Why I go to therapy

[chanaleh]

My theory for today: The value of therapy is in having a place to tell the unvarnished truth. We spend so much time telling the world and ourselves that we are contented when we're not, that we are not afraid or angry or lonely or sad when we are. Behind the office door, we are allowed to open up those feelings to at least one sympathetic listener with absolutely no stake in the things we have to hide. And maybe, gradually, we relearn the habit of hearing and inhabiting our own truths by the light of day.

(Okay, for "we", read "I", but still.)

Comments

[ladytabitha.livejournal.com]

That is such an excellent description of therapy that I'm almost tempted to actually go.

[greenlily.livejournal.com]

This is a very good description of how therapy works for me too. My therapist and I have agreed that when I begin to be able to let people know when I really am angry or sad or fed up, I will probably not need to go to therapy any more. :)

"I came back as a bag of groceries accidentally taken off the shelf before the date stamped on myself..."

Neat!

[zogathon.livejournal.com]

I've often wondered what people actually do in therapy, and what they get out of it. Thanks for sharing!

ymmv

[(Anonymous)]

I'm sorry you feel you have to spend so much of your life in a cocoon of self-restraint.

The best way I found to describe what my therapist did for me was a chemistry analogy. Remember that really cool experiment we did in high school chemistry where the teacher gave us this beaker of milky white yuk and then we dropped a little crystal in, stirred it around a bit, and suddenly we had a clear liquid with all the yuck settled out?

A good therapist, for me, is like that crystal. Dropped into the cloudy yuck of my brain, stirring things around until in the end it's much clearer.

[ukelele.livejournal.com]

I think I will read "you" for "we" -- I'm not in that plural, so it can't be first-person. In my brief experiences with therapy I found myself *less* likely to tell the truth, because I have a strong desire (need? compulsion?) to be pleasant and happy around the humans, so as not to burden them, and this is doubly so for strangers, which therapists of course are (unless you spend way more time with them than I ever did). My public/private boundaries, and my sense that emotional pain in others is stressful to endure (and thus that I should only ask others to endure it if our closeness gives me some kind of claim and them some kind of recompense), forbid me to have usefully emotionally open interactions with strangers.

Lying to myself, actually, is not something I'm very good at. (Mind you, I've spent years trying, but it was clear to practically everyone, occasionally including myself, that I was no good at it.) I don't necessarily go about telling others the various truths I know, and I don't necessarily know what the truth is in all the circumstances I'd like to, but that's different.

Then again, I never pretended I was a good candidate for therapy ;).

[zenala.livejournal.com]

Wow, that describes me pretty well, too. I'm extremely selective about who I'll open up to. I guess I'm fairly open with what I write here, certainly for my friends-only entries. Being able to put on a front has its plus side, though--this week in Amsterdam, I've been able to get through several transactions with no one ever guessing I'm not Dutch (I can barely say Dank U)

[(Anonymous)]

I had something of a breakthrough moment with my therapist last year when I realized I couldn't disappoint her. When we talked about my doing things differently, there was no point to me doing things because she said so because she had no attachment to whether I did them or not, and if I was unhappy or frustrated, there was no reason to not tell her because she wouldn't take it personally.

I guess I'm pretty much saying the same thing you did. The thing that makes therapists useful is their detachment, strangely enough. Of course, that's a tricky role to fill, and some therapists are better at it than others, but a relationship with a good therapist is completely unlike a relationship with a friend.

mattrolls