I've been reflecting on my experience with my previous therapist, probably because she tried to contact me on Friday.
I've been reading The Woman Who Thought Too Much by Joanne Limburg. She discusses how a prominent psychoanalyst noted that therapy can become a game for people with OCD. The idea behind psychoanalysis is that the patient is entirely open during the session and the psychoanalyst uses the themes and dynamics that come up to diagnose and treat the patient. Well, people with OCD often have this problem of obsessing over how to say things just right as to avoid any inaccuracies, especially inaccuracies that have to do with their own mental state and treatment. Therapy can become a game for people with OCD: they strategize endlessly on what to say when and how to say what, whether they are revealing too much or not being honest enough. This is not to say that people with OCD don't take therapy seriously; rather they take therapy too seriously and it can become a breeding ground for new obsessions.
My previous therapist wasn't a psychoanalyst; I suppose what we were doing was cognitive therapy without behavioral therapy. Maybe there was some new-agey stuff mixed in too. Regardless since her approach didn't emphasize behavioral therapy which is the only type of therapy documented to be a viable treatment for OCD, I do think think therapy became a bit of a game for me. I ruminated endlessly on what to say when, what to reveal, and how to reveal it. I never found these details significant, though, because for whatever reason I didn't see them as part of the bigger picture of a tendency towards obsessive thinking. Until I realized I had OCD, that is.
I also went to the therapy group my old therapist ran for a while. At one point she posed a question to the group: What makes it difficult for you to open up to the group? I answered that I was afraid that talking about my problems might somehow be really harmful to someone else. Therapy was evoking harm OCD in me and I even directly admitted it!
I would mull over therapy group a lot. There were just so many things I could try to keep tabs on. How did I come off? Maybe I came off as whiny. Did I really explain my problem well? Maybe someone was upset because of what I said.
This is not to say that group therapy is never an option for people with OCD. Group therapy might actually be a good exposure for someone with OCD. It's just important to know what is going on.
I've been reading The Woman Who Thought Too Much by Joanne Limburg. She discusses how a prominent psychoanalyst noted that therapy can become a game for people with OCD. The idea behind psychoanalysis is that the patient is entirely open during the session and the psychoanalyst uses the themes and dynamics that come up to diagnose and treat the patient. Well, people with OCD often have this problem of obsessing over how to say things just right as to avoid any inaccuracies, especially inaccuracies that have to do with their own mental state and treatment. Therapy can become a game for people with OCD: they strategize endlessly on what to say when and how to say what, whether they are revealing too much or not being honest enough. This is not to say that people with OCD don't take therapy seriously; rather they take therapy too seriously and it can become a breeding ground for new obsessions.
My previous therapist wasn't a psychoanalyst; I suppose what we were doing was cognitive therapy without behavioral therapy. Maybe there was some new-agey stuff mixed in too. Regardless since her approach didn't emphasize behavioral therapy which is the only type of therapy documented to be a viable treatment for OCD, I do think think therapy became a bit of a game for me. I ruminated endlessly on what to say when, what to reveal, and how to reveal it. I never found these details significant, though, because for whatever reason I didn't see them as part of the bigger picture of a tendency towards obsessive thinking. Until I realized I had OCD, that is.
I also went to the therapy group my old therapist ran for a while. At one point she posed a question to the group: What makes it difficult for you to open up to the group? I answered that I was afraid that talking about my problems might somehow be really harmful to someone else. Therapy was evoking harm OCD in me and I even directly admitted it!
I would mull over therapy group a lot. There were just so many things I could try to keep tabs on. How did I come off? Maybe I came off as whiny. Did I really explain my problem well? Maybe someone was upset because of what I said.
This is not to say that group therapy is never an option for people with OCD. Group therapy might actually be a good exposure for someone with OCD. It's just important to know what is going on.
lol "Therapy was evoking harm OCD in me and I even directly admitted it!"
ReplyDeleteI think I have had similar concerns.
Something open-ended can elicit a lot of confusion because there are so many ways it could go -- complexity, chaotic system, etc.
personally regular therapy did not work for me because I would get bored. it was never fast-paced enough for me, not interesting or challenging enough, except with one therapist who was extremely unconventional and would throw me these off-the-wall questions