Why Seek Therapy

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Re: Willing to an extent?

From: Ellen-Marie Silverman
Date: 06 Oct 2012
Time: 14:54:45 -0500
Remote Name: 76.230.146.138

Comments

Hello, Karly. I appreciate your question; it is so basic. When clients and clinicians work together on mutually agreed upon goals, using mutually agreed upon strategies and methods, it is quite possible and likely that impasses, such as you described, will nevertheless occur. Those are the times when careful reassessment by both as to the aims and purpose of treatment needed to be undertaken and previous decisions about each re-considered. /// The example you gave of an impasse was one where the client was fearful of taking the next step in the treatment program. This is not an unusual happenstance at all, not in stuttering therapy or in other therapies I know something about, such as swallow therapy and voice therapy. /// Change, even change we say and believe we want, can, and often is, frightening to everyone. Perhaps, you know this from personal experience. (You may want to read a book about overcoming fear of change, very accessibly written, by Caroline Myss entitled, "Why People Don't Change and How They Can," also available in VHS and, I think, DVD versions.) Scaling up to the most fearful interpersonal encounter by first entering a succession of scenarios associated with increasing levels of fear for the client, i.e., from comfortable to terrifying, which some may call desensitization, may be helpful. /// I could say more and will if you a post a follow-up question, but for now let me just say to go slow helping the client learn to face what he/she fears that has been a mutually agreed upon goal, but keep on keeping on moving toward the goal. /// I reember hearing someone say something to the effect that what we fear most is what we most need to do, with preparation and reasonable caution, of course. /// Again, Karly, thank-you for raising an issue that I suspect is also of interest to many grad students. Best wishes, Ellen-Marie Silverman


Last changed: 10/22/12