By
Esther Israel
August 18, 2018
Sometimes people elect to go to talk therapy and make disclosures of fresh wounds, gripes and misgivings in the hopes of closure by the end of the session. Disclosure for closure could be a wack-a-mole trap, with the therapist resolving one issue per session, only to have another problem pop up the following session. Not all problems require solutions and not all solutions involve problem solving.
Talk therapy is a learning experience. What sets you off? Do you know how you offend others? Do you know what to do when you realize you’ve offended someone? Do you know how to stop offending? These are not the types of questions that lead us to feel good about ourselves, so they largely remain unasked, in and out of talk therapy.
Being stuck is extremely unpleasant, but movement doesn’t necessarily involve progress. If we take action but we don’t learn from what we’re doing, it will not yield lasting change. For instance, presenting with a crisis or new complaint each session warrants consideration of level of openness, commitment to change and willingness to share in a learning experience.
Questions the helping professional can ponder with those in distress that may elicit commitment to change are: What are the values and goals that weave your story? How do you feel about where you think you are heading? If you want to be in charge of your future, what do you need to do that you don’t want to do or haven’t done before?
As much as we may feel we are casualties of circumstances, we are creatures of habit. At the same time, life is predictable and the world seems unjust. The past offers us information about how we’ve coped with distress and how we are likely to continue coping. Talk therapy asks us to try something other than reporting on injustices (legitimately) experience. If we allow for an interruption of our old patterns, we will learn trust, cooperation and collaboration. This changes our experience of life.
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