Confused By T's Reaction

[Bill Dickerson]

A couple weeks ago my T and I were discussing politics and she stated a belief that I believed wrong. It confused me since I thought we were on the same wave link. I respect her so I decided I might be wrong so I researched it. I fact checked it I suppose and I discovered I was right so I printed it off and gave it to her yesterday.

Her response completely confused me. I told her what it was and I thought she would consider the new information. She sat it down and said why do I feel the need to always be right.

I was floored I thought I was giving her correct information as a friend. A rush of thoughts overwhelmed me. It felt like somebody hit me in the gut. It reminded me of fighting with my Ex before she was my Ex..Do I feel the need to always be right? Suddenly I felt like I walked into a room full of people and forgot my pants. My arrogance has caused me to act stupidly on many occasions. I know I'm opinionated and can be an ass sometimes but I've gotten older and tried to be humble in my approach now. I also considered maybe this condition has caused me to have odd behavior in the past. Am I slipping? I am filled with doubts about my behavior. I'm questioning myself since yesterday.

Anybody have thoughts?

 

[Friday]

Um. Because in certain jobs if you're wrong -or acting on wrong information- people die? And in other jobs you're lied to so often, and so well, that not fact checking is not only reckless but inexcusably stupid? And your job had both those factors involved, didn't it?

Hard truths can be gotten through. Lies kill. Fact checking? Not a bad thing, IMO.

 

[scout86]

She sat it down and said why do I feel the need to always be right.

I hear that more often than I wish I did too. I guess I'm not actually aware that I have to be right, I just want to be pretty sure of what 'right' IS.

Bill, around here, you don't come off that way to me. Really you don't. Yes, you're opinionated, but you also strike me as willing to listen to a reasoned argument. The more I think about this, you've always struck me as someone who's interested in learning. Maybe this was just an example of your T being human? I'm hoping you get some good replies to this. It didn't bother me too much when my ex-husband threw that line at me during an argument, but it does kind of bother me when I hear it from someone else. It would REALLY bother me, coming from my T. But I can't quite see him handling something that way either.

 

[Friday]

^^^
As an ETA to that... If I'm wrong? I want to know it. Full stop. I've found that out in civilian land, most people don't want to know if they're wrong??? I don't understand that. At all. I can understand tone of voice & delivery (almost nothing makes a better weapon than the truth). I don't have to be a prick about pointing out when someone's wrong (I am also not gonna blow sunshine up someone's ass if lives are on the line, and pussyfoot around feelings, if someone is f*cking up). And I understand about opinions, and multifaceted situations, where we're either not discussing facts, or we're looking at the same facts and coming to different conclusions. Reasonable people can and do differ. And I can understand times&places&rank&discretion&STFU. It's not always time or the place, nor do I always have the right to say jack. I don't have to go running around shouting the truth. But I cannot wrap my head around people who'd rather be flat out wrong, in any circumstance, than be corrected. It doesn't parse.

 

[BlueOrange]

I suspect that your therapist made a mistake. Your description of your behavior makes sense to me. I suspect that your therapist got a shorter version of the story, and misunderstood.

My first instinct is to offer suggestions on how to get the therapist to understand that they made a mistake. Thinking about it, coming back to the next session and saying "I was right the whole time" might not actually change the therapist's perceptions.

Perhaps the thing to do is to ask why she said it. Does she think that there's a problem? If so, what is it and why is it a bad thing?

Is it not actually a big deal from her point of view?

As Friday said, there's a bunch of good reasons to make an effort to not be wrong. If your therapist wants to coach you out of those habits, I would want to understand before I consented to making that change.

 

[Intrepid]

If I talk to my therapist about politics or any other controversial subject I keep focused on what helps my therapy proceed.
At the same time I've had therapists make statements like "why do you always feel the need to be right." I usually sidestep such silliness. I had one therapist push an issue like that and after one more session I fired him. I'm not in therapy to debate.

Even if you do always need to be right there probably would have been much better ways to address that issue with you.

Finally, I pay my therapists. If you are paying for your therapist then you might want to call her something else than "friend". You don't have to pay friends to be there for you.

 

[Justmehere]

In DBT there is a whole section done on interpersonal effectiveness m that might be worth looking into. It is much better explained in DBT self help sites than I will explain here and might be really helpful to you.

One of the things taught in DBT is to keep in mind ones PRIMARY objective in every interaction. Sometimes the objective is to be heard, to be "right" - and/or to have self respect - in this case, perhaps the objective to correct information that was incorrect. Part of what DBT teaches is that sometimes other objectives that are not primary may not be met. It's isn't good or bad, it just is --- the key is being aware of this.

We get to choose what the most important objective is in every interaction.

Sometimes the most important objective is other things, like retaining or building closeness in a relationship. Or, in this case, perhaps it was doing trauma therapy or regaining a sense of being on the same page with your therapist. In which case that was your primary goal but perhaps handing over political info didn't convert that goal well.

Your therapist doesn't need to agree with you or even have an accurate viewpoint on politics to be a good and effective trauma therapist. Yet, small talk and banter can be a key part of building a connection in therapy, and I don't think it was a bad thing at all to bring in info.

But, what your therapist might be touching on is becoming more mindful and aware of what you choose to be the primary objective when you interact with someone. If your goal with your therapist is to persuade her about politics, ok that's your goal. Be aware of it. It may mean that other goals are lower on your priority list.

If your primary goal was to do trauma therapy work, then it's worth considering if correcting her misinformation on a non-therapy topic is helpful to work towards that goal of being on the same page in order to do trauma therapy work.

And it is important to consider what is needed in terms of agreement to do therapy work. Good therapists will disagree with us and challenge us from time to time. If what we needed to heal was to have full agreement on everything then we could just talk to a mirror.., but in fact that doesn't work and what helps is heal is to have someone who doesn't think like us be a safe person to help us grow.

I have gotten caught up in trying to be right more than I wished I would have in the past. For me, I did it out of deep insecurity and fear and sometimes simply missing the point on how to interact effectively. No one around me would have said I was trying to be right all the time until one day a therapist caught me doing it and pointed it out.... it was super confusing and hard to hear and sort out for me. In my case, I think the therapist wasn't totally objective but the feedback was important and there was a problem with seeking to be right too much of the time, and it struck me as confusing because I never experienced myself as someone who was just trying to be right.

I did it because I was able to find and provide info most people didn't bother to check... but I did it more than most people do. Did it help me make friends? No. Did it build relationships? No. was it really my primary goal to be right? No, it wasn't... but I acted like it was. What I really wanted was connected close relationships that were grounded in truth and allowances for differences and even things that were imperfect incorrect and messed up... like me. Instead, without trying, I pushed people away.

You don't have anything to be ashamed about and I can't give you any good feedback if you are comming across in a way to others that makes them feel like you are being too stuck on being right or not... but I can tell you that I believe your goal isn't just being right and maybe if you keep your primary goal in mind, whatever it is, you will achieve it better.

 

[NoWhereKnowWhere]

Like Friday said some people hate to be proved wrong. I myself would rather know if I'm speaking shit and if someone wants to correct or educate me I'm all for it. Your T is still a human and they might've just reacted like that due to her own sore spot.

Sometimes Ts are wrong and don't get it right. If she was to say to you "why do you always feel responsible for the dog shit on the street?" You'd be like lol no I don't! But your reaction seems to say there's something here even if it's just that you really don't want to be perceived this way, someone's said this to you in the past and it's hurt you or something along those lines.

Definitely something to pick away at with T and if she continues to think you always (<~cognitive distortion black and white thinking) need to be right maybe it's her that always needs to be right perhaps she's projecting and you proving her wrong is shit that's in her mind about her not you. Maybe not you'll have to speak to her and feel it all out.

Edit: just noticed I added in the "always" you didn't say she Said that. My bad I should read stuff more closely.
Edit...again. Ffs she did say always so I stand by the what I said. :depressed: :laugh: Omg can I even read. Bed time I think.

 

[Sighs]

The bit I'm picking up here is that you were giving her the facts "as a friend". She's not your friend. She's your therapist. My experience of therapists is that they always make everything about you. As if they are a completely neutral factor in the interaction. And I guess that's how it should be because you're paying them to work on you and your issues.

And I say this as someone who has spent WAY too much time pointing out to people that they are entitled to their own opinion but they are not entitled to their own facts and they have their facts wrong. ;)

 

[Sideways]

If the info you were correcting had something to do with your recovery, your illness, your therapy - then yeah, I can see why correcting her would be important.

But it was politics. She said something you disagreed with (politics - there's always always going to be people out there with different information from different sources), and you went away and not only needed to check "do I have this right?", but then revisit the topic, which is wasn't, on my reading, actually relevant to why you're at therapy.

Some things, like immunising kids, I'm an advocate for correcting misinformation. But correcting political issues generally? That would send me crazy. Because more often than not, a person's political ideology comes first, and the facts to back it up comes second.

So I think context is important, particularly on what it is you were correcting. I'm crawling into the corner to hide even as I type this out, but I can't help wondering - if you're talking politics with your therapist (who has a very particular role in your life, and her personal politics are quite different irrelevant to whether she can do her job...why did your have to be right? It sounds like it was something that wasn't a therapeutic topic at all, so once you'd gone away and established that yes, you have your facts straight, why did yoh have to go that one step further and show her she was wrong?

Like I said, some issues I feel like it's helpful to correct misinformation, but I've had T's with some pretty crazy ideas in the political realm, and it was always a non-issue for me. We don't have to vote the same way for them to be able to do their job well. And making a point of proving people wrong on non-issues (assuming it is a non-issue) doesn't exactly make the list of Top Ten Ways to Make Friends and Get Along With People.

Should your T have been a bit more open-minded and phrased her question a bit more tactfully? Sure. Is her question still a valid one, and perhaps more relevant to your recovery than whatever it is you were correcting her on? Possibly.

Because, of all the things you discussed with your T that day, how many things about your actual therapy did you invest time and energy to go away and do a bit of research on? Why did the non-issue get priority there?

Just some ideas from a different perspective:)

 

[scout86]

After reading all the responses, I'm beginning to suspect this is a 'real thing'. In particular, when I read what @Justmehere and @Ragdoll Circus wrote, I kind of went "Huh?" because something about it just didn't compute. Thinking about it further, when people have 'accused' me of always needing to be right (because it sounds like an accusation of some sort), THAT has always been confusing. Now I'm thinking maybe this is different ways of looking at something and I didn't realize there were different ways of looking at the thing.

Where I'm coming from in this is that accurate, up to date information is very important. Honestly, on some level, if feels 'life or death' important. I suppose that isn't always literally true. :nailbiting: It's not that "I" always have to be right, it's that "information" needs to be right. Information isn't me. So I find the accusation that "I" always have to be right, kind of confusing. I don't think I'm doing anyone a favor by letting them operate based on inaccurate information. Quite the contrary. In fact, the more I like someone, the more likely I am to not let something like that go.......

So, a significant number other people don't care if they're operating based on inaccurate information? They'd rather be 'wrong' than corrected? (When I wrote that it occurred to me that 'wrong' is one of those words that has a rather special meaning and I wonder if that's got something to do with this too.) Can you guys explain this a little more? How is one supposed to know, without stepping on any toes in the process?

 

[Suzetig]

I think politics is such a sticky area for discussion - especially in the States just now. There seems to be a real case of "my truth", "your truth" and the actual truth of the situation at every turn and fact checking only gets us so far. So her view may be right, wrong or completely off the wall but she's your therapist and for the most part her political views don't really matter.

I think you needing to check and come back to her is important to discuss, I'm not sure why you'd want to use your limited therapy time to correct her views on politics but it could point to you needing to be right. I know I do - it's a legacy of an upbringing where being wrong was life threateningly dangerous. It served a purpose for me back then but now is a form of hypervigilance that is quite inhibiting.

As others have said, she's not your friend so it's right that she looks at why you put time and effort into fact checking and feeding back - it coujd point to you avoiding difficult work, needing to be in control, wanting to build connection - anything really but it's important she checks it out. She could have found a more tactful way of exploring it though.