Are Counsellors Good Partners?

[Cherrypie]

I also wonder tonight do counsellors make better partners? They should be relationship experts right?? Or maybe not...maybe they are so busy with other peoples problems there is not much left at the end of the day for a partner?

Just thinking that maybe counsellors themselves should be banned from answering..unless they partnered with another counsellor!! I do have a premonition that andyhp will tell us he is an amazing partner!! ;) Wives, girlfriends, husbands, boyfriends feel free to tell all!!!!

[andyhp]

Just thinking that maybe counsellors themselves should be banned from answering..unless they partnered with another counsellor!! I do have a premonition that andyhp will tell us he is an amazing partner!! ;) Wives, girlfriends, husbands, boyfriends feel free to tell all!!!!

I am...and of course, I am!! Modesty forbids me going further into my own qualities so I shall answer not from my role as 'amazing partner' but from my other role...partner of a psychotherapist. I don't really know if her being a therapist makes her any different than if she wasn't...bit of an impossible experiment as she is and I can never know her as though she wasn't now!

I don't feel her being a therapist carries any specific 'job related' negatives with it though...she certainly gives me a huge amount of support when I need it. For sure there are times when she wants support because of her work but then doesn't everyone, therapist or not? If it was all 'one way' it wouldn't be good whether we are both therapists or not.

Does her job have any specific positives? Well I can't speak for all her relationships or whether she is an 'expert' but as far as I am concerned she is pretty damned good at ours. Again though I don't know if this is affected by her being a therapist or not...she is a good listener but so are people who are not therapists...she's really funny sometimes and really makes me laugh but ditto really...she's warm, caring and loving, ditto again. She knows me very, very well and so often knows what I am thinking but is that again specific to her being a therapist...I don't know. She is smart and very knowledgeable about her work and I guess as we are both in the same business this is something that is a 'job related' plus.

I guess I can't help you much Cherrypie. While of course I am amazing, so is she but seriously, I don't know if that is because she is a therapist or not...she just is. So, I can't really answer your question.

[Cherrypie]

Well...ahem.. what more can one add to that post Andy... To sum up, you are amazing, she is amazing.. :wow: Long may your amazingness last!!

I would say thats seems without doubt then one post FOR therapists as good partners then.. Perhaps as you are a therapist with a therapist that really is a recipie for super dooper success!!

[andyhp]

The only 'specific' thing I can come up with that may impact on someone who is the partner of a counsellor/psychotherapist is that maybe they could feel 'put out' or 'left out' by therapists not talking in detail about their work. We can talk in general terms about our day but obviously not go into detail about the people we have met.

Do you think a counsellor/psychotherapist would make a good partner?

Andy x

[Cherrypie]

Well if I am totally honest I ask because frankly my partner is none to impressed with all this self development that comes with my training to become one.. so I think if he were writing here he would have plenty to say and not much of it would include the word amazing...

What do I think? I possibly have the fantasy that living with a therapist would be living with someone very understanding but I am sure its probably more like living with a painter and decorator who is tired of that role when he gets home... Then again....if I think of Rogers ideas and 'a way of being'...if we are always that way and our empathy and sincerity is not just as a trick or tool then hopefully we are surely more likely to be understanding, empathic and non judgmental human beings at home too ..well most of the time at least.. Sounds good but is that reality? I am not sure.. I am not a therapist yet of course although I do strive to be this all understanding being but as you mentioned I always have endeavoured to be this way from young anyway.

My reality is that I still find myself shouting at my kids and halfway through thinking...hmmm well thats not very counselly of me is it?! Wheres my calm approach gone today?! Or.. if this were happening to a client rather than my husband I would probably be more caring. Now thats an odd observation isn't it. Clients are there sometimes wishing they were family when in fact maybe they really do get the best of the therapist as a client! Maybe even more than the therapists family gets? I suppose as a counsellor you are more of an observer but at home you are immersed in life,living,and all its associated emotion so maybe its impossible to 'be' a therapist anywhere else but in the therapy room?

Oooo lots of ideas..none of them very relevant to the original thread...sorry to me there.. but Ive been typing it out for so long Im leaving it all in anyway!!

[andyhp]

There are a fair few studies out there that have looked at the effect on relationships of one partner undergoing PD. It has apparently been the 'cause' of quite a few breakups. I can't help but feel that the 'cracks' may have already been in the relationship before any training and that maybe the pd work only served to 'strip the paper off the cracks'.

I think you're right to say that as therapists we are more observers but...Yalom also said that as well as observers of the lives of clients therapists are also participants in those lives. I guess another huge debate is where those 'positions' begin, end or merge and what does the 'observer' think they 'observe' and what do they then 'do' with what they believe they have observed?

I think althouigh I'm not totally certain that Rogers was once 'pinned down' on the 'way of being' thing and admitted that as long as you are respectful (UPR), empathic and congruent 'in the hour' you see the client then this is all that can be asked!!

So, in your fantasy have you a preference to what approach your partner would follow... Gestalt, psychoanalytic etc? If so, why?

[Cherrypie]

WARNING!! This post may contains shameless but mildly humourous stereotyping..approach with caution..

I wrote a big reply and it went :(

Most importantly I wanted to say that I feel pd does not just uncover cracks it can be the cause too. I feel that every relationship you usually encounter can be potentially changed by pd. You can find yourself catapulted into a rate of change that its hard to keep up with yourself let alone for those around you. Your nearest and dearest...and even your boss could be being faced with an entirely different personality and they somehow have to adjust..or not.. Each one of those relationships can be affected negatively or postively by this change and it can result in not only the breaking but also the making of your relationships.

The rest you will have to only wonder about.... Did I pick calm and empathic but possibly verrrry boring Person Centered man, efficient know it all, fixing, possibly lacking empathy abc CBT guy, Existential lets talk about death grim reaper hubby or a Psychoanalytic, interpreting my apples into pears, one way conversation partner, ummhmm ahaa?? :yikes:

Tempted by a builder now I think about it... :taunt:

[IntuitiveCounselor]

Hi fellow members (Andyhp, Cherrypie)

You have to remember that we all wear mask's and these mask's are useful in certain circumstances, Imagine if we all told the truth (always), the world would been in chaos :P So basically, we wear masks, although we know the true us, we can be good at avoiding it, so we choose our partners based on the current mask we are wearing, instead of being true to ourselves and making the best possible decision we make our choice's on false "beleifs" - if that makes sense,

I've recently been with my girlfriend for 1month and I've had to tell her some things she should of been told along time ago, 1 person living with a mask meets another one and they both don't admit "reality" to eachother then you can never be in a position to know the "truth",

The best policy for me personally, In all relationships is honesty and early on, I personally don't like to live a lie and never had, I make sure I get in there early - but life can be harder for some....

[andyhp]

The rest you will have to only wonder about.... Did I pick calm and empathic but possibly verrrry boring Person Centered man, efficient know it all, fixing, possibly lacking empathy abc CBT guy, Existential lets talk about death grim reaper hubby or a Psychoanalytic, interpreting my apples into pears, one way conversation partner, ummhmm ahaa??

Tempted by a builder now I think about it...

One of the best 'summaries' of Person-Centred, CBT(ist), Existentialist and psychoanalytic practitioners I have ever read...I spat my coffee all over the keyboard when I read that..brilliant!!!

You make some very good points about relationships and PD. I'm still not convinced that the 'cracks' will not have been there in the first place even though hidden (papered over) but I'm not as convinced as I was...does this sound convincing!?

A builder would be good for fixing the house up!

Stereo types are only stereo types because they have elements of truth in them!!

[andyhp]

Hi IntuitiveCounselor

You have to remember that we all wear mask's and these mask's are useful in certain circumstances, Imagine if we all told the truth (always), the world would been in chaos :P So basically, we wear masks, although we know the true us, we can be good at avoiding it, so we choose our partners based on the current mask we are wearing, instead of being true to ourselves and making the best possible decision we make our choice's on false "beleifs" - if that makes sense,

Honesty probably is the 'best policy'. But I feel you are somewhat contradicting what you wrote earlier, 'imagine if we all told the truth (always)', the world would be in chaos'. Once we 'vet' what to tell or when to tell it then I believe we are engaging in, 'partial' honesty or 'selective' honesty or 'tactful' honesty.

Some of what you write makes 'sense' to me but a/I'm not so sure I totally agree wtih you and b/some of it doesn't really make sense to me! 'we know the true us'. Do you think so, really...completely...always? Choosing our partners based on the 'current mask we are wearing'...I don't really get that...could you expand on it a little? 'False beliefs' as drivers for choice, I agree our beliefs can be drivers for choice but I'm not sure how that marries up with 'always knowing the true us'. If we know the true us then surely we would know our true beliefs as well. Anyway I can't see how our beliefs can actually be false or otherwise, they are what they are, what we 'believe', our beliefs, we wouldn't hold them if we knew they were false. I think we can amend our beliefs but even then we don't know if they are true or false unless we check them against some external measure...reality?...whatever that is taken to be.

Being honest (partially or otherwise) I am left with a feeling of being 'told' by the way you word some of your post and also a sense of you having having tried to 'teach'. For me it would have been better 'received' if you had stated that all this was only your opinion rather than used phrases such as, 'you have to remember'.