I’ve
been in psychotherapy for almost eight years. It doesn’t feel like I
have changed much despite incredible understanding and patience on the part
of my psychotherapist. I have come to the realization that probably the most
important thing I can do in psychotherapy is to leave it. Yet the very idea
sends me into panic—but how will I function? I’ll die! My
psychotherapist does not ever give me advice. I make my own decisions about
my career, my family, just about everything. Why am I having such an incredibly
hard time leaving? Why do I believe I’ll die if I do?
It often happens that clients can spend quite a while in
psychotherapy without making any substantial changes. Many clients have such
deep unconscious conflicts
and fears that much
time must be spent working to identify and understand those
parts of the personality
that fear change. So, as long as progress in understanding is being made,
and as long as every session brings some enlightenment, then the time (and
money) spent is worth it. There should come a time when actual changes, even
if small ones, start occurring, and it is your psychotherapist’s
job to encourage you to make those small
achievements.
Psychotherapy
is not a matter of giving advice, so your psychotherapist seems to know his
job on this point; real psychotherapy is a matter understanding the emotional
depths of human relationships—and the
psychotherapist-client
relationship is the primary relationship to be examined. So if your
psychotherapy hasn’t examined that relationship thoroughly, then any
thoughts of that relationship ending will seem like the threat of
death itself—as
you are finding out. Maybe that work still needs to be
accomplished.
Real psychotherapy
should end with a simple, yet profound, release into life, simply because
the psychotherapy itself is not afraid to die.
No
advertising—no sponsor—just the simple truth . . .
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