On therapy...

[Updated in the text a bit January 15]. When writing this I am listening to "Close Every Door" (on my walk yesterday I started to wonder on this song too. Why I like it and what it is about actually, maybe more about this later. But I like the music, and also the words... But what is it actually about?)!! I'm going to accompany one of our students on piano in this song and am practicing it together with a lot of other things... This song is so ardent (innerlig in Swedish), has a warm sincerity... I think at least.

I have had an exchange with a friend regarding therapy recently. Want to quote from this exchange, a little freely (I try to translate it to English):

“Many clients are often unconsciously very adapting and accommodating to the therapist and swiftly become ‘cured’. Which makes the therapist feel very clever. But people like you and me are probably seen more as the ‘obstinate’ type by therapists, spiteful/malicious and with a lot of ‘resistance’, which of course doesn’t promote the therapy either!! But what I mean is that both you and me want to go further, see deeper, know more. And then you don’t get ‘cured’ in half a year, and this can be extremely frustrating/vexatious for many therapists. That you want to work on yourself really.

I am thinking especially on what you wrote:

‘And therapy is often (very often?) about behaving ‘normally’, resonating ‘normally’ and ‘sound’, then you are on the right path, maybe even on the way to being cured? But if you are minimally intelligent you can probably behave in the desired way easily (yes, in the same manner as you have behaved always! As you behaved before therapy. You haven't actually changed maybe at all or only marginally)? Realize what is the 'right' thinking, resonating, and behavior, and you behave according to this? And that is the/a sign you have become ‘cured’ or are on your way to cure???’

For I know at least two persons who have actually been in therapy they thought was very good and helped them very much, but I feel that those persons aren’t especially changed by the therapies they went through or as if they have matured as human beings really or something like that. However, I only knew one of them before therapy. And I think she is exactly the same person before the therapy as after it, which I think is strange as the therapy was said to be so great.

Both x.s and y.s therapies were such short-term therapies with ‘kuratorer’ [this profession doesn't seem to exist in USA etc. But it is people educated at College for Social Workers, hopefully with psycho-therapy education later if they have people in therapy as clients, even if I am a bit doubting in therapist-education/training] and it looks as what the therapists was telling them was that nothing they did was their fault. That the problems in their lives were nothing they carried the responsibility/blame for, wasn’t guilty for. And, yes, that must feel very good to hear! But, how does this help one? If one is supposed to change ones patterns and live a better life where you take better care of yourself, understand yourself better and gets less scared for your ‘demons’? This feels so incredibly banal, infantile, superficial/skin-deep.

But there is a drive in many people not going in therapy too long, so it’s not just the therapists who don’t want to dig too deep and turn unpleasant stones around. For I can’t see before my eyes neither x nor y making acknowledgments for themselves on how much they have to work on, that they maybe have pretty big problems with themselves. For this is probably something you easily push away from you. Everything becomes so much easier, nicer and funnier if you are allowed to feel clever, normal and right, so to say. So when two such persons meets; a therapist wanting to feel clever because he/she cures his/her patients so swiftly and easily (‘wow, what kind of miracle-doer I must be’) and a patient which for nothing in the world want to feel un-normal and strange, a one with ‘psychological’ problems, well then he luck is complete, all.

The therapists can throw all kind of general strengthening clichés around them; that the client doesn't carry any guilt and that you have to live in the here and now, or what else is modern for the moment, and the client can feel ‘deep’ and ‘serious’ when he/she is pondering upon the therapists ‘wiseness’ and thus he/she isn’t forced to think him/herself and he/she isn't at risk of turning such a stone around where all possible creepy things can come crawling into daylight. A sigh.”

But I think Miller is right, if I have interpreted her right; she means that you aren't as guilty as you think (the painful things that was done to you when you were a child isn't your fault, but I don't think we have access to those feelings always and/or have no memory of these events, but the guilt-feelings are there nevertheless, with no obvious reason it looks). But you are responsible for what you do and say as grown up, here and now... And for what you have done earlier as grown up, which can be very painful and difficult. In spite of what you have experienced earliest in life you are responsible...

Also see earlier posts on abuse in therapy.

PS. January 15: The keys on my portable computer are a bit slow, so I miss letters sometimes in my eagerness to write. And I don't have patience to look for solutions to this. You can probably make them faster, and it is probably not so difficult (when you know). :-)

I also came to think on my walk yesterday, with a tired smile, that I write with my forefingers only... I who play piano maybe should be able to use all my fingers, but it isn't so. A sigh. But on the other hand; maybe the fact that I play piano makes my writing fast even if I only write with my forefingers??

I have planned to take a walk to the grocery store to buy semlor for lunch!!! Walk there with my poles!? Do I dare to walk into the store with my poles? :-) I thought of making a soup and eat semla after the soup for lunch... And I bought 20 tulips on Sunday! A promise of the coming spring, nice! In the middle of everything.