New Beginnings

In my preparation for coming ‘back to work’ I glanced through old comments and notifications and found a comment left in 2008 “How do I know I am with the right therapist”? I don’t know how I answered back then, but today I thought “What an interesting question”. How do therapists/counsellors know that they are right for a particular client, and how do clients know that they are with the right therapist?

Often both clients and therapists fall prey to the assumption that therapy is the only path to recovery and/or that therapy with a particular therapist is the only path to healing. This is a dangerous assumption. Let’s not forget, the client is doing the healing, not the therapist. The capacity of the seed to become a fully grown, healthy plant is within he plant, not with he gardener. He or she is only providing an environment in which that growth can accelerate. When the seed is not growing the gardener has failed to provide the appropriate environment.

Unfortunately there are plenty of therapy models that base the lack of progress in therapy on shortcoming in the client: s/he is either in denial, avoidant, hostile, has a negative transference, is lacking trust, or (my favorite one) NOT READY. And although that might all be present in the client, it is the therapist’s job to provide the right environment for that to be addressed. That’s the therapy. If clients wouldn’t have these negative symptoms, they wouldn’t need a therapist.

It might be useful to revisit what a therapeutic alliance is. Judith Herman writes in her book trauma and recovery p.134 and 147

the relationship between survivor and therapist is one relationship among many. It is by no means the only or even the best relationship in which recovery is fostered…Though the therapeutic alliance partakes of the customs of everyday contractual negotiations, it is not a simple business arrangement. And though it evokes all the passions of human attachment, it is not a love affair or a parent-child relationship. It is a relationship of existential engagement, in which both partners commit themselves to the task of recovery.

I read that interpretation and think of compassion, care, respect, understanding, and appreciation. If we (therapists and clients) can make that happen as best as we can and as often as possible, we are having a good thing going and growth can take place.

Coming back to the above question of how to know that you are with the right therapist my response is: when you are starting to feel better, think better, and function better. I personally don’t believe in the old saying “…it has to get worse before it can get better”. I think that is a tragic ‘invention’ of a pessimist who got hold of the fact that many people have to hit rock bottom before they act against their habitual beliefs. But it is by no means a law of nature. Things can actually get better starting NOW.

So, how do therapists/counsellors know that they are right for a particular client, and how do clients know that they are with the right therapist? I would love to hear your thoughts on that 🙂

I Can’t Trust My Memories

Upon the Sharon Armstrong post from a wee while ago where I talked about NLP and eye accessing cues that can indicate whether a person is remembering or is constructing a memory, I received an email from a reader asking whether there would be a way for her to know whether she is making up what she has been telling her therapist. I have heard over the years from so many survivors that they find it hard to believe that they have been abused.

Firstly, there is a difference whether you make statements to justify or explain the fact that you were recently caught with Cocaine or whether you talk about something that happened many decades ago in your childhood. Memories are not set in concrete like the content of a printer’s typeset drawer. They are subject to change over the years, some parts get ‘trimmed off’ and other parts get ‘added’ depending on what you do when you re-visit a memory.

Secondly, if you don’t believe that you have been abused, if you doubt your thoughts, wouldn’t it be a good idea to examine why it is important for you to know whether you have or have not been abused and to what extend? And thirdly, whatever the past trauma was, isn’t it important today to deal with the legacies of the trauma (depression, anxiety, stress, low self-confidence, poor social skills, dissociation, and overall poor self-relations) and re-build a healthy, happy, and balanced sense of self?

I think these are great questions to ask and work through with your therapist when you are not quite sure what it is that you are doing. Your therapist can give you an outside perspective that, together with your inside wonderings will hopefully form a picture that gives you peace of mind.

Always Looking Through The Rear-View Mirrow

Someone asked me yesterday whether there is some therapeutic benefit to telling a client what they went through wasn’t that bad and others had is worse. 

My first reaction was to shake my head. Who would say something like that to a person unless there is an intention to hurt? It sounds so puntive and discounting of a person’s emotional pain.

My advise was to go back to the therapist and express how this statement has made her/him feel. Asking for clarification and what intention the therapist had when making such a comparison. Of course there is always someone on this planet who has had experiences that were worse than our own. Thats not a hard thing to figure out.

On the other hand, sometimes you come accross a person who is very attached to her/his traumatic experience(s) so that being a victim of abuse/trauma becomes a life-position. I liken it to

“Going through through life as if you are driving in a car looking constantly into the rear-view mirror.

It’s easy to see that such a driving habit comes with huge dangers. The driver is bound to crash into all sorts of objects and obstacles and is a menace to him/herself and others. A challenge like the the above statement might help such a person to move out of the victim position and look into the future rather than ruminating about past experiences most of the time. However, I hope people are able to find more effective and gentler ways of shaking the foundations of a habitual victim-position of helplessness and hopelessness.

Sometimes a critical statement like the one above does not come from a therapist or other people in our lives, but from ourselves. We give ourselves a hard time for ‘not getting on’ with things. Rather than joining the blame-game and giving yourself a hard time, a much better question would be “What resources do you need, what skills do you need to learn, what self-care practices do you need to apply to be able to start looking into the direction you are driving: FORWARD!

Thoughts about DID, Diagnosis, and Parts

You might have noticed that I started telling the story of Anna, a person with multiple parts to her personality. If you want to know how Anna’s parts came to exist, and why, you will find many books, websites, and articles that talk about DID and alternate parts. I am getting a bit tired of all these clever explanations like the one in Wikipedia: “a single person displays multiple distinct identities or personalities (known as alter egos or alters), each with its own pattern of perceiving and interacting with the environment. The diagnosis requires that at least two personalities routinely take control of the individual’s behaviour with an associated memory loss that goes beyond normal forgetfulness”.

The Leap Of Faith When Starting Therapy

Trusty
knew better than to waste time when he traveled to the little seaside village
of Shelly Bay. His dark eyes concentrated on the narrow road winding down the
hill that enclosed with loving arms what was once a little settlement but had
become a township with many new houses, businesses, and shops. He didn’t notice
the little pearls of sweat running down his forehead or the breath-taking heat
in the car. He concentrated on the traffic because the worst thing that could
happen would be having an accident or being stopped by the police. The panic it
would cause the Tree People would be horrendous.  He was glad traffic has not been as busy as
it was in the city. He hates it when people compromise his safety by driving too
close or cutting in  in front of him. 

How To Fire Your Therapist

It is not really that unusual that people are not happy with their therapist. The reasons for that can be anything between A and Z. Clients may feel that their therapist is not enough of this or not enough in that. Therapists may feel that their client is avoiding to engage actively in the therapeutic encounter. Finding out who’s right is in most cases a pretty futile undertaking. Really, it’s not about right or wrong, it’s about THE RELATIONSHIP!

Finding the Right Therapist

I read this morning a post by Emily that inspired me to write about finding the right therapist. Although things had gone well for her (it seems) something wasn't right and she stopped with that therapist.

How do you know that you have found the right therapist or counsellor? Wouldn’t it be ideal to have a check-list that you can tick off when you set out to find a therapist? Sadly, it doesn’t work like that. I spent years of researching how services shape the recovery from sexual abuse; and here is what I found out:

Relationships Role in the Treatment of DID

Just the other day I was reminded of people’s strange conception about the therapeutic relationship. Books that discuss psychotherapy and counselling often emphasise that the therapeutic relationship is the most important tool in recovery. And indeed, hundreds of research studies confirm that. I listened to a counsellor who talked about ‘using’ the therapeutic relationship in this and the other way. It sounded like the therapeutic relationship was a shovel in the corner of the counsellors room, which ever now and so often was picked up and ‘used’ to hit the client therapeutically.

Oh dear, oh dear. I think the therapeutic relationship is the most important aspect of the recovery from Dissociative Identity Disorder. But how does it work? What kind of relationship do therapist and client need to develop together for healing to occur, and how exactly does healing then occur?

Mutual Recognition and Recovery

Grouping Together is understood here as those actions that brought the personality system into a working mode of co-operatively aiming for a mutually desired and agreed upon outcome.  Grouping Together was a pivotal step in the COMING TOGETHER stage that directed clients towards integration. It described interactions of self-support where clients did for themselves what previously was provided by others, for example communicating directly with other parts.

Absorbing the Transference

One of the main tasks of therapists in trauma treatment is to be available for the client to express their fears, their needs, their hopes, and their disappointment without them being punished or rejected for it. In a metaphorical sense, the therapist acts as the punching bag that assists in strength building and skill development.