Your Therapy Is Bullshit Or How To Deal With Depreciation

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

It's hard to listen, just over and over again the client explains how insignificant all the therapeutic efforts are compared to the depth of his problems, how once again the meeting was wasted, that again you are saying some kind of garbage, that you are a terrible specialist, and in general everything is in vain.

There is a common stereotype that depreciation is a consequence of the client's inability to tolerate the therapist's competence. That this creates an unbearable tension of envy and hatred for the client, that in attempts to throw off the power of poisonous affects, he refuses to acknowledge the existence of their source. He kind of informs the therapist - you are nobody, and therefore all those feelings that you evoke in me - do not exist. Or that you can never help me - and that's why I defeated you.

And sometimes it really is, really just such a message. But sometimes, such an interpretation mirrors the importance and significance of the message sent by the depreciating client. After all, for the therapist, in a sense, this is a very convenient position - to say to himself - well, yes, the client is terribly jealous of me (or hates, or simply does not want to change), to admit it he lacks gunpowder, so he gets out as best he can. And at once all the attacks of the client lose their meaning, there is no reason to look at them carefully and feel them on yourself - the reciprocal depreciation has taken place.

And this is a dead end in therapy. But there are other options, other meanings that you can unpack.

The main thing that, in my opinion, is worth accepting in a depreciation situation is that the client is honest. That when he talks about the irrelevance of therapy, it’s true for him. And that this is a rather difficult and painful inner experience. And what if the client, despite all this - goes to therapy - in this way simultaneously shows its colossal value for himself. And that, in order to keep attending sessions over and over again, which subjectively do not bring any benefit or even harm, one must be overwhelmed with despair. And, at the same time, determination and perseverance.

And it is possible that what I, as a therapist, am trying to give to the client is really not at all what he needs. Figuratively speaking, he needs a dietary broth, and I feed him with pepper shashlik. Quite possibly delicious, made from excellent meat. Only the client has colic and cramps in the abdomen after him. Indeed, often the rejection contained in the devaluating message is just a healthy reaction to an inappropriate influence. And the client is quite sincerely trying to restore the usefulness of the therapy for himself - in the way that is available to him. You can, of course, say - well, what to do, it's just that he is a bad client does not want to change, does not understand what yummy he got. But maybe it makes sense to take a critical look at your own menu - and at the state of the client? And honestly ask yourself - do I have the necessary dishes in my asset?

It is more difficult when the client himself actively asks for the shish kebab, and having received it, he suffers and complains of poisoning. If this is repeated over and over again, this is a message about hunger and scarcity and, at the same time, the inability to satisfy it without harm to oneself. The fact that no one in the past of the client knew his real needs - and he himself does not know them now. The fact that his usual relationships are those in which he swallows poison over and over again, but cannot refuse it, because he is mortally hungry. And, perhaps, he does not even know and does not suspect that there is another food. One that does not cause nausea. This is a message about a malevolent maternal object. About poisoned milk.

And then the therapeutic task is to pull this situation into the verbal field and make it explicit for the client. Perhaps through very cunning and convoluted resistance - because these are very early and basic violations. And then teach, on the one hand, to hear your needs (and solve them together with the client), and on the other hand, to reject what is not suitable - by pulling out hatred, which, most likely, will be destroyed in this case.

Another option is the inability to retain and fix in memory the value of what at the moment of receiving was felt as such. Such clients simply will not notice good moments, they will slip by. They may have a brighter face in sessions, and sometimes they may look clearly interested and carried away, but at the end of the session they will habitually say that it was boring and they did not get anything useful. But this is not an active rejecting position, it is precisely the inability to recognize one's emotions - one's positive response, which seems to slide off like water from a non-wetting surface - leaving no trace. This will require work with alexithymia and reanimation of emotional memory. Constant and patient return to the client of those emotions that he himself expressed - and did not notice.

Another option is depreciation as a reaction to narcissistic trauma. As a response to the inner impossibility of experiencing extremely difficult feelings. And it can be not only shame, envy and hatred, but also hopelessness and despair, and much more. Or it’s simple - a kind of transcendent pain, which has not even taken shape yet into a concrete feeling. And then the client, who is dying in devaluation, will gradually tell about the zone of his injury with his reactions. Which can be carefully washed with an antibacterial solution - but only after the client is convinced that the therapist can be sufficiently trusted.

And the last one is depreciation as a way of sadistic acting out. When the main goal of the client is the desire to give the therapist unpleasant moments. Then the work on the awareness of the pleasure that the client receives comes to the fore, and then - work with hatred, which I have already mentioned.

In practice, often, the same client will convey completely different messages through devaluation. Or it can compress several meanings in one action. And then deciphering what exactly the client is saying devaluing at the moment turns into a difficult quest every time, the decision of which is very easy to make a mistake, and sometimes even inevitable.

But in case of doubt, to solve it, I always start with the assumption that the client did not really get what he needed, and honestly tries to tell me about it. And this is my tribute to clients who go to therapy, despite the fact that they are experiencing such excruciating feelings. To their courage and desire to deal with themselves - despite the fact that everyone in them screams about the impossibility of this task.