27/04/2024, 17:34 Sidestepping the Dependency Dance in Psychotherapy

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27/04/2024, 17:34 Sidestepping the Dependency Dance in Psychotherapy

Sidestepping the Dependency Dance in Psychotherapy

by David Prucha
Four steps mental health professionals can use to directly address client dependency in this digital age and set the stage for positive therapeutic outcomes.
Filed Under: Person-Centered, Beginning Therapists
In This Article…

The Rhythmic Uncertainties of Therapy

The Dependency Dance
Early Mistakes in Psychotherapy
A Therapeutic Strategy Applied
The Second Conversation

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“Not I, nor anyone else can travel that road for you.?You must travel it by yourself. It is not far. It is within reach.” – Walt Whitman

We’ve all had someone text us a single question mark after not responding to them within the timeframe they expect. You know the one. It looks like this:
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“?”

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27/04/2024, 17:34 Sidestepping the Dependency Dance in Psychotherapy
I mean, did your question mark wander off and get lost somehow? Should we head to the front of the store to reunite it with its missing sentence? While I think the
use of this orphaned punctuation should be considered a misdemeanor offense, it points to a natural phenomenon about human interaction, especially the
disembodied kind most common in the digital universe — when we communicate with each other, there are rhythmic expectations. When we want the rhythm of a
conversation to be slower, but someone else wants it to be faster, the single question mark makes its grand appearance.

“I’m waiting,” it complains.

When starting a new relationship, deciphering these rhythms can be a challenge because the response time between parties can suggest very different things. If one
party responds to a text message quickly, it might mean they’re interested in the relationship, or it might indicate that their device was simply nearby. Yet if someone
responds to a text message slowly, it might indicate they’re disinterested in the relationship, or it might simply mean they’re preoccupied. The signals are unclear and
they require interpretation.

If we’re honest, it’s probably impossible to know what someone’s response time actually indicates, but this doesn’t stop us from reading between the lines. But the
problem with reading between the lines is that we simply end up interpreting or projecting When we feel alone we might imagine that our text was read but ignored
Bios

David L. Prucha, MA, LPC, is an affiliate faculty member at Regis University in Denver, Colorado. He is also a licensed counselor in
Colorado and California and has spent the last 12 years working with clients with a wide range of emotional disorders and life difficulties. David can be contacted at
davidprucha@gmail.com.
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