During the twenty months in which I experienced psychotherapy, perhaps one of the major constants was surprise……..This voyage of discovery was the most incredible I’ve ever known.
Roger Walsh
When you’ve worked as a therapist long enough you become a master debater. The process of challenging illogical thinking, offering counterpoints, issuing challenges, and when necessary outright confronting people all make a therapist a verbally agile craftsman in the use of language. I’ve talked my way out of many tight situations over the years, averted crisis after crisis, and untangled myself from more potential messes than I’d care to remember.
All of that ended today. My new therapist saw right through all my cleverness, diversions, and subterfuges, and made me face some hard truths about why I do the things I do. I was amazed at his gall, incredibly irritated, and appreciative that this might be the first person in my entire life who truly holds a mirror up to me in a brutally honest way.
Today we got into the twin demons of my defense structure, humor and intellectualization. I have become highly adept at shifting in and out of these two modes of communication throughout my entire life, and in doing so have managed to wind up exactly where I sit today. In other words they have allowed me to reach a position of some degree of success and even prestige, while also helping walk me right to the brink of the cliff of self-destruction.
The nature of defenses is they protect us from pain. Most people have several, and many of these are adaptive responses to stress and anxiety. Denial is a very common defense, as is rationalization, and I am more than familiar with both in my own life. Defenses become important when they begin to strongly interfere with our everyday functioning.
As was pointed out to me today, I have learned to talk circles around my own drinking problem and explain, rationalize, and expound on it in a myriad of different ways. What I haven’t done is take a long look into the mirror, and admit that what I am doing is utterly destroying me physically, mentally, and spiritually.
As was also pointed out to me today, I constantly deflect problems by telling little jokes, which creates a temporary subterfuge to avoid talking about my own problems. Hard to argue with this one. But hearing it so directly and so bluntly was still aggravating, which was of course because it struck directly on top of a nerve.
When I left today I felt stripped naked. The cardinal rule of stripping people of their defenses is you don’t engage in this process unless you have something else to offer in its place. No such offer was tended to me today. Perhaps he wanted me to experience what is known as “optimal frustration.” Which, according to constructivist therapy is necessary for fostering independence
optimal frustration has these main points:
- “Children, especially young ones, have fundamental tendencies toward being dependent, selfish, and irrational.
- The child must be forced through frustration to develop: a sense of self separate from caregivers; control of emotions and impulses; respect for others; adaptation to reality; and the skills of independent living.
- While caregivers should be sensitive and nurturing (that's the "optimal" part), frustration is the necessary and primary pathway through which children build the cognitive and affective structures of the self.”
The difficulty with understanding this, is that, despite the fact that I am in my thirties, I am the child in this scenario. This is known as “reparenting” and today I got some tough love. I’m trying deep down to shake off my anger and fully engage in this process.
Because…..Somewhere there is a real child who is depending on me, and I owe it to him to give him every bit of what I have to give without my personal baggage getting in the way. This is keeping me going right now. So yes, I will be “the child” in therapy if it means I am better able to help a real child who is teetering on the verge of the abyss. I am collecting and integrating myself and gathering strength for him, and for me. This time the stakes are much higher.
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