I was never a therapist who was content to listen and say, “Awww” to complaints and problems.
Mind you, I am compassionate. I’m not as hard-nosed as it might sound here. But I also am a roll-up-your-sleeves type of person. Whether that’s preparing a meal for 16 or getting on top of what your situation is so that I can help you solve it.
And I made a big discovery in my many years of practicing therapy: Some people learned, grew, healed, and went off happy. And some didn’t. The difference? One word: Commitment.
In the therapy process, commitment is a really hard thing to ask for. In fact, therapists can’t. They literally can’t. My contract says they can stop any time. It says there is homework but nowhere does it say they have to do it.
Why not?
Because, the reasoning goes, when a person is in emotional pain, they’re too easily taken advantage of. Therefore, the best way to avoid that is to give the client the steering wheel. This makes a lot of sense and therapists, myself included, have been subscribing to it for decades.
But would you really give the wheel to someone who can’t drive?
I mean, if we are going to be logical here, then consider the illogic of putting an upset, overwhelmed, unhappy client in the driver’s seat when he doesn’t know how to drive and wouldn’t even know how to change a tire if needed.
Precisely because clients don’t have the tools to not fight with each other or not use drugs or do addictive things, or not do other nasty things to themselves or to their families, they will be much, much better off with very clear directives on how to drive and change the tires, and a timetable for accomplishing all that so they don’t wait til they’re 70 to get their driver’s license, if you get my drift.
Think of the medical profession. If your arm is broken, the orthopedist does not give you the option of not casting it. A year or so ago, people considering themselves anti-vaxers were told too bad: Your kid needs that vax. Done.
So why would emotional health be any different?
It isn’t, trust me. That is why my married clients who come in for couples counseling are no longer in the driver’s seat. And when their arms are broken, I do not give them a Band-Aid.
Speaking of Band-Aids, I do write articles and posts. This is one of them. But I make the best effort to refrain from “tips.” Tips can be destructive.
For example, how many tips have actually created changes in the reader, listener, or participant? Changes that last? The reality is that “helpful” books and articles are a way of avoiding really rolling up your sleeves and getting to the heart of whatever the matter is.
Tips have the following problems:
- They must be general because articles and books can’t be specific enough. Authors try. I tried. I wrote a best-selling book, but still, no matter how well you describe somebody else’s situation, it’s somebody else’s situation.
- Even if the reader gets all excited and wants to try out the thing that he’s reading about, he will never know without outside help if he’s executing it properly.
- Even if he may be executing the new activity properly, he will never know if that’s really what he needs. Maybe he thinks his problem is “communicate your feelings more” and so he does, when really the “communication” problem he’s suffering from is not being a good enough listener. Without the objective third party who can properly evaluate the situation, he will not know.
This is why research reporting on the efficacy of therapy show that change is infrequent and doesn’t last.
Way back in the 90’s, when my oldest son was in high school, he said, “Mom, you need a website!” and he proceeded to make me one. In those days, there was no blog app on websites yet. You posted articles using html and then they got viewed by the public as regular text. He kept translating my articles into html and I started to feel guilty for all the time he was spending so I learned html. That was how far I went to give out Band-Aids. I have hundreds of articles on my blog. I wonder how many people have made lasting changes in their lives because of them. Don’t get me wrong – I love writing Band-Aids.
You see, from the therapist’s perspective, when we write an article that gives people “a few suggestions” as to how to handle a problem it makes us feel good. Yes, we’re human, we therapists, and we like to feel good. And what lights our fire is helping others. That’s what makes us feel good. So we sprinkle Band-Aids on everything and we can pretend we did something.
Except that is not living in reality.
If you want to make changes, real changes to your life, then you have to do it the hard way.
You’ll have to be willing to learn new skills that are tailor-made for people in your situation and you’ll have to be willing to hear feedback from me as to how you’re doing and what you can do better. Will I cheer you on? Absolutely. There’s a world of difference between listening to a stream of how depressing your life is and saying, “Awww” to make you feel better – which it doesn’t anyway – and listening to your steps in the right direction and getting up on the table and shouting “Yaaay!” to encourage you.
So if you want to really learn, really grow, be the best self you can be and have the marriage you want, then book a free call to speak with me at https://drdeb.com/book. We will talk about your exact issues and both of us will be prepared to roll up our sleeves to make the precise changes necessary for you and your partner to be happy in life and with each other.
When you’ve booked, be sure to fill out the application that is on another page you will be taken to. That info will help us in our meeting and it probably saves 20 min of talk time.