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Should therapists self-disclose?

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Dr. Richard Grossman:
Sunblue:

Amen!


Guest:

"Hi Richard, I see this was your last thought on this, but I do have one observation - if a potential client is able to see their own problems clearly enough to be able to ask themselves those questions about a potential therapist.....do they need therapy? By the time we reach that kind of understanding, at least with me, half the battle (if not more) would have been done. It's a bit chicken and egg I guess. Not that I know."

IMO, identifying the problem is part of the "battle"--then comes the harder parts:  shedding destructive relationships and literally learning to live in a world where your needs are heard and taken seriously.  Significant brain re-wiring has to take place to do the latter comfortably.  After a lifetime (for many) of not being heard, the brain has adapted to this painful situation.  It takes a new experience (therapy) over time to lay down these new "tracks".

Richard

Guest:
I hear you Richard. Thanks for that.

Nonameanymore:
I think they should. One reason why rehabs are even partially successful is because they are staffed with ex users and patients know this. It builds trust, confidence and a knowing that the therapist can/could really help me if they understand what I am going through. Maybe it's this thing I expressed the other day about intellectual and emotional understanding.
I understand your question is not about similar experiences but disclosing them but I guess it would help me for instance if I would go the a therapist who understood emotionally and not just intellectually what I went through and if she told me so she had similar upbringing for instance, I would be certain that the person across really knows what I am talking about. It would make it safer for me to open up and trust, especially if she would seem a person that 'has it together' which would mean that there is hope for me too in becoming exactly that.

sea storm:
This thread just seemed to emerge from the past and I found it interesting.

I am so surprised that anyone would want to go to therapist's who weren't able to self disclose or who thought it counter-productive.
I like the idea of checking in with the client and asking "And how are we doing?"  You know, how is our relationship. If the therapist is in a top dog position this is not good. One has to know deeply that the therapist really knows.

Having gone through training for counseling at the Master's level I saw many counselor's who couldn't really connect with anyone let alone clients. They chose modes of working that guaranteed no deep or probing work would happen and they seemed unable to have deep empathy. It was too high a cost personally for them. It was not something they could develop and they just reinforced who they were rather than growing with each client. If they are working with the worried well then they can't do too much harm but if they are working with the really wounded it is scarey to think of them out there. They would not be disclosing because they didn't have the understanding of multiple layers of meaning and boundaries.  Or they might disclose all over the place and be unhelpful that way.

I notice that Dr Grossman is seen as a parental figure here on Voicelessness and that it seems a great comfort to many. If he weren't the complexity would be amped up exponentially.

As for lumber jacks being handsome and not needing therapy. Oh baloney. They just go drinking and exercise a lot climbing hillsides and having near death experiences.

I'm a lumberjack and I don't care.

SEa

Twoapenny:
Personally I prefer not to know anything about the therapist I'm seeing other than their professional qualifications and whether they have experience in whatever it is I'm trying to deal with.  I find I clam up if the relationships starts to feel intimate in any way and I find chit chat or knowing stuff about them does that for me.  I also find (and I think it's because of my massive codependcy issues) that if/when I know 'something bad happened to them' I find myself worrying about them and monitoring what I say for fear of triggering them.

I do agree with Sea that checking in with how things are going is vital and very useful for both sides, but personally I find someone asking me 'how are we doing' makes me say 'fine' (people pleaser and I don't want you to think you're doing a bad job plus I'm not really even sure I know what I want from this, I just want to stop feeling crappy about myself all the time).  I've had an initial assessment now with a rape crisis centre and as part of their preliminary assessment they gave me a tick sheet that just lists all sorts of thoughts/feelings, negative and positive, and asks you to rate where you are on a scale that ranges from 'constantly' through to 'never'.  Then they give you the same questions again at stages to see if what they're doing is helping or making you feel worse.  Of course, sometimes you do feel worse when you're working through something so there's that to manage as well.  I prefer that sort of more impersonal approach, it sort of felt more clinical and that's what I feel I need now.

I felt that I got to know my last therapist too well to talk about the sexual abuse with her.  I felt embarassed and I worried that she knew me too well and would suspect I was lying.  I think that came from so many people who knew me well calling me a liar when I first told them what he did.  So for this particular situation, I feel like I need someone I don't know at all, know nothing about and who doesn't live too near me so there's little chance of bumping into her in the street.  Equally, I found that knowing a lot could really trigger me.  My last T had to cancel some appointments because her dog was having pups and there were some problems near the end and she was rushing backwards and forwards to the vet a lot with her.  My mum has always been far more interested in her dogs than in her kids - completely different situation, obviously, but enormously triggering for me, no fault of the therapist, she was behaving like a responsible dog owner and was being honest with me about her reasons for cancelling but from my point of view it triggered me and I couldn't go and talk about it to the person involved which made it more difficult!  It's all a bit of a minefield, isn't it?!

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