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Oftentimes, patients do not come to therapy to change. Not really.
They say and think they want to change. It soon becomes evident they want to continue being exactly the person they have been, and living life in the same self-defeating ways—but feel better doing it.
Real psychotherapy begins with helping the person to understand not only intellectually, but to truly take to heart, that what they want is impossible.
In other words, the real work of therapy may begin with crushing disappointment, as the patient struggles to reconcile with the painful truth: neither the therapist nor anyone else has the power to give them what they want.
To feel different, they must become different. And there is no bypass around that psychological work.
Paradoxically, it is this terrible disappointment that opens the door to realistic hope.
Sadly, for every therapist who understands this and is prepared to join the patient in doing the difficult work, there are many more “therapists” happy to bolster the patient's illusion that they can can feel different without becoming different, and therapy can work by magic.
Choose wisely.
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