What would a therapist say to this?

(are there any licensed professionals in the room?)

My character had to attend court ordered therapy that lasted from childhood until 18. She often refers to things her therapist says or the inspirational/motivational posters in the waiting room. it starts out as an eyeroll jokey thing: "my stupid therapist would say____" but then it evolves into her actually trying to remember and hold on to those things her therapist had told her when things get overwhelming.

Professionals, if a teenager or young adult came into your office dealing with the mentality of "never try your best or expect happiness because you'll always be disappointed." and "always strive for the worst because at least then you'll know it can never get any worse than what it already is" what would be the response?
(nevermind getting to the root of the problem... that comes up later)



(of course this mentality changes as the story goes on... but this is the first chapter and i'm trying to set up a key character trait)


ETA: what i meant was counselor.
"counseling often addresses specific problems, challenges, or behaviors in a patient’s life in a very practical way"
"therapists often seek to go deeper by helping the patient understand the how and why behind a challenge"

 

Having only done marriage and premarital counseling with the ministry, I can only offer this. Most times and with most of those offering counseling, you are trying to make someone more aware of their surroundings, cause and effects of actions and words. There is far more listening than talking and as a rule of thumb,, you never tell anyone anything they did not already know, they just did not have the ability to put things into context or see the bigger picture. Just about everyone in the field tries to stay away from little cheap sayings as a way change someones heart.

If you're good, you will have made a friend, offered encouragement where needed, guidance where there was uncertainty. There is a level of trust that is needed that would never develop using cheap little sayings.

While my experience is with older people I have never underestimated the ability of anyone of any age to detect pure bullshit or insincerity. Easier to tell a whopper of a lie than a white lie well, which is how I would classify motivational posters

 

i threw the motivation posters into my story from experience going to the dean, guidance counselor, and principal's offices for various reasons growing up (no, i wasnt a troubled kid. I was just bullied and would retaliate/get revenge on my attackers in various ways)
However, like art, different people see different things in those saying and take away different meanings. Bullshit to some, motivational to others.

what would a therapist say to get this character to realize the bigger picture? I remember when I was on the Therapist track of studies, we were taught to listen (yes) but to also ask/say things that would get the person to continue talking or to express what they needed to express. nudges, so to speak.
My MC is already aware of her flaw. she thinks its armor. its protection. its coping. She doesnt see anything wrong with it (yet). but when things start going wrong and all the years she's spent taking her mandated therapy sessions lightly, comes back she really starts to take those sessions and those posters seriously.
I just need to figure out what was said to her in those sessions that will eventually resonate with her in the future

 

Just googled. Perhaps what i mean (or had in mind) was a COUNSELOR, not a therapist.

Counseling helps you understand a problem. Therapy helps you understand your feelings.

My bad about the mix up

So, if a therapist listens.... What would a counselor say?

 

I've been out of that game for decades and I didn't deal with teens, but I think if I had such a young person as a client, I would start asking if their hopes/expectations were always dashed -- perhaps their hopes/expectations were unrealistically too high. I might try to guide them toward setting more reasonable hopes/expectations with the hope that they could then see some positive results to offset the negative.

 

My character has pressures and high expectations placed on her.
Its a portal fantasy. Her mom popped up on a midwestern highway with an infant in her arms claiming to be a queen from another realm (obviously that didnt go over too well in todays society and they believed her to be a brainwashed victim of human trafficking). But all through my MC's life, her mom has told her that shes made for greater and better things. Shes princess to a land in another world and she is more than what she thinks she is.

Naturally, my MC starts to resent her mom. Because they've lived a cruddy life thus far and shes come to expect the worse because all they've experienced was the worst.

There counseling is because she'd watched her mom attempt suicide when she was really young, and started acting out in violent ways in school.

 

To put things into perspective. A good counselor is like a good police interrogator. Anyone that is good, is excellent at body language, word usage, phrasing and tenses when it comes to speech. Things left out of descriptions, or holes in stories all help point to the truth. While I said in my original post, you never tell anyone anything they do not know, you often tell them things they do really not want to admit to. Everyone that ends up in counseling has a level of comfort with what they do and say. While they may not like the outcome, they always have a reason for their actions and their attitudes. That is normal and something we all do. The problems arise when abnormal actions and thoughts are viewed normal or justified. ..

Going back to my analogy of comparing a counselor to a police interrogator. Just about everyone will talk to someone who will listen and care, 'empathy' your character as well. The second step is to establish some sort of baseline as to what is normal for them so can detect stressors from normal conversations. The third is to go over the details multiple times from different angles to fill in the honest details or missed areas, 'separating fact from fiction, real or perceived' You should have a storyline that the daughter is going to share with the counselor and the questions he would have asked or talked about with her.

That would the base line for offering advice. In your storyline it would be all the holes in her mother's story, or segments of truth that would support it. Those answers would be re-enforced to establish what is really true.

The story line for the movie Terminator comes to mind, John Connor was always in doubt in the second movie, if what his mom said was true. Him piecing together memories or his childhood and the lessons learned to eventually support the truth. Everyone thought Sarah Connors was nuts including her son. In the movie John acted out by being someone always outside the law or having no responsibility to others, the world after all was all going to end according to his mother, similar to your character acting out in school.


On a side note
Disagreements form depending on who is doing the counseling and what is the accepted form of normal. As a Christian counselor my opinion of what is normal would be different from someone in the secular world. My advice was always easy, it is based in scripture and it was always a matter of finding scripture that pertained to what is going on.

One angle seldom discussed about therapists or counselors, is that we are by nature manipulators of people. We will always try to control the conversation and its direction. I used to always play a game when either interviewing someone for an article or counseling, to tell me at least three times, "I should not be telling you this." The other is that once you learn to pick up on all of the subtle messages that people send through language and inflection along with body language is that you never get to shut it off. Tough when every human interaction boils down to, are you lying to me or being honest, why did you word it that way. Those skills come in handy as a journalist or counselor buy creates problems in real life, information that may help you develop that character for your story.

 

I can offer my wife's perspective for the exact right age group... but the wrong jurisdiction

Over here, for someone to get to court and be ordered to attend therapy, things usually will have reached a point where a young person wouldn't drop them into conversation very often. The OP doesn't go into detail on the order or what occasioned it - but it's typically kids who are in residential care (for their safety and to protect the public) and have sexually risky behaviours or aggression+violence. Therapy for most other things - e.g. suicidal ideation, drug use, previous experiences of CSE - is by consent through health and social services rather than being court ordered.

So in that context, someone's having low aspirations and a pessimistic outlook on life is often going to be somewhat secondary to the behaviours the therapy is supposed to be managing. The therapy they get is always life-affirming, but it's success line isn't going to be the person being happy and "their best self" - it's damage limitation. By the time the YP gets a therapist, often they won't listen to one and it wouldn't work if they did. But for an hour a week, they are in a room with a benevolent professional who's paid to listen to them: so you can do lots of information gathering - and whatever behaviours the court wanted to put a stop to, they'll be doing them for one hour less. And that's worth £100 of anyone's money.

At the end of the therapy course, the Judge calls everyone back in and asks:-
"Has the young person engaged in child prostitution in the last six months?"
"-No." says their barrister, "They were locked up 24/7 on a secure order, receiving therapy to help them address their risk-taking behaviours."
"Very good," says the Judge, "And have they battered any innocent dog-walkers in the park?"
"-No." says the barrister, "They were locked up 24/7 on a secure order."
"In that case," says the Judge, "I see no further grounds for the secure order. We must dissolve it."

 

thank you!

MC had been in child protective services after her mom was ruled unfit. her coping was aggression and violence and as she got older, other risk taking behaviors. but the aggression (and her setting her foster mother's couch on fire) is what put her in court mandated professional services.

now, all of this back story isnt the focus. When the story begins, the MC is in her twenties and on the run from a bad group of people. details of her past are spoken about in past tense. her mentions of therapists and counseling is also mentioned in past tense. For example, one of my characters offers her some advice and my MC says sarcastically "oh, my therapist would love you."
but in her internal monologue, she recalls her sessions and feeling anxious and panicky when the court ordered sessions ended. though she was being a bratty kid and didnt listen to her therapist before, she has abandonment issues and felt abandoned when those sessions ended. So she still does bring up her former therapist and her sessions because of those unresolved emotions.

 

It may be very dated now, released in 1980, but Ordinary People movie might be worth a look. Winner of Best Movie Oscar (?) and directed by Robert Redford, Judd Hirsch plays a sort of unconventional therapist/counsellor and I recall some tense, well-constructed therapy sessions, though a long time ago and maybe dated.

Hard to know what exactly meets your needs here. Court orders are pretty directive, narrowing the choices for your mc. With younger people, particularly when under such legal constraints, your therapist may well be more active in directing discussions, taking a focus from the court judgement. It still allows therapist to apply person centred approach, but more tramlined than circumstance of voluntary or adult client. Therapist may be reporting back to same court on progress made?

The therapist may well have inspirational posters hanging around. They don't carry any kind of cure but could be considered as generating a better therapeutic atmosphere than, say, a print of Munch's The Scream. There's so many succinct quotes it's not funny. Just put inspirational quotes into your search engine and find something resonant.

Where your position works is where you have clear idea of mc, therapist and their relationship. Whether dealing with anger, insecurity, depression, panic or whatever, pick what the therapist might say that could resonate years later when mc undergoes similar difficulties.

 

I think Good Will Hunting has a good scene for this. He breaks down the guard first by not saying a fucking thing and it changes the paradigm of their interactions. If a person comes in defensive or hostile, you really can't make any headway until you break that down. So maybe the therapists thinks of a witty way to break down her guard in the first meeting.

 

Hello! Therapist here.

If a client came in with that belief, it has formed from something, and just on the surface here, this kind of thinking style is probably protective in nature. Therefore, in the past they have tried and in their eyes failed, and their esteem took a blow. By not emotionally investing in things, they are effectively protecting themselves from feeling that pain again. Not only would I be interested in teasing out the events when the client did feel this pain (this is a rabbit hole of discussion, so I'll gloss over it here!), but moving forwards, how is this approach working out for them? It's almost Therapy 101 that people develop protective styles that cause more problems than they aid!

Furthermore (back to the original post) 'always strive for the worst' is interesting. What is the worst? What does it look like? How do you strive for the worst? Might be useful to see what the client considers as 'the worst', as this is a very individual concept...