Thoughts during a bike tour…

A bike tour dressed only in an armless dress and a t-shirt yesterday evening… It’s sun today too and seems to be a warm summer’s day.

Of some reason I thought about therapy cycling in the summer nature…

Just to change ones behavior, from a dysfunctional to a functional, how genuine is that? Does changed behavior change ones feeling and emotions, and how changed are ones behaviors actually? How radically does a changed behavior change one feelings and emotions, in long term? Maybe they become for those that are least hurt and less traumatized? But those that are more, or a little more...? Does a functional behavior on the surface change ones feelings especially radically? Does a sensitive client feel genuine, not false?

Does unprocessed things reveal themselves in other areas instead? I.e., you react symbolically in other parts of your life instead?? And have the same problems but changed to other objects and parts of the life? What does this cause? What can it cause in a client that want to be genuine and honest? Does this give self respect and self love? Or maybe the opposite? So how healing is this method in fact? Even if it feels liberating at first (because if you have satisfied the therapist with behaving right and thinking and feeling right, you feel satisfied yourself at first at least for being a good patient!?? As you maybe ones was the good girl or boy!? And you haven't drawn the therapists anger and displease over you!!! How many dare to challenge this really?? Or are allowed to really??).

A clever client will do this (maybe do it very intelligently too?) to the therapists satisfaction, to please him/her and get her/his "love", maybe without even being aware of it? Because the client is often very sensitive to very small signs (unconscious even to the therapist maybe, unconsciously manipulating) in the therapist what behaviors and thoughts etc. the therapist likes and approves of??

Maybe exactly as the client once did early in her/his life to get love and to avoid outbursts, being mad totally invisible, being punished in different ways?? And how healing is that? In long term…

I wonder if things won’t be revealed in other areas and circumstances and relations in life??

And many clients most surely also feel relieved and satisfied with changing their behaviors to something the therapist (expert and authority) like and approve of!!?? Used to satisfy? And the ones that haven’t used this strategy as their main don’t seek therapy, not voluntarily???

But sooner or less this clever client will feel that not much has actually changed: he/she still feel this and that, still have similar problems?? Is still unsatisfied with a lot of things??

And what can this result in and cause?

Can tendencies to blame oneself be strengthened instead?? As the small child once did.

“I am a hopeless case? I am worthless, bad, impossible!!!”

Ingeborg Bosch thinks this tendency to blame oneself stems from earliest in life: to blame oneself, which already the very small child does, to survive that hr/his parents didn’t know what she/he needed… It’s easier to blame yourself… For being such a failure, for feeling this and that, for having those needs, feelings, reactions… It’s the child’s fault – and maybe signs the child is sick?? For not being able to take care of her/himself,,,

And this, the first defense (which Bosch calls the Primary defense) we take with us up in adult life, more or less strong or powerful, depending on how little or much we got from the earliest care takers in our lives. Did we get that care and respect and sensitivity from these first care takers, then we have less needs to fulfill them in adult life and can live more fully and with better relations and less problems of different kinds…

And a therapy that strengthens this defense instead of the opposite is bad – or even harmful to say it straight!!??

Addition at 14.37: Got a tip from a friend in Norway about a short note in a paper in Norway where a professor is cited, he says something in the style that it can be a risk to criticize the power/caregiver and the whole apparatus round treatment; you easily get diagnosed as mad or disturbed... But it is necessary to criticize psychiatric treatment, even if people working in this profession can experience this as hostile, the author of this short note thinks... Yes, if you criticize it is a risk you get diagnosed!?

Can the use of diagnoses and statements about others to them be a way to avoid saying: "I feel... You scared me!" or something? Thus to admit what was awoken in you, maybe also admit them to yourself and by exposing this reveal a vulnerability, feelings of power- and helplessness to which fears of being misused or even exploited and abused in this vulnerability are connected?? Contempt for weakness? But can the strength/powerfulness lie in this "weakness" (and this thought is extremely scary to many??)? To dare to expose this weakness? Dare to take that risk?? I don't know... But exposing them to a one that is worth it, came to think about what Kirkengen has written about narrating... See the last blogpost about that.

Feelings you don't want to admit or maybe even be aware of yourself too??

Just some thoughts... And does his understanding have limits too? Maybe it shall have??

Addition June 27: Got another tip from a Swedish friend on the theme therapy. A short cartoon sequence in Swedish, with a client lying on the therapist's coach saying to his therapist something in the style:

"I get such an ache in my foot sometimes..."

The therapist reflects upon this:

"It's because you dislike our therapist sessions, Spix!"

And continues:

"Unconsciously you punishes yourself for this dislike through experiencing the pain in the foot."

A sudden aha-experience in the client, which spontaneously replies, surprised:

"Oh, damn!"