After three years of biweekly sessions, I finally realized that my therapist is secretly a genius master of rhetoric. I remember first reading their Psychology Today profile when I was searching for a specialized kind of treatment. Amongst their other skills and modalities like “psychodynamic therapy” (based on Freud’s psychoanalysis) and “trauma-informed”, they had the term “motivational interviewing” listed. It was some kind of treatment used with alcoholics. Or something. (Little did I know this was simply a sugar-coated term for the well-known Socratic method.)
Looking back today, I finally see the past three years of answering these deceptively innocent questions for what they are: me, badly losing a debate I didn’t even realize was happening. This master Sophist has effectively challenged and defeated nearly every negative, self-defeating belief I had about myself. The debate champion for hundreds of rounds.
This person has changed so many of my beliefs that I don’t think I’m even the same person I was before we started. I guess you could really learn a thing two from these so-called therapists.
