How to Get the Most Out of Therapy
Read the corny self-help books. Do the homework. Let your therapist know when they’ve screwed up.
I started therapy last August, after years of fits and starts. Every previous time I’d tried to start therapy, it had been a mild catastrophe. I could never seem to find a shrink who was a good fit. Either they were all unable to see who I was, or I was too emotionally shut down to really show it to them. Inevitably, they’d give me advice that struck me as really bad and pointless, and I’d smile and nod and say nothing. Then I’d cancel my next appointment and run gleefully back into the familiar, cold arms of emotional suppression.
There was the social anxiety therapist I saw in graduate school, who watched me shake with violent sobs for an hour and just stared with a placid, sad smile on her face, saying nothing.
There was the mindfulness-obsessed e-therapist I contacted when my former abuser started hurting new victims, who recommended I deal with trauma by washing the dishes in a more slow, contemplative fashion.
And along the way, there were countless therapists-in-training I encountered in classrooms, who spoke so judgmentally and dismissively of their patients that it made me doubt I’d ever find an accepting, safe professional I could open up…
