Sold

I see this term used a bit on here.

I wasn't sold anything.

I was given a number because I was at the bottom of a pit.

I rang. I agreed an initial consultation.

We talked. I wasn't sold anything. No mention of super outcomes. How could there be? No one knows what changes an individual will go through.

I think T's response in the beginning when I was expecting immediate results was "wait and see". She had never promised anything.

I had no expectations.

I didn't want anything apart from the pain to stop.

What is being sold? Where is it being sold?

For me therapy has always been about helping me to think about what was always on the periphery of my awareness.

It neve was about promising me this or that. Never was about promising more satisfying relationships. Winning the lotto. Becoming prime minster.

Where is this selling Happening?


🤷

Same here. I've never been 'sold' anything. Therapy gives me a safe space in which to express myself, and a kind hearted therapist willing to listen and accept me for who I am. Thats all, but for me its everything.

I agree, I tend to see T as an emotional consultant as I was in the consulting field for many years. I pay T for his time and training but the outcomes are mine, hiring and firing are mine. I absolutely adore T but he is a hired “employee” offering no “goods” to be sold other than a trained, outside perspective.
Yes, there is an emotional connection between T and I, contact outside of sessions, rules and boundaries... but I had all of these things with many of my clients as well. The biggest difference is that by the nature of the contract I worked under there were very clear, measurable outcomes I had to be able to enable my clients to achieve. If I wanted something that black and white with T I would have to put more effort into defining goals than achieving them and I would rather achieve.

No one sold me anything or promised anything.

I was not sold anything either.

I initiated contact.

No promises were made about what kind of outcome I would see.

No relationship was pushed on me, nor was the therapist in any way the focus of my therapy. My therapy was about me.

I asked for help finding a way to get through my pain and depression, and that's what my therapists focused on, very much with my permission. If we both saw and agreed to a variation to that focus, it was a mutual decision.

My therapists never claimed to be experts in my life. On the contrary, they reminded me I am the expert on me so I better start learning from myself. They never encouraged any delusion that they were the expert on what I needed. They kept it real.

I wasn't forced to stay. They were all fine with me making decisions about staying or going.

My therapists were sort of educational supports for me. That's just my take on my therapy; might not work for someone else but I'm a teacher so my brain works that way. The subject was my life, my issues, my needs. The therapists were, as we sometimes talk about in the educational world, "the guide on the side," not lecturer or dictator telling me what to learn and how to think; but rather, they were present as a support, a resource, a clarifier often, as I worked my way toward healthier thinking and independence.

Thought I wasnt the only one that had a realistic view of what therapy is.

Thanks for the replys. Good to read.