What Do You Do When Your Therapist Can't Understand Your Trauma?

[joeylittle]

I have always believed 100% in my therapist. But something happened that has really shaken me up and I could use some thoughts and advice.

We have been working through my trauma mostly sequentially. We recently got to part of the story that I had sworn to myself I would never disclose. I know that ultimately that's not going to be a realistic way to heal the trauma; so after about four sessions worth of me working through the anxiety about simply telling the event, I managed to say what it was. Another three sessions later and I could write the actual details and send them for him to read.

Every other time I've hit a wall like this and moved through it, I've felt relief. All sorts of other things too, but a huge relief for being able to communicate.

Not this time. This time he and I are not understanding each other; somehow I'm losing trust in him, rapidly, from this thought I have that he can't understand, connect with, empathize with, or guide me through this pain.

I know it's got to be me projecting my own inability to grapple with it, right?

Does it even matter? I can't stop thinking that he does not understand the horror of it, and therefore cannot support me through what will be a very challenging piece of processing. And thinking this turns into the feeling that I'm alone again; he can't help me.

Thoughts, advice, questions, criticism welcome.

 

[NovemberStar]

Do you think what you're feeling is partly a let down due to building up with a lot of anxiety and intensity, and now it's 'done', part of you is realizing, 'damn, talking about it doesn't make it not happen'? I can only speak for myself, but over the years I have had varying degrees of accepting what happened to me, really DID happen, to ME. I feel that just below the surface I have spent my entire life wanting to believe more than anything, that 'if only I find a trusted person who GETS it, then it will be ok', and it is very very very hard for me to accept that no matter how much therapy I have, it cannot undo what happened; and my T - as wonderful and amazing as she really is, cannot fix it ;(.

I have not fully accepted this, I know I haven't.

Sorry I can't be of more help, I'm not sure Ive answered your Q at all, sorry ;/.

 

[Mystery]

Joeylittle, my thoughts on this are that when we hold a thing inside like that, we give it a special place where it is safe. No one will ever truly know us completely whilst we keep it in that safe place, including our therapist. The shame and fear is just too great a risk to let it out and face the consequences, we feel safe. So you have built what sounds to be a very good theraputic relationship, otherwise you wouldn't have let it out and it seems to have taken you a while to do that, which tells me that you built that trust gradually.

So know your therapist knows who you really are, you are in the most vulnerable state you have been in for years. You are asking for unconditional love and afraid you are not going to get it. Your therapist may understand this but if he doesn't you need to tell him. The relationship with the therapist is like a new parent figure that reprograms the bad belief systems that our bad parenting systems imprinted on us. The closer we come to our therapist the more we feel those old belief systems coming to the surface.

You're asking yourself to bungy jump ito a new relationship of trust and support, where you can really start to work on your deeper issues once you feel safe. You are standing on that platform ready to jump, but terrified all the same. Our therapists are human too. If your therapist doesn't completely get the horror of what you experienced that is ok, as long as he understands the impact that it had on you. The new relationship of trust with a therapist is a two way street too. You need to say what you need and trust that he will care to listen and attempt to give you that.

There are good and great therapists, then there are just the plain bad one's too. Trust is earned never expected, it's the same everywhere in life, not just therapy. It can't be rushed or coaxed from someone, it must be given. Hope that helped :-)

 

[joeylittle]

Actually, I think I'm the opposite, @NovemberStar - I know what happened, and that it happened to me: actually, totally me. (And the horrible feeling that goes with it).

I don't think my therapist understands the ramifications of what happened - or doesn't have a way to understand how deeply disturbed I am about it. I think he considers it just another event in the trauma.

I do think I possibly had too much built up around that idea of "somebody getting it", just the way you described.

I guess I'm asking, do they need to understand in order to help? It's a little like I think he sees a broken bone where I see a shattered bone; the treatment is the same - mend the arm - but one is less salvageable than the other. Or something. That's a terrible analogy.

 

[Shaan]

@joeylittle Feel for you. I'm stuck in the same situation and all I can think of all day long is "I shouldn't have and I shouldn't have"

 

[joeylittle]

@Mystery , that makes a lot of sense, all of it.

My therapist is not of the mind that he is in any way a surrogate for a "real" relationship - you are right, I am asking for some kind of unconditional response - if not love (which I would not get from him), then unconditional understanding or faith in what I'm expressing.

Oddly, it's like he's trying to minimalize it, when normally I do. He makes much of it being out of my control and I disagree with aspects of that, but he won't hear my disagree I think.

I wonder if in response to me calling it "the worst thing", he is trying to recontextualize it as "another thing in a line of horrible things "; except to me , it's the worst thing.

On some level it seems maybe as simple as validation. He hasn't validated my experience somehow. But he always has before - that's why I'm confused.

 

[Mystery]

I just read your diary, the whole lot so far and left you a message there. It would be extremely hard for a man to get that level of connection and to cope with believing. He does need to comfort you and he should. He's finding it hard to believe maybe or it's beginning to traumatize him too perhaps. I've known women who had similar experiences to you done by bikers, same street different house. So I know it happens.

I got away from a very huge single stranger raper in 2001. I have an inkling of what it feels like to get away and what you had to do to live with this. I stress that word inkling, because I cannot possibly feel what you have or know the strength and confusion you will process in your healing. I would like to say, that I think I can handle hearing all this with you and I would like to be your friend if you find that acceptable in time.

 

[Mystery]

If your relationship with him is strong it is ok to get angry and hurt with him about this if it is how it makes you feel. You will eventually process your anger and rage and he is the safe person to do it with. You don't always have to be the one keeping the peace any more with him.

 

[Seasounds]

@joeylittle:

• I think you are right on; your therapist is running into his issues, which are getting in the way of, preventing him, from being able to empathize and be therapeutically helpful to you.
• All therapists have their limits; unfortunately, when they hit 'their wall' they don't know how to resolve their 'being stuck'.
• In defense of you, with your therapist-who is stuck, you might consider, non-defensively saying, "I'm feeling alone, since I spoke of the worst part of my trauma. Can you help me?" If he doesn't respond in the way you want, he may be stuck, indefinitely, himself. (This doesn't serve you.) Wait for him to respond. Don't fill the silence.
• At that point, if no positive, or no empathetic response from him, I'd clearly and diplomatically state, rather than angrily state (since it can compound your pain and backlash on you, if he responds harshly) that since you are feeling "alone" in your trauma, that you'd like to take a few weeks break. This puts you in a power position, of 'driving your therapy' the way you want.
• From my experience, this diplomatic response has a greater impact on your therapist-they can't 'write you off', and they end up having to work to understand your point.
• Ask around for some therapist who can handle the kind of trauma that you have.

@Mystery, what a wonderful gift you've offered. I hope Joeylittle takes you up, on it!

 

[Jane.l]

I think you do need to tell your T how his reaction is affecting you , I think you need to know where his reaction is coming from - don't try and second guess you need to know from him.

The other thing I would say which may sound stupid and obvious but I actually had a lightbulb moment when it dawned on me that however much I wish he could my T can never really understand totally because he hasn't had that experience or anything like it , doesn't mean he can't help me but he will never 'get it' as much as someone who has been through it . I suddenly realised this when I was frustrated he didn't seem to take on board how hard something in particular had mean to tell him but I am also really bad at expressing any emotion so he hadn't even picked up that it was messing me up - could that be possibly what's happening with you ?

 

[Hashi]

I wonder if in response to me calling it "the worst thing", he is trying to recontextualize it as "another thing in a line of horrible things "; except to me , it's the worst thing.

There's a difference between the therapist themselves accepting/seeing it as the worst thing, and the therapist accepting that you see it as the worst thing. If that makes sense. I'm not sure which you feel might be the case here - is your therapist actually trying to change your viewpoint on this?

There's something about a therapist not being able to grasp the enormity of something. Maybe not minimising in the sense of considering something and dismissing it, or blocking it for whatever reason, but actually being unable to grasp it.

I also have a "worst thing" and I would have hated it if my therapist had not honoured that to me it was that. At the same time, I don't think she could understand why it was the worst thing. Horror was a big part of it, and I think that was significant. I think my therapist's frame of reference allows her to relate better to things were more threatening to my physical integrity, more degrading, more terrifying etc. I don't think she could understand about the horror. It's the thing I understand least of all myself. So without an experience of it, I think it would be very hard for her to imagine.

I really did need validation, though. If I told my therapist it was the worst thing and they didn't validate my experience of that... well, I would be very upset in that situation.

It's possible that this is a misunderstanding, projection or misjudgement (on his part). Especially if he's always lived up to your trust before. Do you feel you could talk to him about what you've written here?

 

[Tinyflame]

I know it's got to be me projecting my own inability to grapple with it, right?

If this thought crossed your mind, it may be because you sense that the process of revealing 'stuff', or 'this' stuff, is what is making you feel as you do. I say that only because you said it, & whatever was the response, does it make him less 'trustworthy'? Has he been trustworthy?

If the answer is yes, I would just say how you feel, what you fear, what you are thinking. I don't have much experience in this so I try to just say 'whatever' (that is the truth). Such as, "that makes me feel horrified". I hope you can say what you are thinking, even that you feel he doesn't get it or that you're feeling mistrust.

Hugs & best wishes, I think you did a huge thing. .:tup: :hug:[DOUBLEPOST=1405120674,1405120526][/DOUBLEPOST]I wrote without seeing Hashi's post, maybe 'horror' is the big part. Horror is hard to relate to.