Posted by Eddie Sylvano on February 11, 2003, at 9:24:53
In reply to Re: fickle therapists-on vacation-Eddie, posted by bpdzone2000 on February 10, 2003, at 21:17:06
> It is so nice to know I'm not alone...Thanks for sharing. If I do tell my therapist these deep secrets do you honestly believe that this could help me? How?
---------------I suppose an exceptional therapist would expertly deduce relevant areas of discussion for therapy on their own. You'd say something tangentially suggestive of your feelings about authority, and they'd quickly illuminate the larger issue. In the real world, I imagine, a more direct approach may be needed.
How could revealing this help? The purpose of therapy is to reveal the thoughts and beliefs that underlie your actions, since these beliefs ultimately shape your life. Over the years, every emotional event you've experienced has left an impression on you, with your mind creating associations between the events and the emotions (and between other events and other emotions). Therapy helps to illuminate all those associations, and thus help explain why, in your case, you desire rescue from authority figures, or fear abandonment. Therapy tries to reveal how you're "programmed," in a sense. By understanding the forces that drive you, you can more objectively evaluate the truth and validity of the associations you've made, and free yourself from any erroneous programming. It's sort of like debugging (can you tell I'm a programmer?).> What does this thinking mean? I've read alot on this and they say it has to do with seeing the therapist as another person from a different time in your life. Well if that's the case then don't we all have these thoughts because there is always someone we wish to replace right?
---------------Given what I've just said, this should make sense. Your personality upon entering the therpaist's office is the sum of all the previous experiences you've had. The therapist isn't part of that. How do we come to understand new things? By referencing things we experienced previously which resemble the new thing. We make assumptions about new cars based on our experiences with old ones. We start with what we know, and work from there. It's not a concious desire on your part to replace the therapist with someone from your past, it's just your brain's way of coming to some sort of undersatnding of the therapist, about whom you really know nothing. You do the same thing with strangers every day, but you probably don't have to deal with them enough to consider the fact. This process is also an example of exposing how you're programmed to think. All the while you've been living your life, your brain has been making emotionally weighted connections between events and people in your life without your intervention. Therapy is about intervening in this important process, because your brain has likely made some inaccurate connections. I, for example, used to believe that I was unlovable. Why? It wasn't a decision I made based on the facts, which said otherwise. It was the result of several negative events in my life, and an overly shy personality (which was the result of other beliefs about myself, on so on and so on...). Taking critical control of the evaluation and creation of my beliefs has allowed me to revise them, and therefore revise my mood and behavior. It's not that cut and dried, but that's the basic idea. By discussing our thoughts, we can reveal their origins and question their validity. Since our thoughts reference our emotions, doing this right can ultimately make us happier.
poster:Eddie Sylvano
thread:35870
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/social/20030208/msgs/36825.html