So in many cases, “trauma processing” can basically mean noticing you’re not a child anymore. You have power. So you don’t have to appease the hostile telepaths just because they’re adults.
Yes, definitely. And this is also why it’s often so important for the therapist—if this is done in the context of therapy—to exhibit unconditional positive regard toward the client. If the therapist is genuinely accepting of any thoughts and feelings that the client brings up, then that opens the door for the client’s parts to start considering the possibility that maybe they can tell the truth and still be accepted. And once it has become possible to tell the truth to at least one person, it becomes possible to tell it to yourself as well.
(Though maybe I should say that the therapist needs to either experience unconditional positive regard toward the client, or successfully deceive themselves and the client into thinking that they do. Heh.)
One additional tangle is that often the client’s issue is less about needing to act in a certain way, and more about needing to be a certain way. At some point, one frequently goes from “it’s bad to break something and not be genuinely sorry on that particular instance” to “it’s bad to be the kind of person who wouldn’t automatically feel sorry and who needed to fake being sorry”.
This makes it harder to get to the point where the therapist could provide evidence that they are fine with you not being sorry in that particular instance, because getting there would require you to reveal that it’s possible for you to not automatically feel sorry, and that feels dangerous by itself!
And what you’ve written also gets to the limitations of therapy—that no matter how much positive regard the therapist might have toward their client, if they are still e.g. living with an abusive partner, just the therapist’s warmth and support may not be enough to produce a shift. (I haven’t had clients with situations that extreme, but I’ve certainly noticed times when we started making much more progress once they broke up with a partner or quit a job that they had been trying to force themselves to do, and then suddenly new parts of them came to awareness that could now be convinced they were safe.)
It’s worth noting that many therapists break therapeutic alliance for ideological or liability reasons and this is one of the reasons that self therapy, peer therapy, llms, and workbooks can sometimes be better.
(Though maybe I should say that the therapist needs to either experience unconditional positive regard toward the client, or successfully deceive themselves and the client into thinking that they do. Heh.)
I mean, technically they don’t even need to deceive themselves. They can be consciously judgy as f**k as long as they can mask it effectively. Psychopaths might make for amazing therapists in this one way!
True, though I think that judgment tends to be hard to effectively mask in this kind of context (though maybe psychopaths would be able to fake it; I don’t know). At least my own experience inclines me to agree with this person:
I’ve worked with and/or done swaps with a lot of different practitioners (IFS, aletheia, VIEW, regular talk therapy, bodywork, voice work etc), and what I found to be the most effective element of their skill set (for me) is: non-judgmental, loving presence…
many times I have explored the same topic with two different practitioners within a few days of each other; and it’s in those cases that the impact of the difference in the quality of non-judgmental loving presence is most noticeable.
the degree to which the quality of the presence is non-judgmental can be VERY subtle, but the system can pick up on it. it might not even be a strong enough signal to notice it consciously, but it will greatly impact how the session unfolds.
Yes, definitely. And this is also why it’s often so important for the therapist—if this is done in the context of therapy—to exhibit unconditional positive regard toward the client. If the therapist is genuinely accepting of any thoughts and feelings that the client brings up, then that opens the door for the client’s parts to start considering the possibility that maybe they can tell the truth and still be accepted. And once it has become possible to tell the truth to at least one person, it becomes possible to tell it to yourself as well.
(Though maybe I should say that the therapist needs to either experience unconditional positive regard toward the client, or successfully deceive themselves and the client into thinking that they do. Heh.)
One additional tangle is that often the client’s issue is less about needing to act in a certain way, and more about needing to be a certain way. At some point, one frequently goes from “it’s bad to break something and not be genuinely sorry on that particular instance” to “it’s bad to be the kind of person who wouldn’t automatically feel sorry and who needed to fake being sorry”.
This makes it harder to get to the point where the therapist could provide evidence that they are fine with you not being sorry in that particular instance, because getting there would require you to reveal that it’s possible for you to not automatically feel sorry, and that feels dangerous by itself!
And what you’ve written also gets to the limitations of therapy—that no matter how much positive regard the therapist might have toward their client, if they are still e.g. living with an abusive partner, just the therapist’s warmth and support may not be enough to produce a shift. (I haven’t had clients with situations that extreme, but I’ve certainly noticed times when we started making much more progress once they broke up with a partner or quit a job that they had been trying to force themselves to do, and then suddenly new parts of them came to awareness that could now be convinced they were safe.)
It’s worth noting that many therapists break therapeutic alliance for ideological or liability reasons and this is one of the reasons that self therapy, peer therapy, llms, and workbooks can sometimes be better.
I mean, technically they don’t even need to deceive themselves. They can be consciously judgy as f**k as long as they can mask it effectively. Psychopaths might make for amazing therapists in this one way!
True, though I think that judgment tends to be hard to effectively mask in this kind of context (though maybe psychopaths would be able to fake it; I don’t know). At least my own experience inclines me to agree with this person: