Do You Feel Angry With Your Therapist?

[BloomInWinter]

I do find that after tough sessions I feel myself projecting anger onto my therapist so I don't have to process my deeper hurts unlocked by our session.

I ride it out, knowing this opening of the emotional floodgates is a necessary part of the process. I trust the process. I still don't like being pushed where I don't want to go but I always learn something about myself during it.

I tell her if I'm angry at her if I really think my anger isn't my defensive structure of avoidance in play trying to protect me from feeling. As it turns out, I rarely am angry at her, or at my previous therapist.

Anger is considered a secondary emotion.

"Certain feelings may also hide, under the radar, behind other feelings. For example, it's not uncommon for fear and hurt to disguise themselves behind anger. So you think you're angry? But it might really be all about being hurt.

Sometimes our strongest emotions hide behind other emotions because they represent our deepest needs and fears, and it can be scary to express them. And so we may use secondary emotions (like anger) to mask them."

"...Fear and hurt are often the underlying emotions in situations where we express anger, annoyance, or coldness.

Dare to question those "crusty" emotions and get to the inner core.

The more often you can correctly identify what you're feeling, understand why you're feeling it -- including what "soft" vulnerable feeling might be driving it -- and take that big risk of honestly expressing it, the better it is for you"

Source: Dead Link Removed

I still have great difficulty just sitting with the soft emotions without looking for some distraction. It is one of my goals to someday be able to allow the soft emotions underneath to come to the surface and learn how to express them in a way that helps me get my real needs met.

 

[Hashi]

@LAURIEJOY - this doesn't sound good. Is it OK to ask why you're seeing someone new out of school? It sounds like her inexperience is showing. Maybe your options are limited?

 

[BlackbirdSinging]

I was angry at my previous therapist for forcing me to imagine one of my abusers was sitting next to me. She wanted me to say all that I could to him. In that moment all I could say was to her. Two words "I can't". She pushed me until I did. I dissociated so badly I don't remember the end of the session.

I'm angry at my new therapist for not being on top of the people in her office who schedule the appointments for messing up my scheduled appointments. It's a little insulting that she doesn't realize my weekly sessions have been getting scheduled weeks apart when she didn't order that. I'm curious if she even wonders where I've been for the past month.