I have
been in therapy for about 5 1/2 years. My therapist, as far as I can tell,
is competent and wise. After the first year of therapy, I went through a
12 day manic episode. Since then, I have painstakingly worked to achieve
a greater awareness of my unconscious mind—depression, rage, high anxiety,
feeling overwhelmed, terror, fear, crying so intense I feel I could shatter,
etc. I feel like I imagine a soldier would feel living day by day in the
combat field. It’s so draining: I want a break; I want to sleep without
waking with terrifying dreams; I want not to feel absolutely isolated and
alone; I want not to cry so intensely; I want the suicidal thoughts to stop.
I feel that I am improving; yet, it is so hard to perceive when wading through
so many repressed emotions and conflicts. I ask him constantly how long it
takes for the process to end, but he only says that we will know when it
does. How long should therapy last? Is 5 1/2 years too long? How come every
time I feel like I’ve taken a step forward, the emotions coming flooding
back in? I wish the effects would lessen, but they only get stronger. When
will it abate?
You ask a question that started the whole
managed care business
in the first place. The business executives in the health insurance industry,
concerned about their profits, started asking, “How long should
psychotherapy last? When does it all end?” Well, they may as well have
been asking, “How long is a piece of string?”
So let’s
look at how you end your message: When will it abate?
To interpret your
question, let’s look at how you began your message: you have been in
psychotherapy for 5½ years, and after the first year you had a 12-day manic
episode.
So what’s
missing between the beginning and the end? Well, actually, what’s
missing is what came before the beginning. Now, this statement might
sound obscure, but you cannot navigate to where you’re going if you
don’t know where you are, and you won’t know where you are if you
don’t know where you have been.
In other words,
you say that after a year of treatment you had a manic episode. But you
don’t say if you ever had any manic episodes before you began treatment.
You don’t say what sort of life you had before treatment. You don’t
even say why you decided to begin treatment.
So there you
are, a soldier in the combat field who doesn’t know what he is fighting
for or with whom he’s fighting. He’s just there, fighting, in
tears.
So when your
so-called “therapist” says that “you will know it when it
does,” what does that mean? Does he even know what he means? The truth
is, it’s necessary for you to find out how it all began; that
is, to discover the
unconscious childhood
roots of your current symptoms. Trying to eradicate symptoms, like a soldier
in combat getting rid of enemies, is the equivalent
of pushing away a crying child.
Speaking metaphorically,
it takes more courage to face the emotional pain in your unconscious than it takes
to fight a military enemy on the field of combat.
Therefore, when you can
attend to that crying child within you with compassion, understanding, and comfort,
the real healing will begin. When you can attend to your symptoms as if they were
frightened children who need your love, your psychotherapy will have started. When
you can attend to the child’s tears without fear, the flood of pain and tears
will abate because the joy of understanding will have begun.
No
advertising—no sponsor—just the simple truth . . .
 |
|
|
|
If
this website has helped you, then