Posted by Dinah on August 31, 2007, at 11:22:05
In reply to Magic Moment - very long, posted by DAisym on August 31, 2007, at 2:19:15
Daisy, I doubt anything I (a client who openly wants forever therapy) would say could influence your friend. But I think he's missing a salient point. It's those moments that are actual catalysts to see things differently, to do things differently. Change doesn't come with understanding something intellectually and doesn't even come all the time with struggling to think of things differently or to do things differently.
A lot of times change comes with small or large moments of grace. With things that touch us. At unexpected times even.
My therapist is fond of saying that Siddhartha might have found enlightenment when he quit looking for it and sat under the Bodhi tree, but that he might not have found it without the years of preparation he put in.
I think of therapy as being the same way. The hard work prepares us, but the special moments, large and small, change us.
My biggest changes have come from 1) a wince, 2) an unscripted glance, and 3) saying something to someone in chat that my therapist had likely said to me a million times but with the sudden bone deep realization that it applied to *me*.
What you described was one of those special moments of attunement. I've experienced them, although my therapist is not as likely to acknowledge them (or remember them). And of course I'd like to have them again. I might even seek to have them again. But that doesn't mean they can't effect deep change. They can.
I'm not sure what you described was a matter of gratification. But why is gratification necessarily bad? Even soothing and feeling good, which admittedly we could potentially begin to look for from our therapist, can if used wisely be a way of teaching us to self soothe. And this wasn't even that.
poster:Dinah
thread:779884
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20070822/msgs/779951.html