Lie Down and Tell Me About It

by: Connie H. Deutsch

Lie Down and Tell Me About It by Connie H. Deutsch Over the past several decades, therapy has become the flavor of the month pastime. Many of those on the outside want to get in, and would if finances permit it, and those on the inside want to stay in. It doesn't matter whether or not they are making progress, they just feel more comfortable staying and staying and staying.

I have always been of the belief that if you are going for therapy, choose someone you can connect with, someone you can trust with your deepest, darkest secrets, and then not play the con game. Be open and honest and don't fabricate things to make yourself look good, and most of all, if you aren't seeing even the teensiest, tinsiest bit of progress after three months, find someone else.

Many people need deep therapy but then there are others who just need a sounding board, someone to listen to their complaints without judging them and not expecting them to move beyond their problems. And that's all right, just don't call it therapy; call it a gab session or a help line, or something else, but don't call it therapy and have people believe that you have a terrible therapist.

I once had a client who complained about everything, asked for advice, and never listened to it. This went on for a long time and then one day, after he finished telling me his sad tale of woe, I asked him if he wanted feedback or if he just wanted to complain. He was so startled by the question that he said the first honest thing in months of knowing him. He said, "I guess I just want to complain."

We all know, or know of, people who have been going for therapy for ten or twenty years and nothing has changed. They are still having the same emotional reactions, still feeling anger and rage at the same type of stimuli, still approaching situations in the same way, and still blaming others for their problems. How many years, and how many times, can you keep blaming your family for your emotional meltdowns? When is it time to stop playing the blame game and look at yourself in the mirror and take responsibility for your own actions or lack of actions?

A physician once referred one of his patients to me who was having a hard time getting over her divorce of three years past. I allowed her to get her story out and go through the gamut of her emotions for her first three sessions. After that, I expected her to work on her behaviors and adjust her expectations to align themselves with her present circumstances.

For the next four sessions, she did remarkably well with the homework assignments I gave her. Then, one day she told me that she was discontinuing our work because she was making too much progress and that she would rather go back to her former therapist where she could cry the entire hour and not be expected to do anything to change the status quo. She told me she would return when she had gotten everything out of her system. I knew she would never come back because if she hadn't cried out her anger and sadness in three years, it would never happen. She didn't want to get everything out of her system and she didn't want to be helped; she just wanted to cry and let everyone know how badly she was wronged.

Therapy has its place in society and a lot of people have been helped because of it, but the person has to be willing to try to change the destructive behavioral patterns that are causing the unhappiness. As the old saying goes, if you keep doing the same thing, don't expect the results to be different. And most of all, realize that although you were shaped by your environment and might be able to blame your dysfunctional family for your hangups, you are now an adult and have the power to move beyond your childhood. It's time to take responsibility for everything in your life and stop sabotaging yourself with the old blame game.