I have
been in therapy on and off for six years. My first therapist died unexpectedly
between sessions. My second therapist screwed up and did not protect the
boundaries of the therapeutic relationship. I am with my third therapist
and things are progressing slowly, but I can see the work getting done. I
am having a problem trusting her and being willing to open up about what
the true feelings going on inside me are. She makes it easy to talk, but
I find it almost impossible to trust. What can I do to overcome this and
start dealing with the issues?
Trust has to be learned. If it isn’t learned as a
child through healthy family interactions, then it must be learned outside
the family through other social interactions. Unfortunately, most persons
who don’t learn to trust within the family are so emotionally wounded
that all other social interactions are stained by a general lack of trust.
Therefore, such persons are left with a final option: enter psychotherapy
and learn how to trust there, through the
psychotherapeutic
relationship.
Now, in your case,
you experienced some previous failures of psychotherapy and your trust was shaken.
Nevertheless, what you need to do now is ridiculously simple, and yet emotionally
difficult. You must make the clear and bold decision to talk to your current
psychotherapist about previous difficulties in psychotherapy and your lack of
trust because of those difficulties.
If your current
psychotherapist is competent, the work will lead you into an exploration
of all the reasons why you find it difficult to trust others, and through
the growth of
honest, genuine
communication you will discover how (a) to trust your own
unconscious perception
of things, and (b) to trust the psychotherapist. What you learn from that
encounter with the psychotherapist can then be applied to other social situations
outside psychotherapy.
If your current
psychotherapist is not competent, your attempts to speak about your lack
of trust will be ridiculed, minimized, criticized, or ignored. Well, in that
case you will have to say, “Hmm . . . looks like we’ve
got another one of those ‘bad therapists.’ Let’s keep looking
until we find someone who’s good.” And then start
looking. Just
remember that the very process of looking for a competent
psychotherapist—with all its frustrations—is itself a part of
“dealing with the issues.”
No
advertising—no sponsor—just the simple truth . . .
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