Why is this happening to me?

While trying to figure out how we ended up in a bad situation, we may approach our good friends, family, mentors, or even a therapist or a life coach.

Often good friends give us their “two cents” – they offer criticism, constructive or not, letting us know when we’re being jerks, or calling us out on our attraction to narcissists. These friends mean well, but they can’t help that their opinions are colored with their own biases, fears, and limitations. We may even find their “two cents” insulting, but it offers us the opportunity to think deeply about what they said and hopefully, look inward. In a way, friends can help us make necessary changes in our life by confirming criticism we’ve heard before. Unfortunately, it could be that our friend is just projecting their own experience onto us, in which case their advice might not be right for us. We’ve all been there.

Then there are our parent(s) or beloved family members. They might be an uncle, an aunt, or any relative that has been a mentor to us who is one or two generations older. They may not know what it’s like to walk in our shoes. Their advice is based on their experience and may be outdated. We are very lucky when these family members or mentors truly understand what we are going through and it is important to thank them for the advice they provide us no matter how helpful it is or is not. We should consider ourselves blessed if we have someone like this in our life.

Then there’s the Therapist. We trust a therapist to be objective, and to make an effort to understand what we are going through and advise us appropriately. The Therapist, may be well-versed in the speaker-listener technique, for example, which is a family and couples therapy technique. The Therapist can guide us in our individual therapy but also guide us through relationships with our significant other, parents and/or family. Sometimes, this is needed when friends and family might feel overwhelmed. However, the Therapist has limits too. The Therapist may be busy with their caseload, their family, or their own issues. We must remember that the Therapist is a person, like us, and that they are in their workplace when they see us for depression treatment or family and couples therapy, for example. No matter how much they understand us or how experienced they are, they cannot magically fix everything for us on their own. Even if we’ve been to multiple therapists, counselors, or psychiatrists, and selected the best one for us, there is only so much help they can provide. The person seeking the therapist needs to eventually make a decision on their own. They need to make a synthesis of all the information their family, friends and therapist has given them. Sooner or later, the day may come when you ask the trusted therapist – why does this keep happening to me? And the therapist responds, “that’s something only you can understand”, or “I can’t make that decision for you.”

The therapist does have a point, as certain questions the patient asks cannot be answered by the therapist. However, one of the promises that I built my practice on is to help my patients address such an impasse. I offer a variety of services such as anxiety treatment, depression treatment, addiction treatment including outpatient detox plans and vivitrol, suboxone, sublocade, genetic testing, PTSD techniques, behavioral addictions treatment, and can provide talk therapy sessions in office or via online video chat in these unusual times to anyone throughout New York State, New York City and North Carolina. Together, we can make these treatments have a lasting, positive impact on your life. There will be times when I’m not going to be able to see it – that question you want me to answer. However, I know what it’s like to be a patient and to ask questions to one of the aforementioned people. Some patients may be unfortunately stuck in their ways that they reject clear answers they get. This is common. Some patients have worked hard to listen to the advice they receive, but it may be poor advice or incongruent with who they really are.

This is one of the things I do in my practice. I will see you for who you really are – and give you objective advice based on what is best for your circumstances through psychotherapy. What we do with that advice, whether we work to change our situation or make no effort to help ourselves, is completely up to us. This unconscious vision is something psychiatrists, psychologists and therapists work on every day – it is the ability to listen to our patients objectively, and to formulate an honest idea about them. (Doctors use the word Patient and non MD or DOs such as PhD, PsyDs and Social Workers use the term Client). This idea is based on what the patient says consciously and who the patient is unconsciously. The level of skill varies from therapist to therapist. It is a skill any person can practice and develop. Please remember that seeing a therapist once is usually not enough to make lasting changes in your life. How can a whole lifetime be conveyed in just 60-90 minutes? There may be a lot of assumptions made, and misconceptions created. The real truth of who we are comes out in time. That’s why successful therapy takes multiple visits and work on the patient’s part. The mental health doctor can help us reveal a lot but they are just a guide.

According to the Freudian school of thought, if a patient starts to make progress in 3 years then the therapy has been a success. Nowadays, most people think 3 years is too long to realize a change – I also think 3 yrs is too long, but that is actually up to the patient. I must respect the patient’s process of self- understanding and self-realization. It all depends on how receptive a patient is to the feedback they get and how well they integrate it into their life. The value of the Freudian style is exploring the unconscious mind – but I’m not a psychoanalyst, rather I practice psychodynamic psychotherapy – which is like psychoanalysis-lite. Jungian psychotherapy is also needed when Meditation or Self Realization is touched upon in therapy. Sometimes talk therapy alone can be like mental hockey – there is such a thing as analysis paralysis – or over thinking. In this setting, a combination of talk therapy, speaker-listener technique and meditation can help let go of old behaviors. Some psychotherapies like DBT (Dialectical Behavioral Therapy) are rooted in meditation and can help us let go of these previous traumas or bad habits so that we interpret them differently, and in a healthier way. DBT is used to treat Narcissistic, Borderline, Depressive and Histrionic Personality Traits. Call to learn more about this.

In conclusion, the habits don’t change until one feels the change in their heart – which is self-realization – which both talk therapy and meditation can help with. It’s most important for the therapist to be knowledgeable about all these therapies and be able to respond to the patient like a person and not with jargon. Jargon is for other psychiatrists and therapists – we must use language that our patients understand. It’s most important to make the patient feel comfortable and understood. You are welcome to call if you are interested in uncovering more on your journey of self-discovery and self-mastery.