Help Another

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

- Hello, - a pleasant female voice politely begins the conversation, - but how to make an appointment with you.

I clarify the essence of the request (family relationships, problems in the couple's sex life), talk about the cost and conditions of admission. The girl says that everything suits her, we are discussing free hours in the schedule, and suddenly …

- No, he works late on Friday, let's go on Saturday.

- Who works late? - on the machine I ask again.

- Well, husband. Who will come to you for an appointment.

- Will the husband come? Or you? Or did you want a family consultation?

- No, I want your husband to come to you. Well, so that you can help him to improve relations with me.

So. Have arrived.

“It’s your husband who asked you to find out,” I ask hopefully, and clarify: Let’s then he himself call me, and we’ll come to an agreement?

- No, he will not call, he does not know yet that I have written him down to you.

This situation is not an anecdote. Quite often people try to "attach" a person to a psychologist who was not even going to turn to him. The motives are different: sometimes friends and relatives are sure that a person needs help, so they simply impose psychological counseling on him. “Well, I can’t watch him suffer, I know that this will make him feel better.” Sometimes they want a psychologist to help them "influence" a family member who has strayed from their hands: "You tell him to change his behavior, he will obey you." Sometimes it’s an attempt to cope with your own anxiety: “You just check if everything is in order, and then tell me.” Sometimes people think that poisoning a person to a psychologist is like enrolling a child in a circle or a doctor: I decided, I wrote it down, I brought it, waited outside the door. Alas, this only works with children, and even then - not always. An adult must decide for himself whether he wants to work with a specialist. And does he have any problems.

Such people are very offended when a psychologist tells them that he will not accept their spouse, friend, child. Well, that means, without a request from the client, nothing will work - you are a professional. Well, how is it, violation of personal boundaries - what are the boundaries between loved ones, do you doubt that he has no one closer to me? Why can't you say what you asked for - I'm paying you money.

There are many reasons why no psychologist can fulfill this kind of request. Firstly,

Psychotherapy is work

Collaboration of two people: the therapist and his client. The psychologist cannot initiate changes in a person by pressing the magic button if the client is not going to change. A psychologist cannot “gradually” make someone happy, relieve anxiety, “motivate” someone to do something, he cannot do anything like that. A psychologist helps a person to deal with himself, but in the end the client works on his own, and if the client himself is not going to change anything in himself, it will be a "dead number". By the way, contrary to myths and rumors that it is beneficial for a psychologist to take money “for nothing” as long as possible, nothing contributes to the specialist’s burnout more than useless “therapy” without therapy. Not worth the whole palette of feelings (from helplessness to despair, from fatigue to irritation, from doubts about their own work to the complete depletion of their resources) that the psychologist experiences, over and over again holding useless, fruitless meetings with a client who does not want to change, those money that you pay him. Believe me, the psychologist has already invested a lot of time, effort, money and emotions in learning how to do his job well. And he values every hour of his working time too highly to waste it on powerlessness.

Secondly,

Psychotherapy is a personal relationship

Yes, unlike medical relationships, a psychotherapeutic alliance is, first of all, a personal contact with a client. And sending someone to a psychologist is almost the same as marrying strangers without their consent. No matter how your friend, relative or spouse needs help, you cannot "slip" a person with whom he will automatically have a contact, whom he can trust, in which he will simply immediately believe. You can advise, introduce, recommend. To force - no. And “endure - fall in love” in this case does not work, because it is impossible to force someone to endure interference without consent.

Thirdly,

Psychotherapy is privacy

Therefore, to influence the course of therapy, to explain to the psychologist what exactly you want to change in a loved one, to find out some details (“You ask what is happening there, otherwise she doesn’t tell me”) - no one will give you. Even if you pay for the meetings. Even if you are acting as a customer. The simplest explanation is that professional ethics do not allow us to move anything outside the scope of therapy. But ethics is not just a set of rules that we have to follow. The laws of professional ethics, like the safety regulations, are, relatively speaking, “written in blood”. And their violation brings so much harm to all the participants in the events that it would not even occur to a competent specialist to "try", and your "yes, I will not tell anyone" will not help here. In addition, the psychologist always remains on the side of the client who turns to him. Whatever happens. Not on the side of his mom, dad, husband, wife, friend - and this distinguishes the therapeutic relationship from the domestic one.

The same can be said about the information "about the client" coming from you. There is no need to tell the therapist anything about his client ("He himself will never tell you, but in fact he …" or "I think his problem is that …", and in general, "You see, he is such a person …"). No, please don't do that! First, you violate the boundaries of the one who goes to the office. Second, you bring something into the context of the client-therapist relationship in advance that should not be there. You do not allow the therapist to work directly with the client's reality, bringing into it your own fantasies and guesses, your own attitude to the situation, your own needs. Just believe: in therapy, it is important what the client says and what the psychologist sees during the appointment. Only during the reception, only inside the office. The psychologist does not need to know and see what you see in your relationship with the person who asked for help. How not to form your own vision of the client, based on your stories.

Fourth,

Psychotherapy is very intimate

This is a joint activity of two people who are connected with each other by a very unusual, but very personal relationship. Each time the alliance that arises between the psychotherapist and his client is unique - it is full of various feelings and experiences, transferences, projections, small discoveries. And the analysis of these relationships is a fairly large part of the therapeutic work itself, because the shades of feelings that arise between the client and the psychologist speak much more about the client and his characteristics than what he directly tells about himself. Intrusion into this process disrupts its effectiveness, negates all the jewelry work that the specialist does, identifying and analyzing the reactions that arise in the office from the client's side and his own.

Fifth,

Psychotherapy is growing up

One of the sides of psychotherapeutic work is helping the client to achieve personal maturity, in the formation of his boundaries, this is the release of the client from addictions, the work on separation. And if the work already begins with a violation of the boundaries of a person, with the fact that someone decided something for him, this work, by definition, starts very badly.

If you are worried about the state of a loved one, if you think that he needs help, if for some reason you really want him to turn to a psychologist or psychotherapist, you can tell him about it. And even recommend a specific specialist if you have an opinion on this. There is nothing more you can do. Neither ask him to "be sure to go", nor demand, nor blackmail (“if you don’t go to a psychologist, everything is over between us”). Nor is it compulsory to sign him up for a meeting. Neither influence the course of therapy, nor control the process. The only exception is the situation when you turn to a medical therapist or clinical psychologist with a request concerning a person with a psychiatric diagnosis, which limits his sanity and legal capacity, who has lost criticality in relation to his condition.

But you can go to a psychologist yourself. Talk about how and why this person's condition worries you so much. What makes you try to decide everything for him, why you cannot let go of the illusion of control, why is it so important for you to try to influence what you cannot influence. What feelings does your powerlessness evoke in you in attempts to change and improve something in these relationships. And it will be really interesting work, useful first of all - for you, and secondly - for your relationship and with those who bother you, and with the world as a whole.