If anyone knows that pain=gain, it should be me. I confess to forgetting that recently.

But I agree that we can forget that therapy is the place where that motto should be the most bold because therapy is about 'digging up the dirt'.

I guess what comes to mind is if you have found a safe place to 'express' your demons, you think it's just that -- a safe place. You forget the 'exploring' of the demons part that often feels unsafe. It can feel as though your 'safe place' is tarnished.

When I had a session about self-distructive relationship behavior myself, I had trouble seeing where I was going wrong. Our discussion left me with questions about my life and the usual feeling of 'having answers' is not what the drive home was like at all. A friend asked how my session was and I said, 'ok'. She asked if it was bad and it's true, it felt kind of bad but I thought a minute and told her it wasn't because I knew that this was part of being aware of yourself.

I think it's great that you touched on this because at the point where a client walks out the door feeling bad- they can't confuse that with YOU making them feel bad. And maybe people leaving therapy because of that feeling could be avoided if the therapist made a point (though it may seem obvious to them), to remind their client that 'hey - this is going to get worse before it gets better'. Just a gentle reminder as to why they are there.

Common sense is not always common practice. Aren't we all guilty of that sometimes?

Great read!
Lucy

Over some 20 years of assisting psychotherapy groups using expressive arts I have found myself explaining that clients need to wade into the mud and muck before they can get to the clear water. Even in meditation classes I tell clients that the deeper you go with mindfulness the more the issues arise out of quieting the mind. Now as a graduate student in counseling psychology specializing in dance/movement therapy I am happy to find that it’s a part of our training – working with clients in the process of becoming well/whole is a journey that has its peaks and valleys. Thanks for bringing this issue to light in your blog.

http://counselingandtherapy.wordpress.com/

Thank you for posting, as an aspiring clinical psychology student I throughly enjoyed reading your post!

I call BS. First of all, a person's story is completely subjective, particularly where guessing how others feel is involved. ie: "We might discover that her suspicions have cost her many friendships as well." How? By finding the lost friends and doing a survey? This is just Jane's opinion of the situation, not a fact. Why encourage her to adopt a negative evaluation of her situation over a positive one without evidence?

Furthermore, even if it were true (ie: even if some of her friends truly felt that way), why encourage her to see at as a problem now when it wasn't before? Does Jane still have friends? If so, she must have some positive qualities too. Why encourage her to dwell on the negative unless this was causing her distress prior to therapy (which apparently it wasn't)? Everybody has negative personality traits to a greater or lesser degree. Nobody goes through life without offending *somebody.* What is theraputic about encouraging people to feel down about such things?

IMO, therapy that encourages people to feel worse, so to speak, often isn't doing so in any kind of constructive way, it is simply encouraging people to see themselves and their experience in a more negative and depressing light, and this can kill people's vitality an energy to do the positive things they do.

So what if people have more negative traits than they're prepared to acknowledge at at any one time? Why not deal with the presenting one, let someone get confidence from that, THEN go onto the next? No sane person actually cleans they're appartment by dumping the entire contents of every shelf and cuboard onto the floor at once, so why advocate the psychological equivalent?

If Jane came to therapy to deal with her suspicions about her lovers, she's obviously capable of taking responsiblity for a problem. Why not just use practical approaches to set goals and help her cope and stop? If she's able to stop doing it with lovers, it seems to me that a likely side effect is that she'd stop doing it with others too. Then she'd feel better *without* having to feel worse.

I have been with my therapist for a while now and have definitely discovered the "no pain, no gain" side of it. In fact, at least once a month I find myself feeling like parts of therapy are harder than getting my 18 month old to sit still.

My husband asked me once how my appointment went. I responded, "I hate my shrink."

He was quite surprised (as I actually adore him and hubby knows this) and asked me why and what had happened.

"He keeps doing his job!"

Of course, I didn't actually mean that I hated my therapist. Those are just the days when I have had to stop and look at something difficult or that I generally expend a great deal of energy avoiding. And they are often the most productive sessions. They can be a bear - but I wouldn't have it any other way.

Thank you so much for your column, by the way. I recently discovered it and you have hit on many things that are so me! I plan on printing out the post about small talk and taking it in to my therapist. I am extremely guilty of this both because I hate the silence that occurs as he comes in and gets my chart settled and because I have no idea how else to start.

Hopefully he will have a suggestion for starting because I think it frustrates him when we end up on tangents that have nothing to do with things we "should" be talking about. Do you have suggestions on that topic? Not just what not to do but what to do instead?

I think that even in meditation classes, therapists tell clients that the deeper you go with mindfulness the more the issues arise out of quieting the mind. Your blog is really worth to read!

I have always thought that there is only a certain type of people who will benefit from therapy: those who have experienced a great deal of trauma in their lives. In these situations, it is necessary to deal with the past "demons" in order for the person to feel mentally healthy and progress in their lives.

However (as far as I know), most of the people who go to therapy have not really been through any traumatic experience. They are just going because they don't want to think for themselves and solve their own problems. They feel better to pay someone else to do it for them. It's much easier that way.

Maybe that's why they expect no pain. Dealing with negative emotions is a part of life. When you think introspectively, you are bound to encounter some things that are unpleasant. You cannot expect for there to be none of these thoughts.

My problem is NOT with people who cannot deal with their negative emotions on their own. My problem is with those who don't even want to try, those who don't even want to try to face the pain those emotions would bring. They don't like the upsetting feelings so they instead hope that paying someone to talk to them, would magically cure those feelings.

And when the cure fails at making them feel good (since that's not the point of therapy, as you said)...they feel upset that psychotherapy didn't make them feel good.