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Counseling
One of the things that's always annoyed me about certain kinds of
advice columns (think Ann Landers) is the blitheness of the short-cut
they take in saying,
"Seek counseling" every time they come up against something they can't
address in 25 words or less. Those newspaper columns are getting
shorter and shorter these days.
One major problem with a suggestion to seek counseling is that there
are so many different kinds of counseling, and then such a variety of
competence within the different counseling "schools," that getting a
counselor that's right for you is something of a crapshoot. I'll talk
more about the search process in a later post, but here's one of my
patented True Tales of Marital Disconnect.
I recently heard from a reader whose wife had experienced a sexual
assault in her youth. (I'm not quoting his letter because there was too
much potentially identifying detail). She attempted counseling, but
after her first counselor quit his practice under an ethical cloud, she
next went to a sexual
counselor, who apparently prescribed soft porn and masturbation, a
suggestion that disturbed and disgusted the assault victim so much that
she immediately quit counseling for good.
While a history of sexual assault is certainly a good reason for a
woman to seek psychological help, I don't know why this woman went to a
sexual counselor instead of more general therapy. Sexual therapy is
best for people who want to recover their erotic selves for their own
sake, because (for example) they miss the way they used to feel. They
want to get their previous level of sexual enjoyment back, or they are
genuinely committed to finally becoming a fully sexual being.
But if there are personality or relationship problems that need to be
overcome, a narrow focus on sexual dysfunction can be very problematic.
It's like saying, "Never mind why you don't want to, just Do It"
(advice I understand forms the central premise of a couple of recent
books on this subject). From other elements of my reader's story I
suspected that this wife went to counseling more as an attempt to solve
her husband's unhappiness with her sexual disinterest, and not because she herself really wanted to change.
So, the first rule of counselor-seeking is to acknowledge the problem
you're trying to solve is YOUR problem and that you are willing and
ready to solve it. This, in fact, is the most common problem with
couples counseling, sexual or otherwise. Almost invariably, one member
of the couple is far more committed to the counseling concept than the
other, and the "hostile" member of the pair can sabotage the entire
enterprise because they are not really willing to work with it. Therapy
requires a relatively whole-hearted cooperation, or it isn't
therapeutic (how that for today's Outrageous Obviousness?).
Some people would say that it is rational to be hostile to certain
kinds of counseling. If you come to feel that a counselor is "not on
your side" or is being unfair to you, you will resent it and your
cooperation will naturally suffer. Unfortunately, it is also
common to hear -- or feel -- things in therapy that make you angry with
the therapist. When this happens in couples therapy, the partner whose
faith in the therapist is faltering will often assume (sometimes
rightly, alas) that the therapy is designed to aid the "therapist's
pet" at the expense of the other partner. BASIC BLOG: Introduction | Disgust | Discomfort | Distraction | Insecurity | Anger | Fat Wars | Misunderstanding | Boredom | Infidelity | Technique | Motherhood | Aging and Depression | Bad Company | Childhood Abuse and Sexual Fears | Counseling | When to Split | Being the Hero of Your Own Life
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