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Emotional Sharing/Intimacy

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Emotional Intimacy. How hard could this be? Sharing, trusting, caring, giving and letting others give to you? It is hard. For starters, check out the post on Psychological Space.

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First steps to treating rape-and a therapy story

I wrote this one to show you how badly I can blow a case, and to make suggestions to increase the odds it won't happen to you.

You people know me as therapydoc, but I do research and have a faculty appointment, too. One day I took a call, expecting it to be a client, but it was the dean asking me if I would please take on a funded project. There is this small problem, she tells me, of acquaintance rape.

Ultimately a new agency to treat college rape survivors off campus gets off the ground because of the project, and I get a paper out of it, present it to the annual meeting for the Council on Social Work Education. It's about how social workers should be treating rape.

But the following story happened years before, when all I had to go on was my fairly extensive knowledge of cognitive behavioral and exposure therapies for anxiety and post traumatic stress. I had used these tools for all kinds of abuse and assault, even for rapes that had happened in the past.

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Process Versus Content

It's a very simple concept, really. But I remember first hearing about it many years ago in graduate school and getting it, but not getting it, and what made it worse was that the instructor, Joy Johnson (where are you, Joy?) made a serious pitch, told us that if we didn't get it, basically, we would be only be so-so at this job. Whereas if we did get it, we had half a chance.

A patient ended up clarifying it for me, unintentionally, of course. Joy taught us that process is what's happening, the action, and that content is the story. There's a difference between seeing something, and hearing about it. The guy selling you a car is going to be friendly, and he'll tell you all about the features and wonders of the vehicle, but if he sells it to you, it is likely because of the way he worked you, not because it's such an awesome car.

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The Disappearing Act

Maybe, instead of lovers, you start out as best friends. Or maybe there has always been chemistry. Maybe someone fixed the two up, thought you would work well together, and you did.

In each case things start out swimmingly, perfectly, and for awhile, maybe even a long while, it's magic, and there's attention and love, and that face I see on the leather sofa two feet away from me is pretty happy.

And the cynic in me waits for the other shoe to drop. Far be it from me to burst anyone's bubble. I'm not your mother. Let the fantasy last. We all need a little hope, and when someone is kind, when someone is attentive, when someone is flirtatious, well, it feels pretty good.

This is the new relationship paradigm, you know, love without commitment. With a divorce rate holding steady at one out of two, what is the point of the crystal and china? Why register at all? Surely weddings are expensive, and happiness a toss of the dice. I'd prefer to think, actually, that…

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