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i love my therapist. he's the greatest! all i can say about getting therapy is just don't give up if you find a therapist that doesn't work right with you. a lot of people just have conflicting personalities and this can be a problem when trying to get therapy/giving someone therapy. i've had several therapists and the first two just weren't right for me. so i guess what i'm trying to say is um... shop around!

i think one of the things i like about my therapist most is that it's more like i'm having a serious conversation with another person rather than feeling like a patient. i don't call my therapist by "doctor selehi" either, i call him by his first name, camble. it seems more comfortable that way. so i guess i would suggest to anyone interested in becoming a therapist is don't give off the vibe that you are condescending. by calling someone by their first name you're sort of automatically admitting equality and it becomes a more comfortable environment. also, what i like about camble is that i know what he is going to talk about with my parents after i'm done talking to him. in Virginia, the state where i live, it is a law that all patients are guaranteed confidentiality unless they are in danger of hurting themselves or others. it makes me feel safer to talk to him when i know that he's not going to tell my parents all my dark little secrets that i disclose to him every friday at 5.

and about the cutting thing... although i've stated that to have a good relationship between therapist and patient you must gain trust and friendship, i do think there are boundaries. after all, it is a professional relationship when you come down to it.

i don't think that a therapist showing a patient their own scars is smart for a bunch of reasons. first, it is not the therapists job to reveal their life to their patient. everyone has their own lives and personal issues but people who go to therapy go there to work out their own problems. not dwell on their doctor's problems.

and if someone who comes to therapy for help see's their own therapist with scars they can take it two ways. either they consider that their therapist understands what they are going through and can help overcome SI or they believe that their therapist is just as messed up as they are and that it would be pointless to continue therapy sessions with that particular therapist. it's just better when you don't know anything about your therapist's life because then you can't hold anything against them if you feel like you are being confronted in a session. the point of therapy is to think about your life and if you're making comparisons to the person who is helping you,it could just make things worse or more complicated.

on top of that, it's a bad influence. SI is a serious problem and it is not a normal behavior. a patient who engages in self-harming behavior should not be encouraged otherwise in any way, even if the aim is to help them. it is a risky step to take when you want to help someone.

so... i hope this has helped. i guess i just started rambling and stuff.. and for the record, i am a recovering self-injurer.

My therapist also made me do a timeline, with the good things on top, and the bad things below. It was hard to do, 'cause I didn't want to remember some of those things. But, I did it, and I think that made her understand what's been happening more.

I don't like when therapists push something onto you. I mean, my old therapist would tell me about my chakras and my aura. I don't actually really practice that stuff, and she knew that, but did it anyway. doing stuff like that bothers me. Pushing religious beliefs are also bad.

I don't think I'd like it if a therapist showed me their scars. It'd give me a sense of mistrust about them. They would be in my position. That's not the place for a psychologist.

Let them have a conversation with you and don't push things they don't want to talk about yet. There's a time for everything, I believe. If I don't want to talk about abuse, I don't want to talk about it. I'm going to close up and end up putting up a bigger wall between us than there was before. Don't force situations upon them. I understand that things do have to be dealt with, but don't persist in something that's going nowhere.

that's what I'd want in a therapist, psychologist, whoever. Someone just to talk to, not someone who's superior or holier-than-thou.

yeah. i agree with that. saying something that you do and sharing something that intensely personal to show that you understand a patient is just going too far.

My therapist is pretty good. I like her because she's almost always honest and upfront with me, she's completely confidential and she's never given up on me. I also know that she's not in it for the money because herself and her partner run the business as a charity and half of their clients don't pay anything at all. We have a friendly but working relationship whicand despite being a devout Christian, she has never tried to enforce her beliefs onto me.

She's not perfect of course, sometimes I don't feel like I can tell her everything but I think that's more a reflection of the sort of person I am. When I first started seeing her I was so quiet that she did all the talking, as a result sometimes I felt like I couldn't talk. Sometimes she thinks she understands me when she doesn't but that's to be expected too, eitehr way she knows me pretty damn well.

She often relates things to her own experiences. Sometimes this can make me feel a bit uncomfortable because she's had a bit of an effed up life at times. I never really saw it as a bad thing though, it just prevented me from thinking that she didn't have a clue. Come to think of it though, I wonder if there might have been some transferrance of symptoms. For instance, she mentioned that when she was stressed she started scratching herself in her sleep and a few months later I noticed that I'd been doing the same. Then again possibly not because I reckon I have different reasons for it, I've never done it very badly or for a sustained length of time and I may well have done it before but just not noticed.