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Apr. 2nd, 2009 07:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
elizabethI am declaring Mondays to be nights off (tetris and tea and possibly pleasure-reading and an early bedtime). After group, I am just wiped.
It's like a combination of all the bad things about being "in the world," and all the hard things about therapy, with absoltely none of the rewards of either. I mean, when I go "in the world," I have a fighting chance of making friends. I can learn things, experience things that have a better-than-even shot at being interesting and pleasurable. None of this applies to group. When I go to therapy, I expect to work hard, to learn uncomfortable truths, to have to face things I don't want to; but I also expect to grow and change and become better. Group isn't, for me, about the actual experience of sessions, it's about the meta-experience of how I handle sessions, so nothing individual that actually happens in sessions is the point. There's no straight line between group sessions and my behavior, as there can be in work with Dr. L; I don't feel or see impact.
Actually, that doesn't feel quite right, that last — group is all the worst parts of the social world and therapy, all jumbled up, but I don't think the lack of connection between group and the rest of my life is the problem. Not the entire problem, anyway, but I'm not sure I can put my finger on why it's so exhausting (and yes, it does come after a long, full day, but I'm pretty sure it's something to do with group qua group).
It's like a combination of all the bad things about being "in the world," and all the hard things about therapy, with absoltely none of the rewards of either. I mean, when I go "in the world," I have a fighting chance of making friends. I can learn things, experience things that have a better-than-even shot at being interesting and pleasurable. None of this applies to group. When I go to therapy, I expect to work hard, to learn uncomfortable truths, to have to face things I don't want to; but I also expect to grow and change and become better. Group isn't, for me, about the actual experience of sessions, it's about the meta-experience of how I handle sessions, so nothing individual that actually happens in sessions is the point. There's no straight line between group sessions and my behavior, as there can be in work with Dr. L; I don't feel or see impact.
Actually, that doesn't feel quite right, that last — group is all the worst parts of the social world and therapy, all jumbled up, but I don't think the lack of connection between group and the rest of my life is the problem. Not the entire problem, anyway, but I'm not sure I can put my finger on why it's so exhausting (and yes, it does come after a long, full day, but I'm pretty sure it's something to do with group qua group).
