Sure, you might be telling your psychotherapist what’s wrong, but doctor knows best.
We’ve all been there: a chip on one shoulder and a fear tucked in the garter belt, we regale the psychotherapist with our tales of woe, heartrending despair, anguish, difficulty, and struggle.
At last, having vanquished our own psychological debilitations, we breathe a sigh of relief as the therapist asks us that wondrous question, so fraught with possibility: and how does that make you feel?
But wait! This may not be the outcome you want.
Psychotherapist Arjun Rivas offers us a peek into the psychology of the psychotherapist.
“Many psychotherapists,” writes Dr. Rivas in Psychotherapeutical Optionalities Governing Anxietalistic Reduction, “heave with dissatisfaction at the myopia of their patients. Seeing that even simple objectives, making the most hesitating of progress, will requires years, decades, lifetimes, the psychotherapist gives in to the old cliche and allows the patient, in this case a victim of their own know-it-allness, to follow his or her own machinations.”
If you want a productive session with your therapist, bear in mind these tips.
1. You are just as responsible for guiding the session as your therapist.
The therapist is a handmaiden, a servant to assist you in probing the canals and backwaters of your mind. But you are driving the high-powered jet boat of your brain.
2. Try to see things from your therapist’s perspective.
Imagine sitting all day in the same chair, with the same pen and same notepad, day after day, year after year, listening to stories so similar that the patient need not say anything at all for the therapist to know the story, to fill in all details, even names, dates, and places. Have sympathy for your therapist and avoid the grievance dump, known among psychotherapists as the “Shit dump.” Your therapist is not a garbage dump, a colon, or rectum, but a highly-paid human conduit through which you move toward sanity and wholeness.
3. You are wrong: doctor knows best.
According to a recent study by the Psychotherapeutic Lobby of America, psychotherapists claim that at least 90% of their patients are delusional about the real problem.
Your depression is only a knee injury or phantom cold. Your fear of water means you are low on potassium. Your trouble getting over your second marriage comes from a misplaced concern over native moth populations in Yellowstone National Park.
Says Arjin,
Therapists can spend years working with some patients to help them accept that they are seeking the help of the professional, and that the therapist is not seeking their help.
4. Treat your first session like an interview.
Eighty six percent of psychotherapists give up on their clients within the first 60 seconds, usually after asking a simple question: “So, what’s on your mind today?”
“The answer to that question,” says Arjin, “means the difference between the therapist doodling on the page and making serious observations.
“Think of the first sixty seconds of the session as an interivew. The therapist is not so much interested in helping you as determining whether you are a good fit, whether you simply want to bloviate or whether he or she might be able to channel your cognitive powers toward greener pastures.
“If you fail the interview, the therapist might welcome you back again and again, but only for monetary gain.
5. If you fail the interview, prepare for weeks, months, and years of Rogerian psychology.
In the 1940s Carl Rogers developed a form of psychology known today as Rogerian.
Early in his career Rogers gave up on solving the problems of others. In his posthumously published memoir, How It Makes Me Feel, he explains on page 211:
I realized with ennui and disdain, both for myself and those afflicted, that I could do nothing for them but give them what they wanted, which was to be told what they wanted to be told. And who better than they to do this? Seeing how much my patients relied upon me, how much money they were willing to pay for my services because of that reliance, and how they sought my encouragement in telling them what they wanted to hear, in place of therapy, I developed a series of three elicitation questions that any therapist, feeling that disdain and ennui I have felt—and god knows the honest ones will—would be advised to use, questions that one might use across many decades to build a thriving practice, to make a good living, then fade into retirement:
- How does that make you feel?
- What else would you like to tell me?
- Why do you say that?
Through empirical observation I discovered that the questions proved general enough for any situation and could be used almost interchangeably to prolong conversations and proliferate issues until one has stockpiled years of issues to manage. And so the patient, who is now more a client, returns to rut and ruminate again and again, talking through things that he or she might tell to a teddy bear, a mirror, a statue, or a caged bird—perhaps simultaneously, depending on the psychic state. And the conclusion is the same: questions, questions, and more questions. There are only questions, and the answer is that one ought to ask more questions.
Now it’s your turn: Have you ever failed an interview with a psychotherapist? And how do you think you would feel about what Carl Rogers would feel about what you would think? Spill the tea in the comments below.
