I’m a therapist. I believe in therapy. But….
My heart is broken from the number of people who have spent months and years in therapy and …. not changed their lives one iota.
I understand that “therapy” means healing and sometimes the only thing we need to feel better is for someone to be a good listener, for someone to just understand us. I get that. That is truly important.
But it’s not enough.
Sometimes we do need to make changes. We can’t keep doing the same thing, thinking the same thoughts, responding with an eyeball roll at our wives, growling at our husbands, screaming at our kids, crying in the bathroom with the door locked.
There have got to be changes. Sometimes all the kind listening and validating isn’t enough. When you validate me, the real question is: Will that cause me to validate myself or will it cause me to come back to you for years and years looking for the validation that I am unable to give to myself.
I met an absolutely lovely therapist not long ago. A sweetheart! And smart. I could tell that person was smart by the insight I heard in our conversation. But it was against the methodology of that therapist to challenge the client. A challenge might frighten off the client and then what? A relationship built up over years could be lost.
I totally respect that.
You do not take an axe to a relationship. Trust and safety are crucial elements of a working therapeutic relationship.
But I was thinking about it and I started to wonder: Let’s do a cost-benefit analysis, here. What is lost if this therapist challenges a client? Well, the relationship could be lost and the client will not make any change anyway.
What is lost if the therapist does not challenge her client? The client will lost the opportunity that G-d gave her to think about the challenging question and make a new choice. The potential for radical and improved change is lost.
Looking at it that way, I decided that since I respect each client’s right to make their own choices and decisions, I would rather take a risk of having someone annoyed at me from telling them something they didn’t want to hear about themselves than to not give that person the opportunity to deeply consider my question and use it as a catalyst for change.
Now, mind you, this conversation took place with a therapist that I respect for her ethics, kindness, and smarts.
But there also are therapists who miss the mark. They do not get to the meat of the situation; they do not seem to know their way out of the woods. Clients will throw all sorts of smoke-bombs around so as to prevent themselves from change! It’s not that they wouldn’t, in their heart of hearts, like to change. They would. They’re just scared. It’s scary! They need help with that, reassurance, a little (figurative) handholding. But let’s not get detoured off the road. Let’s still go forward. Many therapists seem to get lost in the forest and don’t know how to lead their clients ot of it.
I recently was talking to someone in another state who was telling me that his wife had cheated. She was angry at him for bringing up the fact that he still felt unsafe about what would happen in the future. His bringing it up meant he didn’t trust her.
Well, yeah. Exactly. He didn’t.
So the therapist brought the question up herself in a therapy session and to quote the man, his wife “shut down” after that. She was thinking of divorce.
I asked the rather basic question, did the therapist ever discuss the state of the marriage in the first place that had led his wife to look elsewhere? – No.
Did the therapist ask whether the conditions that had led the wife to be dissatisfied were still present in the marriage and if so, what was being done about them? – No.
Did the therapist discuss privately with the wife what the problems were from her point of view? – No.
Did the therapist ever have the wife ever give the proper five-step apology on this? – No.
So, I was floored. To me, that’s incompetence. It’s like trying to rebuild the marriage on quicksand.
But I was curious. What exactly were they discussing in therapy sessions? The man told me that she wanted him to do things to help his self-esteem. Well, that’s fine; no problem there, but if the wife was breaking down his self-esteem, how in the world would he build it? To that end, one thing the therapist could have done would have been for him to take steps to feel good about himself when his wife was putting him down or invalidating him or brushing off his concerns about her felicity. Now, that is a special kind of practice that I don’t see therapists using, but it is powerful (see Bruce Ecker’s juxtaposition research; Buzzanell’s resilience research).
Then there is the whole other half of the equation – his wife. Did the therapist know how troubled she was? How lacking in her own self-love she was? – No, again. It is necessary for marriage therapist to understand each person as well as how they interact. It’s not about putting out fires; it’s about finding appropriate solutions.
To that end, I have created a list of nine questions for you to ask yourself about your therapist to see if they will help you move toward getting the Marriage You Want.
1. Are they trained as a Marriage & Family Therapist? Meaning their entire program was about helping people with their marriages and families.
2. Does their philosophy include the possibility that some people “can’t be helped”? The reality is that everyone can be helped if they are willing to commit to doing what it takes to achieve their goals. Which leads me to the next question.
3. Do they let people know up front that there is homework to do and that this isn’t about just “feeling better” but doing better?
4. Is there accountability? Meaning, since you have to do homework, what will the counselor do to help you over the rough spots? What will the counselor do to make the homework more understandable? What will the counselor do to see to it that you actually do it?
5. Are the tools comprehensive? Meaning, is there a tool for each and every area of concern in your marriage, even areas that you didn’t think of bringing up because, let’s say, they were too private?
6. Does this counselor have insight? Did you feel from the very first visit that they “got” each of you?
7. Does this counselor understand how to be not only “neutral,” but as Minuchin said, “multi-partial” so that each of you feels validated?
8. Does your counselor get lost in the weeds between each of you finger-pointing, blaming, criticizing, or avoiding? Meaning, is the session often about putting out fires rather than moving forward?
9. Do both of you come out of sessions feeling small and discouraged or empowered and hopeful?
Some of the items on the list above are impossible with traditional therapy – which is why I have switched modalities, myself. To get real clarity on YOUR situation, book a call https://drdeb.com/book