Essential Tolerances For Successful Therapy

[BloomInWinter]

I have found on my own personal journey that establishing a good, safe, productive therapeutic relationship with my therapists required me to push myself to tolerate the distress of some things which I used to avoid or escape from.

Here's what worked for me (so far) in making major headway in being able to receive help and put it to work in my life.

I had to force myself to tolerate the distress of:

• Accepting that I need the help of a human being to get better. The best I had been able to accomplish on my own only made me sicker.
  
  
• Accepting that my therapist is able to see needs I have which I am unaware of.
  
  
• Accepting that I must put to work the grounding & safety skills in my real world situations or my work in therapy is pointless.
  
  
• Accepting that I am not an expert on therapy, or even what I truly need in therapy.
  
  
• Trusting that all my feelings that come up are ok and I can feel, express, and survive them.
  
  
• That my therapist is a just a human being who cannot read my mind, be expected to remember every detail I express, or even always be on top of his or her game.
  
  
• That the negative feelings which come up in therapy about my therapist are actually my brain projecting unresolved issues onto the therapist....and that only by expressing them and talking them out helps me finally heal the original wound that was inflicted on me earlier in life.
  
  
• That every moment I spend wondering what was behind the words & facial expressions of my therapist were wasted moments of my life. Usually, I was wrong. When I gave myself permission to ask rather than be in distress & worry, I started learning how differently my therapists think about me as opposed to my abusers.
  
  
• That forcing myself to look at those things which I most want to avoid are the shortest distance between where I am and where I want to go.
  
  
• That every minute I spent trying to prove to my therapist why s/he was wrong is actually avoidance at work and a completely unproductive waste of my time and energy
  
  
• That I cannot read anyone else's mind, and what I tell myself about other people's thoughts are rarely even close.
  
  
• That I must tell my therapist what I feel, think, and experience about anything coming up in therapy or my treatment plan is incomplete.

There's more but I have an appointment shortly.

 

[arfie]

Wow! Sounds to me like you are in danger of healing.

Well said, BloominWinter. Very eloquent.

 

[Suzetig]

I really needed to read this, after a session spent talking through how unbearably anxious I was after making myself very vulnerable to my therapist. I also need to add:-

• It's ok that I can't give myself what I need to heal.
• Vulnerability isn't a failing or a weakness
• It's ok to accept care from my therapist

 

[Chava]

Vulnerability and needing help isn't working for me. I feel too bad about myself. But I think this list makes a lot of sense if you can trust humans a little bit. There's a point where the fear outweighs the benefit. I want to believe all this stuff but I'm so bad at it, which just makes me feel like more of a failure.

 

[joeylittle]

I love this list.

A big one for me is: It's not me; it's a disorder/disease. Illnesses of the mind are not any less valid simply because we don't understand the mind as well as we understand the liver, say. It's an illness and it sucks that it's very hard to treat. But it's still an illness.

That helps me keep going sometimes.

 

[JEKBreatheandBelieve]

@Chava - I don't like that you feel more like a failure and you think you're bad at vulnerability and needing help, but I do like that your statement is a real reaction and I can relate.

 

[Chava]

@JEKBreatheandBelieve thanks. I don't want to detract from the real post. I think I'm there sometimes and that's when I move forward. When I'm in a more primal state of trying to just not be destroyed, it hurts too much to even want or need support from a therapist or to even do the therapy thing. Loaded with denying myself today, but on some level realize that too is coming from a place of wanting to protect and sustain myself.

 

[Bookoffee]

That I cannot read anyone else's mind, and what I tell myself about other people's thoughts are rarely even close.

I am just now understanding this. I thought I had "super powers" because I knew what EVERYONE was thinking. As my wife puts its, my "spidy" sensors are off.

 

[KwanYingirl]

As the unofficial Queen of Avoidance, this list is brilliant!

 

[scout86]

Is it ok if I print that out and put it up (probably is several places) where I can be reminded of it A LOT?

 

[StellaBlue]

Awesome post @BloomInWinter . I'd like to print this as well.

 

[BloomInWinter]

Print away!