Book Review: How Does That Make You Feel?

“We’re all crazy and the only difference between patients and their therapists is the therapists haven’t been caught yet.” – Max Walker The therapeutic relationship is an unusual one. You go once a week and spend fifty minutes pouring out many of the most intimate details of your life — tragedies, triumphs, infinitesimal slights that are still eating away at you for reasons you cannot understand. Then you pay and leave. You think about the session afterwards, anxiously anticipate the next meeting. But who is this person, really, with whom you share all your heartfelt thoughts and emotions? While they may offer tidbits of their own lives, the skilled therapists keep the sessions focused on their clients and remain, by and large, a mystery. Yet, as patients, we often perseverate over even these kernels of information about their lives. I had one therapist who liked chickens, another with two children, a third who enjoyed traveling abroad (much to my chagrin — how dare you leave me to go to some far flung, potentially dangerous part of the globe?). In her new book, How Does That Make You Feel? True Confessions from Both Sides of the Therapy Couch, Sherry Amatenstein brings together essays from both therapists and clients as each shares their experiences in therapy and in life. Amanstein, a Licensed Clinical Social Worker and therapist based in NYC, has written a number of other books, including The Q&A Dating Book, Love Lessons from Bad Breakups, and Th...
Source: Psych Central - Category: Psychiatry Authors: Tags: Book Reviews Disorders Essays General Memory and Perception Personal Stories Psychology Psychotherapy Therapists Spill Treatment Amanstein Anxiety Beth Sloan books on therapy books on what it's like to be a therapist Carl Rog Source Type: news