The second season of In Treatment, with Gabriel Byrne, got started last night. Once again, it is a combination of interesting drama and therapy that is quite different from the therapy I think tends to be most helpful.
Once again, Paul, the therapist, seems more intent on telling his client what she might be feeling, thinking, and what he thinks she needs to do than on helping her to experience her own feelings and to feel safe and secure enough to share them with him.
"Living Like You Mean It", by Ronald J. Frederick, has just been published. It is based on a type of therapy I trained in (AEDP) and his subtitle probably says it best "Use the wisdom and power of your emotions to get the life you really want." In a nutshell, the idea is that we are often phobic of our own emotions (or of particular emotions) and that this can be problematic. Although some people feel "too much", it is quite common not to be aware of certain feelings, or to tamp them down, and this frequently leads to anxiety and other problems for us. We can learn, in a safe environment, to grow more comfortable in our ability to tolerate a fuller range of our emotions.
This is not the sort of therapy on display in "In Treatment". On the other hand, we do get to see the drama of Paul's client storming out of his office feeling misunderstood, understood in a way that felt uncomfortable to her, or a combination of the two. Fascinating TV (at least, to a therapist), but as for the therapy...
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