first, and it slowly got worse and worse and I did finally leave. Maybe more like a failed marriage than a cult.
Side Notes:
(1) OK this part is a tangent, but adds to my resentment and our differences. She also recommended another alternative practitioner, an MD, who had me on thyroid hormones very much against my regular doctor's guidance (his treatment made my bloodwork very abnormal). That actually seemed to help physically, but over time I realized the safety data was lacking, and he was not using sound judgement to prescribe all this stuff. If I had gone along with his all of his recommendations I would have been on a boatload of expensive supplements and hormones, not FDA approved, not covered by insurance, probably not safe or effective. Plus it was all sort of denialism, thinking I didn't really have bipolar, I had an undiagnosable thyroid disorder. Kind of nutty, and I would hope the person I trusted to help monitor my moods would have discouraged that type of thinking instead of encouraging it.
poster:Tabitha
thread:1064984
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20140310/msgs/1065065.html