I would say most people entering therapy hope to change things about themselves or the way they see situations in order to feel happier and more productive. But what really causes those inner changes through the therapeutic process? The most important in my opinion is the client's ability to be honest with themselves. The purpose of therapy is not for the therapist to back up all your perceptions of yourself and your relationships, rather it is to identify unconscious patterns that are self-sabotaging and that cause you to find yourself with the same type of problematic relationships and situations repetitively.
You are the common denominator of all your relationships. The human mind can justify all sorts of things and compose theories to fit the narrative they want to believe. Therapy is a challenge to you to examine and investigate your own thoughts and feelings, to take accountability for situations in your life and to see what role you are playing in sustaining them. It is not the world's responsibility to avoid triggering you, it is your responsibility to empower yourself and work on your triggers so the power to affect your mood does not stay in someone else's hands. You can't change the way other people feel about you or make someone feel or act a certain way towards you. People will form their own judgements as the relationship progresses. When you look into the world and think that people always feel a certain way about you, this is very likely something within yourself that you project outwards. A common one is jealousy; sometimes this is used as a defense mechanism by people who are not likeable (believing everyone is jealous of them) so that they do not have to do the inner work to change what it is about themselves that causes people not to want to be friends with them. They may be aggressive, selfish, domineering, or critical, yet think others are are mistreating them when they try to defend themselves. They may enjoy giving other people negative feedback but be unable to receive the same in return. They may have high expectations of other people but not realize that to have these fulfilled they also have to fulfill the other person's expectations of them. As a result they find themselves lonely and isolated, never able to form long-lasting and healthy relationships and justify this by blaming others for being jealous. You can keep blaming other people but at the end of the day there is no one with whom to share an intimate and trusting bond with. As a therapist, I can validate the way you feel about something or someone, even if I don't agree with it, because that is the way you feel. However, the objective reality based on facts may be different than what an individual feels and this may be a source of their interpersonal problems. I ensure to point this out these discrepancies as well. Sometimes people will project the same feelings they have with people in their life onto their therapist and these are great learning opportunities to point out self-sabotaging patterns, if the client is open to hearing them. It is not the therapist's responsibility to change you, it is your responsibility to be honest with yourself in order to drive the change you seek.
21 Comments
Tess
8/31/2022 09:06:16 am
That part about the jealousy is right on, I’m a therapist as well and I’ve noticed clients who just are totally unaware of how they push people away with their negativity. They aren’t even worth being jealous of most of the time!
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Samantha Samuels
8/31/2022 05:07:51 pm
I think its the path of least resistance to push the responsibility to change on other people and that is what they tend to do. The same pattern emerges with people who believe multiple past partners were "narcissistic", when they tend to have these types of traits themselves. There is an attachment to playing the role of the victim.
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Matt
8/31/2022 11:49:07 pm
The ego gets a lot of satisfaction out of playing this victim role because it gathers sympathy from other people. I don’t think it’s great having people feel sorry for you, never understood the appeal.
Tess
12/19/2022 10:51:42 pm
I recently appeared on a podcast with another therapist discussing about client's feelings for others in their life mirroring their own outlook. Predictably, a client of mine who thinks she is the ultimate goddess, everyone is jealous of her and she is the centre of the universe, confronted me in session thinking I was speaking just about her. She ran a long rant (that she paid me $200 to listen to!!) about how she thinks I am jealous of her and listed out the most ridiculous reasons. And then she decided to terminate therapy. Good riddance! She knows that is the truth and the truth can be painful, and that is why she had such a strong reaction. I did challenge her notions but once someone is convinced of their own delusions, it is of no use anymore to respond. It is so sad to see her life; always covered with loads of makeup to cover her plain looking face, lonely, isolated with no friends and family, without a job and living off her parents' wealth. She has some pie in the sky delusions about a business that will never be successful and she finds trouble with everyone. I tried my best to be kind but sometimes it's just impossible to deal with these clients. Do you have any suggestions?
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Samantha Samuels
12/20/2022 09:46:13 pm
That sounds like a really difficult and disappointing experience with your client. I feel like she acted in a cowardly way. Namely, she knew you couldn’t really respond to her insults and accusations as fully as you would have liked and you had to keep it professional by limiting your responses in the role of a therapist. She could dish it out but she couldn’t take it. It reminds me of insecure people who write long angry rants and then block you so they don’t have to face your response or they communicate in some other way where they know you can’t or won’t respond. I try to extend empathy but at the same time, it is hard to maintain respect when people engage in this behaviour.
Matt
8/31/2022 11:38:58 pm
You mention projecting onto the therapist, that was my aha moment when my therapist correctly identified that what I was accusing her of was the same thing I was accusing multiple people of in my life. I didn’t want to admit it at first and got angry with her but upon reflection I realize something within me needed to heal that pattern before it manifests yet again with someone else.
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Samantha Samuels
9/1/2022 10:01:55 pm
I always go back to the idea put forward by Anais Nin that people don’t see the world as it is but rather as they are. I do feel people can be angry, defensive or experience some negative emotion when this type of feedback is given but ultimately it is for their own good. It is one of the most useful things a therapist can do for a client. What they do with this feedback is up to them.
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LT
9/3/2022 10:11:57 pm
That’s true, that feelings are not the same as objective reality. Some people confuse the two and they assume things that have no evidence behind them just because they feel a certain way about it.
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Samantha Samuels
9/7/2022 08:36:31 am
The thought record in cognitive behavioural therapy is an excellent tool to encourage the mind to be more balanced in thinking. We usually try to find facts that support our beliefs but rarely do we actively recall facts that would go against the belief.
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Robert T
9/7/2022 10:15:27 pm
As long as people stay stuck blaming everyone else in their life the same story repeats over and over. More difficult each time as the universe has to scream harder and harder to get your attention. I finally realized one of these patterns myself in my early 30s with ex girlfriends and since then have changed and been happily married for almost 17 years now.
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Samantha Samuels
9/9/2022 10:17:39 pm
That’s a wonderful story Robert, thanks for sharing. The universe does start out with small whispers but when we ignore this inner intuition, it gets louder and louder, sometimes with a large scale shakeup in your life.
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Layla
9/11/2022 08:44:50 am
My sister would always accuse me of being jealous of her since we were teenagers. Interestingly, I have always been the one more complimented by others for my beauty, intelligence and financial success. I have more friends and a loving family of my own where as she can’t seem to maintain healthy relationships with anyone and tends to feel negatively towards others in a general sense. The way she interprets people’s behaviour seems to be cynical and judgemental. I’ve tried to help her because I know I’m in a better position, and I try not to respond to her insults because she is struggling in life. Maybe, this is a way for her to feel more successful than she really is?
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Samantha Samuels
9/11/2022 10:02:12 pm
Sometimes when people are extremely successful in an area of life, it could be true that it invokes some degree of jealousy from others. However, in the case of people who aren't successful (as you feel is the case with your sister), calling someone jealous could be a way to avoid taking responsibility for the fact that she lacks proper skills to build success and healthy relationships. I usually assess it by seeing if they have a pattern of accusing many others of the same type of thing, is it a global outlook they have of other people and the world. Do they have healthy relationships in their life or are they always blaming others? It sounds like you may believe she is trying to pull herself up by pulling you down?
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Kara
9/18/2022 09:24:20 am
That is exactly like my sister lol! It is a way to convince herself that she is more successful because in her heart she knows the truth. Still, she is my sister and I love her so I don’t insult her back but I do make it clear I won’t listen to her rants and will only communicate when she speaks respectfully to me.
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Miss V
9/22/2022 12:25:00 pm
I've learned a lot about the way in which I was responsible for enabling people to treat me a certain way through therapy. Once I accepted my part in this and stopped the behaviours, their expectations changed accordingly. Honesty is the best policy.
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Samantha Samuels
9/25/2022 10:31:27 am
The change must come from the inner self, only then can you see changes in the outer world. It doesn’t matter how you change your appearance or if you move somewhere totally new, unless your thoughts and behaviour towards other people and external situations changes, people will respond in the same way as they did before.
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Gracie
10/6/2022 10:33:25 pm
This resonates with me because when I went through my own inner process of change, the people who I ended up with after were very different from those in my life before. It’s your energy that attracts people to you who are on the same energetic field.
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Samantha Samuels
10/12/2022 10:39:14 pm
It is definitely your energy that attracts people to you, not merely who you would ideally like to attract.
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Rita
10/21/2022 12:40:41 pm
Everyone we meet is a teacher in some sense, and those who provoke the deepest reactions from me are my best ones.
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Samantha Samuels
11/29/2022 06:45:37 am
Yes I agree. I also think that you know you are growing when you don’t have an emotional reaction to people who intentionally try to insult or hurt you. Sometimes those who you try to help the most don’t appreciate what you have done for them. But to me that’s fine because I’ve always believed that what other people do is their karma and how I react is mine. You see him or her as a wounded person trying to wound others to make themselves feel better and can extend empathy rather than feeling negative emotion towards yourself or them.
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Sara
11/26/2022 05:20:59 pm
It is wonderful when you can use your own shadow to become a teacher for others through your work. What we see in others is what we have within ourselves. The people that enter our lives are reflections of who we are, including clients and coworkers, hence why we chose them, especially the ones that provoke the deepest parts of our psyches.
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