Re: Pshychoanalysis anyone?

[Anonymous]

Krazy, one of the reasons your psychiatrist may insist on a regular meeting time each week is because of his own tight schedule. The psychologist my husband and I see has the same problem – when we stopped seeing him weekly and went to every two weeks, he suggested that it would be difficult to go back to a weekly visit and that if we missed one, we likely wouldn’t see him for four weeks – it wasn’t pressure to keep coming every week, he was just letting us know what the consequences might be. That’s just how it is, these people are in demand and booked pretty solidly. We could do a meeting by Skype since we are from out of town, but it’s not nearly as effective.

We are really seeing him for meditation training along with therapy (although he does do just psychotherapy as well), and he does have a small group of people following a similar path who meet together every two weeks as a group. Sometimes we each share our experiences, but not always. It’s open if we want to. He actually has two groups, one that started at the same time and another that started two years later, so we alternate, everyone meets once a month for their particular group and we all meet once in between as a whole group. What’s nice about meeting as a group is that you get to hear other people’s struggles and realize that you’re not the only one! And hear other people’s successes too, and know that it might be possible for you too. And sometimes you’ll hear something that resonates with you, that you might not have realized about yourself. Very helpful.

The combination of meditation training and psychotherapy is very effective, definitely more effective than just meditation training on its own. They say you can go through all of the zen koan training and still not have dealt with your personal material. An article I read this week said that quite a few important North American meditation teachers are turning to therapy. So it’s definitely becoming more mainstream in the meditation community.

I wouldn’t know what to suggest about trying another therapist – you are putting a lot of trust in the individual and although difficult emotions are bound to (meant to) come up, it’s still important that you resonate with the person. That’s how I feel about it.

REPORT ABUSE