Coregulation For Therapists Quotes

The path of waiting and listening forgoes certainty and exposes us to a sense of tentative unknowing, which is often uncomfortable at best.

This may only be tolerable when we have developed some degree of trust in the inherent healing capacity built into the human system and the power of interpersonal receptivity to animate the process.

For most of us, this trust arrives because we have experienced it ourselves and can now embody it for others.

As this deep learning proceeds in us, we may be able to rest more easily into the waiting because the unknowing is increasingly being held within our expanding window of tolerance.

As we are able to work in this way, I believe our people get a felt sense of our profound and enduring respect for their inherent wisdom, something that is likely a unique and healing experience given their history of traumatic relationships.

I don't believe I have found any offering that is more empowering than respect. ~ Bonnie Badenoch

Perhaps after all, for all our talk of change, redemption or personal growth, for all our dependence on therapists, religious faith or mood-altering drugs both legal and non, we're doomed simply to go on repeating the same patterns over and over in our lives, dressing them up in different clothes like children at play so we can pretend we don't recognize them when we look into mirrors. ~ James Sallis

Instructing in cures, therapists always recommend that "each case be individualized." If this advice is followed, one becomes persuaded that those means recommended in textbooks as the best, means perfectly appropriate for the template case, turn out to be completely unsuitable in individual cases. ~ Anton Chekhov

The attachment to parental figures I am trying to describe here is an attachment to parents who have inflicted injury on their children. It is an attachment that prevents us from helping ourselves. The unfulfilled natural needs of the child are later transferred to therapists, partners, or our own children. We cannot believe that those needs were really ignored, or possibly even trampled on by our parents in such a way that we were forced to repress them. We hope that the other people we relate to will finally give us what we have been looking for, understand, support, and respect us, and relieve us of the difficult decisions life brings with it. As these expectations are fostered by the denial of childhood reality, we cannot give them up. As I said earlier, they cannot be relinquished by an act of will. But they will disappear in time if we are determined to face up to our own truth. This is not easy. It is almost always painful. But it is possible. In ~ Alice Miller

Bowlby's conviction that attachment needs continue throughout life and are not outgrown has important implications for psychotherapy. It means that the therapist inevitably becomes an important attachment figure for the patient, and that this is not necessarily best seen as a 'regression' to infantile dependence (the developmental 'train' going into reverse), but rather the activation of attachment needs that have been previously suppressed. Heinz Kohut (1977) has based his 'self psychology' on a similar perspective. He describes 'selfobject needs' that continue from infancy throughout life and comprise an individual's need for empathic responsiveness from parents, friends, lovers, spouses (and therapists). This responsiveness brings a sense of aliveness and meaning, security and self-esteem to a person's existence. Its lack leads to narcissistic disturbances of personality characterised by the desperate search for selfobjects - for example, idealisation of the therapist or the development of an erotic transference. When, as they inevitably will, these prove inadequate (as did the original environment), the person responds with 'narcissistic rage' and disappointment, which, in the absence of an adequate 'selfobject' cannot be dealt with in a productive way. ~ Jeremy Holmes

PATTERNS OF THE "SHY"

What else is common among people who identify themselves as "shy?" Below are the results of a survey that was administered to 150 of my program's participants. The results of this informal survey reveal certain facts and attitudes common among the socially anxious. Let me point out that these are the subjective answers of the clients themselves - not the professional opinions of the therapists. The average length of time in the program for all who responded was eight months. The average age was twenty-eight. (Some of the answers are based on a scale of 1 to 5, 1 being the lowest.)

-Most clients considered shyness to be a serious problem at some point in their lives. Almost everyone rated the seriousness of their problem at level 5, which makes sense, considering that all who responded were seeking help for their problem.
-60 percent of the respondents said that "shyness" first became enough of a problem that it held them back from things they wanted during adolescence; 35 percent reported the problem began in childhood; and 5 percent said not until adulthood. This answer reveals when clients were first aware of social anxiety as an inhibiting force.
-The respondents perceived the average degree of "sociability" of their parents was a 2.7, which translates to "fair"; 60 percent of the respondents reported that no other member of the family had a problem with "shyness"; and 40 percent said there was at least one other family ~ Jonathan Berent

I think there's some evidence that when it comes to being a doctor or nurse, a police officer or therapist, that empathetic engagement leads to burn-out. Imagine if you're dealing with severely ill children, and you felt their pain all the time, and the pain of their parents - you wouldn't be able to do that job for very long. It would kill you. ~ Paul Bloom

The more familiar you become with your biography, the better you will have learned to perceive your internal signals and take them seriously, and the easier you can judge whether your therapists follow along with you and help you or whether they only serve to confuse you more. If you don't want to pay the bill for someone else's confusion, you must have the strength and the wisdom to give up a therapist or a confusing group as you would give up a mechanic who politely but blindly tried to fix your car while ignoring and wanting to ignore what was really wrong in the first place. ~ Alice Miller

Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy

There are almost no pure cognitive or behavioral therapists. Instead, most therapists use a combination of both techniques. This is known as cognitive-behavioral therapy. It is generally recognized as the best therapy for social anxiety.
In cognitive-behavioral therapy, a therapist helps you identity maladaptive thinking patterns and replace them with new ways of thinking. He or she also teaches you relaxation techniques and new behaviors that make you feel more comfortable in social situations.
Cognitive-behavioral therapy uses many of the same techniques that we explored in the previous chapter. Although you might make great strides on your own, sometimes it is easier and faster to have someone guide you. Often it is difficult for people to explore hidden beliefs about themselves. A professional therapist is experienced in working with people who are trying to change. Often a therapist will see connections in your situation that you cannot.

Carlos was terrified of speaking in class. Whenever the teacher called on him, his heart raced, he blushed, and his stomach felt upset.
His therapist first had him focus on his thoughts during class. As an experiment, she had him purposely answer a question incorrectly during biology class. To his surprise, the teacher didn't make a big deal out of it, and the other students didn't laugh. As a result, Carlos realized that his imagined consequences for making errors were gr ~ Heather Moehn

People can only understand their own pain. Even a genuine desire to help a person with a disability can become a burden or a discouragement for the person on the receiving end. It is important for helpers and therapists to ask themselves, If I was the person I'm helping … ? It would be useful also if they double-checked that the assistance they're offering is of real relevance to the person with special needs, and not about gratifying their own desire to care. ~ Naoki Higashida

And it is essential that therapists arrive at this knowledge, for the world view of patients is always an essential part of their problems, and a correction in their world view is necessary for their cure. So I say to those I supervise: Find out your patients' religions even if they say they don't have any. ~ M. Scott Peck

Exploring Feelings for Young Children with High-Functioning Autism or Asperger's Disorder: The STAMP Treatment Manual offers practical recommendations and creative practices that will certainly help young children with high functioning autism or Asperger's syndrome overcome their struggles with the really tough issues blocking their positive growth and development. Therapists, educators and parents caring for autistic children who endure a heavy load of anger, distrust, difficult interpersonal relationships, poor self-esteem and self-doubt need this excellent book. ~ Liane Holliday Willey

We therapists often make inaccurate assumptions about people living with DID and DDNOS. They often appear to be "just like us," so we often assume their experience of life reflects our own. But this is profoundly untrue. It results in a communication gap, and, as a consequence, treatment errors. Because the dominant culture is one of persons with a single sense of self, most with multiple "selves" have learned to hide their multiplicity and imitate those who are singletons (that is, have a single, non-fragmented personality). Therapists who do not understand this sometimes describe their clients' alters without acknowledging their dissociation, saying only that they have different "moods." In overlooking dissociation, this description fails to recognize the essential truth of such disorders, and of the alters. It was difficult for me to comprehend what life was like for my first few dissociative clients. ~ Alison Miller

I've never had very high regard for therapists. I owe my health, my mental survival, to my friends and loved ones. ~ Salman Rushdie

Helping professionals, therapists, life coaches, healers can greatly assist you in changing your life for the better, but they pale in comparison to the power thats gained from developing a relationship with yourself. It's you that holds the power for change ~ Renae A. Sauter

Whereas we'd once believed that the symptoms and behavior exhibited by our clients primarily reflected their psychological defenses - a view that attributed a degree of intentionality, no matter how unconscious - now, we better understood the symptoms as manifestations of instinctive brain and bodily survival responses. We understood that sympathetic activation fuels anxiety and rage, parasympathetic dominance causes shutdown and passive-aggressive behavior, flight responses spur fleeing the therapist's office, and fight responses lead to verbal or physical aggression or violence turned against the self. When clients self-harm, for example, these days, we understand their actions to be instinctive, rather than thought out - an effort to regulate or relieve, rather than punish. ~ Janina Fisher

My therapist in Paris once told me that being creative is a better form of therapy for me than sitting on his couch. ~ Julie Delpy

I go to all the appointments. All the meetings. I sit with the team of inclusion teachers, occupational therapists, doctors, social workers, remedial teachers, and the cab driver that gets him from appointment to appointment, and I push for everything that can be done for my autistic boy. But I will never have a plan that will fix him. Noah is not something to be fixed.
And our life will never be normal. And people always say,
oh well what's normal, there's no such thing really, and I say
sure there is ... there's a spectrum ... and there's lots and lots of possibilities within that spectrum, and trust me buddy, ducks on the moon ain't one of them ... .but ... .
In this abnormal life, I get to live with a pirate,
and a bird fancier, and an ogre, and a hedgehog, and many many superheroes, and aliens and monsters
and an angel.
I get to go to infinity and beyond. ~ Kelley Jo Burke

Worse, Roger erupted into outbursts of uncontrollable rage, without apparent cause. In time I learned that this was one symptom of what therapists formerly described as a manic-depressive personality. Now they call the condition bipolar disorder. Roger sometimes telephoned and began the conversation, "You better listen to me, Dad, or you are one dead man." Then, half an hour later, "Dad, can we go to the Yankee game tonight?" Bipolar disorder is terrifying, perhaps most of all for the person suffering from it. ~ Roger Kahn

So we had psychiatrists and counselors and therapists around the set regularly, especially for those scenes in which Jason would be dealing with a patient to make sure we were doing it all appropriately. ~ Alan Thicke

With regard to complex trauma survivors, self-determination and autonomy require that the therapist treat each client as the "authority" in determining the meaning and interpretation of his or her personal life history, including (but not limited to) traumatic experiences (Harvey, 1996). Therapists can inadvertently misappropriate the client's authority over the meaning and significance of her or his memories (and associated symptoms, such as intrusive reexperiencing or dissociative flashbacks) by suggesting specific "expert" interpretations of the memories or symptoms. Clients who feel profoundly abandoned by key caregivers may appear deeply grateful for such interpretations and pronouncements by their therapists, because they can fulfill a deep longing for a substitute parent who makes sense of the world or takes care of them. However, this delegation of authority to the therapist can backfire if the client cannot, or does not, take ownership of her or his own memories or life story by determining their personal meaning.Moreover, the client can be trapped in a stance of avoidance because trauma memories are never experienced, processed, and put to rest. Helping a client to develop a core sense of relational security and the capacity to regulate (and recover from) extreme hyper- or hypoarousal is essential if the client is to achieve a self-determined and autonomous approach to defining the meaning and impact of trauma memories, a crucial goal of posttraumatic therapy. ~ Christine A. Courtois

Will protect you from your suffering. You can't cry it away or eat it away or starve it away or walk it away or punch it away or even therapy it away. It's just there, and you have to survive it. You have to endure it. You have to live through it and love it and move on and be better for it and run as far as you can in the direction of your best and happiest dreams across the bridge that was built by your own desire to heal. Therapists and friends can help you along the way, but the healing - the genuine healing, the actual real-deal, down-on-your-knees-in-the-mud change - is entirely and absolutely up to you. ~ Cheryl Strayed

I know. So, I was angry with you. I didn't know why. I was angry with the world. I did know why. I hated all my therapists for being useless. I was this little ball of self-destructive fury, and none of them could do anything but tell me that I was a little ball of self-destructive fury. [ ... ] I knew I was angry. Tell me what to do with that anger, please. ~ Gayle Forman

Nietzsche claimed that a philosopher's system of thought always arises from his autobiography, and I believe that to be true for all therapists - in fact, for anyone who thinks about thought. At a conference approximately ~ Irvin D. Yalom

All of my friends were seeing a therapist, and I thought something was wrong with me that I didn't see a therapist. So I went to a therapist to find out why I wasn't seeing a therapist. And it turns out I'm very screwed up. Thank God I found a therapist to tell me for $125 an hour. ~ Ellen DeGeneres

The word "holistic" is meant to distinguish their method from the purely numerical process at less-selective state universities or community colleges, where a committee will automatically admit any applicant with scores or grades above an explicit threshold. It's a cagey word, "holistic," borrowed from New Age yogis, Gestalt therapists, makers of herbal toothpaste, and other mystifiers whose prestige depends on your not being able to figure out exactly what they're doing. A more practical and accurate term for holistic admissions is "completely subjective." Kat ~ Andrew Ferguson

When looking at triggers for mental health problems, therapists often identify an intense change in someone's life as a major factor. ~ Matt Haig

Alternative therapists don't kill many people, but they do make a great teaching tool for the basics of evidence-based medicine, because their efforts to distort science are so extreme. ~ Ben Goldacre

When I was arrested,' I said, 'I had to undergo a psychiatric evaluation. So, I've actually been certified sane enough to stand trial, which is more than I can say for most of the people I know, including the psychiatrist who certified me. In fact, to get convicted in a court of law, you've gotta be declared sane. Which means that every convict in the world, in a jail cell, is sane, A-Grade and Certified. And with so many people on the outside seeing therapists and counsellors and all, pretty soon the only people who'll be able to prove they're sane will be the people behind bars. ~ Gregory David Roberts

And so I was very grateful that I didn't do the British stiff upper lip, but I went straight to a therapist. And she was wonderful and helpful, and I went for about two years. ~ Lynn Redgrave

You cannot do any more for me," I said. "Since I have begun to depend on you I feel weaker than ever before. I have disappointed you by acting neurotically at the very moment when I should have shown the wisdom of your guidance. I don't want to ever come back to you. I feel that I must go and work and live and forget about all this. ~ Anais Nin

Ultimately the most profound problems with psychotherapy have always been that instead of possessing any contrarian or transcendent values to enable it to produce insights countervailing against our dysfunctional and incoherent and humanly destructive culture, its "therapists" have been virtually all shills or agents for this culture, trying to accommodate their patients to a fundamentally unhealthy and insane way of life. ~ Kenny Smith

Now on to reparative therapy, I think counseling is a wonderful tool for anybody regardless of what struggle they bring to the table. I think we can all use a little bit of counseling on planet earth today. But when it comes to reparative therapy, the reason we have distanced ourselves from it is because some of the things that they employ and some of the messages that I've heard from reparative therapists with regards to what someone can expect once they get through that type of therapy. ~ Alan Chambers

In the last month, I've realized in a way I never had before that this is and will be my life -- this day-to-day work on and for and with Benj. He will improve and develop and there will be many rewarding moments. But he has a lifelong disability and he will always need loads of effort on his behalf, both in every single interaction with him and with his teachers and therapists. It can be extremely exhausting and overwhelming... But the blessings of being his mother far outweigh the worry and stress and fatigue. Truly he has made me an infinitely stronger, more patient and compassionate person. I can do this. ~ Priscilla Gilman

Coming to terms with your sexual abuse and speaking out is necessary for healing. Whether is alone in a therapist's office, in a book or to simply share your trauma with a trusted person the truth always heals.
Let's not conform ourselves to live in silence with this trauma. Silence perpetuates more abuse. ~ Cecibel Contreras

We are navigating through the unconscious, and this brings us to the occult, something hidden, secret and "difficult to understand." When things bog down, it is time for something else. Therapists need to have a variety of methods and perspectives ready. For example, dysfunctional families create a lot of confusion, havoc and pain. Interlopers, straw men and false gods have usurped the soul's central position - and oftentimes therapists have a chess game on their hands. ~ Stephen Poplin

Each State has its own health insurance mandates, and some of them are good, but there are about 1,800 of them all across the Nation, including provisions for acupuncturists, massage therapists, and hair replacements. ~ Timothy Murphy

It has been a long road for us as family therapists to reach an understanding of just this phenomenon-the sense of the whole, the family system. While we could have explained the theory of meeting with the whole family to the Brices, at that anxious moment it would not have touched them. There are situations where, in the words of Franz Alexander, the woice of the intellent is too soft. The family needed to test us. They needed the experience of our being firm. As unpleasant as it was, our response must have reassured them. They knew, and we sensed, how difficult their situation was and how tumultuous it could become. They simply has to know that we could withstand the stress if they dared open it up. ~ Augustus Y. Napier

The phenomenon I'm describing, rooted so firmly in that primal human drive for self-preservation, probably doesn't sound surprising: We all know that people bring their best selves to interactions with their bosses and save their lesser moments for their peers, spouses, or therapists. And yet, so many managers aren't aware of it when it's happening (perhaps because they enjoy being deferred to). It simply doesn't occur to them that after they get promoted to a leadership position, no one is going to come out and say, "Now that you are a manager, I can no longer be as candid with you." Instead, many new leaders assume, wrongly, that their access to information is unchanged. But that is just one example of how hidden-ness affects a manager's ability to lead. ~ Ed Catmull

We may find ourselves in a role similar to that of a gardener as we cultivate a space in which healing can naturally unfold.

In terms of neurobiology, this stance encourages us to lean into the reassuring awareness that our systems already contain seeds awaiting our attention.

For some examples, we humans are always seeking the warmest possible attachments we can imagine (Cozolino, Siegel), our brains are continuously yearning for the arrival of a co-organizing other (Badenoch, Cozolino, Schore), emotional regulation flows naturally from being in the presence of someone we trust (Beckes & Coan) and even our nervous systems have a preference for the social engagement circuitry that sustains connection (Porges).

With this kind of support from the biology inherent in both practitioner and patient, our bodies may begin to open into a welcoming state as others come towards us, with a sense of partnership being established rather than someone doing something to us.

However this also means letting go of the potential certainty that comes from feeling we are in charge. ~ Bonnie Badenoch

When clients relinquish symptoms, succeed in achieving a personal goal, or make healthier choices for themselves, subsequently many will feel anxious, guilty, or depressed. That is, when clients make progress in treatment and get better, new therapists understandably are excited. But sometimes they will also be dismayed as they watch the client sabotage her success by gaining back unwanted weight or missing the next session after an important breakthrough and deep sharing with the therapist. Thus, loyalty and allegiance to symptoms - maladaptive behaviors originally developed to manage the "bad" or painfully frustrating aspects of parents - are not maladaptive to insecurely attached children. Such loyalty preserves "object ties," or the connection to the "good" or loving aspects of the parent. Attachment fears of being left alone, helpless, or unwanted can be activated if clients disengage from the symptoms that represent these internalized "bad" objects (for example, if the client resolves an eating disorder or terminates a problematic relationship with a controlling/jealous partner). The goal of the interpersonal process approach is to help clients modify these early maladaptive schemas or internal working models by providing them with experiential or in vivo re-learning (that is, a "corrective emotional experience"). Through this real-life experience with the therapist, clients learn that, at least sometimes, some relationships can be different and do not have to follow th ~ Edward Teyber

A knowledgeable physical therapist can slowly build up patients' confidence by reassuring them that there is no structural problem and reminding them of the physiologic reason for the pain. ~ John E. Sarno

War thoughts again. I think back to the business cards from that health shop earlier on. I think about miniature wars that individuals fight all the time. They fight against cellulite, or negative emotions, or addictions, or stress. I think about how we can now hire all different sorts of mercenaries to help us fight against ourselves…Therapists, manicurists, hairdressers, personal trainers, life coaches. But what's it all for? What do all these little wars achieve? Although it is a part of my life too, and I want to be thin and pretty and not laughed at in the street and not so stressed and mad that I start screaming on the tube, it suddenly seems a little bit ridiculous. All the time we do these things we are trying to enlist ourselves into a bigger war. We are trying to join up, constantly, with the enemy.
-
Hitler tried to impose his shiny, blonde, neat, sparkling world on us all and we resisted. So how is it that when McDonald's and Disney and The Gap and L'Oreal and all the others try to do the same thing we all just say, 'OK'? Hitler needed marketing, that's all. His propaganda was, of course, brilliant for its time, everyone knows that. What a great idea, to make people feel that they belong to something, that their identity makes them special. If Hilter had bee able to enlist a twenty-first-century marketing department, would he have been able to sell Nazism to everyone? Why not? You can just see a beautiful, thin woman with her long blonde hair moving sof ~ Scarlett Thomas

The overarching principle of a therapeutic relationship is that therapists should be ever mindful of a variant of the Hippocratic oath and, to the degree possible, strive to "do no more harm" (Courtois, 2010). Complex trauma clients have already experienced considerable harm, much of it at the hands of other human beings. As a result of the ubiquitous processes of transference, attachment styles, and IWM [Internal working models], these clients often view the therapist's behavior and their relationship through the lens of their trauma-related negative interpersonal expectancies and unhealed emotional wounds and injuries. Therapists should not be surprised to be "guilty until proven innocent", not because clients with complex trauma histories are "unfair" or "unreasonable" but precisely the opposite - because the most realistic self-protective stance for them (given the fact that betrayal and harm have been more the rule than the exception) is to "distrust first and verify" (or to be hypervigilant) rather than to start with an expectation of safety and trustworthiness. ~ Christine A. Courtois

One of the frustrations for therapists of all persuasions is the knowledge that a person's circumstances will change only if it is within that person's power to decide to make some changes, and that when the cause of her unhappiness lies with someone else, it is almost impossible to help her feel better. Rather than admitting that the task is impossible, mainstream therapies simply change the focus of the blame. When the victim is blamed, it serves to make the task of the therapist so much easier but, for the victim, such a change of focus amounts to psychoppression - that is, oppression within the context of therapy. ~ Betty McLellan

The play account rule is that it must be spent every month. That's right! Each month you have to blow all the money in that account in a way that makes you feel rich. For example, imagine walking into a massage center, dumping all the money from your account on the counter, pointing to the massage therapists, and saying, "I want both of you on me. With the hot rocks and the frickin' cucumbers. After that, bring me lunch!" ~ T. Harv Eker

Beginning therapists must learn that there are times to sit in silence, sometimes in silent communion, sometimes simply while waiting for patients' thoughts to appear in a form that they may be expressed. ~ Irvin D. Yalom

They – note the 'they' – paid Dr Stone to figure out what had destroyed the patient entering the ward. In each case a bullet had been fired at him, somewhere, at some time, in his life. The bullet entered him and the pain began to spread out. Insidiously, the pain filled him up until he split in half, right down the middle. The task of the staff, and even of the other patients, was to put the person back together but this could not be done so long as the bullet remained. All that lesser therapists did was note the person split into two pieces and begin the job of patching him back into a unity; but they failed to find and remove the bullet. The fatal bullet fired at the person was the basis of Freud's original attack on the psychologically injured person; Freud had understood: he called it a trauma. Later on, everyone got tired of searching for the fatal bullet; it took too long. Too much had to be learned about the patient. Dr Stone had a paranormal talent, like his paranormal Bach remedies which were a palpable hoax, a pretext to listen to the patient. Rum with a flower dipped in it – nothing more, but a sharp mind hearing what the patient said. ~ Philip K. Dick

Sometimes, just the act of venting is helpful. Counseling provides a safe haven for precisely that kind of free-ranging release: You can say things in the therapist's office, with the therapist present, that would be incendiary or hurtful in your living room. ~ Laura Wasser

If I ever have more than $37 in my pocket I´m going to open a school for girls with bad attitudes where we basically talk to therapists all day while wearing soft pants and occasionally taking a field trip to the nearest elote cart. ~ Samantha Irby