CannonSalt - You said "what are your thoughts on 'it gets worse before it gets better' when you do psych work? I've heard that chestnut more than once."
I always end up going through the wringer whenever i attend psychotheraputic appointments. Usu. I end up there when I am travelling really rough and my life has fallen apart (again). I feel flayed, like all my skin has been peeled off when I start working with a new practitioner, having to go over the 'story'. I used to often say "No pain, no gain" but I have backed off from that assertion in past year or so, its like a self-fulfilling prophecy that one!
However, I am pretty clear about (like I wrote in the response on this discussion 30 Oct at 7.19) the steps I take before an appointment, trying to clear my fuzzled head, note down what the actual problems are (or what I perceive them to be at least as a starting point), what I hope to achieve. The most useful approach for me so far has been those practitioners who work within the framework of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT). I suspect though truly good practitioners have a whole toolkit of skills and approaches and adapt and fit to suit each individual.
Yes, it almost always gets worse before it gets better, as I dig in the mud and muck and face/confront some terrible life's experiences that happened to me, the damage they have done, the *mistaken learning I have come away with from those things. This is one reason I usually only do one round of mental health appointments (6) per year. I would just be a jelly mess if I did it continuously. I want to grab life with both hands and live the best I can as often as I can - so out the other side of therapy I try mainly to just 'live' and concentrate on home, hearth, loved ones. I am not keen on psychotherapy for its own sake, and sucidal ideation is invariably a feature that rears its ugly head as I go into and though therapy.
In my last round of sessions I disclosed something I had never old anyone in 50+ years that happened to me when I was 17 years old. I thought my throat/heart would break saying it, it was a very hard story to tell, and once I did, the freedom from the holding tight of that incident was immense. I got 'unstuck" on that one.
I do though wonder how practitioners cope with hearing such terrible things. I feel for them too. Listening to the hardest, vilest things humanity does to each other. I am not suprised some end up doing the job by rote just to protect themselves.
*Re: mistaken learning - I identify things that I learned through my life, usually as a child - where given my innocence, naitivety and lack of life's experience I have 'learned the wrong lesson'.
For instance - that I am "bad, or powerless" the real lesson (which no child can learn because of lack of experience) is that the perpetrator is the problem, not my reposnse to them. How could I have KNOWN to say no. How could I have known to seek help. Too young. So I walked through the rest of my life with this mistaken learning "you don't say no, or you don't 'tell" or "you don't stand up for yourself" or "you must never question authority" because... it just brings worse pain and monstering. Mistaken learning. Counselling has definately helped me identify where I have learned something by mistake and helped me into correct understandings.
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13 YARN