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Meh:
Back to complain some more about my therapist. She does this thing where she is trying to challenge my thinking process. The thing is it really isn't helpful and it pisses me off. She says to me "Is that so"....and I say emphatically...Yes, it is so....and I clip right along not going into it because instead of a challege I experience it as dismissive. I wish I could have found a therapist who was a better fit for me. I haven't really gotten into anything very deep with her. I just told her that the problem solving paperwork she gave me frustrated me so "I just stayed with the frustration and decided that even if I am angry or upset that I can....continue without giving up" Oh hell. I'm feeling a little under the weather today my stomach hurts. I'M ANGRY THAT I DON'T FEEL UNDERSTOOD by my therapist. She is paid through some kind of grant, I swear they should just pay for me to go to the freaking dentist and then I would get something solid out of their stupid health care grant project crap. I mean I have seen her about 4-5 times now. If she only gets paid 50 dollars each time (I don't know how much she is paid)-- that is like $250 that I could give to a dentist. DUH--

I've continued to go to the therapist though just in case there is even like a 1% chance that she can give me 1% help.

I mean I'm understanding that I not her her has to do all the real work I just wish she had more to add to the mix because all I have is me. All that is going to come out of me is the same old garbage. I wish she could ADD something that I don't already know/have.

Meh:
Um hum. The therapist has said that to me a few times the "Is that so" part. She says it a little humoursly.

She doesn't understand the Voicelessness piece at all.

It frustrates me that I would have to try to convince a therapist of what voicelessness is like- this is not even possible--. You know how there are some people that know without being explained to.  The voicelessness is not even the main focus of what I have been trying to discuss with her--more the homelessness. I think the homelessness is related to my FOO emotional problems though. 
I see everything as being a part of a big sticky spiderweb system--maybe that is flawed thinking I don't know.

I'm angry that her philosophy is all about the changing a persons flawed thinking--it's exactly what I wanted to avoid.

I really feel like I want mentoring of some sort. What if I'm like an omelette and I have eggs and cheese and olives but I don't have salt and pepper. HOW WOULD I EVEN KNOW WHAT SALT AND PEPPER IS? If I'm missing salt and pepper and I don't understand salt and pepper how can I say "I need salt and pepper". Thats where I wish the therapist had more insight/intuition.

if I don't get the bigger picture together I think I'm going to self-sabotage myself back down. I think I tried to say that to her also that I need something that I can be excited about.

I'm afraid I'm a really tough client for her we already got in an argument over the term depression.




--- Quote from: Hopalong on February 17, 2012, 12:41:25 PM ---FWIW, I am also extremely sensitive to dismissive language, and that would trigger me too.

If I had a therapist who unthinkingly responded, "Is that so?" when I made a statement, I would need to say this to her at some point:

I need to bring something up. I know you must not mean it the way it sounds, but I need to tell you that I have a strong feeling of being dismissed when I make a statement and you respond, 'Is that so?'" If there is another phrase you could use, I would really appreciate that. "Is that so?" sounds like, "I don't believe you" or "I doubt you." And that makes it harder to feel at ease talking with you. Would you mind using a different phrase when you're responding to me? Thanks.

fwiw,
Hops

--- End quote ---

Meh:
So I'm noticing that The bigger picture is hard for me. I'm not certain if this is because "my mother never told me" or if its more related to other issues.

This is something I wish my therapist could explain more to me.

Ultimately the bigger picture is created out of small minutia. Maybe a person never really does conceptualize their bigger picture.

In my current circumstances I feel at a loss for the search for meaning or purpose. In my mind a life worth living involves cultivation and investment something that I'm absolutely not doing right now.

I try to ask myself where am I going, what am I supposed to be doing, what do I want to be doing and I don't come up with any answer in fact I tear up and get a headache over it. Asking myself this question actually makes me cry. I just can't come up with anything. If it gives me a headache it must mean that it just gives me tension/strain/stress. Where do we go to find answers like this?
 

Meh:
I don't have ANSWERS and solutions. I know what I feel like I'm missing out on and what I have grief or loss over and that is what I thought was the key to finding solutions. All the therapist seems able to do is say "so that must make you feel sad"...and then she is picking a would and I'm supposed to get emotional or something. It's just not helping. How does this help? Its just a question to the ethers.

My therapist is basically just communicating to me that I have to figure it out on my own. She gave me some dumb papers that identify problems and then says to identify goals. The thing is I have a problem with getting my plans to work and that is why I ended up here in the first place. I mean I'm already failing. So why tell a failing person to figure something out clearly something is wrong with me. Or at least now I feel that something is really fu<ked up with me. I hate therapy. I don't know I need to give it a rest. If I'm just becoming angry with the therapeutic approach maybe that is a cue to me that this isn't working.

sKePTiKal:
Well, Star... I can see where you're frustrated and even maybe angry at the whole T process. It's not exactly a comfortable or nurturing experience in the beginning; or it wasn't for me. I clammed up, ran away a few times and seriously wondered if it was worth the agony I was going through. It's just a wild guess on my part, but your T might be trying to explore where your anger-buttons are... find out what they are because it just might provide enough "textbook"-kind of info for her to decide where to go from there... and start making some more productive (and practical, useful) suggestions. Finding those buttons, isn't the end-result of therapy... it's what I used to call the "gold nuggets of treasure" that helps a person untangle the incomprehensible "big picture" of themselves. Maybe. It's a possibility, anyway... some Ts work that way.

I can relate to a couple of things you said; I went through something like this in T, too. There was a really hilarious moment for me (in retrospect - I was deadly serious at the time and about to have a nuclear meltdown) when I was in the midst of a tirade about not ever being listened to; that no one ever HEARD me or cared about what I thought was important... and she said, Really? Is that so? and just looked at me.

And I finally "got it" (hard-headed as I am). She was listening me; she cared; she let me say anything I wanted... any way I could get it out of my head, which as you've probably figured out from my writing was a whole lotta words that took forever to "spit out" what I was really trying to SAY.

She often asked me what I wanted. And I really couldn't say - because no one ever bothered to care about what I wanted and I didn't dare want anything personally, for fear of Nmom. I felt like a non-person because I couldn't come up with a list. Who doesn't want something, you know? And why didn't I know what I wanted? SIGH... I still don't walk around with a list of things "I want" in my head. I didn't even know how to find out what I wanted - sheesh! At that time, the "quit smoking" want was pretty high on my list (because my MD said I should - and well, everyone knows this, right?) and I had 1 more thing - live near the water. That was all I knew for sure. I expected that she would give me a whole list of ways to quit smoking... a fool-proof explanation and plan... and more than once, I confronted her with all the other stuff we talked about - and what I'd said my goal was, in coming to therapy - help me quit smoking and why weren't we doing that? I even quit therapy for year and tried to quit smoking on my own.

THAT was a true failure, in that I simply made myself totally miserable. I went back, because I couldn't function at all, like that - I was in pieces that I didn't recognize and didn't know how they fit together.

My point, Star... is that sometimes to "fix" what's wrong... it's necessary to disassemble "us" and examine each piece in detail. And I don't think it's possible to do this by one's self.  It's like we're too close to picture, to see exactly what the composition is - what the picture's about... to find that one thing that "just doesn't work" in the picture. Therapy is all about understanding how each individual piece of "us" works to create the "big picture".

Hang in there! If you're already at this point, then you're making pretty fast progress. It took me a year or more, to get where you are now. It might be confusing and yucky for awhile longer... but really, it DOES get better and when you start on that track, progress even speeds up.

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