Due next week: Therapy homework
Once in awhile, my therapist assigns me homework — usually for one of several reasons:
- We only had time to touch on a subject in therapy and she wants me to keep thinking about it to flesh it out.
- She wants to keep better track of my symptoms and I’m not very good at bringing up bad days (not because I’m manipulative and want to hide it from her, but because I never feel it’s “bad enough” to bring to her attention).
- There’s something that I’m not able to say in person, and can much better articulate in writing.
I’m not anti-therapy homework, because it really is easier for me to write than to talk. We started to talk about this in the comments of my last post, but I feel less uncomfortable and/or vulnerable when writing about issues than when talking about them. Also, it’s helpful for me to be able to write and re-write my thoughts — I can spend 3 hours on that homework assignment if I want. I can go back to old journals and do “research” (only I would come up with research for therapy homework!). And…. I don’t have to necessarily be there when my therapist reads it, which means I don’t have to deal with the heavy emotions.
At the same time, though, I think a major problem with therapy homework is that it IS done at home. Sometimes, if it’s a tough assignment, I end up really upsetting myself. It’ll be 11:00pm and I’ll be sitting in my bedroom with old journals and reading things that I really should just burn. My therapist isn’t there. It could be a week until I see my therapist again. Sometimes I’m still upset the next day, and it does affect my eating or mood.
Maybe I should put off any assignments until a couple of hours before therapy….
The problematic ones tend to be the ones that I *know* will bring up too much.. Like the one due tomorrow that you just re-reminded me of
This is such a timely post as I too have “homework” which I’ve procrastinated. Well, I’ve worked on it but just not in the same sense I was supposed to. I don’t know whether it is entirely due to feelings being brought up or not. Once I push myself through to writing about troubling experiences, I seem relatively okay. It’s the reading it aloud or sharing it with someone else that tears me up and send me off into a panic.
In my med school lecture on CBT the professor actually talked a lot about the importance of homework for CBT. In addition to establishing some continuity between sessions, he explained that homework is most valuable because it often can serve as a stepping stone to uncovering some bigger issues. For example, he explained that a lot of patients would be unwilling to say “I have issues with feeling too needy and worrying about ruining my relationships.” However, if they keep not being able to do their homework, it may come out that they worry that if they do their homework “too well” it will imply that they don’t really need therapy. Likewise, if they are always doing homework perfectly and obsessing about it, it might come out that they worry if they are not perfect, their relationships will crumble. I know the former example definitely applies to me, and I think he definitely had a great point with this.
Hey, new to your blog…
I am with you, I am MUCH better at writing than I am at talking. I had to keep and “FFJ” (food and feelings journal) for about year and a half, then my T decided I needed to stop with hopes that I might actually talk. Eh, not so much. It’s just very hard for me to talk, yet very easy for me to write, which is why I love blogging!