What You Need To Know About Lying to Your Therapist

 

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Clearly seeing reality is a waystation toward the goal of enhancing your wellbeing. As you might imagine, lying to your therapist impairs both your and your therapist’s ability to see that reality. If you’re like most people, you’ve probably lied to your therapist.

In their book, Secrets and Lies in Psychotherapy, the authors report that between 84 and 93% of clients lie to their therapists, often about multiple things. This isn’t terribly surprising since research has shown that the average person lies once or twice a day.

Consider your honesty on a first date. Odds are, you may be less than totally truthful. You may paint your job in a more positive light, talk about relationships with your children in a slightly more glowing way, or tell an anecdote about something, embellishing the details to make it more humorous or interesting. 

These are all normal lies told for the sake of impression management, to make us look a little better, appear somewhat more accomplished or take a conversation from merely interesting to scintillating.

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Want to Move Forward in your Life? Shift your Focus from ‘Why’ to ‘What Now’

 Where you decide to go next is far more important than how you got here.

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There are innumerable issues that bring people to therapy and coaching. Folks usually want to feel happier, more confident, less angry, and the like. Before diving into making changes to improve their situation, answers to the “why” questions are frequently top of mind, as in:

Why do I get so angry with strangers, or procrastinate on important projects, or turn a positive moment into waiting for the other shoe to drop?

Much as I hate to admit it, those questions often can’t be answered definitively, even after weeks, months and sometimes years of exploration. How would we know if we did get the “right” answer to the source of your anger issues, procrastination or worrying?

A closely related set of “why” questions pertain to the motivations of others. We can spend hours investigating why your wife cheated on you, why your daughter drinks too much or why [your question here].

The thing is, not much is certain when it comes to what motivates us. For a variety of reasons, we can’t even answer the “why” question about ourselves (e.g., Why did I think it was a good idea to go to law school because two years in I’m bored to death?) much less about someone else.

Why, you ask (hahaha)?

Consider how you might answer a question about yourself now, vs how you answered it one or two years ago, vs how you might answer it two years from now. As the end-of-history illusion demonstrates, our understanding changes over time, as do our narratives about our lives, even though this is very difficult to imagine.

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4 Ways Your Thinking Can REDUCE Your Anxiety

We all have an internal dialogue. There's the good guy on one shoulder that says you're great, and the bad guy on the other that says you're an idiot. When the bad guy drowns out the good guy, anxiety results. The bad guy offers a lot of self-criticism, like, people will think I'm stupid, awkward, selfish, or, you fill in the blank.

Instead of allowing the negativity to drown out positive self-statements, cognitive strategies for anxiety reduction help us reframe, dispute or otherwise convert self-criticism into positive or neutral self-statements. It works like this:

1.  Notice what you're thinking. This is always the first step. Sometimes you realize you're feeling anxious and you haven't even been aware that your thinking is triggering that anxiety with self-doubt. Just noticing that you're thinking something (for example, When the boss said I looked tired I said I had a late night instead of telling him I was just deep in thought, now he's going to think I'm..) may help you realize that it's no big deal.

2. Consider the alternative. Let's say you notice the thought and it still seems problematic. Maybe the boss is going to think you're blowing off your work by staying out too late, but what's another possibility? Perhaps everyone comes in tired some days and she was just expressing concern. Given your strong work record, why would she doubt you?

3.  Problem-solve. Sometimes anxiety really does have a purpose. That purpose is not to ruin your day but to alert you to something you need to change, address or otherwise deal with. So let's say you fear your boss might think you're blowing off work because you often stay out late, come in tired and aren't as productive as you could be. That's a problem that can be solved. You know what you need to do and worrying about what the boss thinks isn't it. You need to get more rest, come in energized and get it done.

4. Let go of worry. Most worries are about things that could actually happen. Your kid might get into a car accident, you might have cancer or you might become destitute. These things could conceivably happen. But are they likely? Probably not so much. This type of worry, the "what if" kind, doesn't lead to problem-solving. These are the worries you need to learn to let go. It's helpful to name the thought as a worry, note that it's not likely and remind yourself that thinking further about it is not useful. Distracting yourself from the thought by moving on to an activity that will mentally engage you is one way to let go. Acknowledging that a thought is not a fact, it's just a thought, is another step toward letting go.

These are steps to take to start working with your negative thinking, and flipping it, so your good guy drowns out your bad guy. Coupling this strategy with reducing your physical anxiety by practicing relaxation or meditation and exercise, in any combination, getting enough sleep and eating a healthy diet is a great start to living anxiety-free.

To learn more about cognitive behavioral approaches to anxiety and depression:
 

Read: Mind Over Mood, by Dennis Greenberger and Christine Padesky

Watch: The Noise in Your Head

Judith Tutin, PhD, ACC, is a licensed psychologist and certified life coach. Connect with her at drjudithtutin.com to arrange psychotherapy to reduce the anxiety in your life (Georgia Residents only please).

Terminating Therapy: Should I Stay Or Should I Go?

A client comes in to see me. When I ask how long she's been depressed, she replies, "Probably my whole life." The odd part is not the lifetime of depression. Sadly, I hear that more often than you might think. The odd part is when we meet a second or third time. I learn my client is considering dropping out of therapy, because, she says, "I don't think I'm getting any better."

 
Here's the thing...while therapy is supposed to, and usually does, instill hope for the future, if you've been depressed your whole life, can you really expect to feel significantly better in a week or two?

According to a recent book, 20% of the time clients drop out of therapy early, most often because they have unrealistic expectations. The most common is that dramatic, sustained change will happen after the first session, or two. The unusual and sometimes confusing nature of the therapy process itself can also drive clients away.

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7 Reasons You May Be Anxious About Getting Help…But Don't Be!

Many of us love the holidays. Perhaps an equal number loathe them. Either way, they're filled with stress. Visiting one's dysfunctional family, or not seeing said family, giving or receiving the right gifts, being with a challenging partner or feeling alone, these are just a few of the issues that come up for us this time of year.

A surprising number of my psychotherapy clients tell me they worry that they won't have enough to talk about to fill the 45 minutes. My coaching clients sometimes have concerns about how well they're using the time. Many clients come to me saying how long they've waited before finally making the call to schedule an appointment.

These are some of the specific concerns I hear and the reasons they should NOT keep you from getting some help: 

1.      My issues are boring. Starting therapy or coaching does not mean you are entering a contest for who has the most interesting, exotic or unique life. Your difficulties, be they holiday concerns, boyfriend problems, problems with your sister, boss or children, are the stuff of therapy and coaching. Yes, people all over the world are fighting for freedom, suffering injustice and the like, but I'm there to guide you through your procrastination, insomnia or panic, not to end world hunger. During your session, your issues are the most important thing in the world for both of us.

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My One True Love Has Never Forsaken Me

My Valentine's Day musings led me consider my true loves. Since I am the post-divorce queen, I thought a lot about what my sisters and brothers are going through post-divorce. I worried about all those in the land of the single, wondering when their next Valentine would arrive. 

I realized that there is only one true love that has never forsaken me.

These are some of the things I noticed about my true love:

• We were friends first. 
•  I explored my doubts and didn't rush things.
• When I was ready, I totally committed and put all my eggs in one basket.
• I am not jealous in this relationship. 
•  I always feel I can be authentic.

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Treatment for Depression: Psychotherapy or Exorcism?

I’m a fan of psychotherapy, being a 25 year veteran in its practice. In addition to positive psychology approaches, the usual subject of this blog, I’m drawn to solution focused therapies. In my mind, these include those so named as well as cognitive behavioral and allied approaches that clearly ask clients to make behavioral changes and work toward solving the problems of life. Not just talk.

But I still have lots of questions about the practice and the process. I have questions about how it’s conducted, the role of medication, where mindfulness and values fit in, if we sometimes do more harm than good, what works for whom, what doesn’t work, and so forth.

I like my clients to think about the process too and take some responsibility for the work we do together. I think it’s healthy to question my work and for clients to question it, and their role in the work.

I believe that most people can live without disabling depression. There is a lot of evidence that the relationship with the therapist is itself a helpful and healing relationship. Repairing important relationships in one’s life and beginning new ones is equally important.

Additionally, I encourage people to do a variety of things, including:

· getting out and doing things in nature and in the world
· listening to music, experiencing art, going to church, or doing whatever pulls them up
· getting support from friends and family
· talking about good things going on in life, and good things desired (not just talking about problems)

I was delighted to hear a story about African approaches to healing depression by exorcism. On the surface it seems quite unlike what I find useful, but when you dig down deep, there are many shared beliefs. It’s definitely thought-provoking. Have a listen to Andrew Solomon’s experience.

Be the Relationship

I've often tried to think of a useful way to frame this concept for clients and other consumers of psychotherapy: it's not something that I do "to you," it's a relationship. In that relationship you can change and grow, or you can remain the same, untouched, immobile.

It's like any relationship. Do you consider the ideas of others? Can you try them on for size and see how they fit? Have you opened your mind to something different that isn't exactly what you expected?

A client I hadn't seen in four years called. I remembered her easily--she was so difficult to work with. She arrived with a long track record of failed therapies: psychologists, psychiatrists, counselors. All had tried to help her and failed miserably. For some she had angry words, for others, merely indifference.

I thought my attempts to engage her as a unique human being failed miserably when she cancelled our 8th appointment and never returned.

Four years later, out of the blue, she appeared. I was the only one whose opinion she respected, she told me. What should she do? She was still having the same problems. Therapy and medications had failed. I asked about self-help books and the internet. All useless. I patiently explained that these were all the options I knew. She had called me, so perhaps psychotherapy was worth a try now. Sometimes we're able to use things at one point in our lives from which we could not benefit earlier.

I don't know the ending to the story, but it reminded me again how important it is to be present in your therapy, coaching, in your life. Don't just go through the motions; be there. All of you--heart and mind have to be present for change and growth to occur.