So I was reading
I was reading this book on Cognitive Behavior Therapy for class last week. I (and many others I know) am kind of in love with CBT because it's got tons of research behind it, actually seems to work, and is largely about putting yourself out of business/teaching the patient to be their own therapist, not about "leading" and "teaching" and being above and superior. It's about the very practical business of life, but still about helping folks to make meaning out of their thoughts and behavior that helps them rather than harms them.
In this book there was a case study of a woman with OCD who had obsessions of harm, which sound pretty horrible; she had uncontrollable thoughts of hurting her family members. Pushing them down stairs, stabbing them, etc. It had come to the point where she could not ever handle a knife, could not stand on a subway platform, could not follow someone downstairs. So, one of her coping mechanisms was to picture herself in a healing white light. By the time she came to therapy, she was very caught up in the idea that there was a very stark division between "good" and "evil" and she was always one step away from becoming irrevocably "evil." Scary stuff. So the therapist worked with her on this to desensitize her and all was well. However.
The therapist viewed the "healing white light" as an OCD behavior, and had her phase it out. This I found very strange, as meditation and healing thoughts are generally not considered pathological. I wondered if this were a case of professionals pathologizing normal, helpful behavior, or if in order to give up her fears of becoming "totally evil" she had to give up these thoughts of being protected by this white light. I wonder what would have happened if the therapist had helped her to spend more time enveloped in white light and communing with all the good in the world, basing herself in light.
The end of the case study reported that the woman was doing very well at three months out, so one can't argue with results, but it's been bugging me that this woman's spirituality was possibly diminished by therapy.
In this book there was a case study of a woman with OCD who had obsessions of harm, which sound pretty horrible; she had uncontrollable thoughts of hurting her family members. Pushing them down stairs, stabbing them, etc. It had come to the point where she could not ever handle a knife, could not stand on a subway platform, could not follow someone downstairs. So, one of her coping mechanisms was to picture herself in a healing white light. By the time she came to therapy, she was very caught up in the idea that there was a very stark division between "good" and "evil" and she was always one step away from becoming irrevocably "evil." Scary stuff. So the therapist worked with her on this to desensitize her and all was well. However.
The therapist viewed the "healing white light" as an OCD behavior, and had her phase it out. This I found very strange, as meditation and healing thoughts are generally not considered pathological. I wondered if this were a case of professionals pathologizing normal, helpful behavior, or if in order to give up her fears of becoming "totally evil" she had to give up these thoughts of being protected by this white light. I wonder what would have happened if the therapist had helped her to spend more time enveloped in white light and communing with all the good in the world, basing herself in light.
The end of the case study reported that the woman was doing very well at three months out, so one can't argue with results, but it's been bugging me that this woman's spirituality was possibly diminished by therapy.