Using Mistakes in Therapy
Our Book- In A Cradle Of Words, THERAPY|I found this blog, http://thetherapyandcounselingblog.blogspot.com/ and just had to comment using trackback and since I am a beginner I have no idea if this will work out but here I go! Ms Lisa Brookes Kift blogs about both boundaries and effectiveness in therapy- two of my favorite topics. In fact, I have just co-authored a book, In A Cradle of Words: Intimate Encounters in Relational Therapy. I am commenting as both a therapist and a client. I personally believe the best therapists must be able to be hardworking clients as well. There is a situation I describe where I am in therapy and my therapist makes a mistake. Here it is:.jpg)
“With my own therapist I had a session where I got to some important feelings, and I felt really touched by how he had helped me, but when I told him how touched I felt, he just looked away. He didn’t seem to hear or see how much gratitude I was feeling or see the significance of it, because he was already going on to the next thing…I was really angry.”…. “He started to talk about something else, but I stopped him, and I told him that I had been feeling all this appreciation for him, but that he had ignored me…First, there was a look of shock on his face. He said something like, ‘Oh, I can see you have feelings about this. I didn’t realize that I did that. Tell me, what are you feeling?’
It was really important to me that he didn’t get defensive and discount the anger—that made me feel safe. He showed caring and concern when he asked me to express my anger to him….I said something like, ‘I’m angry that you didn’t see how appreciative I was, and I felt really sad and hurt that you were ignoring my feelings….once I expressed the sadness and the hurt to him, I realized that I was feeling the same painful feelings that I had felt with my dad—anything I felt was unimportant to him. I would either be criticized or ignored. And the two feelings, the one with my therapist, and the one for my father, were identical. My therapist acknowledged the painful feelings I had in response to his mistake. If he had not made that mistake, I would not, at least in that session, have worked through those feelings connected to my
father.”
Our book is a memoir and this Relational Affective Therapy. Hopefully it will be released in early July.
Best
Christopher Diggins, M.A.
