CROWN PSYCHOTHERAPIST

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

Although I am a sighted person, a blind person is worse.

Having extinguished the light inside, now

I cannot be considered a scientist:

To knowledge of myself, I closed the door.

To sound wise, from above

enlightened

I who have destroyed my soul cannot

And just an animate being

Having named myself, I will lie.

Grigor Narekatsi

… how easy it is to break a life, to destroy a person. Lives as fragile as cloth can be thoughtlessly ripped open overnight due to banal pride.

Elizabeth Stout

Being a psychotherapist means being a lonely nomad, God, a loser, Satan, feeling threatened, being the subject of passionate love and hate, and asking yourself questions. Our work constantly upsets us, because we are always not confident, we constantly meet with resistance from those whom we want to help, our success is never complete, and failures are distinct to the point of obsession.

J. Bujenthal

Psychological knowledge has a strongly pronounced active active component. A psychologist not only studies a person, but also "constructs" him, contributes to his change and development. This creative function also has the other side of the coin: psychological knowledge makes it possible to carry out a manipulative approach to a person.

The expectations and fears projected onto the role of the psychotherapist are quite high, as a result, it is often endowed with inadequately overestimated general potency. The modern psychotherapist can be associated with the position of a magician, wizard or shaman, who occupies the position of an intermediary between the "higher" forces and ordinary mortals. Common stereotyped views of psychotherapists include the following: a psychologist is able to see through people; the psychologist gives advice; the psychologist has superpowers; the psychologist has a "magic wand", with a wave of which he solves all problems; the psychologist can encode, program, hypnotize, etc.; the psychologist has no problems of his own.

Such ideas about the profession of a psychotherapist cannot fail to attract a narcissistically organized person to the implementation of psychotherapeutic activities. Such a role is quite capable of satisfying the addictive needs of the narcissist; it can provide a sense of "specialness", superiority, control, and grandeur. People who seek psychological help are used to provide the narcissist with a sense of grandeur and omnipotence.

For a narcissistically organized person, the words of J. Bujenthal, included in the epigraph to this publication, can, passing through the filter of narcissistic distortion, acquire a different sound - the role of the psychotherapist provides the opportunity to be “ALL” (narcissistic expansion): both God and Satan, and then the neighborhood "Loser" with such hypostases only gives the effect of mystery and grandeur.

The problems of people requiring support and participation make them small in the eyes of the narcissist and need a competent and strong figure. Due to the narcissistic defectiveness, such a specialist is not able to professionally set goals and objectives and carry out activities within the framework of his competencies. Such a specialist uses you as another way to pump up their empty Self. Failure to clearly delineate boundaries leads to the fact that such a psychotherapist is not able to adequately perceive their capabilities and limits of influence on another person. He is also unable to accurately assess his professional skills and knowledge, taking on any options for solving psychological problems.

Not focusing on the value of another person, such a therapist is always directive, and this has nothing to do with which psychotherapeutic school he considers himself to be. About this in one of the Ch'an sayings: “When a good person preaches a false teaching, it becomes true. When a bad person preaches a true doctrine, it becomes false. The declared psychotherapeutic values run counter to the actions of such a psychotherapist, while the narcissist has no internal conflict, due to his inability to reflect on the content of his professional activity. He is convinced of his infallibility and high professionalism.

It is not necessary to count on the fact that such a therapist will follow the obligatory and primary rule of providing psychotherapeutic assistance - confidentiality -; the narcissist does not recognize any rules and tramples any boundaries. Moreover, the disclosure of information about his client by such a would-be psychotherapist is not perceived by him as a violation of professional ethics due to the privileged position that any narcissist gives himself.

How can you tell if your therapist is a narcissist?

How often does your therapist reschedule your appointments, are late for them, or change the amount you pay for his services? If this happens often enough, you have a good reason to think about the narcissistic characteristics of the person whom you trust the most intimate. Observance of boundaries is one of the important conditions for the implementation of psychotherapeutic assistance, which any psychotherapist, even a poorly educated psychotherapist, is aware of. This circumstance is extremely important in any human relationship and has a special status in the practice of providing psychotherapeutic assistance. Therefore, if you periodically have to wait 20 minutes for a "savior" to appear, or your life becomes less orderly due to frequent cancellations of sessions by your therapist, or you never know how much you will have to pay next time, be sure - you need to change psychotherapist. Do not succumb to manipulation: stories about superload, force majeure situations, extraordinary cases, to which the therapist was forced to leave. Of course, not without it, but if such situations are repeated repeatedly, such psychotherapy will not bring you anything good.

Beware of the "nice in every way", seductively charming individuals who greet you in their office. At the initial stages of your interaction, the narcissist sets up his networks: he flirts with you, is kind, interesting, bright, original, charismatic and knows everything for sure.

Be vigilant about whether your psychotherapist surrounds himself with an aura of super-ability to see people right through, ahead, or even beyond the horizon. Being discerning and navigating the client's inner logic is the basis of psychotherapy, but the therapist's constant referrals to his inner experiences and the desire to "squeeze" them into you has nothing to do with the true goals of psychotherapy.

Narcissistic abuse is also a situation in which the therapist gradually slides into a situation that means a role reversal during therapy. More and more, he begins, initially as an illustration, and then out of his need to relieve himself of talking about his own conflicts. Now the therapist speaks more than the client. The client becomes an attentive listener, thus gaining more importance for the therapist, and becomes the only one who truly understands him. After the initial horror that the therapist - an idealized and unattainable person - suddenly takes on human aspects and communicates a lot about himself, the client's depressive mood disappears. Now he feels a new meaning in life, because he is so needed! The client has noticeably changed in a positive direction, which convinces the therapist of the correctness of his actions. In his new status of an understanding listener, he feels more valuable and strong, his own problems have receded into the background.

For psychotherapy, the therapist's empathic understanding is essential, which should contain "more" than the client's initial self-understanding, which contributes to the latter's self-understanding. However, if you are in a state of breakdown, mental confusion, disharmony, and hardly understand yourself and your goals, what appears as empathic “more” of the narcissist therapist compared to your understanding of your situation is an attempt to infect you with your ideas. What is presented as a "greater" understanding, in fact, are convenient schemes, stereotyped frames, banal ideas that simulate the process of psychotherapy. The difficulty lies in the fact that a person's appeal for psychotherapy is due to the fact that his self-experience is incomplete or untrue, and the task of the psychotherapist is to open the door to holistic and true self-experience. It is the therapist's empathic understanding of the client that helps open this door. Therapeutic responses serve as diagnostic criteria in recognizing and understanding the client's pathological behavior. It also describes the interpretative potential of the therapist's responses to the client. The therapist's responses during therapy lead to the emergence of images of how the client became who he is, and the preliminary recognition of pathological patterns that support the client's problems. The therapist should develop images and hypotheses of how the client, within the framework of pathological models, experiences his personality and his inner experience. But your difficulty in determining whether a false understanding is being induced in you can be complicated by your defensive processes and resistance to being aware of your own experiences. While your defense mechanisms are strong, it is difficult to determine whether the therapist is imposing a false understanding of your situation on you, or you have not yet come to the brink of realizing your own experiences. Try to check the intuitive impressions of your therapist in other ways: your own further experiences, reactions, behavior, emerging images, dreams, reactions of other people to you. And yet, if you feel that you are forcibly “squeezed into the frame”, fed until you faint with “feedback” and intuitive “scenes,” take a closer look, perhaps you will see a crown on your therapist's head. The involvement of the therapist is not an end in itself, nor is it what is communicated to the client as "therapist's self-disclosure." If you notice that you are not a figure in the process of psychotherapy, but you are assigned the role of "listening" to the truth, be on the lookout.

Empathy, according to Rogers' definition, should be a subtle and precise method of understanding the client in his “internal coordinate system”. Rogers pointed out the need for the therapist to be constantly receptive to all the nuances of understanding the meaning that the other person is experiencing. Empathy - means the temporary residence of another person's life, movement along which must be carried out carefully, without passing judgment. Rogers pointed out that when the therapist is closest to his inner, intuitive “I” and is possibly in a slightly altered state of consciousness in a relationship, then whatever he does brings healing, relief and help. These are the moments when the psychotherapist's spirit touches the spirit of another person. The list of other signs on the basis of which narcissistic personality disorder is diagnosed, registered in the diagnostic and statistical manual for mental disorders adopted in the United States, includes a lack of empathy, which is the basis of psychotherapeutic relationships and a factor involved in the client's self-understanding of himself and his own problem situation. The narcissist is completely incapable of showing empathy and emotional resonance, his world is pulled exclusively to himself and each person is viewed only from the point of view of what he can give this hungry child. Narcissistic communication with other people is of an accentuated one-sided nature, which makes a person with such a personality defect professionally unsuitable. The oversight that the narcissist posits is nothing more than suspicion. So, we are not talking about any empathic attunement to you if a crown shines on your therapist's head, which is evidence of his impotence and professional defeat.

If you strive to know and develop yourself and at the same time have your own point of view, a sense of support in yourself, then most likely you will easily and very soon recognize a narcissist in your psychotherapist, if he is. You will feel that in this space of relations they do not tolerate a different worldview, different views and worship of other "kings". You will be able to appreciate the ideological wretchedness of your therapist and falsehood. Your ability to resist the suggestion of a charming narcissist will save you time and money spent on a morally underdeveloped narcissist. Attempts to debate, persistently find out something will lead to the fact that the narcissist will try to scare you, threatening with an invisible scepter, and when you open the door to leave the king's domain forever, in your back you can hear threats and portents of hellish torment. The narcissist therapist will most likely find comfort in the fact that you are a "difficult person" who does not understand or appreciate monarchist gifts after the rage has passed. Subsequently, he can warn colleagues that they cannot do business with you, since you do not want to work on yourself, change, etc.

But you may not have a sense of support in yourself, everything may be just the opposite. Turning to a psychotherapist, looking for support, participation and care in his person, without having your own strength to fight, you can easily be misled; You can take the mask of professionalism, strength, superiority and knowledge at face value and become the feeding trough of such a psychotherapist for a long time. Most likely, this will not happen if you turn to such a therapist in a state of grief, in this state a person can distinguish truth from falsehood well. Although disturbances in consciousness during this period may also prevent your therapist from seeing the narcissistic defect for some time.

Your own need for inflation makes you vulnerable to such a therapist. All the ugly and grotesque forms of self-expression of such a specialist, which are framed in the frame of prestige, specialty, originality, can support in you the desire to be close to the psychotherapist in the crown, feeling that from interaction with him the royal headdress begins to grow on your head.

If you take independent steps towards understanding yourself, the therapist's narcissistic jealousy will instantly nullify this. To admit that you are able to independently determine the trajectory of movement within the walls of his ice castle, where only he rules, is unbearably painful for such a psychotherapist. This is his territory, and only he determines how, where and why on it the movement is carried out.

Constantly controlling the communicative process, the narcissist fences off the subjectivity of the Other, the Other ceases to be the Other, the necessary dialogue turns into an incessant monologue. Do not succumb to such catchers of new souls, sooner or later they will leave you "at a broken trough." Appreciate your time, money, and opportunities, and don't give them away to the narcissist. The only purpose of such a "specialist" is to make you one more subject, feeding his stupid appetite.