"active, engaging and extroverted therapists"
I have no idea about therapists specifically, but I recently decided that active, engaging, and extroverted people are essential to have around in small numbers. They are the fiber to the bowels that are life.
I think that some people really do need to talk about how their early relationships are affecting the ways that they treat other people or the fears they have about trusting people.
When I work with people who have schizophrenia, I think it's important for them to have a place to grieve and not just be given tools to manage symptoms. It's infuriating to get stuck with an illness like that.
I also find it crazy that studies of long-term therapy usually define that as 50 weeks of once a week.
Further, for people with something like bipolar 1, I think that people should see someone who knows what's going on with their lives to help them manage symptoms and not just see a pdoc for meds for 10 minutes every 3 months.
Also, I'm biased cause I'm in analysis, but I think that good therapy can train you to know yourself so that you're not always looking for the therapist's advice and can learn to trust yourself.
They need a therapist's opinion, advice and structured action plans.
This is the bit that was completely missing from my relationship with the therapist I saw during my divorce. Also she was batshit crazy and did insane things like recommend I eat only raw vegetables and nuts in order to cleanse my body.
IMLX, I blame psychoanalysis. The first therapist I went to (on a recommendation) was Freudian in at least some weird way, and he barely offered anything at all that I noticed. Maybe he thought the answers to his questions were self-evidently illuminating. Later, I switched to CBT, which was much better.
The most satisfying and useful therapeutic experience I had took about a year and the dude didn't talk much at all. Never cottoned to CBT, personally.
4: okay, that's really weird.
Freud, himself, was pretty active, so a lot of 50's style Freudian technique is just bad and kind of unfair to him. Psychoanalysts talk more than they used to, and they behave differently when doing analysis versus therapy.
Engaging people with action plans can help more, but they can also cause mare damage.
I had a dr. tell me I needed to stop thinking about philosophy or in a philosophical fashion. For her, all of philosophy was a manifestation of depressive rumination. I think this is because she was an idiot (I have other evidence of this.)
Engaging people with action plans can help more, but they can also cause mare damage
"If you can't jump that horse through that flaming hoop, you'll never be well."
Lee and I are in couples counseling now, which I realize is different from solo counseling stuff. We both like that the counselor is the assertive kind who's making us look at and work on things, though it's also about to take a sidetrack into Lee's early childhood and how it impacts her ability to be a comfortable parent. The goal is definitely for this to be a limited-time thing where once we've worked out what we need to we go back to our normal lives. Well, normal but better lives, I suppose.
For her, all of philosophy was a manifestation of depressive rumination.
Sounds about right.
I have a billion things to say about this, so it goes without saying it's a day where I actually need to get shit done.
Rather than dwell on the past and hash out stories from childhood, I encourage patients to find the courage to confront an adversary, take risks and embrace change. My aim is to give patients the skills needed to confront their fear of change
Which is fine if the patient finds general courage and general skills usable later on too. Getting advice/therapy to solve a current problem doesn't do much for people who can't recognize their next problem is in the same pattern as the last one. Seeing other people repeating their really dumb and self-destructive patterns is too common to be novel, seeing and being able to abort one's own is more difficult IMX.
I would have disengaged an "active, engaging and extroverted" at the first visit. Mine was smart enough to figure out how to deal with suspicious me; acting like a golden retriever at the dog park wouldn't have worked.
(I guess about 12-15 visits about 20 years ago, a good handle on how to do my own therapy, and a phone session about two or three months after the DE died as a check on my own perceptions of how I was handing things during the deepest of the dark.)
More than anything right now I'm curious to hear about Tweety's satisfaction with analytic therapy, if it's possible to discuss without delving into private corners of his brain filled with ponies in boiling caramel.
I was always theoretically staunchly in favor of a psychodynamic approach except as the years have gone by, I've gone to a couple of therapists and have found myself increasingly impatient with it. And it's impossible to know from the (slowly) moving platform of my brain whether that impatience is critical and in some limited way objective, or diagnostic. One is hesitant to get stuck in the tar baby of "your resistance to the slow pace of analytic therapy is grist for the mill," but.
18.1: I dunno; the dude seemed very smart, and being forced to go someplace (or, if I didn't go, face the question of why I didn't want to) and talk to somebody who was almost certain clever enough to know when I was being evasive turned out to be enough to (eventually) get me to figure out what I didn't want to talk (well, complain) about. A similar approach had been unsuccessful many times before; for various structural reasons it wasn't as easy for me to avoid at that go-round.
I'm sure it has much more to do with me and the stage of life I was at than it does with the dude or the approach, but anyhow, it (with "it" construed broadly) worked.
In my half-assed introspection about it, I think the fact that I really disliked the process (that is, sitting there talking about myself) was therapeutically helpful.
Well and this is the thing. I'm pretty sure different kinds of therapy are appropriate not only for different people, but for different times in a person's life.
the dude seemed very smart
Was it here I was having a conversation about whether one's shrink needs must be smarter than one?
I really like my therapist, but I'm afraid she's more of the passive, psychoanalytic sort. I think I'd feel too guilty to stop seeing her and find another therapist, which is probably something I should talk to my therapist about.
We also offer meta-therapy for those who need to work out complicated issues with their therapists.
Was it here I was having a conversation about whether one's shrink needs must be smarter than one?
I definitely believe this to be true, in the specific realm of interpersonal intelligence.
I benefited a lot from my first therapy experience, which was nearly two years with a psychodynamic guy. I feel like the open-ended structure is part of what forced me / helped me to open up to some aspects of my experiences that I'd been avoiding. And that very opening up was what I needed right then. I think that directive therapy wouldn't have created that opportunity, or wouldn't have brought me face-to-face with myself in such a useful way. I think the course of therapy ended at a good time, though; towards the end, I had a sense that I'd done most of what I could do at that particular time in my life and with that particular therapist. (He was definitely not as smart as me, btw, but was smart enough.)
Lately I've been seeing a CBT therapist. I'm just a few sessions in, and I'm still completely unsure of the value. I find myself resenting my new therapist for treating my problems like they have easy solutions; I suppose I should talk to her about this, but she'll probably just tell me to journal about it or whatever.
21: Probably with me. Whenever therapy comes up here, I whine about how being less crazy sounds like a nice idea, but that finding a useful therapist also sounds like the sort of project I am completely defeated by.
So a guy with a book to sell makes glib arguments by anecdote that his way is the best way to practice his trade, pitched to a popular audience rather than using a professional journal to persuade his peers.
I'm sure this will go well. I think we already know that some papers publish controversial stuff because critical links are still page-views, but this makes me wonder if some editor of the NYT is trying to maximize their links from Unfogged specifically.
Personally, the therapist I think helped me the most and that I remember the most fondly was the one I saw for about two or three years, compared to several I saw for a few sessions at a time in college. There's a huge apples and oranges problem with comparing them - I was living in a different environment, the problems I was trying to address weren't quite the same, I don't think I started taking anti-depressants until after college - but I do think his more passive and analytical and introspective style, and the length of the relationship between us, both helped.
Finally, it's weird that the article starts out with quotes about therapists not being attentive. You'd think that problem would probably be reduced with a therapist you've known for years. Kind of undercuts the rest of the article.
I'm willing to bet the author of that article doesn't take insurance. Or, in other words, deals exclusively with people who are motivated, self-aware, and comfortably well-off enough to have the free income to spend on therapy. And yeah, action-oriented therapy probably does make sense for many people who are starting from that place. But I spent the past four months working in a free clinic and ten sessions is nothing when you're dealing with people whose anxiety and depression is intricately tied to living in dangerous places with not enough money, not enough time, and not enough of a safety net. Not that it matters -- we cut them off anyway, because the waiting list is always too long -- but at least we're not smug about it.
I definitely believe this to be true, in the specific realm of interpersonal intelligence.
I don't believe it to be particularly true; my heuristic would be that a therapist needs to seem smart enough for you to believe that if you're saying something that you, on some level, know is not true (or not relevant) they probably also know that.
I'm off to my therapist of eight months, whom I've been bugging for a 50,000-foot check-in. Will report later. Overview: I was crummy for the first four months, and have been feeling much better for the last three.
I just read the article, and could he be more fatuous? I mean, sure, many problems can be solved by "here's some advice; go follow it," and those are the problems people solve with their friends. It's when people aren't able to identify the problem or to follow the obvious advice that they go to therapy.
In general, I'm hesitant to say that therapists have to be smarter than their patients, but that guy? It's hard to imagine his patients benefiting in any lasting way.
you to believe that if you're saying something that you, on some level, know is not true (or not relevant) they probably also know that.
Hah. I don't think I've ever met anyone that would meet that standard.
I suppose I should talk to her about this, but she'll probably just tell me to journal about it or whatever.
Right, in psychodynamic therapy, it'd be "grist for the mill." In CBT, there is no mill.
32: In the realm of personal accounts? Really? I mean, conversation is limited to areas where you're having trouble dealing, and the story either adds up or it doesn't, and good therapists have an ear for stories that don't add up.
32: well, one, most people are uninterested in meeting that standard. Two, it tends to emerge over time; if you keep saying the same thing is the problem, and you have a growing sense that they know perfectly well that it isn't the problem, that increases the chance that you'll eventually say "oh fine it's actually [ other thing ]" (burst into tears; move to california with weird girl; bid fond farewell to your townie buddies).
It's really more like a trick you're playing on yourself, but that's my theory about how the process works: you can only bullshit somebody who you're paying to help you for so long before you start to feel silly, especially if you suspect that they know perfectly well that you're doing that.
good therapists have an ear for stories that don't add up.
Also, I found that the act of telling these stories within the therapeutic context made me aware of how my own stories didn't add up. Sometimes my therapist would point something out, but just as often I'd become aware of it myself before he said anything. In one sense, I'm really bad at being aware of my own evasions and defenses; in another sense, I'm the world's foremost expert about them.
The first few months were helpful, but at some point I became convinced that my (very passive, very psychoanalytic) therapist was a charlatan, and I think I'm right about that.
The breaking point was when he said something like "now that the immediate crisis has passed, the only way you can make progress is to come in more than 4 times a week" at which point I got off the train. Then he billed me for a whole bunch of sessions I never went to.
So, while I'm not saying long term psychodynamic therapy neve works full stop, there is definitely a potential for exploitation by the therapist -- their incentives are to keep paying customers coming back, and many act on that incentive.
Then he billed me for a whole bunch of sessions I never went to.
I'm sure he spent the time thinking of your case and yearning for your return.
36: good therapists have an ear for stories that don't add up.
Yes, and mine was good at seeing forests instead of trees in the pictures I painted for her. I'm sure I'd do better on an IQ test, she had the experience and ability to see things I couldn't because I was too close to them.
38: yeah, that sounds like a fraud. Billing for sessions you didn't attend or even schedule might be an accident at first, but starting sessions four times a week after the immediate crisis is over sounds a bit weird, and I have a hard time imagining that four sessions a week is necessary for anyone except in the case of really extreme trauma. There are, of course, lots of things I have a hard time imagining that nonetheless happen, but all three of those facts together is suspicious.
It is fraud, but probably not the type of fraud you can get caught for unless RH sent a process server or something to withdraw from therapy.
42: analysis is typically four or five sessions per week.
It basically left me with the view that money grubbing Freudians who look like fat trolls should be shot in the face, which is probably an issue I need to work out in therapy.
25 years ago, as agrad student in biochemistry, I was depressed, so I looked thru abstracts on PUBMED
and i found, in pretty short order, that the
#1 predictor of success in therapy is...
how well the therapist and patient relate to each other.
so, when I wen to therapy intake/assessment, they assigned me to some random doc, and i asked, what if don't like him, and they sort of looked at me like I'd asked if fellatio was part of the therapy
which is the main weakness of the profession: if they admit that the science is correct, it means you patients get to evaluate you...
If you schedule and don't show with no notice, they have every right to bill you.
I've heard of some analytic practitiobers who made patients pay by the week which meant that you paid if you had a gallbladder operation, and you paid for the shrink's vacation.
That author sounds more like a coach than a therapist, to be honest.
44: Seriously? Wow. Scientology deserves a second look.
44: some people who are not in training will let you call 3 sessions a week analysis.
If you schedule and don't show with no notice, they have every right to bill you.
Not if you withdraw from therapy with reasonable notice.
45: That's called transference, right?
Right. I said "I need to take a break from this" and then didn't come in. He sent out two months o bills and sent them into collections. F that guy.
You should have reported him. Two months is just harassment.
46: The first guy I tried freaked me out totally and I cancelled after the first interview/session. That freaked him out and his nutty reaction escalated my anxieties. I almost didn't bother looking for another one, I'm glad I kept on.
I mean, if you cancel or no show and then show up but don't explain. Your guy sucked, Halford.
And a decent person will give you a pass for emergencies and illnesses with less than 24 hours notice.
On shrinks detecting whether you are lying to yourself:
I'm sure they're used to listening for rationalizations, but they also have the benefit of body language. Mine just asks me "Is that true?" or "Does your body agree that is true?" and I'm supposed to do a scan for disagreement in my body (clenched stomach or jaw, tensed muscles, hand fidgeting) and confirm or fess up.
But I meet Wynde's description of someone who is paying for her own therapy perfectly.
Now I know why the non-foodies complain about all the food threads.
Anyhow, even putting aside the billing issues, I'm pretty sure that the push to have more sessions and never-ending time in therapy was basically a scam. Not a conscious scam -- I think he sincerely believed it would be helpful -- but a situation where the financial setup of the profession left him blind to the fact that he was selling a very expensive service that doesn't really work.*
*not saying this true of therapy generally or for everyone, at all. I've had positive experiences with other people. Just saying that therapists prescribing too much therapy can be a problem.
Anecdote #1:
The second therapist I saw in D.C., after several years with the first, gave me the "I believe in getting people in and out of therapy quickly, too many therapists keep patients around too long" rap. After a few months, she said that I didn't fit in that category and probably needed to be in therapy for much longer. My extra-specially dysfunctionalness, let me show you it.
She was more outspoken than my first therapist and I wish I'd switched sooner. When she felt like we'd hit a block, she referred me to another therapist, who was differently helpful.
Everything I know about therapy I learned from the movies.
Groundhog Day
That's an unusual problem, Mr. Connors. Most of my work is with couples, families. I have an alcoholic now.
You went to college, right? It wasn't veterinary psychology, was it? Didn't you take some course that covered this stuff?
Sort of. I guess. Abnormal psychology.
So, what do I do?
I think we should meet again. How's tomorrow for you? ... Is that not good?
58: This thread:me::bike thread:everyone else.
FWIW, the rationale behind some-people's-rage-provokingly open-ended therapy, I would say, is this: the essential process that's so slow is building a relationship with the therapist (as organically as possible, given that the situation is completely artificial) and then relating for long enough that habitual problems will manifest that the patient/client/analysand could never have simply waltzed in and told the therapist about, because they were either unconscious or not wholly understood by same. And they have to manifest consistently enough that the therapist/analyst can see a pattern. And this has to happen without the benefit of natural, protracted interaction. So that takes a long and unpredictable time.
(...or is maybe impossible.)
59: right, I could be the poster child for that. I saw mine 2 times a week during a crisis time when he was a resident plus I had a group which died, then 3 times and then for analysis. I'm one of his control cases, so he charges me only what I feel I can afford. He spends a lot of his time doing MRI studies on social cognition in people with psychosis, so I don't feel too bad that I don't pay him much. He's getting hours for a qualification, but the shared office space rent and the cost of his supervision are probably more than the fees I'm paying him. In other words, he's not getting rich off of my coming in that often.
Anecdote #2:
When I moved to Austin, I got some referrals and saw one therapist maybe 3 or 4 times and then fired her, which was hard. She tried to talk me into staying, said it would be useful to talk about why I didn't want to stay, etc. I think she was genuine and not just hoping to keep a client, but I'm very glad I moved on quickly.
I've generally tried to avoid therapy, and this thread is not making me reconsider that.
I thought this article was horrible. It presented good therapy as some kind of blend of life coaching, and an internet advice column. When people are stuck it's not really a cognitive issue -- they don't need someone to say 'hey, shape up and do X!", or "have faith in yourself and ignore your stupid boss/boyfriend/whoever". We all have plenty of friends and relatives who can do that kind of thing. The point of therapy is not to give advice to empower the person to take on their own interal emotional resistance to taking advice, which may be subconscious or in any case need to be surfaced into consciousness more. That takes time -- not the 10-20 years of Woody Allen-esque spoofs, but some time.
This is true even for CBT; the 'cognitive' part refers to thoughts but the point of CBT is that these thoughts become habitual semi-conscious responses that have to be uprooted through behavioral training. I am not a big acolyte for CBT but those guys were trained psychoanalysts as well.
66: I'm fairly certain I would be a disaster without therapy. It's definitely not for everyone, though.
Damn, I always screw up my sentences -- should be:
"The point of therapy is not to give advice but to empower the person to take on their own interal emotional resistance to taking advice"
Come to think of it that's still a pretty kludgy sentence.
I dunno, teo. I spent a couple years in therapy and think it was money well spent. It was interesting at the time. So far as I can tell these things, it removed some anxiety and self-loathing, and without those, my subjective experience is substantially more pleasant all the time. I changed some patterns of behavior.
I felt really stuck for a long time, and now I am unstuck and happier. I recommend it to people who (are otherwise privileged, but) don't like their situations and cannot reason out better ways to be. If you're at that stage, a therapist can help take a look at and change base-level assumptions.
We all have plenty of friends and relatives who can do that kind of thing.
This is not actually true for lots of people, which can be a symptom of or contributor to other issues, or just bad luck. I agree with the rest of what you say, though.
I am currently very irritated my goal-oriented treatment plans, so I'm feeling charitable to the open-ended stuff. As opposed to "will identify a reason for showering at least once per week for 12 weeks.". Or will reduce suicidal ideation to no more than once per week.
I recommend it to people who (are otherwise privileged, but) don't like their situations and cannot reason out better ways to be.
Eh, I've got my problems, but that description doesn't really apply to me in several ways.
I don't mean to knock therapy entirely, though. My sister's been in various kinds for years, and she seems to like it fine. She once told me, soon after she had started, how good it felt to just be able to sit down and talk with someone about her life and problems. That sounds awfully unpleasant to me, which may be a sign that it would help me but I think actually isn't.
58
Now I know why the non-foodies complain about all the food threads.
62
58: This thread:me::bike thread:everyone else.
Therapy really is good for everyone! Just talking about it fosters a greater understanding of how people function!
My sister's problems are and have always been way more severe than mine, btw. Therapy isn't the only approach she has taken.
Then I will not recommend therapy to you, teo.
I don't want to let my negative anecdote stand as a reason not to do therapy generally. Even the bad therapist was extremely useful, at the beginning, in a moment of crisis.
Personally, I got the best results out of doing what amounted to a group therapy session. There's something very empowering and useful about hearing other real people talk about their problems, and it also forces one to turn off the contempt valve, which is a big problem for me and I suspect not uncommon around these parts.
I think I've seen four therapists for any length of time.
#1 yawned a lot.
#2 was the most helpful, was analytic but not wholly passive or blank-screenish. Was not, I would have said, as smart as me, but smart enough and empathetic. In my 1.5 years with him, I let go of some intense anger toward an ex that wasn't doing me any good, and maybe accomplished a few other little things.
#3 Was very smart and/but was a Self Psychologist. I hated my life right then and I'd come in and just let fly with the misery. He'd nod and sigh and say supportive things. At the end I wanted to scream "STOP BEING NICE TO ME" and maybe throw things at him. Just small things. The Kleenex box. I emailed him one day I wasn't coming in anymore, not even for a termination session. Big therapy no-no.
#4 Was fine I guess but not what I needed then. Somewhat productively he really, really pissed me off one day and I got to experiment with the expression of anger, not a strong point. But it wasn't enough and I left after six months.
Then there was my clinical supervisor who would have been a good therapist (analytic but unafraid of authentic reactions up to and including sarcasm.) I decided to be friends instead, which you can do after supervision but not after therapy.
Probably also relevant to my own attitude is the fact that my grandfather was a Freudian analyst.
Then I will not recommend therapy to you, teo.
But crossfit, well.
Crossfit then therapy to recover from issues arising form crossfit. Works the other way around as well.
82: Tell me how that makes you feel.
I've generally tried to avoid therapy
Have people tried to push you into it? That seems counterproductive; the lightbulb really does have to want to change.
Probably also relevant to my own attitude is the fact that my grandfather was a Freudian analyst caught molesting a wallaby in a private zoo.
I feel a little embarrassed that this article caught my eye at all. The guy reeks of life coach in the worst way. I actually went to amazon and looked at his book and it's all "One question frees you from the emotional paralysis that has been keeping you stuck." Actual quote! So I'm trying to figure out why I was a little drawn to the article anyway.
I mean some of it is some sort of quasi-oedipal rage at the establishment of therapy after having the state of New York change the laws at the last moment in a way that pretty much guarantees I'll never be a therapist...in fact, maybe a lot of it is that.
Annie Hall: Oh, you see an analyst?
Alvy Singer: Yeah, just for fifteen years.
Annie Hall: Fifteen years?
Alvy Singer: Yeah, I'm gonna give him one more year, and then I'm goin' to Lourdes.
I wish I had time to comment. I'm currently in a therapy group that has a person who has been goign for 25 years. I think this is rather long.
I don't see what's so bad about a life coach (n.b., I don't have one and am generally put off by the sunny optimism/banality, too). I mean, why isn't that a plausible model of one effective thing a therapist can do? And while some people may have non-professionals to do the coaching (i.e. friends or relatives) many many people don't.
Have people tried to push you into it?
"Push" is probably too strong a word, but my mom, at least, did try for a while to get me to go, and I even had one session with my dad's therapist shortly after he died. He seemed nice enough but the experience didn't do much for me. My psychiatrist when I was in grad school also once casually suggested I might try therapy, but I didn't at that point.
Since no one has yet shown any appreciation for Smearcase's nice line about the Upper West Side dialect I feel like I should. Well done.
I don't even know how to pronounce 'Kael'.
I don't even know how to pronounce 'Kael'.
It's Kryptonian.
90: My friend with a life coach is also the friend with absolutely delusional self regard*. A therapist would maybe want to examine some of that but a life coach (or her life coach, at any rate) happily enables it.
*I like this person very, very much, but it's pretty stunning.
I finally read the Times piece. It's not as bad as some of the comments here suggest, but it's not great either. It definitely does reaffirm my sense that the kind of therapy under discussion would not be useful for me.
79.2 might be the stupidest thing I've ever read from one of you lot, and that's really saying something.
82 is unbelievably funny. I don't even want to know whether it's true.
Heh. Someone important to me has absolutely delusional self regard. Part of me envies it. How nice that must be! Most of me thinks it is not my problem to correct (and not a thing that should be corrected). And some of me wonders if I should maybe say a cautious word or two.
98: Sounds like somebody could use some group therapy.
Or somebody's got a case of the Mondays.
100: Oh, I'm totally envious. I was a little worried for her when she was super keen to go our high school reunion, because she so sure she was going to floor everyone with her awesomeness. "I mean, who there will have done anything more amazing?" "You do realized XYZ won the P/u/litz3r Pr/i/ze for history, right?" "God, she's so boring." So she talked talked talked about this reunion and how great it was going to be until the very night she went -- after which I never heard another word about it.
It's hard for me to fathom how such a person isn't insufferable, but you seem to like ME, so you must have excellent judgment.
It's hard for me to fathom how such a person isn't insufferable...
Exactly.
Sometimes she is! And sometimes she *really, really* is. (A while ago she got a sort of mail order [not really -- but there were no classes and a 70pp triple-spaced nonsense dissertation at an unaccredited institution] PhD in cultural studies and began lecturing me about academia and I lost it.) But more often than not she is a very fun and thoughtful friend.
79: Group therapy was great. I e-mailed them on holidays for a while. (The group got canceled with one week's notice because the hospital decided to restructure the residency program, so we never had a good termination process.)
Holy shit maybe I should get a bogus Ph.D. like that. How hard can it be? What does she use it for?
What does she use it for?
Getting sea monkeys?
I've had two good therapists and two bad couples counselors. The first good therapist was an intervention during my divorce, during which the trauma was all very easy to see. (I supplemented it with an Imago weekend, which was also very useful and which I recommend to couples*--the material was so powerful that I got a lot out of it even though the married couple who led it were batshit insane.)
The second good therapist is the one I have now, with whom I've been working for eight months. I feel much less stuck creatively for the last four months--I don't feel like I've entirely internalized a healthy, useful connection to my feelings, but I feel like I know how to fake it til I make it really well. We discussed going down to biweekly meetings followed by check-ins as needed. I don't think rapid, goal focused work would have been as helpful in this case--I came in as a moderately well-functioning, faintly miserable person who wanted to get unstuck, and there was a significant amount of brush-clearing to do. I chafed at first, but I think it's been useful.
I mentioned the article to her, and she was actually pretty sympathetic -- she says it's not her style, but she thinks they make a strong case.
*In our case, it led swiftly to a final separation and eventual divorce. YMMV; for me, no better money ever spent.
So that she can say things like "It's perfectly all right: I'm a doctor"?
My shrink is pretty smart, but he's said often enough that I'm smarter which is probably untrue. He might not catch unfogged references, but he makes some that I don't get and he certainly gets most of mine well enough.
In my case, the person is young, so it is only part of general insufferability/adorableness.
LB is pretty much right. She uses it for telling people she has it!
(I wish I could tell you here about the institution that granted it. Because it's more interesting than a degree mill -- except that it is a degree mill.)
two bad couples counselors
Apo says this all the time, I think, but the main reason to go to couples counseling is to make the divorce go more smoothly. Anecdotally, I know of 0/20 or so "successful" experiences with couples counseling.
The fake Ph.D. would be awesome for writing letters to the editor.
Dear Editor,
Your recent article mentions Semolina, which is a poison. Please, make note of this in a published retraction.
Sincerely yours,
R. Halford, J.D., Ph.D., M.Div.
I figure it's gotta be pretty easy to also get a fake M.Div.
Coaches can be good if you need help with things like time management or help getting a job. Unlike therapists, some of them will introduce you to their contacts.
Also, I'm going to call the fake degree mill I start "Oxon University" so that you can put the (Oxon) after your fake Ph.D.
an Imago weekend
Is this some sort of knockoff version of the Memory game?
118: Is it the one in Cambridge or the one in New Haven?
So that she can say things like "It's perfectly all right: I'm a doctor"?
Did I ever tell the tale of my friend who went to the toilet at a party and was sitting there with her pants round her ankles when some bloke walked in. He said, "Oh, sorry", and left.
A moment later he walked in again: "It's alright, I'm a doctor." So my friend, who was getting annoyed by now and wanted to piss in peace said, "So am I. Go away." (She had a PhD in IR).
Seconds later, he was back again: "What specialism?"
I don't feel like I've entirely internalized a healthy, useful connection to my feelings, but I feel like I know how to fake it til I make it really well.
How would you tell the difference?
119: Like I said, we're doing couples counseling and won't be getting divorced since we aren't allowed to get married in the first place, but she said she expects us to do well and improve our relationship (and when Lee asked clarified that no, she definitely does not say that to everyone she sees) but she's both a certified Marriage and Family Therapist and someone who deals with attachment issues and adoption, which so far has meant she's very understanding about our fostering experience and totally alert to Lee's attachment problems. Since those were the two things (well, and more general intimacy stuff) I knew we needed to deal with, it seems like a good fit even if she does like enneagrams.
Lee and I are still sort of fighting about our previous couples counselor, whom we only saw a few times. She wasn't really challenging us or saying anything interesting or insightful, but one thing she said made me so mad that I said I couldn't in good faith keep seeing someone whose ethics were so far away from mine. (The problem was that Lee insisted we were "the customer" in trying to find an adoptive match and that social services should be meeting our needs because of that. My response was fuck that, because it turns the kid into a commodity and is creepy and morally reprehensible, plus everybody knows that the goal is to find families for kids and not kids for families. So Lee said that, well, maybe we and the kids were both "customers" but that social workers should still be doing what we want more proactively and blah blah blah. Apparently we still disagree about this.)
I had an excellent counselor who was a super-evangelical Christian (like, she and her staff fasted together and prayed) and I wouldn't necessarily say she or any of my counselors were smarter than I am in the sense I'd normally use it to evaluate people, but she had a very different approach to life and set of insights that ended up being extremely useful to me.
119: The parents of some guy I know who would never be so gauche as to talk about his parents' beeswax on a blog went to couples counseling when things were going badly and said it really helped. They're together 25 years later and seem happy to be so, so perhaps it did and does sometimes. But yeah I think it's conventional wisdom that generally people go to figure out how to break up.
121: A former coworker of mine who has an MSW and a masters in theology (not an M.Div) got some kind of bogus ordination online so that he could marry couples. I'm sure he's really great at officiating at weddings. One even got written up in the NY Times in a non gross way.
I know of a (still) successful use of couple's counseling (with my same therapist). They were dating and had problems and broke up and the counselor helped fix the problems and they got married and appear happy.
This was not reported to me by the therapist; the couple are the people who referred me to the therapist.
119, 128, 133: My parents went to couples counseling after my father moved out. Six months or so later, he moved back in. On the other hand, they never had a happy day together until he moved out again seven years after that. Not sure how to score that -- .5/23?
...the counselor helped fix the problems and they got married and appear happy
I bet a counselor could be really good at helping a couple appear happy.
The article was posted with accolades on FB by a friend of friends who is herself a therapist , someone whom I have reason to believe is good at what she does. So I took it fairly seriously, and even though I haven't yet got to the point where the thesis would be an issue, the idea that there are bad therapists was sort of troubling for me just now, and it's made me worry a lot over the weekend. Seems like you lot might have some advice for me?
A couple of weeks ago I sort of hit rock bottom at work and had to face the fact that I've been mildly depressed for months and super, super depressed for 2 months. I joined Kaiser last fall but, as usual, figuring out how to start using it had seemed like too big a project too manage, so it was only hitting the utter inability to get out of bed at all despite several important meetings that made me figure it out. I went in to meet my GP last week mildly expecting to be blown off, because I have been by previous doctors in the past, and was really surprised how quickly she went from 'new patient' to 'wow, you're really ill and I'm going to order a bunch of tests and write you a prescription for prozac and schedule you to see a psychiatrist asap.' (Prozac helped me out 10 years ago when I was last this bad and dropped out of grad school. I also apparently have no Vitamin D in my system. I'm supposed to see the psychiatrist late next week) So while my mood is still terrible I'm rationally hopeful that maybe I can be helped in time not to get fired again ( I think milder episodes helped me get fired from my last two, more demanding, jobs), but I also know that my particular Kaiser plan doesn't include very many individual sessions with either Psychs or therapists, and that felt like it was very helpful and necessary 10 years ago, and sort of problematic when it was cut off suddenly. I was thinking it might be something I just pursue on my own, outside of Kaiser, but. . .how do people pay for it? It sounds horribly expensive and I'm really broke. And how do you even find someone? When I was in grad school I just got referred to someone in the same building by my GP. And how do you find out if they're any good? Is there a yelp of therapists that's actually useful and not just a spammy referral site?
got some kind of bogus ordination online so that he could marry couples
My dad is a licensed lay minister in the U.C.C. and has been pastoring a church for over 20 years. The rules for who he's allowed to marry and where are pretty unclear (it seems like he's maybe not allowed to perform marriages anyplace but in his church), so he got an ordination from Universal Life just to make sure he's covered.
138: Wow, Edith, that sounds rough. I'm glad you're going to be getting some help. Lee also just found out about a huge Vitamin D deficiency, as have several of my other friends in recent months, but she didn't get much of a surge of energy once she started taking the supplements. Others do, though.
I don't know anything about Kaiser, but my insurance will keep paying partial amounts toward additional sessions. Many therapists also work on a sliding scale. I think I used the Psychology Today site to find the woman we're seeing now.
138: Look for places with sliding scales. Private practitioners' rates are often ridiculously high. That's why people go into private practice. If you live in a town with any psychoanalytic institutes, you might check there--sometimes they have sliding scale therapy (not CBT obvs!) or just outpatient mental health clinics. It's a crap shoot. Either place will have some bad therapists and some good ones. (The bar for entry at an institute is higher professionally but also some real loons go to institute.) Then just be assertive about switching therapists if you get one you don't think is good.
Btw you can check out some therapists on psychology today's site. A lot of people post profiles. A lot of them are the same in a discouraging way* but once in a while you'll find one where some idea of the person behind the profile breaks through. This is if you go to someone in private practice, of course.
*which is its own story, as I found out--there's a woman who makes her living coaching people on writing profiles, and her advice is pretty unappealing. Ask lots of questions! "Are you feeling stuck?" Don't use any big words! People don't want to be intimidated when they're depressed! Ugh.
Thorn: Thanks for the Psychology Today site. That did not pop up in my non-reassuring initial googling. I think the Vitamin D was more for the fact that I'm always really achy, which is sort of mood-detracting in itself.
MS: I did not realize that psychoanalytic institutes were even a thing. Thanks.
(not CBT obvs!)
Obviously? Why is this? I've never tried CBT, but it seems sort of appealing to me, b/c I know I have a tendency to fall into irrational cycles of thought. My web searching has indicated that there is only the one expensive place here locally, though.
Obviously you won't get it at a psychoanalytic institute is all I was saying, not that it wouldn't be good.
Oh, I thought you meant that CBT is never sliding. Poor parsing on my part.
143: I understand that the new thinking about the ethics of informed consent to psychoanalysis mean that they are supposed to tell you about CBT as an alternative.
145: For some reason I find that funny. I guess I immediately start imagining ludicrous extensions of the policy. "While the practitioners here at the Kohut Institute offer services informed by the theory and methodology of Self Psychology, we are required by law to mention the alternatives presented by the Kleinians, the Middle Group, and the Anna-Freudians. Also, it is your legal right not to make conscious the unconscious at all. Or to start your own goddamn school."
Edith, if you're willing to give a general location, the great Unfogged network might be able to come up with some referrals for you. You could also e-mail one of the front page posters if you don't want to announce it to the world and see if they know if one of us lives near you.
got some kind of bogus ordination online so that he could marry couples
What's bogus about it, exactly? It's a perfectly fine end-run around a silly legal requirement. Similarly to Blume's story, I have an aunt who is a judge in Virginia, and who has been asked to officiate at a couple of family weddings. The first time, they had to get a special act of the legislature to empower her to perform the ceremony (in RI); for the second one (just this last weekend, in Texas), she decided that the local paperwork wasn't worth the trouble and signed up with the ULC instead. I also have more than one entirely non-ministerial friend who is ULC-ordained for this purpose (and have been to weddings they performed).
I did not mean to be judgmental. My point was that he got a credential online to do something that was quite useful but not part of the education he took most seriously.
Sir Kraab--I am a Bay Arean.
Inspired by Smearcase's suggestion I checked out some of the local school's and am a bit saddened to find that at least the first one I called only runs during the academic year and closes up for the summer. Procrastination gets me again.
138, 140: Anecdotally, I will note that a family member who was recently prescribed Prozac was also found to have a Vitamin D deficit. Not sure what is wheat versus chaff about the possible correlation of depression and Vitamin D deficiency, but prior history suggests to me that SAD is not out of the question for this individual.
150: Bay Areans, hop to it! Any ideas for Edith?
Edith, if the doc didn't do it already, might be worth asking about thyroid testing. Not that you've said anything particularly suggestive of thyroid problems other than depression and achiness, which can be lots of things, but... I went through a spell last year (and into this one) of unbelievable insomnia and my primary decided I was depressed and sent me to a shrink, who also decided I was depressed and prescribed ever increasing doses and combinations of sleeping pills that didn't actually help me sleep. By the time I was actually losing my mind from sleep deprivation, I finally insisted the doctor needed to look for something physical because I wasn't sleeping and my hands were all shaky and I dropped a shit ton of weight with no good reason. She relented and drew blood and voila, hyperthyroid. So I went to the endocrinologist and we tweaked my thyroid medicine and all my problems magically disappeared and I lived happily ever after.
Do you mean extended Bay Areans? I love my therapist, but it would be quite a roundtrip for Edith.
Without any very good reason I'd say see what the LGBT center offers, be you LGBT or not. I guess I'm thinking they tend to be well-funded (pet cause for much-reviled UMC HRC types) and might have good therapists and a slidey sliding scale.
Casual googling reveals 3 analytic institutes in SF itself. Or check out The Psychotherapy Institute in Berkeley. Their FAQ notes a policy of aiding in referral for people for whom their scale is not sufficiently slidey, so it could be a good place to start, especially if that's your side of the bay.
151: I'm on the Vitamin D3 and B12 bandwagon. The stuff is cheap and not easy to OD with. I don't care if my perceived improvement in mood and physical well-being is all placebo effect as long as it works.
Thanks Smearcase. What does UMC HRC stand for?
DK: Yes, she ordered thyroid tests, all clear. Thanks, though.
JPS: that's interesting. My natural tendency is to avoid bright sunlight, which is probably unhelpful, but I always assumed that meant SAD wasn't an issue. I'll ask about it.
A lot fo people are deficient in vitamin D. I was around 19 when you want between 25 and 34 or so. My boyfriend clocked in at 10, and his bones are a little wonky.
UMC= Upper Middle Class
HRC = Human Rights Campaign. It's an LGBT group that gets a lot of money from successful professionals (many of whom might be DINKs). So, when I needed a free flu shot, I made sure to go to the community clinic that has special resources for the LGBT community, because it was by far the nicest.
157: Biohazard, do you have atime that you take the B12? AM, lunch or bedtime? I don't want to take it at night if it will make me jittery.
159: Oh, right. For some reason I saw HRC and thought Hilary Rodham Clinton. (Must be that whole former first lady solidarity thing.) At the risk of seeming really dense, what is a DINK?
Never mind, figured it out. I had mistyped it when searching.
This place was recommended to me by another Unfogged person, and I've been going for about two months now. It's sliding-scale, as low as $30 per session. I'm not entirely sure how I feel about it; it hasn't helped me change my dysfunctional behaviors very much (yet), but on the other hand, I do feel like it's helped me acknowledge problems that I was somewhat in denial about. So there's that.
I didn't read the article, but I think there's a false dichotomy arising between active/behavioral approaches and longer-term therapy. I think I'm instinctively a behavior therapist, and as it happens well-matched in my setting with the values of my supervisors, but 12 sessions seems ridiculously short for the problems of any of my clients, except maybe some of the couples.
I might be getting more out of it if I weren't constantly late for my appointments.
also, Smearcase, I can ask you online, but what about NYS law changes? Can an MSW now longer ever do therapy in NYS?
offline, I meant, although that really wouldn't have made sense either.
It's a long answer so it's off-blog.
160: I take it at night around 9pm. I haven't noticed any difference in the ability to sleep, just in increased energy levels when I'm awake. The B12 doesn't work like caffeine for me, the latter seems to be more related to alertness and the jitters if overdone. Your mileage may vary. I don't see any harm in experimenting with when you take it, see what happens and adjust for your convenience.
Can anyone more familiar than I am with French politics tell me if this article is as ghastly as it reads to me?
I'm biased, because I think Hollande's election is basically the last hope the EU has to not be piloted off a cliff by Angela Merkel and the ECB's band of austerity ghouls, but it certainly seems like a) Hollande's sensible stance on austerity and non-extreme stance of French protectionism are being treated as beyond the pale in the omniscient journalist voice and b) Sarko's promise to cater to Nation Front/Le Pen voters is being explicitly equated to Hollande saying he wants to reach out to people who voted for Le Pen as a protest vote.
I don't read or speak French and I haven't been following the election news that closely (since it's been apparent that Hollande is going to win), so maybe he's been proposing to send all the intellectuals and eyeglass-wearers to reeducation camps in Strasbourg.
oh, p.s.: when tallying the fraction of couples attending couple therapy who wind up divorcing, consider that still married couples might not casually disclose that they were in couple therapy, so you actually don't know the true numerator or denominator.
I guess. I think the more likely thing is that by the time people head to counseling, they're pretty far on the rocks anyway, and the couples counseling process isn't really designed to keep people together who've already more or less decided that they don't want to be together.
A therapy thread.
At the library: I was hauling a big stack of books up the stairs in my arms, with a bunch of other things dangling off various limbs; one of the dangling things shifted the center of gravity and the book stack exploded down the stairs. I turned around and this lovely girl was coming up the stairs behind me. She gave me a warm, sympathetic smile and reached for the nearest book. I opened my mouth to say, oh I don't know, "thank you" or "sorry," and snapped "Don't touch it." On some level, I was amazed to see her obey this insane order and move to the side.
I don't think I can remember the last time I directed that much coldness and hatred toward a stranger. At the library, the beautiful library! On such a golden spring day!
I have had a lot of therapy, enough that it's a depressing amount to disclose -- and right now, I can't believe how worthless it all seems. (I felt indifferent or hostile to the vast majority of practitioners; I had two good ones.) On the other hand, my judgment is obviously impaired. I need sleep and I need to know which of a rapidly multiplying set of life trajectories is going to obtain in, say, July. Upon reflection, the thing that turned me into an evil shit dropping books in the path of passing undergrads was some news of an estranged friend. Apparently physical objects really can turn into metaphors without your conscious knowledge: don't make me promises you can't keep, would-be Samaritan: you can't help longer than a moment. But also, I would give you everything I am carrying if you would only smile at me again -- I can't hold onto anything*, and I am so fucking lonely.
Now something flippant. Hmm. Finding a good therapist: easier, or harder, than building a working mine on an asteroid?
* Eh, let's put it at 3 or 4 things, but not simultaneously.
174 to 173. To 172, I haven't followed the election all that closely, but in general US news coverage of France is absolutely horrific. At least that article didn't feature some segment about mistresses or food or not getting fat.
Hollande can cater to frustration with current Merkozy led EU policy. He can also make similar anti-liberal (Euro meaning) arguments as MLP. I'm certain he'll do both since they fit right into his campaign and appeal to at least some FN voters. Sarko can't do either of those so he'll have to double down on his fascist chief campaign adviser's anti-immigrant, law and order, national greatness, religion is good (if Christian) themes. (Sarko's adviser, Patrick Buisson, had a long career as a top figure in the alphabet soup of French extreme right movements and remains and avowed Maurassian, he was the architect of the successful takeover of much of the FN electorate in the previous campaign). An exit poll said that the FN electorate was going to split 60-20-20 Sarko-Hollande-abstention.
The hard left candidate, ex senior PS figure Jean-Luc Melenchon, pushed Hollande a bit to the left in the early campaign stages, but since JLM has offered unconditional support in the second round, and polls suggest that 85-90% of his voters will do the anti-Sarkozy thing, with the rest abstaining, Hollande doesn't need to worry about a balancing act.
Overall, Hollande is very much the favorite at this moment, with the polls giving him 53-58% of the vote, but there are still two weeks left, so nothing's certain.
don't make me promises you can't keep, would-be Samaritan: you can't help longer than a moment. I think I know what you mean by this. A brother of several sisters I went to school with died in a car last week; I was never terribly close to them but I was rather fond of one and admire her blog. I feel this weird need to do more then send condolences but. . .I can't, really.
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La la la, screw you Fifteen-hour-exam, doot dee doo, hundreds of slides, phonebooks worth of papers to review bum da bum no idea if I should be preparing more of if I'm even capable of retaining more, ding dong, ding dong. Be over now, stupid test.
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Snarkout--
In 2002, Jean-Marie Le Pen got 16.8% of the vote (edging socialist Lionel Jospin out of the run-off in a very fractured left-wing field), and everyone I knew in France was outraged and distraught. Now Marine Le Pen is at 18%. It's pretty shocking.
The article itself doesn't seem so terrible to me. Not good at describing the actual politics on the ground or the history of the Front National, but not particularly biased. As I read it, Hollande is looking to pick off from that 18% whatever voters are simply frustrated and want to see change and progress, while Sarkozy sees them as potential base votes.
I mean, 18% of demonstrated voters is a shitload of voters. For the second round, Hollande has to say something vaguely conciliatory (what is quoted is literally the bare minimum).
180.1 - Well, it's a largely universal truth that economic hardship pushes people towards political intolerance; look at the rise of fascist/ultra-right parties in Greece. I guess I'm boggled at the this sentence:
"That means both Hollande and President Sarkozy are likely to reach out to the fringes with populist, protectionist rhetoric just at a time when Europe is seeking steady leadership from France to help lead it out of its catastrophic debt crisis."
Which strikes me as an awful lot of wrong to jam into one sentence that's simply stated as The Received Truth from Journalismland, as there are zero examples provided of Hollande "reaching out to the fringes" rather than being a bog-standard center-left politician.
179: Is it today, or tomorrow?
182: Maybe it's both! (Depending on when the fifteen-hour timer starts.)
I read recently that the suicide rate in Greece is up 45%. How's that for depressing?
Maybe it's an hour today, and 1/2 hour tomorrow, and 15 minutes on Wednesday, and 7.5 minutes the next day, and so on until it adds up to 24 hours.
185: that would be swell.
But no. It starts tomorrow morning at 9.
If it were up here they could just have it be sunrise to sunset.
And now the new head of the Bundesbank is attacking Draghi and Merkel from the right. Oy.
188: Around now, it could be anywhere.
185: that would be swell.
Would it? You'd better hope that sums of geometric series aren't on that test.
175: that sounds terrible LK. My sympathies.
191: they aren't, but the limits of temporal perception might be.
Yeah, I've been trying to respond to 175 too, because I darkly enjoyed the story but it sounds pretty awful.
194: just let me know if you have any kittens you want kicked! Apparently.
(However, also-true story involving books: I am semi-compulsorily reading a book, which was made into a film, both involving a famously intense animal torture scene. I was really surprised by how sick it made me to read, even years after seeing the film version. The semi-compulsory aspect of the reading made me resent this.)
Lurkey, I'm so sorry you're feeling wretched. Having the future stretch out in front of you (well, me) as a mess of potential blech or, maybe worse, something good somewhere there just hurts. I hope I don't sound hurtfully cheesy, but this can be a useful place to talk about stuff like that if you need to and can tolerate bike talk or whatever else going on around it. I am not in the greatest place in dealing with potential futures right now, but I'm mostly doing fine and that's a good thing and still somewhat novel for me.
195: Old Yeller?
Sorry you're having such a rough time of it.
maybe he's been proposing to send all the intellectuals and eyeglass-wearers to reeducation camps in Strasbourg
So long as I get flammekueche and choucroute, I would be down for that sort of reeducation.
Thanks for the well-wishes (to everyone), but very, very special thanks to 197 for helping me to imagine an 8-hour-long Hungarian Old Yeller, where the kids all gang up on Old Yeller somewhere around hour 3...
Le Monde's Sarko quote is "One must respect the voters of the FN [the Le Pen party]."
Italian fast trains are apparently privatizing. They look like shoes.
re couples therapy - my wife and I did it for a year and a half. Very intense and difficult, takes a lot of patience and commitment on both sides. We had the most intuitive therapist I've ever experienced, very gifted. And yet I'm a little reluctant to add us to the statistic because it feels like tempting fate. Who knows, but joint therapy was useful and did not lead directly to divorce.
176
174 to 173. To 172, I haven't followed the election all that closely, but in general US news coverage of France is absolutely horrific. At least that article didn't feature some segment about mistresses or food or not getting fat.
Seriously, I haven't followed French politics all that closely, but the article in 171 doesn't sound worse than most US news coverage. I'm relieved to see that the smart money is on Hollande, I guess, but we shouldn't be surprised to see an incumbent not doing well these days. I like that the likely future president of France is named "Hollande", which seems like fodder for a "who's on first?" routine, but that's just because I'm juvenile.
I wouldn't be too worried about Le Pen or read too much into her doing as well as she did. That's only like 2 percent better than her father did in 2002. The Republicans can count on at least 27 percent of the vote over here; the FN has their own unreachable base too.
Also, sorry lurid. Good luck. I don't have much to add, except maybe saying don't beat yourself up too much. Granted, snapping at her was rude, but to her that's all it was - someone probably having a bad day. It's a sign that things aren't going well for you, but there was no harm done, no need to dwell on it if she probably won't.
I agree with 90.
I'm seriously considering getting a life coach (that is, if I can find a really good one) because (a) I tend not to like to talk about this stuff with friends/family, and (b) I might actually put in the time/effort if it's a scheduled activity with someone who has a financial incentive to make sure I keep at it.