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June 8, 2011 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
46:43
1927 How to Find a Great Therapist!

Some thoughts about one of my most common questions.

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So one of the most common questions that I get asked is, how do I find a good therapist?
That's a great question. I don't know.
I don't know how you should find a good therapist.
But I have some very strong arguments and opinions about what therapy is and what a good therapist is, which you can accept, of course, or discard.
They're just my opinions as you see fit.
Spoiler alert! This is about the movie...
A Beautiful Mind, if you haven't seen it.
Well, I'm going to spoil it for you.
So fast forward about 30 seconds.
In the movie A Beautiful Mind, the protagonist, Nash, is subject to these hallucinations.
He thinks that he sees people who aren't there and so on.
So at the end of the movie, once he's aware of this in himself, then every time he sees someone new who's important or who may be relevant, he turns to the person next to him and says, Hey, can you see that guy?
And if the person says, yes, I can see it, then the reality of it is established and lickety-split, we're all set to go.
If, of course, the person says, no, I can't see him, then he knows he's hallucinating and might need to adjust his meds or whatever, right?
But this is his check. He goes to somebody else to check the reality of what he is perceiving.
And that, to me, is the essence of therapy.
It's the essence of therapy.
And because I'm fundamentally a moralist, I'm going to make a moral argument or an argument around therapy as morality, which I think is a good argument, but I'm certainly willing to hear counterclaims and counterfacts.
So, I believe that if we have suffered evil in our life, if we have suffered from the predations of evil people...
Then, unfortunately, we are adrift.
We are lost in society.
I mean, it's just wretched.
It is absolutely wretched the degree to which people will not simply say, damn, that was evil.
People will clam up.
They will become uncomfortable.
They will keep their distance.
They will shun people who put them in the position of Having to make any kind of moral judgment.
Or, you know, as the guy with the bushy forelock says in Outnumbered, don't get involved!
They won't. They won't.
People won't. Won't get involved.
And so if you've suffered, I don't know, some evil from some priest or teacher or parent or whatever as a kid, then...
You are going to feel very hesitant to bring this up among friends, among family, among parishioners, among congregations, among acquaintances, among colleagues, among anybody.
Because society is addicted to betraying the victims of evil.
It's addicted to betraying the victims of evil.
For a variety of reasons we've talked about before in this show, but we don't have to get into them here.
But I can virtually guarantee you that if you go to your friends and say, I suffered evil at the hands of X when I was a child, people will...
They'll say, sweet fuck all, frankly.
They'll make you feel uncomfortable putting them in the position where they have to have any kind of spine whatsoever.
I mean, people are so...
Whatever you want to invest or inject in here, they're so X that they will cry havoc and let slip the dogs of indignation at a waiter who forgets their order or the opposing costumes of a team from the other side of town in a sports game.
But when you say, I suffered evil at the hands of X when I was a child or even as an adult, people would just kind of clam up and back away and nobody ever wants to say a damn thing.
Which, of course, is very strange in a state of society because a state of society, these goddamn voters, they're labeling everyone evil all over the place, up and down.
It's not even a pointillism.
It's a neutron bomb of wet paint.
Drug users, evil!
People that don't pay taxes, evil!
In jail! I mean...
It's just astounding. People who don't support the welfare state, uncaring for the poor, evil, shunned, maybe in jail.
Atheists, evil, unbelievers, shunned, maybe in jail.
I mean, people who dance at the Jefferson Monument, evil, shunned, put them in jail.
I mean, the state of society has millions of laws labeling everyone under the sun evil for one goddamn thing or another and putting them in jail for nothing.
For nothing! And yet you say...
I was beaten up by my dad, or I was raped by my priest, or I was humiliated repeatedly by an abusive teacher.
And people are like, oh, did you hear something?
I didn't hear something. Strangely, I thought somebody's lips were moving, but I heard nothing.
And that is the sick and tragic, flaccid-spined reality.
The amoral toadies we kind of live among, frankly, not to pull any punches.
So, if you've suffered evil, and I think a good number of people have, if you've suffered evil in your life, particularly as a child, you have the emotional effects of having suffered evil.
Horror, indignation, anger, rage...
Feelings of vengeance.
A whole load of stirred up primal base of the brain amygdala impulses.
And not impulses, they last for a long time.
If you have suffered evil, if the crater called...
Sorry, if the asteroid called evil has smacked into the airless moonscape of your histories, then it leaves a big crater, a volcano which never goes out.
And... Unfortunately and tragically, and this I believe is fundamentally the root of almost all the evil that is in the world, if you've suffered evil, then you have the emotional after-effects of evil.
The emotional after-effects of evil cannot be assuaged on one's own.
Because we need confirmation.
Like the guy, Nash, in A Beautiful Mind, turns and says, Do you see that guy there?
Is he really there? Or am I just imagining it?
Well, we...
Tragically and unfortunately, we have to turn to people in society and say, Listen...
Do you see that devil over there?
Do you see that devil in the room?
I mean, am I crazy?
Am I just imagining it? Do you see that evil?
Do you see that soul-sucking Sith presence in the room?
And how many among us will say, hell yeah, holy shit, that was bad.
Tell me more. Oh my God.
I can see this smoking crater from Jupiter.
People. I can virtually guarantee you that outside of FDR, maybe a couple other communities, you go through your whole damn life constantly saying to people, explicitly or implicitly, There's evil in the room.
Do you see the evil in the room? Do you see that guy in the room with the horns?
Do you see the evil? And everyone's like, I don't know what you're talking.
I don't understand. I don't know.
I'm not comfortable with this.
I don't know what you're doing. What else has to do with anything?
Ah, you know, so maybe there was, maybe there wasn't.
You know, the important thing is just to, you know, get over it.
Deal with it. Ah, you know, everybody makes mistakes.
It's your family, it's your religion, it's your country, it's your culture.
You can get mad, but, you know, you rise above it.
Be the bigger person. All this sort of stuff, right?
But you will never get...
Yeah, there's evil in the room.
There was evil in the room. That's some damn evil in the room.
And I believe that the majority of emotional dysfunction comes from people, unconsciously usually, desperately pointing at the evil in the room.
And other people saying, I don't understand what you're saying, I don't see any evil, if there is evil, think of the good and the evil person, and you have to have loyalty to that person anyway, because of history, because of culture, because of family, because of religion, because whatever.
And so, imagine what, you know, if Nash, in A Beautiful Mind, says, listen, do you see that guy?
And someone says, yeah, I see him.
Then he's like, whew, okay, good.
There's no emotional complication from there.
And if they say, no, I don't see that guy, then he's like, oh, geez, you know, that's a negative, but at least he's not uncertain, right?
He's like, okay, so I'm hallucinating that guy.
I'm not saying it's fun and it's pleasant, but at least it's not chronic.
There is an answer.
As to whether the guy is there or not.
But imagine how Nash would be if every time he turned to someone and said, do you see that guy standing there?
They're like, I don't know what you're saying.
I don't understand. I don't know.
I mean, you know, that's up to you.
I mean, that's... I don't know what...
I don't know how to answer you.
And I don't even like to ask this question.
Blah, blah, blah, blah. They would never give him an answer.
Never give him an answer. Or if they would say, there is no guy in the room, even if there was a guy in the room.
Right? So, he would turn and say, in a ballroom, let's say there are 50 guys in the room, and he turns and says, do you see those 50 guys in the room?
Someone says, no.
I don't see those guys.
Which guys? We're not even in a ballroom.
I don't know. Who are you?
I'm a flamingo.
When he's not a flamingo.
I mean, how would he feel?
He would feel completely insane, and he would have no grounding or rooting in reality.
And this is the state of the moral soul of mankind.
That we who have experienced evil turn to others and say, Hey, did you see that?
Do you see that devil?
Do you see that demon in the room?
Do you see that evil in the room? Do you see that gun in the room?
Do you see that rape in the room?
Do you see those punches in the room?
Do you see that sadism in the room?
Do you see that sociopathy in the room?
Do you see that cruelty in the room?
Do you see that monster in the room?
Do you see that evil? And nobody will answer.
Yes, no, maybe.
It's all just a blinding, bewildering clusterfuck of crossed wires.
And so there's no relief.
There's no answer.
And so we can't be cured of the effects of evil because nobody will admit that there was evil.
Or believe that it is, of course, the logical consequence of that is there should be no laws or rules of any kind because there's no such thing as evil.
But the moment you talk about that, people are like, oh no, we've got to have laws.
We've got to throw pot users in jail.
We've got to throw people who don't pay their taxes in jail.
We've got to go attack the Afghanis and the Iraqis and the Libyans and the Syrians and anybody else who looks at it as funny and isn't part of our buddy list for today.
Nobody will socially accept the existence of evil, but politically it's everywhere, and you understand that it's everywhere politically because people will not accept it socially, or see it, or expose it socially.
The why is, you know, and we can talk about that more if people are interested and there's a lot to do with basically just collusion with evil and everyone's guilty.
But we can talk about that another time.
But the important thing is...
People have trauma because they have experienced evil.
Not because they have experienced misfortune.
Not because they have experienced misfortune.
If your mom...
Let's say you have great parents and your mom dies...
Of cancer when you're nine.
I mean, that's terrible, that's tragic, horrible.
But there is a social recognition and acceptance of your experience, right?
So you say, my mom died when I was nine.
People are going to say, oh my goodness, that's just awful.
How was that? How terrible?
Most people will get it, will understand.
And of course, if you've got a good dad or a great dad and your mom dies, then he's going to talk to you about it and help you work through it and you've got his love and you've got the memory of your mom's love.
I mean, it's a horrible, painful tragedy, but I genuinely don't believe, it's not only true, it's just my opinion, I don't believe that it's going to leave you with permanent psychological problems.
But if you were to say to people at the time and afterwards, my mom just died of cancer and you're nine, and people say, I don't know, I mean, maybe she did, maybe she didn't.
I mean, maybe there's such a thing as cancer, maybe there isn't.
Maybe you hallucinated your mom, maybe she was there, maybe she wasn't.
I don't know, I mean, who's to say?
I don't like talking about this stuff.
I mean, you know, if you bring this stuff up again, I don't think we can be friends anymore.
Wouldn't you just be shocked and appalled?
And how on earth would you get over your grieving process?
How on earth would you heal...
Because our deepest emotions are collective.
This is the thing that, you know, I differ from the objectivists in this area, right?
In the future, I don't think they'll need to be because they'll just be reinforced when we're younger and we'll then learn to trust them more.
But people are just so opposed to fundamental emotions like passion and outrage and Ardent love and integrity and the desire for virtue.
People are just so threatened and screwed up by those feelings that they oppose them constantly.
So, to recover and hold on to them as adults, we need a community of people who are not insane, in my mind.
And so imagine if your mom dies when you're nine and nobody will even admit the existence of your mom or maybe hallucinated everything or maybe she's, you know, you can just concentrate on the other dimension where your mom is still alive and everybody just avoided and rejected and repudiated your feelings.
I mean, you couldn't heal because you'd have to live a double life.
Privately maybe you'd grieve but you'd start to feel insane.
If everybody had the same opinion that maybe your mom had lived, maybe she hadn't, maybe there was cancer, maybe there wasn't, maybe cancer is a good thing, maybe it's beneficial to you, it makes you tougher, whatever, right?
And you need to be friends with cancer.
After a while, you'd start to think that you were insane for having all of these feelings that were completely undercut and rejected and undermined by society as a whole.
You couldn't heal. You couldn't grieve.
Maybe privately you'd have some grief, but publicly you'd have to pretend that you lived in the same unplugged, zoned out, spaced out, dissociated planet of negatory, foggy void that everybody else lived.
The Swiss cheese, where there's not even any cheese, just holes and a faint smell of bad cheese.
You would not be able to be who you are in society because you would be so thoroughly rejected and undermined, your experience thoroughly, right?
And so if you have suffered a terrible misfortune, like your mom dies of cancer when you're nine, then you can process that.
I'm not saying you always will. Maybe you've got a bad family or a bad environment or something and everybody just rejects you or, you know, it's the common thing where nobody talks about it anymore and, you know, then you're going to...
That's because your feelings of loss and grief and anger are rejected and dismissed or suppressed or attacked.
And so, yeah, you're going to feel like you're not...
That's going to give you a permanent psychological problem until, until, until...
You go to a therapist and say, my mom died when I was nine.
And your therapist says, oh my god, how terrible.
And validates and validates and validates your experience.
Thus, at the same time, of course, raising significant challenges with and about your existing community where that was not possible or not allowed or attacked, which is why you ended up in a therapist's office.
Completing the real is, to me, what therapy is all about.
Completing any and all interruptions of the real.
These were my real feelings.
This was my real experience.
This was my genuine life.
But people have got to give you those weird, funny, cross-eyed looks whenever you bring up anything serious, because anything serious or real threatens the collective psychosis called culture.
Emotional psychosis, in my opinion.
And so, when we have suffered evil, we are in a worse category than if we've suffered misfortune that everybody rejects the reality of.
If we've suffered evil and everybody rejects the reality of that evil, we're in a worse situation.
Because misfortune won't strike again the same way, right?
Your mom's not going to die of cancer twice.
But evil can strike again.
And if you can't see it, almost certainly will strike again.
And so it's worse to reject somebody's moral experience of evil than it is to reject their emotional experience of tragedy.
Tragedy. And so, a lot of therapists...
Have that sort of, well, tell me how you feel about it.
They're sort of opaque. They won't give much of their own opinions.
And that I don't like.
You know, I could be wrong.
Maybe I am, maybe probably am, but I don't like it.
I mean, to go back to the simple example from A Beautiful Mind.
The guy, Nash, says, do you see that guy...
Over there. I need to know if he's real or not.
And you say, well, tell me about your experience of seeing that guy.
Tell me how you feel about seeing that guy.
It's like, no, no, no, no, no, no.
That's not the issue. The issue is not how I feel about seeing the guy.
The issue is, do you see him?
Am I crazy? Or is he there?
Do you see him? And I believe most of what drives people into therapist's office is the experience of evil, is being the victim of evil doing.
And I believe that the best therapists are the ones who say, when you say, do you see that devil in the corner?
The therapist says, I sure do.
I sure do.
Oh boy. What a terrible thing to have experienced.
That's just awful to have been the victim of such abuses, such injustice, such attacks, such evil doing.
That's the reality.
That's all we're talking about. It's not that simple, of course.
There's a lot of reintegration and it raises great issues and great problems.
With your existing society, right?
So, if you go to a therapist and say, there's a devil in the room, and the therapist says, oh my god, there certainly is.
You might want to think about not being in that room.
I see it too.
I see the dead people too.
Well, if...
The therapist does that, then it's a very volatile thing to do.
Probably why a lot of therapists don't do it.
It's a very volatile thing to do because it exposes the society that you live in, right?
How are you going to integrate into a society which has denied the existence of the evil you suffered for your life, your whole life?
And then when you, with the therapist's support, you say, Yeah, there was evil in the room.
There is evil in the room. And everyone gets, like, now that you've got an ally, now you've got support, now you've got someone saying to you, there is someone in the room.
They can't see that guy in the room.
They can't see that devil in the room.
Well, you've got to go back and live among everybody who denied and rejected and fogged and repudiated and dissociated and Swiss cheesed you up the yin-yang so that you wouldn't see it.
Then you have to ask, why? What are their motives for it?
Why can't they see it? Is it that they're so frightened of evil that they can't see it?
Is it because they're evil themselves? Why are they sacrificing my reality for the sake of their own defenses?
What kind of maturity is that?
And do they believe that reality is better than fantasy, that truth is better than falsehood?
And if so, which everybody will say they do, and if so, then what does that mean?
That kind of hypocrisy.
And, yeah, like I tried both kinds of therapy, right?
And it took a look, I mean, with my second therapist, third therapist, the one that worked, it took a long time to get that kind of moral clarity.
Easier for some people earlier on, but it took a long time for others.
And that kind of clarity, I think, is really essential.
Is really essential. Yeah.
And we have that kind of clarity with other relationships, right?
Particularly parent-child, of course.
And to some degree priest and certainly teacher, particularly if you're a libertarian and you kind of get how monstrous government teachers and the government educational system is.
I mean, that would be asking a lot of a therapist, I think, to be a libertarian and an atheist and maybe an anarchist and, you know, understand ethics.
I mean, that's a lot. So, I would focus on...
But you can get other libertarians to sympathize with how horrible government school was for you.
Yeah, I mean, I get that. But, of course, particularly with regards to parents.
I mean, it's...
I mean, the Get Out of Jail Free card is...
It's not even a card.
It's like gravity. It just is.
And so, yeah, I think that's an important thing.
I think that the greatest, certainly the greatest, I'm not saying this is any proof, but certainly my greatest relief, the load off my shoulders came out of the moral validation of that which had been fogged, rejected, and evaded by everyone else.
And yeah, look, I'm telling you, this is why I've always told people, this is domino effect.
It's a domino effect that occurs.
You get one person to stand up with you against the devils that beswarm your mind.
And the fact that everybody else isn't there becomes very, very, very glaringly obvious.
And that other people have contributed to your...
Static-brained crazy by rejecting your real experience and real emotions about it.
That is a tough, tough thing to process because, of course, you come out of that stronger and you start to say to people, you know what?
There really was some bad stuff.
There really was some evil in my past.
And I've tried talking about it with you guys.
And if I haven't, I'm trying now.
And I don't like that this fog is occurring.
I don't like that this is like you pretending like I'm crazy or weird for bringing up the fact that I suffered evil.
I suffered evil! I was the victim.
I mean, the rape victim who was told that She wanted it.
It wasn't rape. It wasn't rape-rape.
It wasn't real. She may have hallucinated it.
She may have imagined it. She may have dreamt it.
The guy may be a great guy.
Maybe one mistake, right?
That person is not going to be able to emotionally process her experience or his experience with that kind of befuddling, befogging, malodorous companionship.
So, yeah, I think that...
I don't think you need a therapist well-trained in UPB, though.
I'm sure it wouldn't hurt. You know, to get some of the basics, right, about if you experienced abuse as a kid or are experiencing abuse as an adult, then, yeah, you don't need that expert.
You just need an expert in the basics of abuse.
And I think that kind of verification, that kind of validation, that kind of recognition...
is what takes the most burden off people's minds.
And it's a very hard thing to look for, a very hard thing to try and achieve.
But that would be my case.
Now, how do you go about finding that?
How do you go about finding somebody like that?
Well, I think that's a good question.
And maybe I'll do a part two of this, and we'll try and sort it out.
Part two of my thoughts, at least on...
How you might be able to find a good therapist.
Now, remember, investing in a therapist, I mean, it's a lot of money, but of course it's a huge amount of emotional investment.
There's a huge amount of vulnerability and trust that is involved in...
Talking to a therapist, you bare your soul.
You place a huge amount of emotional and moral trust in your therapist.
Think of the last time you had to, if I'm speaking to my fellow geeks out there, think of the amount of time you spent on your last electronics purchase researching and so on.
If it's anything like me, it's ridiculous.
I mean, in terms of the money you save at an hourly rate, it's somewhere around a Singaporean foot stapler at a shoe factory.
But that kind of care should be nothing compared to the kind of care that you're trying to get going or to establish when it comes to figuring out who you're going to trust in a sense your soul to.
So, So take the time and figure out what it is that you want and then ask if the therapist can provide it.
So if you're dealing with particular issues, let's say you're dealing with, I don't know, physical abuse from a priest or something like that, then let's say that, then I would ask, do you have any experience dealing with clergy abuse?
I think that's an important question to ask.
Do you have experience in this kind of thing?
Again, speak geek to geek.
Imagine an employer who wanted a PHP coder.
First thing they're going to ask is, do you have experience in PHP coding?
Not, are you a general coder, but do you have experience in this particular kind of coding?
So, I think to ask a therapist if they specialize, if they've had experience with, what their experience is with the kind of issues that you...
Want to deal with? I think that's very important to ask.
And, you know, you can ask for specifics.
I know it's, you know, I'm not saying all therapists because what do I know, but I imagine there's some therapists or psychiatrists or psychologists who would like it if you just kind of sat back and, you know, like a doctor doesn't particularly like it when you come in with handfuls of internet research, but not, I mean, some doctors perhaps, but But I would say that you can ask these questions, and I think a good therapist will be happy to answer them, because a good therapist wants to make sure that he or she is a good fit to your issues as well.
So ask if he or she has had experience in the area that you want to deal with.
These aren't commandments. These are just my suggestions.
So that would be number one.
Number two, I would ask the therapist...
You know, just roughly, more or less, here or there.
What his stand is on things like forgiveness.
You know, do you think that forgiveness is always necessary for closure?
Ask the therapist, perhaps, what...
And, you know, you may not get all of this on the phone, but you can get some sense.
You know, just say, you know, I don't want to take up too much of your time.
These are brief questions, but I just want to get a sense of where you're coming from.
What is... The therapist's definition of closure, of success.
I think that's important.
So, if you're estranged from your brother, say, is the therapist's definition of closure and success re-establishing that relationship with your brother?
Well, that's important to know. That may be what you want, that may not be what you want, but it's important, I think, to figure that out.
You also may ask the therapist under what circumstances Should relationships not exist?
I think that's an important question.
One example of that would be something like this.
If you are in the process of getting out of a drug habit, then I would imagine that therapists would probably say something like, well, it's probably not great for you to be around habitual drug users while you're trying to kick the habit.
Or if you're trying to deal with the history of emotional abuse, then it may not be productive to be in friendships with people who are currently emotionally abusive to you and so on.
So, under what circumstances are relationships not productive to the therapeutic process?
I think that's important because, you know, again, it's just my opinions, but if the therapist says, you know, all relationships are valid and so on, then, you know, I personally wouldn't go to that therapist because I think they then have a bias of reconnection.
You know that you have to reconnect, that you have to keep these relationships going no matter what and I think that is their own bias and that's not I don't think that's healthy, but, you know, again, I'm not the expert.
So, asking those kinds of questions.
And look, I mean, I'm not saying you sort of spend an hour cross-examining the therapist before you go in.
You might have this on your first session.
I think it's good to come with questions.
I certainly did way back in the day when I started my multi-year, multi-hour-a-week focus on therapy.
But come in and have some questions about what it is that you're trying to achieve and evaluate the therapist.
You know, when it comes to therapy, you are the employer.
You are the employer. You know all those times you've sat across from the hiring manager and you have had to answer all of those questions about how your skills relate to the job and what if you mean your biggest successes and failures and where do you want to be in five years and all that kind of stuff.
Well, now this is your chance to be the employer and the therapist is the potential hire.
And I think that's important.
It's an important perspective to have.
And particularly, I mean, if you do this in the first session where you're paying, then yes, I think any therapist who's bothered by these sorts of questions, I would argue, or think there's a good argument to be made, that they may not be quite the most productive person for you to trust yourself to.
Any good hiring manager wants to make sure that we have a best fit employee.
And the best fit employee isn't necessarily all of those, the employee with exactly the skills that you want, like that cookie cutter employee.
That's not necessarily the best employee.
The best employee is, you know, the thinker who's agile and adept and hopefully possesses the basic skills necessary to at least adapt to the position.
I think that there's also some value in asking more specific questions about the proposed content of the therapy.
What's your general approach to therapy?
What do you believe is dysfunctional?
What's the difference between dysfunctional and functional?
How do you know when you've gotten there?
I think those are good questions to ask, so that you have some sense of what the end goal is.
It's a little easier, of course, You know, you break your ankle.
Well, you go to your doctor and you don't really have to say, what's the end goal of fixing my ankle?
That's to get you back to where you were before.
So, and maybe strengthen it a little if there was some problem there.
So, you know, you get an infection and you take some antibiotics.
The goal is to get rid of the infection.
It's all pretty clear, right? But in...
In the mental health profession, I think there's a fair amount of disagreement on what constitutes mental health.
For some people, it may be more of a successful adaptation to society.
For other people, it may be more personal integrity in the sort of Ayn Randian style.
Not that I think many therapists are objectivists, but in terms of integrity to yourself and not necessarily adapting to society.
So there's lots of There's quite a broad spectrum, I think, and some disagreement on what constitutes mental health in the therapeutic profession.
There are some psychiatrists who argue that everybody is pathological Which, you know, doesn't really help in terms of UPB or isn't really helped by UPB, since the person who's saying everyone is pathological is himself or herself pathological, blah, blah, blah. So, yeah, I mean, what is the goal, right?
I mean, do you believe, you can ask the therapist, do you believe that Happiness comes from personal integrity to values, or does it come from a successful adaptation to society, many of whose values are not particularly rational?
Right, so you could say, well, let's say I come from a Mormon family, and I'm an atheist.
Is it success for me being who I am, who is an atheist, even though it causes conflict and difficulty in my relationships, or is it finding a way to adapt to I mean, these are very important questions.
I think you need somebody who you're able to have that kind of conversation with.
So there may be other kinds of content that you want to talk about.
Let's say that you're really into dream analysis.
Maybe you've listened to some of the shows where I've done that kind of stuff and you thought, hey, that's fruity but useful.
Okay, well, obviously I'm no trained therapist.
I'm just sort of giving my thoughts about dreams.
But if you find that useful and helpful, and I must say that I found dream analysis enormously helpful...
In therapy, well, you say, well, what's your approach to dream analysis?
What do you think of dream analysis?
Do you do it? Do you have any experience?
Have you found it useful? And so on.
That may be important for you.
Maybe you think role plays.
You've read books where role plays, or maybe you've listened to a couple of shows where I do role plays with people, and maybe you find role plays to be helpful or useful.
Say, well, do you have any experience with role plays?
Do you think that they're helpful? Do you think that they're useful?
And so on. And...
Another thing that you can ask is, do you have a generally fixed approach to dealing with the kinds of traumas that I want to deal with?
Or is it more eclectic and kind of, quote, winging it depending on each individual?
I think that's important. I mean, winging it is a little riskier, I'm sure, but I think that's important.
You can ask what the general length of the therapy is that the person does.
Are they more into short-term?
You know, I get six sessions from my insurance company, that kind of stuff, or 12 sessions, or are they more into longer-term therapy?
I think those kinds of things are really important.
You know, if you've talked about your issues and what you want to deal with, then you may ask, what kind of time frame do you think I will need to set aside to deal with this?
I think that's important. I mean, we do that when we order pizza, right?
How long is this going to take? Or if you're going to sell your house, how long do you normally take to sell a house in this neighborhood?
I think it's a good idea to write these questions down ahead of time, to go through them, and to view the first session as a job interview.
I know it sucks to have to pay for a job interview, but I think it's well worth it.
You can spend a lot of time and money on a therapist who isn't a good fit or may not be that great a therapist, and that may sour you to therapy as a whole.
If you have an injury, That needs rehabilitation, that needs physio, and you go to a physiotherapist who injures you further, then you're worse off than if you'd never gone to a physiotherapist to begin with.
And you may be like, oh, physiotherapists, they're terrible, I don't want to go.
I mean, then you just limp around, right?
So, in something this important and this sensitive, gosh, oh gosh, I would just strongly suggest asking these questions.
Now, I would also say that it doesn't hugely matter...
What the content of every question is, and you may find a perfect fit, you may not, but I would suggest that the content of the answer of each particular question is not essential.
I think what is important is, is the therapist listening?
Is the therapist giving you feedback that is sensitive to what it is that you're asking?
Is the therapist also looking for a good fit?
I mean, I remember as a hiring dude, I never particularly warmed to those potential employees who would just say, yeah, I can do that, yeah, I can do that.
I've had experience similar to that.
Because then it's just like, you know, you tell me what container you've got and I'll pour myself into it and lickety-split will be fine.
I just felt that that was not discriminatory enough.
That's like, I don't know, the guy or the woman who would go out with...
Anyone who will ask, that's just not, I think, very flattering in many ways.
So if you say to the therapist, hey, have you had much experience with clergy abuse?
And they say, no, not exactly, but I did counsel a porpoise once who had a lack of affinity for cormorants, and when you think about cormorants, they have a sort of priestly vestment kind of outfit, you know, then that's just like, okay, so you just kind of want clients, right? And I think that's not...
I mean, of course, it's a business relationship to some degree, and the therapist has to eat and all that, so it's not bad that they want clients, but not, I think, at the expense of a good fit of skill sets and need.
I think it's also reasonable to ask the therapist how much homework is there.
What proportion of the work is done outside?
What kind of homework is assigned by the therapist?
What sort of work is required or expected or useful or beneficial, whatever you want to phrase it, is beneficial outside the therapeutic office.
I mean, what goes on in the therapeutic office?
I would submit is the tip of the iceberg as far as what goes on in therapy as a whole.
I did much, much more work outside the therapist's office than I did in the therapist's office.
And that was incredibly helpful and really, really supercharged things along.
So I think that's also really important to try and figure out.
So if it's like, well, I will give you an hour or two of exercises every week, or I would find it useful if you did that as a therapist, or keep a dream journal, or whatever it is that's floating around their noggin, then I think that's useful as well.
And I think that...
It's probably better if you're more proactive in your own healing.
And so, you know, oh, you don't have to do anything, just come see me, and we'll sort it all out here.
I don't know that that's ideal.
Again, that's just my thought.
And, I mean, the tricky...
It is tricky, of course, and you don't have to do it in the therapist's office.
But I think it's also important to experience...
Your experience of interacting with the therapist.
I think that's really important.
Is the therapist really taking in your questions?
Is she...
Giving thoughtful replies.
Do you feel that the questions are welcomed and useful?
Or are they an annoyance, an imposition?
Does she want to sort of rush along?
And is she asking you, have I answered your question to your satisfaction?
Is there anything else that I can do to help?
I think those things are really important as well.
Because, I mean, therapy is founded upon effective communication and you want an effective communicator.
And an effective communicator will ask, was that helpful?
Was that useful? I mean, I think I'm a pretty effective communicator and...
You've heard me probably a number of times in podcasts saying, you know, was that useful to you?
Is there anything I could have done better?
Was that helpful? Did that miss the mark?
And so on. And I think that, you know, if some random amateur podcaster can do it, then a trained and well-paid professional...
Should do it as well.
Do you feel listened to?
Do you feel that your presence is being acknowledged and absorbed and reflected back to you in a way that deals with the concerns or the questions, really, that you're bringing up?
Do you feel visible? And I know that this is all tough stuff to do because, of course, if we had this kind of assertiveness, we may not be going to therapy in the first place, but I still think it's really, really worth doing.
And then, of course, as therapy goes along, I think it's important to monitor how you feel.
Like, so you find the therapist that works for you, or you think it's going to work for you.
I think it's important to continue to examine your feelings as you're continuing along the path in therapy.
Am I looking forward to my therapy session?
Do I come out?
How do I feel when I come out of the therapy session?
How do I feel during therapy?
The therapy session. Those are all, I think, very important questions.
Do I feel progress?
Do I feel things getting better?
Do I feel a change in my relationship to myself?
Do I feel a deepening, a relaxation, a security, a whatever it is that's occurring?
And this, of course, is not a linear, it's not a straight line, and it's a jagged, hopefully upward path.
But do I experience that?
In my experience as a therapist.
I think that's really, really important.
I mean, this is the same thing you would, you know, if you've broken an arm and you need to get your limber back and you go and see a physiotherapist.
Of course, you may not look forward to the physiotherapy because it might be painful, but, you know, afterwards, or is there progress?
Do you feel like you're getting more flexibility, more strength, and so on?
This is important. Same thing with a personal trainer.
You may not enjoy the workouts, but hopefully at some point you will enjoy the workouts and you will feel that you're making progress and so on.
And I think that's important.
You can, of course, also ask your therapist, well, let's say that we embark upon this journey together, how do we measure progress?
How do we know if it's working?
Because you may or may not know, because, I mean, again, if you go to a physiotherapist, Therapist, it may hurt a hell of a lot before it gets better, right?
And they should know that, right?
So, you know, what's the process as far as that goes?
How do we know if we're actually achieving anything?
I think that's important.
You can also ask in general, are you a proactive therapist?
In other words, some therapists are very much, well, tell me what you feel, tell me what you think.
And some therapists are more proactive, right?
And we'll give, hopefully, insights and opinions and suggestions and so on.
You know, you can ask, well, where do you fit on that continuum in general?
And you may want somebody who's more proactive.
I don't know about the reactive ones.
I have my opinions, not too positive, but they may work for you.
Now, hopefully you understand, I'm not saying that, you know, all these questions need to be asked the first time you see a therapist or on the phone.
But these are the kinds of questions that I think are useful.
I probably haven't covered a tenth of the ones that may be useful to you, but of course I don't know.
But these are the kinds of questions that I think are helpful.
And they really have two purposes.
The first, of course, is to get the information.
And the second is to feel how you feel while getting the information and feel how you feel after the phone call or the first session or something like that.
And, I mean, none of this guarantees anything, but I think it does put you in a better position to hopefully get the most out of therapy, and I hope that these suggestions have been helpful.
And please let me know if there's anything else of use that I can spray my random opinions on in this area.
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