The Problems with Therapy
Ever since she came to me, S has been seeing a therapist two hours away. So, once a week, we drive to the therapist's office, I sit in the waiting room for an hour, and then, we drive back. Sometimes, if the appointment is early enough, we stop somewhere for food or shopping--but most of the time, we literally leave around 5 and drive back at 8 or so, putting us at home by 10, if we are lucky.
I have mixed feelings about this therapist. I call her before each appointment to talk on her answering machine about how the week has gone; that way, if S is hesitant to bring something up, she has a little background. But it does not seem to me that the therapy itself is doing much good. In fact, our family therapy (with a therapist literally a block away from us) seems to be much more helpful. S goes back and forth about whether the therapist is helping her; sometimes, she says she is, and other times, she tells me she needs someone more qualified or smarter.
Anyway, around the time when S had her huge, four-day melt down, when I was literally trapped in our house for four days, I started exploring other possibilities. I called back around to the two or three therapists in the region who had said they might consider seeing S, but weren't taking new patients. Finally, one of them said she was, and I scheduled a two hour intake with her--the plan was that I would meet with her to share S's history, and then, she would do a separate intake with S, and at that point, we would decide whether we wanted to switch to someone closer to home (and possibly more qualified to work with kids who had experienced severe trauma) or stick with the therapist S has had for the last two years.
I really want a therapist who will take a team approach, who will be willing to get more involved with our family, who I can call on when, say, S is unable to stop raging. Luckily, our family therapist has done this for us to some extent, but she's not an expert in S's issues. I also wanted someone who could talk to S more than once a week when necessary, who wasn't overscheduled, who didn't cut her hours during the summer (as S's current therapist does).
So, I was eagerly awaiting the scheduled appointment, but then, the new therapist was ill. No problem, except that her next available appointment was THREE weeks later. At this point, I wondered how someone who couldn't get me in for another three weeks could possibly be better than the therapist S is currently seeing, but I agreed to schedule yet another appointment.
In the meantime, I had to fill out eight pages of paperwork. The paperwork was completely inappropriate for families like ours--there was no acknowledgment that maybe S was not living with her biological parents, or that maybe she had only one parent, and not two--you could, for instance, check a box saying you were divorced, but there was no box to check saying you were simply single. (Is it just my imagination, or do plenty of women have kids before they are married--to say nothing of adoptive families like ours?) There were a lot of questions about methods of discipline that seemed to imply that parents had to be partly to blame for the child's behavior (not to suggest that we aren't, sometimes, partly to blame, but still--the tone of the questions was really problematic). There was also one infuriating checklist that included the phrase "clings to father," but no correlating "clings to mother." Apparently, children do not tend to cling to their mothers if they are troubled?
Anyway, I finally got to the paperwork, and filled it out, writing a lot of critical comments in the margins, things like "my daughter was adopted so I don't have a full medical history; thus, I am going to leave this page blank," to "my daughter does not have a father, so there is no way I can answer this page" to "there is no check box here that matches our family--I adopted my daughter as a single mother." You get the picture.
I got a reminder in the mail yesterday with a note that I MUST bring the paperwork in advance, or else the therapist would not see me. So, I dropped it off a couple days ago. Then, this afternoon, less than 24 hours before the appointment, the secretary called and said, "I'm sorry, but Dr. ___ cannot see S tomorrow. That appointment was mistakenly scheduled. Dr. ___ is not currently accepting new patients. Please call back to schedule an appointment with another therapist."
No, thanks. I've already talked to all the other local therapists--trust me, not a single one would work well with my daughter. This was the only therapist with any expertise in S's issues and the only therapist who had come with some positive recommendations from people with children whose backgrounds are similar to S's.
To say I was irritated when I got this message would be an understatement. First of all, poor S was nervous today about tomorrow's appointment, going back and forth about whether she really needed more help or not, really wanted to switch or not, worrying she'd hurt her current therapist's feelings, etc. Ugh. Don't they realize they have put S through a terrible ordeal?
And, I can't help but wonder if the therapist got scared off when she saw the paperwork. If you think I'm being paranoid, just know that I sent similar paperwork off to approximately 12 therapists before S had even arrived, and ALL of them, except for her current therapist, called back to say either that they didn't think they were qualified to help her or that they were not taking new patients.
Recently, there was a letter in the local paper from a family who had lost their adult son to suicide. The letter explained how difficult it was to get the help one needed when was in crisis. It was poignant and horrifying.
I feel lucky that we have a good family therapist--but she's not necessarily qualified to help S with her trauma work. I feel lucky that we have a semi-qualified therapist for S--but she's two hours away and we can't always get in to see her weekly.
Sometimes I think the whole system needs to be shaken up. We don't need therapists who can't even say hi to us if they see us on the street, who are so overworked that they can't extend an hour appointment if the client needs more time, who are so concerned about boundaries that they can't talk to others in the client's life who are in a position to help them. Everyone should have a team of people supporting them through their emotional/vocational/spiritual journeys. These people should talk openly to each other and to the person receiving the direction; there should be time and space to really help the person understand herself and grow.
The local Developmental Achievement Center uses exactly this model--we accept it for "those people" who have cognitive or mental health challenges, so why can't we accept it for everybody? I, for one, would love to have people in my life who I knew loved me enough to really want to take the time to be present with each other and with me to help me on my journey. And, what's more, I long to play that kind of role in others' lives--I can't even count the number of times I have felt completely alone when advocating for my students who needed advocacy, much less for S.
Today I had a spiritual direction appointment. After my retreat, I'd sought out spiritual directors in our region and, miraculously, found a liberal Christian who understood the GLBT community and had teenagers of her own. I talked openly and honestly about my spiritual journey with her, and she told me about hers. While I'd gone to her because she was more experienced and had some training in spiritual direction, I was also aware of how different it felt from counseling/therapy; she wanted me to know and understand her and where she was coming from; she often told stories from her own life to help illuminate my journey; we spent time in contemplative silence together, and in prayer. This, to me, is the kind of guidance most of us need--to be fully heard by a fully human person who is not so worried about boundaries that she refuses to share even the smallest detail of her personal life, by someone who, while further along on her journey, is nevertheless able to confess challenges and roadblocks in her past and current life.
It was a good experience, and I'm hoping to be able to continue, though she would not make another appointment with me--she wanted me to take in the experience, pray about it, be sure I wanted to go forward, even though I felt sure after that first meeting.
I don't mean to suggest that S doesn't need therapy--I just wish there were models available that went beyond our "50 minute session, first come, first served, rigid boundary" model, that took into account that different people process things and heal and learn differently. I do know that S needs medication now and probably will for the rest of her life; I'm also aware that, given the level of abuse she faced, she also needs a kind of expertise that just anyone probably cannot provide. For that matter, I do, too--I was looking initially for someone with some experience with adoption and adoptive parents, but instead, I chose my therapist after she had already gotten to know me and S and had some sense of the scope of our problems (she is also our family therapist, and S and I agreed that I could see her separately). She has been helpful, especially with specific issues related to my parenting and my work life, and I will continue to see her in addition to the spiritual director, as at this time in my life, one will help me attend to day-to-day dramas, and the other to the big picture of my spiritual life.
Still, I firmly believe that therapy/counseling/spiritual direction--whatever we choose to call it-- should address the spiritual--whatever that looks like for each person--and should be flexible enough to meet each person's unique needs.
I have mixed feelings about this therapist. I call her before each appointment to talk on her answering machine about how the week has gone; that way, if S is hesitant to bring something up, she has a little background. But it does not seem to me that the therapy itself is doing much good. In fact, our family therapy (with a therapist literally a block away from us) seems to be much more helpful. S goes back and forth about whether the therapist is helping her; sometimes, she says she is, and other times, she tells me she needs someone more qualified or smarter.
Anyway, around the time when S had her huge, four-day melt down, when I was literally trapped in our house for four days, I started exploring other possibilities. I called back around to the two or three therapists in the region who had said they might consider seeing S, but weren't taking new patients. Finally, one of them said she was, and I scheduled a two hour intake with her--the plan was that I would meet with her to share S's history, and then, she would do a separate intake with S, and at that point, we would decide whether we wanted to switch to someone closer to home (and possibly more qualified to work with kids who had experienced severe trauma) or stick with the therapist S has had for the last two years.
I really want a therapist who will take a team approach, who will be willing to get more involved with our family, who I can call on when, say, S is unable to stop raging. Luckily, our family therapist has done this for us to some extent, but she's not an expert in S's issues. I also wanted someone who could talk to S more than once a week when necessary, who wasn't overscheduled, who didn't cut her hours during the summer (as S's current therapist does).
So, I was eagerly awaiting the scheduled appointment, but then, the new therapist was ill. No problem, except that her next available appointment was THREE weeks later. At this point, I wondered how someone who couldn't get me in for another three weeks could possibly be better than the therapist S is currently seeing, but I agreed to schedule yet another appointment.
In the meantime, I had to fill out eight pages of paperwork. The paperwork was completely inappropriate for families like ours--there was no acknowledgment that maybe S was not living with her biological parents, or that maybe she had only one parent, and not two--you could, for instance, check a box saying you were divorced, but there was no box to check saying you were simply single. (Is it just my imagination, or do plenty of women have kids before they are married--to say nothing of adoptive families like ours?) There were a lot of questions about methods of discipline that seemed to imply that parents had to be partly to blame for the child's behavior (not to suggest that we aren't, sometimes, partly to blame, but still--the tone of the questions was really problematic). There was also one infuriating checklist that included the phrase "clings to father," but no correlating "clings to mother." Apparently, children do not tend to cling to their mothers if they are troubled?
Anyway, I finally got to the paperwork, and filled it out, writing a lot of critical comments in the margins, things like "my daughter was adopted so I don't have a full medical history; thus, I am going to leave this page blank," to "my daughter does not have a father, so there is no way I can answer this page" to "there is no check box here that matches our family--I adopted my daughter as a single mother." You get the picture.
I got a reminder in the mail yesterday with a note that I MUST bring the paperwork in advance, or else the therapist would not see me. So, I dropped it off a couple days ago. Then, this afternoon, less than 24 hours before the appointment, the secretary called and said, "I'm sorry, but Dr. ___ cannot see S tomorrow. That appointment was mistakenly scheduled. Dr. ___ is not currently accepting new patients. Please call back to schedule an appointment with another therapist."
No, thanks. I've already talked to all the other local therapists--trust me, not a single one would work well with my daughter. This was the only therapist with any expertise in S's issues and the only therapist who had come with some positive recommendations from people with children whose backgrounds are similar to S's.
To say I was irritated when I got this message would be an understatement. First of all, poor S was nervous today about tomorrow's appointment, going back and forth about whether she really needed more help or not, really wanted to switch or not, worrying she'd hurt her current therapist's feelings, etc. Ugh. Don't they realize they have put S through a terrible ordeal?
And, I can't help but wonder if the therapist got scared off when she saw the paperwork. If you think I'm being paranoid, just know that I sent similar paperwork off to approximately 12 therapists before S had even arrived, and ALL of them, except for her current therapist, called back to say either that they didn't think they were qualified to help her or that they were not taking new patients.
Recently, there was a letter in the local paper from a family who had lost their adult son to suicide. The letter explained how difficult it was to get the help one needed when was in crisis. It was poignant and horrifying.
I feel lucky that we have a good family therapist--but she's not necessarily qualified to help S with her trauma work. I feel lucky that we have a semi-qualified therapist for S--but she's two hours away and we can't always get in to see her weekly.
Sometimes I think the whole system needs to be shaken up. We don't need therapists who can't even say hi to us if they see us on the street, who are so overworked that they can't extend an hour appointment if the client needs more time, who are so concerned about boundaries that they can't talk to others in the client's life who are in a position to help them. Everyone should have a team of people supporting them through their emotional/vocational/spiritual journeys. These people should talk openly to each other and to the person receiving the direction; there should be time and space to really help the person understand herself and grow.
The local Developmental Achievement Center uses exactly this model--we accept it for "those people" who have cognitive or mental health challenges, so why can't we accept it for everybody? I, for one, would love to have people in my life who I knew loved me enough to really want to take the time to be present with each other and with me to help me on my journey. And, what's more, I long to play that kind of role in others' lives--I can't even count the number of times I have felt completely alone when advocating for my students who needed advocacy, much less for S.
Today I had a spiritual direction appointment. After my retreat, I'd sought out spiritual directors in our region and, miraculously, found a liberal Christian who understood the GLBT community and had teenagers of her own. I talked openly and honestly about my spiritual journey with her, and she told me about hers. While I'd gone to her because she was more experienced and had some training in spiritual direction, I was also aware of how different it felt from counseling/therapy; she wanted me to know and understand her and where she was coming from; she often told stories from her own life to help illuminate my journey; we spent time in contemplative silence together, and in prayer. This, to me, is the kind of guidance most of us need--to be fully heard by a fully human person who is not so worried about boundaries that she refuses to share even the smallest detail of her personal life, by someone who, while further along on her journey, is nevertheless able to confess challenges and roadblocks in her past and current life.
It was a good experience, and I'm hoping to be able to continue, though she would not make another appointment with me--she wanted me to take in the experience, pray about it, be sure I wanted to go forward, even though I felt sure after that first meeting.
I don't mean to suggest that S doesn't need therapy--I just wish there were models available that went beyond our "50 minute session, first come, first served, rigid boundary" model, that took into account that different people process things and heal and learn differently. I do know that S needs medication now and probably will for the rest of her life; I'm also aware that, given the level of abuse she faced, she also needs a kind of expertise that just anyone probably cannot provide. For that matter, I do, too--I was looking initially for someone with some experience with adoption and adoptive parents, but instead, I chose my therapist after she had already gotten to know me and S and had some sense of the scope of our problems (she is also our family therapist, and S and I agreed that I could see her separately). She has been helpful, especially with specific issues related to my parenting and my work life, and I will continue to see her in addition to the spiritual director, as at this time in my life, one will help me attend to day-to-day dramas, and the other to the big picture of my spiritual life.
Still, I firmly believe that therapy/counseling/spiritual direction--whatever we choose to call it-- should address the spiritual--whatever that looks like for each person--and should be flexible enough to meet each person's unique needs.
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