18 November 2013
Should I Be Concerned If My Therapist Sees A Therapist?
Short answer: no.
Long answer… If you don’t feel that seeing a therapist yourself (or therapy itself) is bad, then why should it be concerning if your therapist chooses to see someone? Many therapists see their own therapist, and it shouldn’t be surprising. After all, therapists are tasked with working with a wide array of potential concerns from an even wider array of individuals and couples. That’s a lot of emotion and anger, and anxiety to contend with; depending upon what’s going on in that therapist’s life sometimes the therapist-as-therapist and the therapist-as-private-individual divide can become difficult to delineate.
A rough metaphor would be working with a fitness trainer and then one day coming into the gym and seeing your trainer privately working out, perhaps even struggling with her regimen in a way that is proportionate to your own.
This concern speaks to an expectation in some quarters that therapists should be detached experts who should have no need for personal therapy. After all, what kind of therapist would you turn to if they needed help? Well, the answer is that we all need help from time to time. And I’m skeptical of the “detached expert” expectation – you cannot after all be interpersonally detached and interpersonally present at the same time. One only needs to read this article about a detached expert and his experience with PTSD as a result of his own practice to understand that it’s (for lack of a better word) crazy to assume that even the most accomplished mental health professional doesn’t require intermittent self care from time to time.
If you are interested in learning more about my services, about me, or perhaps booking an appointment, please call me at 416-873-7828 or email me at info@downtowntherapy.ca for more information.
filed under: anxiety• general info• psychotherapy• PTSD
6 November 2013
Depression: ‘Second biggest cause of disability’ in world
I thought I would share an article from the BBC about the prevalence of depression around the world, and its status as a major concern.
You can read it here.
I’m happy that this topic is getting attention, though of course it opens many questions in its wake. In my experience, everyone who suffers from depression suffers in their own way which is often inflected by the culture in which they either live or were raised. The question no one seems to want to ask is, if only because the answer is so complex: what do we do about it?
If you are interested in learning more about my services, about me, or perhaps booking an appointment, please call me at 416-873-7828 or email me at info@downtowntherapy.ca for more information.
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