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Re: 'we'll never know why your mother,,,'

Posted by pegasus on December 15, 2009, at 9:38:20

In reply to 'we'll never know why your mother,,,', posted by rnny on December 14, 2009, at 22:56:34

I would have felt dismissed by that as well. In fact, I've experienced similar moments in therapy, and I *did* feel dismissed, or reprimanded for being boring, or something along those lines. It sure shut me up, anyway.

That said, there is a school of thought that says that the best therapy focuses on the here and now, versus the client's history. Not that the client's history is irrelevant, but that if you continually draw attention to the relationship in the room, everything you need to work on will come up anyway, and in a way that the T and the client can experience directly, right in that moment. Versus remembering what it was like in the past. So some Ts frequently try to call attention to what you are experiencing now. This is the type of thing that Irvin Yalom talks about a lot in his books. Maybe this was an unskillful way of trying bring up that notion?

And then there is also a related line of thought in therapy (and parenting and probably elsewhere) that says that because we cannot actually make anyone *else* do something, it is more effective to focus on what *we ourselves* can do. This is the type of thing Harriet Lerner talks about in "the Dance of Anger" and other books. It's a bit different than saying it's tiresome to talk about what the other person did. It's more about focusing on what is effective to address the problems that you are experiencing, regardless of the other person.

It also seems like she probably wasn't really meaning to say that she doesn't understand why your mother behaved the way she did. It may just be that she thought it might be more helpful for you if she could redirect you to focus on the present, and how to empower you for the future. However poorly she might have presented that idea.

peg

 

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poster:pegasus thread:929286
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20091212/msgs/929381.html