Terrible therapy session

[Scarlet13]

So, I had a hard session today with my T.
I was in a good place because last week in our session she really instilled in me attachment security. So I came in today ready to work as I felt so secure and safe with her.
I have been remembering more sexual abuse. I always knew I was molested by a 13 year old girl when I was 4. This was horrible the things she did. She was very narcissistic. I believe though her mother came over and molested us both together a handful of times.
Her mother was "nurturing" during the sexual abuse. My mother never sexually abused me, but was very rejecting and so I have had a lot of trauma from women.
I was talking about this with my T and also how I get intrusive thoughts when I am around my daughter and bathing her ect. She is 4, the same age that I was so she is just extra triggery to me.
I was telling my T how I get thoughts that I will molest her. It is like a mean voice in my brain says, "What if you molest her? Go ahead, just do it." and then I feel repulsed and disgusted. I am still going through benzo withdrawal and this adjustment from withdrawal makes these thoughts worse a lot like OCD thoughts.
I dont really want to molest her but my brain has this terror that I will and this causes the mean voice.
So my T asks me,
"What would happen if you did molest your daughter?"
I thought about it and I said, "I would kill myself.'
And she said,
"Well, you would get help."
My T did say that she thought I would never do that.
I am a very good mother. Very committed to my children. I am highly empathetic.
But that exchange made it feel like I could potentially molest my daughter.
I feel furious. Sure if I did abuse my daughter I would get help right after losing custody, having my teaching license suspended, and getting fired from being a teacher.
I sent her an email telling her how upset I was. I just do not understand her line of questioning, the 'let's imagine you are a child molester, what would happen' scenario. I told her, I will never have to get help because I will never do that. No matter how much trauma I have endured, no matter how disgusting and torturous my intrusive thoughts get, no matter how f*cked up my sexuality is, I will never be a potential child molester who will potentially need help for my child molesting ways.
This is not me. Not my personality. I am an advocate for children, I am aware and compassionate.
What was the point of this question?
After sending her the email I felt like vommitting. I am attached to her and dont want to lose her. She has been a good therapist, but I don't know how we can recover from this, how to trust her again.
I will absolutely be holding back and treading carefully, if she even wants to work with me again. I always get hurt by people over and over again. I am not a child molester.

 

[Suzetig]

That sounds like a very hard session. I wonder if she was trying to explore your fears around the thoughts you're having and acting on them - i.e. trying to get you to look at all the ways you're different to the woman who molested you (who presumably didn't feel she would end her life if she ever hurt a child). It's a clumsy way of doing it but for people who are worried by their thoughts it can be useful to explore "what if you did" because it underlines that they never would.

I don't think your T did it because she thought you would hurt a child but to give you a grounding to challenge the intrusive thoughts. As I say, a clumsy way of getting there and certainly something to talk through.

 

[Deleted member 12723]

I was telling my T how I get thoughts that I will molest her. It is like a mean voice in my brain says, "What if you molest her? Go ahead, just do it." and then I feel repulsed and disgusted. I am still going through benzo withdrawal and this adjustment from withdrawal makes these thoughts worse a lot like OCD thoughts.

I think to tell you that you are not alone in your thoughts and that it is normal to have them and now that you are aware the thoughts will lose their hold and power over you, because you brought them out in the light of day.

I too had thoughts like with my children when they were so small and I was horrified at myself. I was in the beginning of my therapy and so much was surfacing in me. I never once acted on the thoughts and neither will you.

I think your therapist was showing you the natural consequences for you had you acted on your thoughts in a perhaps clumsy way to show you that you are not an abuser and to perhaps reassure you. That is my thoughts.

Going through Benzo withdrawal is so hard, having done that myself last year. I have never done anything so hard in my life so I feel for what you are currently going through.

I think it would be good to have some kindness and compassion for yourself and what you went through as a small child. Try not to beat yourself up over having the thoughts. You are human. You only thought and did not do it and neither will you do that. Take reassurance from that okay?

 

[Sideways]

I agree with @Suzetig completely. I'm sorry it ended up being such a distressing strategy, but it does seem to have worked...??

You started your post suggesting that part of you is worried that you're going to molest your daughter because of the thoughts she triggers. But by the end of the post, you've very clearly set out how absolutely sure you now are that you won't ever do that, no matter how many thoughts may intrude.

Clumsy and truly awful to consider? Absolutely. But, seems to have worked...???

 

[barefoot]

I agree with @Suzetig too. Sounds like a horribly hard and distressing conversation/session, but I am thinking that your T asked the question to provoke you into challenging your intrusive thoughts. The last line you wrote? I think getting you to that point was probably why she asked the question.

Seems like you have gone from worrying/ruminating about the potential for you to molest your daughter to your T asking that question to you then feeling outraged by the question because you now very firmly know that you would never do that.

I’m not really defending the way she did it because I think it does sound quite heavy-handed and a risky approach. But, as @Ragdoll Circus says, it does seem to have worked. You now seem to have great clarity and certainty around the fact that you are not and will never be someone capable of harming a child in any way.

 

[Scarlet13]

Well, it just really felt like she thought I would really do it because the thoughts were so vivid, a voice telling me, "Go ahead do it, just molest her." I told her this out of trust, not holding back. Right after I shared with her new emerging details about how I was being molested by a woman who was "mothering me". I share specifically the memory about how this woman "cuddled" with me naked and then there were others acts that were torturous and got blended in and how her daughter was there and it was all so traumatizing in this mother wound sort of way. Especially because then my own mother was very rejecting and told me I was partially responsible for being molested. I used to crave physical, skin to skin contact with my mother. I think I craved my mothers body, to be close to her in ways that were like when I was an infant and I would ask for extra baths so she would have to touch me naked and put lotion on me and these would be nurturing ways and not sexual ways. I craved her touch as the antidote to be essentially raped by this random woman. And I did get her to soothe me and touch me skin to skin and it helped greatly she was a very intermittent mother.
This was a lot to talk about. My thoughts for my daughter are OCD like. I think it would have been better to explore how these thoughts, while vivid, are anxiety's voice talking. Ever since I got post partum anxiety I have had zero trust for myself as a mother. The thoughts used to even be way worse like I would imagine smothering her, strangling her, leaving her out side naked, dropping her, ridiculing her.
It has gotten better now that I am off of psych meds which all caused manic reactions and I an finally sleeping better (after 4 years).
But for my T to take me through hypothetically molesting my little girl and then telling me I could "get help" made me feel like she was giving me the message that she did not trust me. That if I were to do that then I could get help.
Thanks, everyone for helping me to see what she was trying to do. This is helpful. I am just not sure how to get through this. She has in the past been such a good therapist. She is an expert in this especially and you can tell but I do not understand how hypothetically imagining that I would molest my daughter would lower my fears. How does knowing I could get help for my 'poor choices' of molesting my daughter at all comfort me? I absolutely would attempt suicide. Because my career would be over, because that would me I am really, really sick and should not be alive around any children.
I don't really get her thinking and do not know how I will ever trust her again. I do not want to continue in therapy. My intrusive thoughts for my daughter are now through the roof.

 

[Sunny546]

I am gonna be the odd ball here.
Her statement to me, felt like normalizing.

Like okay, so u follow through.. then what?
Its like imagine u do it...and the aftermath wont be as bad as u think. U will get help. Its simple as that.

I had something similar....i was repeating what my mom did to me.
I hated it.
I discussed it.
My T asked me...why do u want to stop this behaviour.. why do u think this bad...what will happen to my daughter in long run if i continue.
I answered all these in detail.
He then told me...what happened to me was wrong and harmful. It should not have happened. Its not normal. And my daughter deserves the opposite.
Its a work in progess.

I hope your T clarifies what she meant by asking that question.

 

[EveHarrington]

Seriously, you need to suspend any kind of therapy that isn't 1 million percent supportive, non challenging, and even remotely HINTS at anything difficult.

Your therapist is a total moron for doing any of this stuff with you while you're going through DRUG WITHDRAWAL.

She knows nothing about how to handle people who are coming off of drugs. Nothing whatsoever.

You don't put someone through drug withdrawal and then get into heavy shit. Oh yeah, I know you're going through some of the worst stuff of your life, but LETS GET INTO HEAVY TRAUMA SHIT!

No. Just NO.

 

[Scarlet13]

I am 8 mos off of klonopin and I tapered .125 mg over the course of a year. So I am not currently in acute withdraw just lingering effects.
What I really need help with is how to navigate this. I know what she was trying to do. She was trying to do the "think about the worst case scenario and then see how it is manageable" approach. This can be effective. Like if I was having ruminations over being fired I could think about this in a real sense and then problem solve it in the hopes that I would feel control from the hypothetical problem solving and not control that can come from rumination (which is not effective).

This was the wrong approach for me. I was highly triggered by this, "Let's pretend you are a child molester, what would you do" approach. This is because these intrusive thoughts of molesting my daughter are not the same type of anxiety as a worried I could get fired thought. These thoughts are more OCD like thoughts and they are torturous and deliberately uncomfortable like my brain is agitated and is just sending out horrifying thoughts to hurt me. So to fully live the idea out in therapy was not right for me as it made the horror even more real and it actually resulted in an increase in these types of thoughts. I am not sure why. She was once so attuned to me and now things are not going so well. I dont know if I should try to work through this or even how to trust her again.
Has any one worked through a therapy move that wasn't the right one that was triggering?
I do not want a new therapist I just don't know how to trust her again or how she could do that.

 

[Sideways]

She didn't think you were actually at risk of molesting your child. She'd have reported you if she actually thought that was a risk.

It's pretty well established that challenging dysfunctional thoughts, head on, is an effective way of managing them. Therapy 101.

You're now in a position where you know this thought, even though it's distressing, is ridiculous. So when it pops into your head, you can confidently tell yourself "Meh, there's no way I'd ever molest my child". Doing that? Stops engaging with the thought and helps your brain rewire and let the thought go.

In your OP you talked about how you'd established a good attachment with your T at your last session. It's natural for that to oscillate back and forth for a while. Feeling challenged seems to have pushed back a bit, but that's a normal part of the process. If you give it a bit of time, you may well find it settles back to a healthy attachment again.

 

[Deleted member 541]

I’m not sure about others that have been molested as a child, that are grown with children now. But I too had these thoughts with my daughter when she was young. I have suspicions about my own mother, but no actual memories. I caught her in a bad position with my daughter when my daughter was only about 18 months old. So, I’ve had suspicions since. I never acted on them, but did have them.

I think that bringing this up was a huge step for you and one that you need to explore throughly. I’m sorry you’re struggling, but I think that you have a handle on this. WHY?? Because you brought up the subject, you want help with the intrusive thoughts. Molesters don’t do this.... They don’t ask for help, they just act!!!!!

Be proud of yourself for asking for help...

 

[Scarlet13]

She didn't think you were actually at risk of molesting your child. She'd have reported you if...

Thanks very helpful insights.I will try that, "Meh, I am not going to do that."
I hope you are right about the attachment going back to secure and healthy. I was upset at her in my email but I was still respectful. I hope she will still want to work with me.