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Default Jun 15, 2019 at 10:11 AM
  #1
After I end a contact with a therapist or a counsellor I sometimes google them. We have access to registers that specifies whether a person is married, where they live, how long they have lived in that house/flat and so on, the income rates in that area and so forth.

More or less all of my former therapists, counsellors and similar staff live in expensive flats in the city center, several are married and those who arenīt married most often have kids from their previous relationships.

I know itīs often said that a T doesnīt need to have the same experience as a client with different issues but I still donīt feel any therapist will understand how I live. They may be able to help me anyway but I feel seeing a therapist (or other successful people) will always be a reminder of how I have failed in my own life.

At the same time I understand a T canīt have such a bad life as I have and be able to practise as a therapist. I just see all the inequities in society and between groups of people through the therapists I meet with.


I can never "catch up" in such a way that Iīll be able to buy an expensive flat where I want to live or finding someone to live with within a normal time span, not like 20 or 30 years after "everybody else".

What do you think and feel about this?
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Default Jun 15, 2019 at 10:26 AM
  #2
I know it can be hard. One thing I remind myself is that while it looks like T has a great life there are things about my life that they are envious of. Plus who knows what their life looked like in the past? I also agree though that there are some areas that unless a T has experienced it first hand they dont truly dont understand.

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Default Jun 15, 2019 at 10:36 AM
  #3
I don't see the point in it. Why compare yourself to someone else? I don't think therapists have better lives than I do. But I don't see the point in comparing one's self to anyone else. I am of (or more) the same socio-economic educational area as a therapist, but I don't look at Mark Zuckerberg or Bill Gates and get worked up because I am not a bazillionaire and never will be. I am satisfied with my choices and am living the life I chose to have which meant getting some things that are very important to me and not dealing with some things that would not be important to me. There are inequities and I don't see inequities as ever being fixed. Sometimes they shift, but I believe there will always be inequities to deal with. Also, just because someone is married, has an expensive place to live and has a child - does not make them automatically happy or happier than anyone else. Therapists are not charmed people. They can have rotten children, rotten spouses (I have never known one who was not divorced at least once), rotten parents, live outside their means, be plagued with envy, doubt, etc just like anyone else.

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Default Jun 15, 2019 at 11:18 AM
  #4
Wise words from Stopdog.

There is much more to success than financial status. I know some truly successful "poor" people. I also so know some dismal failures who are millionaires.

Me. I'm a lower-middle class school teacher. I'll never live in a fancy house; my older house that needs lots of updates and repairs will have to do. Maybe someday it will get a new coat of paint and better flooring; for now, it's home. I'll never be a world traveler. Yes, I could be envious of all my wealthy friends who travel A LOT, but that's just not an option in my life, so I just accept it for what it is and drive down to see my sister and stay at her house on my vacations (I can afford that). What would be the point of resenting other people's ability to do more? I always tell them send lots of pictures and I'll live vicariously through them. LOL!

You have to learn to make the best of what you have. And yes, sometimes, financially, that isn't much but there are other ways to find feed your soul that don't cost a great deal of money.
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Default Jun 15, 2019 at 11:34 AM
  #5
The first thought I had: why do you keep pushing therapy given that it always makes you feel badly, and in more than one way?

I relate to what stopdog said and am in a similar position. I personally don't give a damn to many of the so-called socially respected values such as property, getting married, having kids etc. I value education so I have chosen to put a great deal of energy into that in many ways but am not moved by credentials per se. Perhaps more than anything, I value personal freedom and have set my life to have quite a lot of it, which meant choosing not to get into certain kinds of positions and status as it would limit the level of freedom and autonomy that I like. For me, a therapist is definitely not someone I would ever want to trade lives with. I definitely have regrets and would change some decisions and strategies if I could go back, but oh well.

It sounds to me, Sarah, that you have some ideals that are just not compatible with your reality but you keep chasing them. I would ask myself the question why? And, even more, can there be a different way, something that fits with who you? It sounds like you want to live someone else's live and kinda ignore and devalue your own. Of course depression can do that... but therapists get depressed and chronically dissatisfied as well. I personally know quite a few that are some of the most effed up, insecure, lonely, disrespectful people I have met. There is often a lot of talk about such therapists here on PC. I don't think there is anything magical about status, wealth, property.... many people who have them complain about all the maintenance and stress those things can come with and wish they had chosen differently.
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Default Jun 15, 2019 at 12:42 PM
  #6
Sometimes we need to confront what makes us unhappy about our own lives in order to deal with it and make progress. Envying other people's lives is an okay way to see what it is you want, but not if you get stuck there. Maybe try to think about what you can change in your life, something that is within your power that you can work on.
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Default Jun 15, 2019 at 01:55 PM
  #7
There was a study out recently that said something like, wealthy people can be just as sad and unsatisfied as poorer people. Its all relative. There are certain emotions that I personally think are useless and serve no good. For one two of those are envy and jealousy. Neither is positive and neither contributes to your well being in a healthy way.

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Default Jun 15, 2019 at 02:45 PM
  #8
When you have enough money to feed yourself and your family and when you have a (relatively) secure roof over your head and when you can pay (most) of your bills and when you are living materially well enough (even if you feel an emotional mess), it is easy to disregard the pain of the lower classes. Pain is only relative if you aren't on the lowest rung of the ladder.
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Default Jun 15, 2019 at 03:42 PM
  #9
I think if everyone could just rationalize away or wish away feelings of not belonging, there would be a lot of unemployed therapists.
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Default Jun 15, 2019 at 03:48 PM
  #10
It is not about rationalizing away feelings of not belonging. It is about making a different choice other than spending time comparing oneself with therapists and fantasizing they have marvelous charmed lives when you don't when that activity seems to serve only to make the person miserable rather than figuring out different choices. Whether therapy or something else can help one make other choices is up to the person. If nothing else, try to choose fantasies that make you happier rather than sadder. Or don't - it really isn't going to bother anyone else. But either way - it is a choice.
And remembering that one has choice - even if only in some things or to limited extent- is, I believe, something that can be useful even if one is not yet ready to make a different choice.

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Last edited by stopdog; Jun 15, 2019 at 04:17 PM..
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Default Jun 15, 2019 at 04:27 PM
  #11
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Originally Posted by stopdog View Post
And remembering that one has choice - even if only in some things or to limited extent- is, I believe, something that can be useful even if one is not yet ready to make a different choice.
Said no one ever when they have lived in poverty and deprivation. Choice is a privilege which is not afforded to the poor.
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Default Jun 15, 2019 at 04:31 PM
  #12
Here, this is certainly a choice to look up where therapists live, their family situations, and their home price.

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Default Jun 15, 2019 at 04:50 PM
  #13
I think most self-sabotaging behaviors are free choices theoretically but people still engage in all kinds. It can be hard to imagine why someone does not choose differently when we never had that pattern.
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Default Jun 15, 2019 at 04:55 PM
  #14
I am not saying it is easy or not understandable that someone doesn't make different choices. I am only pointing out it is a choice and one that keeps repeatedly making the OP seemingly more miserable. But certainly everyone does what they are going to do and certainly my ideas are not going to be useful to everyone.

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Last edited by stopdog; Jun 15, 2019 at 05:10 PM..
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Default Jun 15, 2019 at 05:08 PM
  #15
Stopdog-sure, people can make a choice to not google someone. But I think if this is a core issue for someone, it will regularly manifest and in different ways. If not googling, then when watching TV. A person can not watch TV. If not TV, then driving down the street and passing those flats. A person may be able to avoid driving down the street. In all, a person might have to disconnect from life altogether to avoid feeling like that, which ironically, is sort of what Sarah has been doing.

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I know itīs often said that a T doesnīt need to have the same experience as a client with different issues but I still donīt feel any therapist will understand how I live. They may be able to help me anyway but I feel seeing a therapist (or other successful people) will always be a reminder of how I have failed in my own life...I can never "catch up" in such a way that Iīll be able to buy an expensive flat where I want to live or finding someone to live with within a normal time span, not like 20 or 30 years after "everybody else".
I can relate to this Sarah. I have some of these things-children, career, education, above average home...but have often felt that way too and have had many discussions with my therapist about these things. I have often felt like that around my peers despite having similar things, I haven't met anyone who has a similar background as mine. (Not that they don't exist, it's just I have not met any. Most of my peers come from privileged backgrounds). I later learned that my feelings were all from the past-mostly from feeling deprived for much of my childhood. Deprived of love and parenting. I didn't experience 'normal' things- like having food to eat. Later, growing up with almost no 'normal' and having to constantly be around people who had some 'normal' things in life. And there is definitely a normal for those who have had little of it, so I agree with the relative aspect to this. If I lived in a developing country, having food might not be the norm, but where I lived, everyone I knew had food and so having food to eat was the norm. And I now think success is not about having things/accomplishments, but feeling content and whole and doing what you want to do--self actualizing. Some of us never had a sense of safety at all growing up, and this can get ingrained with your personhood. On the outside, I may look like one of those people Sarah, but you see here that I experience similar feelings. I think the same can be for therapists, so a T who has had 'invisible' hardships or adversity to overcome may be able to relate to you.

Since I had different parts, the feelings of deprivation were dissociated and also, I lived in the future for most of my adulthood and was very goal oriented, which eventually broke down. Now, after years of therapy, I started living in the present. It is vastly different from how I lived before, and living in the present--which required a sort of disconnecting from the future--led to feeling a ton of regret at the way my life is now when it could have been so much better. It doesn't help to dwell over things you can't change, but grieving these things with my T has been part of a process. Lately, T and I talk about moving forward, and during my last session, T noted I am looking at the future in a positive light. This wasn't exactly a serial process because there were spurts of throwing away old things, cleaning out closets, etc., that would dissipate and re-emerge. These behaviors paralleled my feelings of having to deal with my past but also make sense of it all. Not quite there, I'm almost at the place I want to be.

I have to be realistic and say that this process has been extremely painful, though I'm not talking about the one concept here as there was a lot of reconnecting with my feelings going on and I had a high degree of trauma. I think I have let go of the grieving surrounding these years , but I don't think a person necessarily needs therapy to move forward. I often remind myself of the economic principle of sunk costs, where you would still be at the same place regardless of what you did in the past. It's obviously a good idea to direct your energies to what you can do now rather than what you could have done, if possible. For some of us, that is a process that coincides with many different tangents and connection points, so easier said than done.
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Default Jun 15, 2019 at 05:17 PM
  #16
There are times I choose to rail at the darkness rather than light a candle.

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Default Jun 15, 2019 at 05:21 PM
  #17
You seem to bring up these kind of social comparisons frequently in your posts, and I'm sort of curious as to what's at the root of them.

Is it that you don't feel like you have the basics (which I do feel most people need to be content) -- a living wage, a few caring relationships, a decent place to live --and that no therapist can understand that? (In short, is it an issue of real lack?) Or is is that you feel your therapists have a lifestyle that you're envious of -- amazing houses, nice clothes, foreign holidays? (Is it an issue of comparison?)

I really empathise with you if it's the former. When you don't have enough money to live, no job, and you don't have someone to rely on it's exceptionally hard to get that across to someone who hasn't gone through not having enough. I didn't get it until I went through four hellish years of it. I've had some decent enough therapists, but I'm not sure any of them would really understand not having enough money to buy food or pay rent. And to be honest, I don't think therapy can ever solve that particular problem. I honestly think this kind of problem means taking a very practical approach and then just getting through hell. It means looking at making very small steps (like getting any job, like socialising even if theres no close friendship to be had) so you can give yourself some breathing space and look around at how to get to the next thing.

But if it's the latter, I'd really encourage you to think about what's behind all those things the therapist has. I grew up upper middle class, and it was effing miserable. The house was a museum my mom wouldn't let us do anything in, the holidays were my mom complaining about everything and sulking in hotel rooms, the marriage eventually had an affair for which I was sent to therapy, me and my brother regularly had nervous breakdowns because the demands on us to be high-achieving perfect beings were insane. Your therapist's seemingly perfect life will have skeletons you are not seeing, whether that's a gambling addiction, negative equity, dying parents, or massive overspending. The house may be beautiful, but you really have no idea what's happening inside. Your therapist does not have a picture perfect life.

I do think there's some truth to what you're saying about it being harder to get certain things when you're older and have never had them. But I do think you can still make positive changes that will improve the quality of your life, I really do. It's always helped me to look back on my life in five year chunks -- I'm always amazed by how much change had happened, even though I feel like my day to day stays the same.

Have you considered making a small goal that will help you? Maybe something like exercising every day? I once read something I thought was very clever -- that fitness is one of the few things that is fair, that what you put in is exactly what you get out, and that no one can pay someone else to do the work for them. It's a very small thing, and it won't solve your life, but it's a foot in the right direction.
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Default Jun 15, 2019 at 06:05 PM
  #18
Jordan Peterson talks about the brain circuit that deals with relative status. Says it's "primordial" and when you feel demeaned it messes with your emotional regulation. I gather that we dont have much control over this.

If someone appears to have a better life, they probably do. It's possible to have what most people want and to be miserable, but it's less likely.

If a person or situation made me feel that way, I would avoid them/it.

Even if the therapist does not have a superior life, it might still feel like it, because of the one-way exposure... your faults and miseries are on display, the therapist's are hidden. I found this inherently demeaning.
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Default Jun 15, 2019 at 06:08 PM
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Originally Posted by Xynesthesia2 View Post
I think most self-sabotaging behaviors are free choices theoretically but people still engage in all kinds. It can be hard to imagine why someone does not choose differently when we never had that pattern.
Or maybe some people are just really out of touch, such as those who grew up with a even a small sense of safety and worth during the early, impactful years.
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Default Jun 15, 2019 at 06:13 PM
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Sarah what you say makes sense to me. It costs a lot to train as a therapist, and it tends to be more well off people who train as therapists. I think that one of the Ts I had was not well off at all. And I think she took on a lot of clients who could not pay much. Perhaps if you could see someone like her you would feel more connected.
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