Everyone would do a little better with a little therapy

The world would run a whole lot smoother if everyone got some intensive therapy, by a trained professional.  The therapy relationship is like no other.  It is sort of like a one-way friendship with someone you can tell all of your "deepest, darkest secrets" who will help you, if they're a good therapist, to see things a bit differently.  It's one-way in that she (I'll use the female pronoun as there are more female social workers and psychologists than male) will not tell you her secrets.  This used to really upset me.  I felt that if I was going to share all of this important, personal information...she should, too!  After all, when she uses my past against me, I won't have any leverage.  There will be nothing to protect me.  And that's what it was all about: trust that my "stuff" would be safe with her.  It seemed unfair.  I complained about it.  I wanted to know anything at all - what kind of music do you like?  are you married?  what do you do when you're not here, listening to a subscription to my issues?

I remember asking a therapist how this dynamic was fair.  She said, point blank, "It's not."  I thought, "Whatchoo talkin' about, Willis?"  I fully expected to hear, "It's in your best interest.  Blah blah blah."  And while she did, eventually, get to that point, she didn't start there.  She started with validation and it made me feel okay for feeling the way I did.  She wanted to "explore it further," which I felt game to do, particularly with the sense of feeling understood.  She didn't dismiss my concerns.  Now, granted, she also did not tell me one, single thing about herself, which irked me to no end, but she did make me feel like I wasn't an needy, idiot for feeling this way.  Wow!  What a revelation!  I had the right to my own feelings, whatever they were!  Oprah would call this an "Aha moment."  It struck me as somewhat obvious and, yet, I don't remember ever experiencing that kind of acceptance of my emotions.

Instead, she said to me, "The therapist-client relationship is like no other.  We're not friends (which she knew I really wanted to be).  That doesn't mean the interdependence is not important to me or to you.  It means that it's a different kind of relationship.  You came here for therapy.  You didn't come here for friendship.  I would be doing a disservice to you if you came to therapy and I sat here and bitched about the problems in my life.  It wouldn't help YOU.  Boundaries (a word I detested) are important and I see them as protecting the therapy relationship, in a way, from becoming a different kind, like a friendship or parental connection.  Does that make sense?"  And, for the first time, after many therapists explaining this to me without my opinion shifted, I felt my mind begin to change.  My mind could change!  And that was a moment I remember because it helped me so much.

I imagine if, say George W. Bush had had some psychotherapy pre-9/11, he could have worked out his Daddy issues and not have had to go into Iraq.  Maybe Freud would have worked out his own Oedipus complex and his Mommy issues (and maybe Daddy issues, too!).  I'm sure you can name a few celebrities, as well as people in your life, who could do with some good ol' fashioned talk therapy.  I think the world would improve drastically if people looked at the plank in their own eye before examining the sliver in another's!  Imagine that.