I pay my therapist $120 every other week. I should, theoretically, feel like I can tell her anything.
But I don’t.
Because I want her to like me. It’s part of being a stage-four people-pleaser.
I …
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Hi The3resa,
I read your account of the battle with honesty.
When this occurs within your therapeutical relationships:
“…..the only person that is fooled is yourself and maybe at times your therapist felt some incongruence from you but at the end of the day, your therapist is not a detective and is not out to prove you are deceitful or dishonest, they can only work with what you bring and are fundamentally only as good as the information which is imparted to them.”
Thank you for sharing this experience, I do hope others will take this onboard.
Regards
Dawn Pugh
interesting. for the last couple of years i’ve seen a psychiatrist who also does therapy on a weekly or twice-weekly basis.
i don’t find myself telling her everything at all, even when it comes to clear pieces of time in which we’re discussing meds, side effects, potential changes.
part may indeed have something to do with the individual relationship between the two people. have you considered looking into finding another therapist?
I totally disagree with the entire idea of wasting a therapist’s time.
Learning to disclose is something we learn in therapy and noticing that we aren’t disclosing and what we aren’t disclosing is important. Knowing why you do it is a great awareness. Awareness is necessary before change can happen.
That is not a waste of anyone’s time.
Sometimes not telling the truth is a way of our testing the therapist, which is a cornerstone of the Control-Mastery theory of therapy promulgated by Joseph Weiss and his followers.
Clients don’t tell the whole truth to see how the therapist reacts to the level of facts and material we provide. If the client is happy with the reaction and the interpretation of the facts as given, the therapist has passed the test that spurs clients to share more and further the relationship. If the opposite is true, if the therapist fails the test, the therapeutic relationship is challenged.
Under this conception of testing-the-therapist, withholding of information can be seen as normal, as part of a panoply of tests that therapists must face from their patients.
For more on control-mastery:
http://controlmastery.org/
Some people leave out stuff because they just don’t like the way it sounds.
If we were aware of all of our blind spots, we wouldn’t need therapy. It is the therapist’s job to flush out the areas the client is hiding or can’t face, and that may take some time.
It seems difficult enough to trust a therapist while establishing relationship. Feeling vulnerable takes time to expose. Don’t beat up the client who is not perhaps telling 110% of their life while hopefully working up to doing so. Yes, “time” is on our side if we do the really good work to work thru a problem or issue. I’ve had good therapists and some awful ones – finding that right match is a god-send!
Yeah, the article seems overly harsh. As a patient, you always have the ability to go back to the therapist and admit lying or a lack of disclosure. I’m sure in and of itself it carries meaning that will aid therapy once in the open. Everyone wants to be liked, no one wants to feel ashamed– I’m sure most therapists “get it”.