I've seen a handful of therapists over the years. Some were more helpful than others. A major breakthrough with the most useful one I saw was when I realized that nothing I could do or say would disappoint her. One of the keys to useful therapy is your relationship with your therapist. Therapy relationships are almost unique in that they are entirely one sided. They exist only for your benefit.
If you have a relationship with a therapist that isn't working for you and that you can't fix, it's the therapist's fault. You should get a new one, and feel no guilt about doing it. (This might be obvious. But some people blame themselves when their therapy isn't working. They should blame the therapist and move on.) At the same time, if you are deliberately sabotaging the relationship, you need to stop. Getting therapists to talk about themselves, for example, qualifies as sabotage.
The dissociation thing is really important. I certainly do it. It's a coping mechanism, and one that our society generally teaches men to have. That doesn't mean it's a healthy coping mechanism, though. It's a problem for me when I'm suddenly angry at everything, and even when I can figure out what the event that made me angry was, I don't know why it made me angry. It's also a problem when I have to explicitly stop and ask myself how I'm feeling. Being surprised by my own emotional state isn't a good thing.
Two questions for xiphias: Are you happy about being dissociated from your emotions? And if not, what can you do about it?
A book I recently read on male cultural programming and depression is "I Don't Want to Talk About It" by Terrence Real. It's not great, but I found I related to it far more than I was happy about. It's worth looking at for info on how depression expresses itself in men and why. (Part of the argument of the book is that our culture defines depression in terms of how women express it. But our culture also teaches men and women to manage emotions in different ways, so men express depression in different ways than women.)
Talking about emotional dissociation reminded me of the book, so I figured I should mention it.
no subject
If you have a relationship with a therapist that isn't working for you and that you can't fix, it's the therapist's fault. You should get a new one, and feel no guilt about doing it. (This might be obvious. But some people blame themselves when their therapy isn't working. They should blame the therapist and move on.) At the same time, if you are deliberately sabotaging the relationship, you need to stop. Getting therapists to talk about themselves, for example, qualifies as sabotage.
The dissociation thing is really important. I certainly do it. It's a coping mechanism, and one that our society generally teaches men to have. That doesn't mean it's a healthy coping mechanism, though. It's a problem for me when I'm suddenly angry at everything, and even when I can figure out what the event that made me angry was, I don't know why it made me angry. It's also a problem when I have to explicitly stop and ask myself how I'm feeling. Being surprised by my own emotional state isn't a good thing.
Two questions for
A book I recently read on male cultural programming and depression is "I Don't Want to Talk About It" by Terrence Real. It's not great, but I found I related to it far more than I was happy about. It's worth looking at for info on how depression expresses itself in men and why. (Part of the argument of the book is that our culture defines depression in terms of how women express it. But our culture also teaches men and women to manage emotions in different ways, so men express depression in different ways than women.)
Talking about emotional dissociation reminded me of the book, so I figured I should mention it.