Apr 2009
Being Framed
26/04/09 20:17 Filed in: Therapy
Therapists sometimes talk about the “therapeutic frame”. The term doesn’t refer to being made a scapegoat, or even to the mounting for the therapist’s qualifications up on the wall. The therapeutic frame is the sum total of all the ‘rules’ and ‘limitations’ inherent to the therapy process. The cost of sessions, the availability of the therapist by phone after-hours, the provisions and limits of confidentiality, the regularity of session times, and whether the therapist would also see one of your friends or family, are all part of the therapeutic frame. While some of the aspects of the frame, such as the adherence to rules about confidentiality, are important in themselves, it is also important that the therapeutic frame, once established, remains secure, consistent, and predictable. How do you feel when someone makes an appointment with you, then doesn’t show up? Having a clearly established therapeutic frame allows you, the client, to form clear expectations about your therapist that you can then rely on over time. Every time the frame changes (for example, if your therapist goes on holiday), it falls back upon you and the therapist to spend time re-establishing the frame; time that could have otherwise been spent focussing on you and your problems.
One aspect of the frame that you may find challenging is the lack of information available to you about the therapist. This can be disconcerting, particularly if you don’t trust your therapist to see things from your perspective. You may find it difficult to talk openly when your therapist is not doing the same. One reason most therapists don’t like to discuss themselves in sessions is that it shifts the focus of the conversation onto them, and away from you. Even a small detail, such as knowing that the therapist is feeling a bit tired today, has the potential to affect the flow of the session adversely. For example, knowing your therapist is tired, you may feel more reluctant to show difficult feelings to the therapist in case you tire them out too much. Some therapists ask clients to lie on a couch for this reason: you are lying down, looking at the ceiling, and can’t see the therapist’s face, so you can’t judge how they are feeling about what you are saying, and therefore are less likely to ‘censor’ what you say to avoid distressing them.
Of course, you may quite like the fact that you don’t know what’s going on for your therapist (or you may simply not care!), as it allows you to get on with the work you need to do in session, without having to also deal with their issues. If you are attending therapy, consider how little actual factual information you have about your therapist, and yet how many assumptions you still make about them. These assumptions are actually very important, and useful to be aware of. They will tell you a lot about the assumptions you make about people in general. Many of the ideas, feelings and reactions you have towards your therapist are a reflection of these assumptions. Understanding your reactions to other people and the history behind these reactions is part and parcel of understanding yourself, which is the point of therapy after all.
One aspect of the frame that you may find challenging is the lack of information available to you about the therapist. This can be disconcerting, particularly if you don’t trust your therapist to see things from your perspective. You may find it difficult to talk openly when your therapist is not doing the same. One reason most therapists don’t like to discuss themselves in sessions is that it shifts the focus of the conversation onto them, and away from you. Even a small detail, such as knowing that the therapist is feeling a bit tired today, has the potential to affect the flow of the session adversely. For example, knowing your therapist is tired, you may feel more reluctant to show difficult feelings to the therapist in case you tire them out too much. Some therapists ask clients to lie on a couch for this reason: you are lying down, looking at the ceiling, and can’t see the therapist’s face, so you can’t judge how they are feeling about what you are saying, and therefore are less likely to ‘censor’ what you say to avoid distressing them.
Of course, you may quite like the fact that you don’t know what’s going on for your therapist (or you may simply not care!), as it allows you to get on with the work you need to do in session, without having to also deal with their issues. If you are attending therapy, consider how little actual factual information you have about your therapist, and yet how many assumptions you still make about them. These assumptions are actually very important, and useful to be aware of. They will tell you a lot about the assumptions you make about people in general. Many of the ideas, feelings and reactions you have towards your therapist are a reflection of these assumptions. Understanding your reactions to other people and the history behind these reactions is part and parcel of understanding yourself, which is the point of therapy after all.
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Yours, mine, ours
02/04/09 12:05 Filed in: Relationships
One third, one third, one third. In any relationship (and I mean, any) there are two (or more) people who differ in at least some small ways. In my threadbare experience this is probably the most fundamental challenge of the human condition: how do we, who are all so different and unique, nevertheless relate to one another? Many people resolve this struggle in an ‘either/or’ way, by being themselves only when alone, and being accommodating to others when in an interaction, thus hiding their ‘true’ self from others.
When trying to find harmony in a relationship, there is a useful rule-of-thumb to use: yours, mine, ours, a third a third a third. In other words, the two of you should be devoting a third of your time/energy towards what you think is important (even if the other person doesn’t), a third towards what the other person thinks is important (even if you don’t), and a third towards things that are important primarily for the relationship (even if both of you wouldn’t do it if alone).
For example, a married couple might sit together and watch a game of football (based on what he thinks is important), then go and visit friends for dinner (based on what she thinks is important), and the next morning lie in bed and talk about the week ahead (even though both individuals have other things they’d rather be doing). A mother and toddler might spend 45 mins. playing together with the child’s tea set (what the child wants to do), then the child will have a sleep before lunch while the mother reads a book (what the mother wants to do), then after lunch the mother and child attend a local play-group (even though the child is still interested in the tea-set and the mother’s not very keen on one of the other mothers at playgroup).
As you may have deduced, the demarcation between ‘yours’, ‘mine’ and ‘ours’ is not always obvious. In new relationships, for example, everything feels like ‘ours’ (you and I don’t matter; all that matters is that we’re together). Further, the idea of ‘ours’ as opposed to ‘yours’ or ‘mine’ can be difficult to see unless you realize that the relationship is a ‘thing’, separate and additional to each of the two individuals in it. The relationship has a life of its own, and needs and interests of its own. If a metaphor would help, you can think of the relationship as a car that the two of you are travelling in. A lot of the time, you can simply use the relationship for your own ends, but it would soon stop working if you never refilled the tank, got it serviced, kept it fairly clean, etc. So sometimes you are driving the car (yours), sometimes I am driving the car (mine), and sometimes the car is being maintained (ours).
In a therapy relationship, this principle also holds, although by necessity there is less time/energy spent on the therapist, and more on you. Sometimes you will be talking about something that upset you during the week (yours), sometimes we will be reflecting on how the therapy process is going (ours), and at some point you will need to pay the fee (mine).
So this rule of thumb may be useful to you if you have one or more relationships, be they friendships, love affairs, workplace interactions, or altercations in the street. It’s worth remembering that there are always three parts to a relationship: you, me, and us.
When trying to find harmony in a relationship, there is a useful rule-of-thumb to use: yours, mine, ours, a third a third a third. In other words, the two of you should be devoting a third of your time/energy towards what you think is important (even if the other person doesn’t), a third towards what the other person thinks is important (even if you don’t), and a third towards things that are important primarily for the relationship (even if both of you wouldn’t do it if alone).
For example, a married couple might sit together and watch a game of football (based on what he thinks is important), then go and visit friends for dinner (based on what she thinks is important), and the next morning lie in bed and talk about the week ahead (even though both individuals have other things they’d rather be doing). A mother and toddler might spend 45 mins. playing together with the child’s tea set (what the child wants to do), then the child will have a sleep before lunch while the mother reads a book (what the mother wants to do), then after lunch the mother and child attend a local play-group (even though the child is still interested in the tea-set and the mother’s not very keen on one of the other mothers at playgroup).
As you may have deduced, the demarcation between ‘yours’, ‘mine’ and ‘ours’ is not always obvious. In new relationships, for example, everything feels like ‘ours’ (you and I don’t matter; all that matters is that we’re together). Further, the idea of ‘ours’ as opposed to ‘yours’ or ‘mine’ can be difficult to see unless you realize that the relationship is a ‘thing’, separate and additional to each of the two individuals in it. The relationship has a life of its own, and needs and interests of its own. If a metaphor would help, you can think of the relationship as a car that the two of you are travelling in. A lot of the time, you can simply use the relationship for your own ends, but it would soon stop working if you never refilled the tank, got it serviced, kept it fairly clean, etc. So sometimes you are driving the car (yours), sometimes I am driving the car (mine), and sometimes the car is being maintained (ours).
In a therapy relationship, this principle also holds, although by necessity there is less time/energy spent on the therapist, and more on you. Sometimes you will be talking about something that upset you during the week (yours), sometimes we will be reflecting on how the therapy process is going (ours), and at some point you will need to pay the fee (mine).
So this rule of thumb may be useful to you if you have one or more relationships, be they friendships, love affairs, workplace interactions, or altercations in the street. It’s worth remembering that there are always three parts to a relationship: you, me, and us.