Outpatient therapy is sometimes known as the referral of last resort. Generally, people go to their doctors first to explain distressing symptoms and after some routine questions and tests about a patient's behavior that are unexplained by medicine, doctors refer to mental health. This is my bread and butter as a psychotherapist.
One of my favorite examples is Dorothy. That's not her real name of course, but it will make sense in a moment. When Dorothy first came to my office, she was like most other mid-thirties, upper middle class housewives that find themselves in a therapist's office with no history of mood or anxiety disorders. Skeptical, yet concerned they're crazy. These are assumptions of course, but all I had in the brief moments of scanning her intake forms minutes before she stood nervously in my office doorway. Dorothy was beautifully over dressed for a therapy appointment. I'd make a point to tell her comfort is key. She appeared as the stereotype of a high school beauty queen turned soccer mom.
"So tell me what brings you here, Dorothy." The rote opening line in my daily work with new patients.
Dorothy smiled and stammered her words, uncomfortably shifting in the arm chair adjacent from mine. "Well... its a long strange story. It's just uncomfortable and so weird. I don't know."
I smiled and shuffled in my seat to match her behavior, the routine of building rapport. "Take all the time you need. It's safe here. Just between us, my license depends on it." We both forced a chuckle.
Silence. I let it go to the point of discomfort and continued to make eye contact for nearly a minute. It's her turn.
"Uhm. I'm having trouble with sex." I nodded and affirmed, still listening and waiting. "You see, I'm married and have been for a long time but... our sex life had stopped. I just couldn't get in the mood."
"Couldn't? Past tense?" I replied.
Dorothy smiled and shuffled, I noted that this body language meant that she's got something uncomfortable yet important to say.
She gave another chuckle as her eyes wandered the room. "Yes, so it was really nonexistent and I just couldn't ever get in the mood, like at all. It was really bad and caused a lot of problems with my husband."
"So, what I'm hearing is that for a long period of time you wanted no sex at all to the point where it stopped. But it sounds like it's not like that right now?" Reframing... right out of the motivational interviewing text book. "So what changed?"
"Well, we found something by accident. It all happened on Halloween last year. We went to costume party. I dressed as Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz and my husband was the lion. So when we got home, I was extremely... horny... and we had really passionate sex, like really passionate and this was after a year of none at all."
"Well that's not odd at all. Role play is very common and stimulates sex lives really well. As a matter of fact, it's a recommended intervention pretty often. I've assigned it as homework more than I can count." I said with confidence, thinking this will be a breeze. The smile and shuffle followed and I knew I missed the mark.
"Right! I thought it got us back on track, but it didn't... at all. The next day and week we were right back where we were. We tried to figure it out. We tried to be detectives about it and I eventually put the costume back on and... we'll then I was..."
"Horny again?" Always use their words. Therapy 101.