I have
been in therapy on and off for 6 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.
Thus you can be left with the final option: enter psychotherapy and learn
how to trust there, through the
psychotherapeutic
relationship.
Therefore, what
you need to do is ridiculously simple, and yet emotionally difficult. You
must make the clear and bold decision to talk to your psychotherapist about
your lack of trust.
If your
psychotherapist is competent, you will be led 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
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 part of “dealing
with the issues.”
No
advertising—no sponsor—just the simple truth . . .
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