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>> No. 31692 Anonymous
6th May 2022
Friday 11:09 am
31692 Helping my dad with "types of" therapy
Somehow my sister has finally managed to bully our dad into getting therapy for the issues he has that marred our childhoods from beginning to end, drove our mum to the bottle and left us half-broken semi-humans with a plethora of our own issues.

To my astonishment, the old man is actually giving it a "serious" go, for the moment at least. He is having EMDR at the moment because apparently a lot of his issues are related to trauma from his own childhood and EMDR is good for that. He doesn't like it and is instinctively hostile to anything that seems like it doesn't have a clear and direct relation to his issues.

He has told me that what he believes he actually needs is "whatever the type of therapy that bloke in The Sopranos has. Proper therapy therapy." I have been tasked with finding out what this type of therapy is called (is it just 'psychoanalysis'?) and arranging it for him.

How do I do this? Pretend money is no object but I understand absolutely nothing about anything. I'm basically Tony's fat idiot son who just wanted to play his PS2.
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>> No. 31693 Anonymous
6th May 2022
Friday 11:33 am
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Mate I'd love for you to find the help you're looking for but we don't really have a great track record for psychotherapy advice. If you were after CBT (no, not that) and fake Buddhism we probably could have helped you.

You might be better off browsing https://www.psychforums.com, though I've not looked into the site very much myself.
>> No. 31694 Anonymous
6th May 2022
Friday 11:34 am
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gestalt_therapy

>Gestalt therapy is a form of psychotherapy which emphasizes personal responsibility and focuses on the individual's experience in the present moment, the therapist–client relationship, the environmental and social contexts of a person's life, and the self-regulating adjustments people make as a result of their overall situation.

Does that sound like what Tony Soprano has? I had it a while ago, didn't really help me but I can see it being helpful for other people.
>> No. 31695 Anonymous
6th May 2022
Friday 12:47 pm
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>>31693
Why use this image?
>> No. 31696 Anonymous
6th May 2022
Friday 2:25 pm
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>>31694
No idea if this is what Soprano had but this sounds like exactly the kind of thing my dad would go for based upon the description. I will try and sell him on it and see what happens. Cheers.
>> No. 31697 Anonymous
6th May 2022
Friday 3:37 pm
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I wish I had the stones to tell the NHS I want "whatever type of therapy Tony Soprano" has.
>> No. 31698 Anonymous
6th May 2022
Friday 5:09 pm
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I mean, the thing is, I don't think whatever type of therapy Tony Soprano has is actually very good in real life.

Yanks are obsessed with therapy, which is fitting because they're an entire country of neurotic bastards, and their society is so atomised what better solution than to outsource the conversations you should be able to have with your spouse or close friends to someone you pay by the hour. But I have my hunches that the reason they have this kind of therapy goes hand in hand with their very lucrative medical system. You don't need to actually have any mental health issues to go to a therapist, and if you do, you're very unlikely to be cured by seeing them. It's as much of a fashion statement as a medical treatment, for a certain segment of Yank society, like doing yoga or going to the gym.

What I'm saying is that the type of therapy your dad has in mind from The Sopranos isn't "real proper therapy". I'm sue he and you both know that it's a fictional, idealised version anyway, but even so, I doubt the real life equivalent will be quite what he hopes for either.

Anyway, there are other approaches beyond CBT, but do try keep in mind CBT is used because it has been proven to be effective. It's just a deeply personal thing though, and finding a practitioner who you actually click with and feel like you can trust helps a lot. Some of them are more "proactive" than others, they prompt you more, give you more to think about rather than just letting you talk and nodding. But it's trial and error getting to them.
>> No. 31699 Anonymous
6th May 2022
Friday 6:00 pm
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The evidence shows that the style of therapy doesn't have a significant impact on the outcome. What matters is what's called the "therapeutic alliance" - the degree to which the patient trusts their therapist and they agree on the goals of therapy. There strong diminishing returns, with most of the benefit coming after 12 to 18 sessions of therapy. Those benefits fade over time, but most of the benefit can be restored with a short "top-up" course of two or three sessions.

If I were looking for a therapist for someone, I'd start by talking to them about what they want to achieve through therapy and what expectations or preconceptions they might have. A therapist isn't going to "fix" you, they're just going to give you some tools that you can use to change yourself. Patients who go into the process with positive but realistic expectations tend to do best.

Next, I'd ring around a few different therapists to just get a sense of them as a person. Any good therapist should be happy to chat for a few minutes about their approach to therapy and how they work with patients. You're looking for someone that you think your old man will get on with, but someone who won't take any nonsense. Think of the kind of mate who has always got your back, but isn't afraid to pull you up when you're acting like a twat.

Going purely on first impressions, I think that your dad would benefit most from some no-nonsense CBT. Cognitive Behavoural Therapy done properly doesn't muck about with old traumas or trying to get to the bottom of your issues (whatever that means), it's about figuring out what you're feeling, figuring out how those feelings affect your behaviour and giving you practical tools to change. It's very goal-oriented and tends to work very well for people who are motivated to change but don't really know how. If your dad is the sort of bloke who doesn't have much of an emotional vocabulary and doesn't realise when he's acting in a self-destructive way, he's likely to find a lot of useful stuff in CBT.

As I said, the most important thing in therapy is trust and understanding. If you can get across to your dad that you need to shop around to find someone on the right wavelength, you're halfway there.
>> No. 31700 Anonymous
6th May 2022
Friday 9:43 pm
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>>31695
Exactly why you think, trypophobia.

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