A few obesrvations on shrinks over 40-odd years
I discovered this group yesterday while looking around DU for something (anything) on grief. After reading a number of the posts here, I decided to add my own thoughts.
First, though, what prompted it was one of our cats going to cat heaven yesterday. Burt, an orange tabby, was with us for about twelve years. Friendly, curious, playful, smart, the whole bit, and we like to think he was a happy guy until we took him to our long-time vet yesterday and she gave us the bad news. We are both devastated, and I'm not even a cat person - far from it.
Anyway, I've seen a small number of shrinks on and off, for short periods, over the past forty-odd years, and I've noticed some interesting differences in their approaches. I'm in a creative field where a lot of people think depression goes with the territory, but I've also noticed that people in the artistic end of my field are far more prone to it (artistic and creative are two totally different things, but that's a whole other conversation).
The first time I went, during grad school, I didn't know I was depressed; I just thought there was something wrong. After a couple of sessions, she discovered it: she told me I was "shoulding" myself -- as in "this should be this/that way" and "he/she should/shouldn't do this/that" -- and needed to "shove the shoulds." That was a revelation, and since that time I've tried to keep the word "should" out of my vocabulary. She also told me that one of my biggest frustrations was that I was a racehorse working with a bunch of turtles.
A few years later, in a different city, I went to another shrink. This woman was rather pushy, but she did give me two takeaways. One was that a lot of managers in my company were regular clients of hers (which I found surprising), and the second was to point out that I was basically cutting off my nose to spite my face on this one issue I had.
So far, two shrinks, each for a short period, and I was in my early thirties. So I thought, okay, great, I walk in with a problem and they figure out what it is and tell me what I can do about it. Just like an MD or a plumber. Cool.
A few years later, different city again, I discovered the other approach: keep coming back and talking about your problems. These folks didn't give me anything to take away -- it was like I was there to vent (with an occasional question from them) until I figured out for myself what was wrong and what I would do about it, and then follow up for another period of time. So sure, "your next appointment is next week" ad infinitum.
That's when I developed a game plan for the next shrink, who again was a few years later in still a different city. On the first session, I spilled it out: I was depressed about this or that, I thought it was a pain in the derriere because it interfered with my life, and I wanted to figure out what to do about it in a short period of time. Basically, I said I wanted to cut to the chase. I could tell from her face that she wasn't too happy about a short-term patient, but she accepted it and we went at it, although I did have to repeat "so what do I do about it?" several times.
I don't have a clue if my first two shrinks were trained differently from the second batch, but their approaches were noticeably different. One was "let's fix the problem" and the other seemed to be "let's talk about you."
I also don't have a clue if my situation is "different" from so many other people, or if I'm just "lucky," but I hope these observations will make a few people think about whether their current counselor's approach is a good match for them. In my case, it took several counselors to help me realize what I really needed.
= new reply since forum marked as read
