Voicelessness and Emotional Survival > Voicelessness and Emotional Survival Message Board
Book: Voicelessness and Emotional Survival: Notes from the therapy underground
Dr. Richard Grossman:
Thank you so much, Hops and Lighter! So often it is our loving memories, if we are lucky enough to have them, that help us through tough times—including the current one. Stroke by stroke…
Take care!
Richard
Dr. Richard Grossman:
Hi everybody,
We’re finally getting there (!) on the research side concerning what I write about in my book. Here’s an article that just came out:
"Study identifies social connection as the strongest protective factor for depression"
by Massachusetts General Hospital
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2020-08-social-strongest-factor-depression.html
It’s ironic that it’s coming from the very same institution that I quit some 35 years ago, in part because my colleagues would never listen to such “nonsense.”
But, many of you may ask, why is such a "connection" necessary with a therapist? Why shouldn't therapists just help people find it elsewhere? And, of course, my answer from the book is: People, in general, at the deepest level, are poor listeners—and this, as I learned from my therapists and teachers, applies to many therapists/university faculty as well. So, the "connection" often has to come first from a therapist capable of listening, in order that the person experience and learn--often for the first time--what this is really like to be heard and valued, and then another person when/if the patient can find someone else who can truly hear them.
Richard
lighter:
THIS is why I haVe such a problem with Western medicine..... white men telling me what I must and musn't do.... what I must do for and with my children without listening to what's going on in our lives.....behaving as though they have all the answers, and our little problems are a nuisance to them, bc we aren't magically righting our boats according to their theories of treatment and healing... if ONLY we'd just DO what they tell us to... all egos and looking down their noses from afar.
::shaking head::.
And....
blech.
I don't think I could be driven into a white male psychiatrist's office..... not with a blow torch, even. With all the suspending of judgment (and getting very curious) I've managed to do lately.... I don't think I could get there in that scenario. Nope nope nope.
It's like a big collage of negative images and experiences pop up.... an entire wall....no.... BILLBOARD of them, and it's a lifetime of negativity.
SO, NOW they're willing to consider... or MAYBE accept what you figured out intuitively all those years ago, Doc.
::sigh::.
And I just don't think the old (willfully ignorant) guard will be responsive enough to accept and incorporate the new data, as they've been practicing ar5se backwards too many years.
GRRRRR.....
::breathing::.
gr.
Lighter
Hopalong:
Amen, Doc.
I couldn't agree more that it's that concentrated and genuine (even if paid for) listening that allows transformation. It's a rare friend who can give that in 3-D, so we turn to therapy.
In a way, you've created that for all of us here. We can write and write and free-associate and narrate and ramble out our lives, and somebody will hear, all or parts of it. Until we can hear our own healthier selves. And that's an amazing gift.
Gratefully,
Hops
Dr. Richard Grossman:
Thanks, Lighter and Hops, for your thoughts. I had no idea that people were unable to listen when I went into this field—I had to learn this crucial truth through experience. sKePTiKal makes the same point in a terrific post on another recent thread: “And lately, I'm relearning the "discretion is the better part of boundaries" lesson again. Even with people I trust. The misunderstandings, endless clarification, twisting things around into their own frame of reference that goes on when people open up with each other can be endlessly frustrating for me, at times - when all I want is to be heard, taken at face value, and not have to endlessly support those statements of emotion with explanations, footnotes & bibliographies.”
https://forum.voicelessness.com/index.php/topic,10639.msg184634.html#new
She could have written a wonderful introduction to my book and explained why I chose not to write it in a more “professional” manner/style! The divergence of status and truth has been one of my most important life-long lessons—although sometimes I laugh at myself for thinking I’ve become an expert on not being an expert.
Hops wrote above:
“In a way, you've created that for all of us here. We can write and write and free-associate and narrate and ramble out our lives, and somebody will hear, all or parts of it. Until we can hear our own healthier selves. And that's an amazing gift.”
Thanks, Hops! That’s exactly the reason I’ve kept the Board running for all these years. In a sense, each of you have been wonderful therapists to others on the Board and listened in ways that most therapists cannot and will not.
And while we’re on the topic of listening, it is so telling to me to see the two reviews of my ex-patient’s book—“The Mathematician and the Teddy Bear” by Sara Field--on Amazon:
1) “The author describes how they feel about an experience, but without saying anything about the experience itself. I couldn't find anything that would help anyone who read the book with their own therapy. Contrary to the title, she was besotted by her therapist within the first month, and went on for 9 years at up to 5 meetings a week, for around $170,000 for 1353 sessions. Vanity publishing.”
and
2) “I read this in two days, which is pretty unusual for me. It was gripping. It was like witnessing the birth of a person -- something the author suggests was happening. At first I was skeptical. Why is this person seeing a therapist 5 days a week and spending so much money? But I quickly became convinced of the authenticity of the need. It was necessary for there to be that much time spent in the basement with a therapist. Later I became convinced that the effort paid off. I could see the transformation taking place in the author's notes over the years. I think this is one book that I will think of often and use in my own life.”
I’m sure that at least 99% of people in the world would “listen” to what my patient wrote in the same way as # 1. In fact, the only comment I received from my friends who read it was that the book was “creepy.” And yet, # 2 “listened” accurately and empathically and saw that the “out-of-the-box” attachment therapy was necessary and allowed the person to finally have a life for which she remains most grateful.
Again, the lesson is: the vast majority of human beings cannot listen accurately to another person’s inner experience. They feed it into their own “systems” and then respond accordingly, thinking they’re being helpful. The result is a world filled with both fiction and “aloneness.” As I wrote in my book, I have spent my entire life/career trying, as best I could, to address this problem. And I thank all of the message board participants for helping me!
Richard
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[#] Next page
[*] Previous page
Go to full version