I am going to change my life. A goal is not to fall into destructive patterns of thought as much, so I do not have to spend as much time arguing against them on this weblog.
A thought on this: the problem with much US psychotherapy is that it makes certain erroneous assumptions, to wit:
a) you are here as a last resort: something terrible has just happened, whether you recognize it or not; or
b) you are massively “dysfunctioning” and need to be forced to recognize this, like a crime suspect forced to confess; or
c) you are having a major or minor crisis and are only interested in being “stabilized;” ord) you only want to vent, not to explore or change.
For me, of course, all of these options are traumatizing because the message is: I do not believe you, and I will not actually listen to you. That naturally drives someone who does not fit the four possible categories to a greater level of pain, as it, most likely, replicates precisely the events that led them to consult this industry in the first place. The slightly better, common assumption is
e) you are so frozen and encrusted in your neuroses that you can only progress very, very slowly and delicately. This may be true for some, but as a best option it is not good enough.
What do you think?
Axé.
coldhearted scientist وداد 
I don’t know. Psychotherapy did make it possible for me to work. But I don’t think it helped my husband that much. I think in his case he simply got over a couple of very harsh blows to his ego and his happiness. But he has problems stemming from his family life that are irreparable and that, since I am his wife, I just have to live with. His mother could not deal with having an infant, so she drugged him with phenobarb until he was two. When her sister in law noticed that he was shambling around and not talking and told her to stop drugging him, she did. It simply had not occurred to her that she was doing the wrong thing; that’s how isolated she was. He did not start talking until age four. He must be a flipping genius to be the high level thinker he is today after that treatment, but it affected him in many subtle ways. And this was the woman we had to look after in her old age! Now tell me how psychoanalysis could deal with that!
Sometimes doing your duty is the best you can do, so it’s nothing to feel guilty about. I don’t feel guilty for not loving her, and I am proud of myself that we did the right things for her in her last, helpless years.
Believe me, at my age, this means the world to me!
How psychoanalysis could have dealt with that, I am not at all sure.
I have decided that finding good situations is perhaps better than going directly after a cure. These things take such a long time. But this is why I am getting more and more interested in psychoanalysis, something that is not crisis oriented or control oriented…