Careful! There's A Baby In That Bath Water!

Having had some negative experience with health care, it becomes increasingly important to be able to experience care that is genuinely supportive and beneficial. Otherwise there is the very real danger that you as a client in therapy might be inclined to "throw out the baby with the bath water". In this situation that might mean closing yourself to information or strategies that could be helpful to you, because you associate them - perhaps mistakenly - with your previous unfortunate, or even damaging experience.

An example: a client has had unsupportive medical experiences regarding his very real disabling health condition. He may have been told, or it may have been implied that this condition was "all in his head", and that there was nothing "really" wrong with him. As a result of this treatment, and perhaps other previous experiences, he concludes that anything associated with the conventional medical establishment is worthless, and cannot possibly be of benefit to him. Instead, he spends years exploring and working with "alternative" practitioners, to try to get some relief from his debilitating health distress. This in fact IS beneficial, both medically and spiritually, the client feels supported and validated, and does indeed gain some measure of relief.

This same client now finds himself in need of psychotherapy, and through a set of circumstances not altogether of his choosing, finds a therapist who uses an eclectic approach, incorporating some fairly orthodox, mainstream treatment models with other, more cutting edge ones. While the more "alternative" models are appealing to this client, he has, even before meeting with the therapist, decided that certain methods, because they are "mainstream", cannot be useful to him. This is unfortunate, because some of these more conventional methods are actually very powerfully therapeutic, and can in fact be presented and implemented in ways that are comfortable, supportive and effective.

After a few sessions of therapy, when a good therapeutic relationship has been established, the therapist is able to skillfully explore all of this with the client, and the c lient is able to begin to recognize his bias, and that it may in fact be more hurtful to him than helpful in his therapy.

In general, it is the case that a black and white approach to just about anything, while in some ways understandable, will prove to be more harmful than helpful.



www.matthewdavid-lpcc.webs.com