Should therapists self-disclose?

[mudpuppy]

First saw The Lumberjack song in the 70's.
It's what inspired me to become one.

mud

[BonesMS]

Hi Mud,

Thanks.  Sadly, only 15% of people diagnosed with lung cancer survive 5 years—which is why early detection is so important.  If it is caught early (before symptoms appear) approx. 75% survive--my wife was lucky enough to fit into this category.  I hope your wife continues to do well…

I've never been through therapy myself but have known a few therapists.
I'm sure, or at least hopeful, that this is merely anecdotal, but the few I have known seem to me to have been considerably more in need of intense therapy themselves rather than dispensing it to others.
Are the disturbed inordinately attracted to the field of psychology the same way, just as an example, smart, handsome, rugged dudes are attracted to the timber industry? Heh.

Yup.  If I were a smart, handsome, rugged dude, you never would’ve heard from me……...or maybe you would have:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5zey8567bcg


Richard

YAY, Monty Python!!!!  LOL!!!!!

Bones

[Guest]

One last thought on this topic (from me).  If you have experienced “voicelessness”, finding a good therapist in my experience, is very difficult.  When people ask me how to do it, I do not have any easy answers.  Training/experience is important, smarts are important, and “kind of human being” is important.  For me, the third factor is the most difficult to assess quickly—particularly in an era of supposed neutrality.  Professional or friend’s recommendations are not enough—one has to make the assessment oneself.  And one has to use every bit of information available.  In a sense, one has to be excellent at reading people quickly—but often in therapy relationships, just as in non-therapy relationships, we are drawn to what we know.  And what we know is/was damaging.  So we have to be careful.  If a therapist is willing to self-disclose and trust, IMO, that is a positive measure of the third criterion.  But clearly, on its own, self-disclosure is not enough.  When auditioning therapists, we have to listen to every word the therapist says, and we have to ask ourselves the same question the therapist asks:  “Who is this person.”  Every therapist will be different and every therapy will be different.  Finding the right match is, in my view, critical.  

Richard

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.

Mud,

Are the disturbed inordinately attracted to the field of psychology

yes! but the more disturbed they are, the more they'll be attracted to psychiatry first. I reckon psychiatrists feel the rest of the world is wrong, so they want to fix the world to fit their view. Psychologists feel they may help themselves as much as their clients/patients so it's more of a mutual undertaking. And that's just my non-informed opinionating based on nothing more than meeting some of the buggers.

On the other hand, we've explored an awful lot of the planet. The really unchartered territory is still inside our heads. What profession could be so interesting? What other profession, if we could really change minds, if we could ....has the ingredients to ...well.....

make a better world.

[sunblue]

This is a really valid issue when it comes to therapy.  I wholeheartedly agree with most here who suggest, that therapists who share similar experiences with their patients can immeasurably add to demonstrating empathy which is so important to building a trusting therapist-patient relationship.

But for me there is a huge caveat.  This sharing of personal experiences must not be selfishly motivated.  Like any other interaction or methodology the therapist chooses to employ, sharing his/her personal experiences must done with an eye to serving the patient and their personal growth.

I, too, have had experiences where 1) it would have been immeasurably beneficial to be validated through the sharing of personal experiences from my therapist and 2) where the therapist shared personal experiences, but not effectively.  In this latter scenario, it also served the opposite effect.  I shared some painful experiences and rather than empathize or validate them, the therapist spent a good amount of time sharing his personal experiences that included the inherent message, "my pain was far greater than yours so you have no right to dwell on your pain because it can't compare with mine."  This happened a number of times.

Now, I'm a very empathetic person and so I became invested in the therapist's pain but ultimately, it just added to be mine.  Not only did I share personal experiences for which I was not validated but I was also made to feel these experiences were irrelvant in comparison to those of others....including my therapist's.  It was "my pain trumps yours."

So, provided the therapist can share painful and personal experiences with the intent of HELPING the patient, it's a very beneficial thing to do.  But the therapist has to have a very good handle on his/her own issues before doing so.  If their own pain has not bee fully addressed, it becomes difficult to share it with a patient without turning the patient into the therapist.

To all therapists, by all means, share!  But be sure the sharing is about helping the patient...not obtaining attention from the patient for your own issues, resolved or not.

I think it's especially important for victims of Narcissists who already have a higher than average level of empathy for others.

[BonesMS]

Thanks, Mud and SunBlue!  Hear, hear!!!!

Bones

[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?!

[Hopalong]

Oy, yes.
Tupp, sounds like that to really let someone "in" -- you'd have to risk being disappointed.

Because I think for some Nsurvivors, when people let us down, it's disproportionate disappointment we feel.
Well, I should speak for myself...that's healthier.

I think I react badly to being let down sometimes because:
1) I was raised to be judgmental so that reflex kicks in when I'm hurt, instead of "I am feeling hurt"--it's protection
2) When someone I'm investing with so much authority/competence (as compared to my own) shows insensitivity or less competence/commitment--it's like, on some level I'm not conscious about, a reminder of how my own earliest "protectors" let me down--and that feels like disaster, like a confirmation that there is no safety in the world
3) So I'd best not start trusting or allowing others to be imperfect or...I'll be the hurt child, without protection, all over again

And I can't take it.

I can work through all this. When I tap into my own strength, then I recover my baseline empathy and compassion, which includes for therapists.

I think it's key to not be ABOVE others, when you feel compassion. It's not because we're more sensitive and compassionate than anybody else. It might be, sometimes, that we feel even that so intensely, that it's disabling. We can hold it out but need to clamp onto the dock intentionally. While others might be able to extend and retrieve, with more naturalness.

Sea said something so helpful to me on my other thread, about "drowning in empathy not being helpful." It was "drowning" that made me think. Or a word to that effect.

Empathy isn't supposed to drain us, but I think Nsurvivors build all sorts of brittle walls, or shell layers. Because as intense as our fear and pain was, equally intense is the empathy we can experience as adults...and that can be just as overwhelming as the original hurts.

So if my T is dealing with something personal, it's a test of my healing. Can I allow this person to move in and out of roles a bit? Can I contemplate their humanness and ordinary life, including failings, and still trust?

For me, when 90% of the time a T is solidly there for me, if the 10% appears, I now see it as a welcome reminder that I am not just AT an appointment to get that service performed (the paid-for listening)...but I am also WITH A PERSON. And if they need some time to just be that person...it is better for me than if I keep them in a rigid "professional" box to keep me safe.

I have to risk the unsafe feeling of trusting, for it to eventually become a safe one. I have to experience, over and over, that I can take these risks with others. That my brother is never coming back into my life. Nor are my childhood bullies.

So I hope, in whatever way you can work it out, that you find you are not a helpless victim merely-patient in your role as client, but also as a co-human being. You are a surviving and healing adult. And it took you great courage to seek help for your troubles.

As it took them courage to take on that career.

You are not "lesser than" your therapist, so you don't have to protect them from you, or protect yourself from them. Bad ones are rare, and you DO have the capacity to intuit who is safe for you.

love
Hops

[Twoapenny]

Oy, yes.
Tupp, sounds like that to really let someone "in" -- you'd have to risk being disappointed.

Because I think for some Nsurvivors, when people let us down, it's disproportionate disappointment we feel.
Well, I should speak for myself...that's healthier.

I think I react badly to being let down sometimes because:
1) I was raised to be judgmental so that reflex kicks in when I'm hurt, instead of "I am feeling hurt"--it's protection
2) When someone I'm investing with so much authority/competence (as compared to my own) shows insensitivity or less competence/commitment--it's like, on some level I'm not conscious about, a reminder of how my own earliest "protectors" let me down--and that feels like disaster, like a confirmation that there is no safety in the world
3) So I'd best not start trusting or allowing others to be imperfect or...I'll be the hurt child, without protection, all over again

And I can't take it.

I can work through all this. When I tap into my own strength, then I recover my baseline empathy and compassion, which includes for therapists.

I think it's key to not be ABOVE others, when you feel compassion. It's not because we're more sensitive and compassionate than anybody else. It might be, sometimes, that we feel even that so intensely, that it's disabling. We can hold it out but need to clamp onto the dock intentionally. While others might be able to extend and retrieve, with more naturalness.

Sea said something so helpful to me on my other thread, about "drowning in empathy not being helpful." It was "drowning" that made me think. Or a word to that effect.

Empathy isn't supposed to drain us, but I think Nsurvivors build all sorts of brittle walls, or shell layers. Because as intense as our fear and pain was, equally intense is the empathy we can experience as adults...and that can be just as overwhelming as the original hurts.

So if my T is dealing with something personal, it's a test of my healing. Can I allow this person to move in and out of roles a bit? Can I contemplate their humanness and ordinary life, including failings, and still trust?

For me, when 90% of the time a T is solidly there for me, if the 10% appears, I now see it as a welcome reminder that I am not just AT an appointment to get that service performed (the paid-for listening)...but I am also WITH A PERSON. And if they need some time to just be that person...it is better for me than if I keep them in a rigid "professional" box to keep me safe.

I have to risk the unsafe feeling of trusting, for it to eventually become a safe one. I have to experience, over and over, that I can take these risks with others. That my brother is never coming back into my life. Nor are my childhood bullies.

So I hope, in whatever way you can work it out, that you find you are not a helpless victim merely-patient in your role as client, but also as a co-human being. You are a surviving and healing adult. And it took you great courage to seek help for your troubles.

As it took them courage to take on that career.

You are not "lesser than" your therapist, so you don't have to protect them from you, or protect yourself from them. Bad ones are rare, and you DO have the capacity to intuit who is safe for you.

love
Hops

I think I'm the opposite, Hops, because I'm paying for them to listen that's what I want them to do!  I don't really want to see them as a person, I want to be able to spill and either recieve some good advice or tips for coping/managing etc or just be able to work it out myself (the way you do sometimes when you say things out loud and for some reason the solutions are clearer than when they're in your head).  To me it's like any other service I'm paying for, I want them to do what I'm paying them to do, particulalrly as it's so expensive and the time you have in there is so limited.  I don't want to spend any of it listening to them talk about themselves.  I don't think I'm as compassionate as you are! xx

[Hopalong]

Well, I've experienced you as very compassionate, Tupp.
I'm sure you know your own needs and what works best for you better than anybody else could, especially including me.

I hope you find the right new T soon, because you deserve excellent listening.

love
Hops

[Twoapenny]

Well, I've experienced you as very compassionate, Tupp.
I'm sure you know your own needs and what works best for you better than anybody else could, especially including me.

I hope you find the right new T soon, because you deserve excellent listening.

love
Hops

That's very kind of you to say so, Hops, I don't feel compassionate, I feel like a grumpy old bat most of the time.  But it's nice to know it doesn't come across like that always.  It's a really interesting thread, I'd never thought about it before.  I've had two really good therapists who've helped me enormously and I did end up knowing bits and pieces about them.  Listening is an amazing skill, isn't it?  Sounds very passive but is actually very empowering for the other person.  Did your doggie door get installed the other day, is your pooch loving it? xx

[Hopalong]

Aww, feel free (to be a cranky old bat).
I have been irritable lately too, offshoot of a week of depression.
It's clearing up now, some walks in bright sunshine and a good
session with my own T.

And yes! Dog door's in and pooch seems so much more relaxed
when I get home. Clearly not in distress. I would love to know
how much time she spends outdoors. I don't think a lot but
it's great to see how much more comfortable she is when I
have a long workday. (Three days/week I'm gone for 10 hours,
which is rough on her.) But this morning we walked a couple
miles with my friend before I went to work, since Mondays
are my "late day". Fridays, too. So it all evens out.

Have a happy Monday, Tupp.

xo
Hops