Issues With Therapist

[Deleted member 28942]

@joeylittle thanks. I've done a lot of cognitive work and it does not work for me. I don't have a problem with using preventing me. For me, that is just saying "Oh there is something here keeping me stuck what do I need next to move forward? What will get me unstuck?"

Yes, thanks for your support. I was surprised that it had a healing effect. She - my therapist - did help me unlock the hurting feelings inside me. Before that my feelings were totally blocked. I could do a lot of cognitive stuff on my own and be self-driven but I could not feel or deal with the difficult feelings. For me dealing with the difficult feelings was just engage in the world being active and creating and contributing and don't stop and feel. If I stopped and feel the pain would be too great. Now, I have a lot of resources. I am very resourceful and very resilient I feel great about myself about this.

 

[joeylittle]

I don't have a problem with using preventing me. For me, that is just saying "Oh there is something here keeping me stuck what do I need next to move forward? What will get me unstuck?"

Cool - and that's all that really matters - your understanding of your own thoughts. Whatever works for you :)

 

[Deleted member 28942]

OMG. Now I see the light. I have a lot of pent up rage towards my mother and I was not expressing it and it all went towards my therapist or other people. I do think my therapist did not handle some stuff correctly and she definitely mishandled the email. My email was testing her how she will act if I am raging angry not just the nice little boy. I was testing very aggressively if she safe to express this pent up anger. She failed the test. However, I started yelling and raging inside my apartment towards my mom (she is not physically present but I can act out all the pent up emotions as if she is here).
Link Removed

I also recovered a memory where she is telling me that I should not direct my rage towards her cause she hasn't done anything wrong and that instead, I should direct towards other people cause they are doing me wrong. I might ask a safe friend of mind who can handle raging to do this exercise with me.

About my therapist, I am not filling a complaint. I just left her a combined 3-star review online. I gave her 5 stars where she really earned and I gave her 2 stars on trustworthiness. Cause I trusted her that she as a trained trauma specialist can handle insurmountable rage and now that it has nothing to do with her. I am still guessing that there was some truth in what I was getting angry at her for but my email was raging mad. ROFL now I am laughing here. I wanna go out for a walk it is so nice outside.

You people helped me a lot. I am continuing therapy with another therapist. Another thing I want from a therapist is to know that I can get ridiculously angry at her for small things and that she can handle that and that she will not abandon me. With my now ex-therapist I had the feeling I could not do that cause I will hurt her feelings and she will decide not to deal with me anymore. Exactly what my mom would do. My therapist is not my mom. She is an imperfect human who messed it up a bit.

 

[Ariadne]

My email was testing her how she will act if I am raging angry not just the nice little boy. I was testing very aggressively if she safe to express this pent up anger. She failed the test.

About my therapist, I am not filling a complaint. I just left her a combined 3-star review online. I gave her 5 stars where she really earned and I gave her 2 stars on trustworthiness. Cause I trusted her that she as a trained trauma specialist can handle insurmountable rage and now that it has nothing to do with her. I am still guessing that there was some truth in what I was getting angry at her for but my email was raging mad. ROFL now I am laughing here. I wanna go out for a walk it is so nice outside.

No, she did not fail. It is not appropriate to "test" people in that way, that is acting out as a child would and expecting to be indulged as a child might. I would not tolerate that behavior in my own 4 year old. The amount of times you mention in this thread whether or not you are "getting what you want" and your incongruous remarks about how great you feel are very disturbing. I would only be comfortable sating that I think you should bring this entire thread to your next therapist and request a new diagnosis. Good luck.

 

[Deleted member 28942]

OK. More clarity. I was angry about her not setting clear boundaries and I only wrote that here and in the email but I was not explicit. For example, before last summer I told her I want to try other things this summer like do Yoga and take it easy. She would say OK it is good to take some time off, yoga is good too. However, next session she would again mention it and I would tell her we cannot do EMDR online. She told me well we can do it using tapping wanna give it a try. I hesitantly agreed. However, when we did the Skype sessions we never did EMDR.

Some other things are I subconsciously noticed that she can't say NO to me, similar to my mom. I would push her to do EMDR and she was hesitant but I persisted and she gave in. This kept being out dynamic for a long time. The last session she told me that she feels rushed and that broke my trust too cause for me that means why she did not set boundaries earlier. For me, that means she was not honest. I saw other cases where she failed to set boundaries. Actually, she never said NO to me about anything. Except for maybe one or two times when she couldn't schedule a session or find a time slot that worked.

I am re-reading the book Dead Link Removed. She wasn't safe cause she did not set clear boundaries. She could not say "I do not think you are ready for that" or "I want to do things slowly" or anything like that. It was very wishy-washy.

 

[blackandwhite2017]

Hi OP,

Disclaimer: I have only finished reading page 5 of this thread...it is too long and I am getting sleepy, but I feel the need to put my thoughts down as I think they may help OP or someone else reading the post.

To OP: have you been tested for Asperger's or Autism Spectrum Disorder by a professional who is qualified to diagnose adult high functioning + high intelligence ASD patients? I have similar literal thinking styles as you do, and people call me rigid and stubborn despite me thinking I am just being logical and I am just finding the most efficient solution. However, I often forget to take others' feelings and their perspectives besides pure logic into account, and I think this problem is what you are dealing with right now. I often pressure people about clarity and closures as well, and they are all symptoms of high functioning, high intelligence ASD apparently...

You don't need to be asocial to be on the spectrum, in fact when I told some of my classmates that I was an introvert, some of them didn't even believe me. My therapist told me that I was using my high intelligence to learn social behaviours throughout childhood and that is why I don't behave too abnormally socially compared to other people now. However, the social disability is still present, and I often run into problems where I am being rigidly logical and literal and coming across as cold and aggressive in the process.

I think it may be a good idea for you to get tested... I see many similarities between your thinking styles and mine. And I have even ran into a similar online debate (battle) on a different forum because people think I was being too harsh but I was just being literal and I was too frustrated to make things sound respectful as I should be.

Best of luck,
HelloWorld314

 

[blackandwhite2017]

In addition to what I have said above...I too often stress I don't care about others' feelings and I am happy the way I am when I feel attacked. I think it is because I have serious troubles being vulnerable as when I was open about my feelings in my childhood, people would think that was weird probably because of my ASD problems of being too literal. To give an example, I once sent a friend a thank you letter in middle school, she was the only true friend I had among all the other bully-friends. But it ended up coming across as a love letter to her and I think that was the last straw that completely ruined our relationship.

Anyway, I often feel the need to act more arrogant and confident when threatened, and maybe this is what OP is doing right now. Regardless, I hope other members give OP some understanding. He is clearly stressed and I think he is really just being too literal instead of being cold and aggressive.

Hugs to you OP...I really see so many similarities between the way you respond and the way I respond when we feel attacked/betrayed/hurt. I hope both of us can lower our defences to the point where we can enjoy the warmth and comfort from being totally vulnerable someday...

Cheers,
HelloWorld314

 

[Ariadne]

You say you would "push her". Why? Yet you expressed that you felt you had to push her to "get what you want." That means she was setting boundaries, you were crossing them. It sounds like you were the not safe person there, not her.

I get boundary issues with therapists: I had one that told me so much about her personal life I knew things about her ex-husband his new fiance didn't know. That's having boundary issues. (and even there I recognize that she was mirroring my disclosure level for the sake of trust) What you are doing is describing that you are literally enraged at your former therapist because she didn't do what you wanted to do and when she did because you pushed the issue, she was still wrong because then she was dishonest? I think maybe you need to be taking a long hard look at your expectations. It is not a therapists job to make you never have to feel bad about yourself. There are times we all need to be able to feel bad about ourselves; that's called healthy shame. Have you read about that?

 

[Valentino]

This is quite a fascinating thread, but tricky and maybe a bit dangerous to jump into.

I suspect that a major issue is that many people are conflict averse, which ends up being highly sensitive to any forms of anger that are too direct. (However, passive aggression, emotional neglect, and abandonment seem to be more acceptable and widely used?)

I just finished attending a 2 day professional workshop with Dr. David Burns who is author of 'Feeling Good', a very popularly promoted and used book to share CBT techniques with the public. I find him unique to other experts, because he continues to be very active with testing, improving and teaching.

His current model is called T.E.A.M. Therapy, which he sometimes describes as CBT on steroids. The acronym stands for Testing, Empathy, paradoxical Agenda setting, and Methods.

It starts off with Testing, which is all about active and ongoing feedback, evaluation, and failures. Therapeutic homework is required by patients, but criticism from patients is invited. Philosophies of 'Fail as fast as you can', and 'Make the patient feel good about criticizing you' was stressed. Testing is foundation of monitoring clinical progress based on assessment of recorded, ongoing, and written history of thoughts & feelings.

Empathy has 5 secrets, of which the first is 'The Disarming Technique' where the therapist actively finds the truth in patient's criticism, which is paradoxical on the surface, but when done correctly, it melts resistance and opens the door to deeper understanding.

Paradoxical Agenda Setting is probably the biggest key and most powerful within his model, but also the hardest for therapists to learn and implement. Dr. Burns claims that the cause of all therapeutic failure is due to poor agenda setting. The paradoxical part of agenda setting involves directly addressing and writing out unconscious resistance (outcome & process), along with inviting and following the patient's motivation.

Methods come last, and that's just 50+ categories of various techniques.

For more details on the model, here's a link to his webpage: The Science Behind T.E.A.M. Therapy

I also recently went to a workshop with Frank Ostaseski, original founder of Zen Hospice Project & Metta Institute, 30+ years in the field of hospice, end of life, and practitioner training. One powerful quote he shared:

"Helping, fixing and serving represent three different ways of seeing life. When you help, you see life as weak. When you fix, you see life as broken. When you serve, you see life as whole. Fixing and helping may be the work of the ego, and service the work of the soul." - Rachel Naomi Remen​

I think this quote really captures a paradoxical challenge within the therapist/patient relationship, but also a common dynamic within various support communities online & in real life. There's such an unconscious strong reaction towards 'fixing' others and validation (ie. fixing, covering up & silencing negative emotions). That it gets in the way of understanding, deeper connection, and genuine transformational growth.

Anyway, I'm a bit anxious and scared with this post. I have been away from online forums for quite some time, and feel a bit rusty. I specifically referenced 3rd party experts to indirectly address some big issues, but I still feel they are very touchy taboo sensitive topics.

I think it's just unfortunate that 'tone policing' might be getting in the way of recognizing some very significant progress and major insights of the OP. Maybe this is a downside and upside of EMDR, it can be very fast & powerful in processing memories, but it doesn't have that many tools to help integrate new insights and evolved parts back into society. But the technique is so powerful that it's hard for a therapist to get in the way.

 

[Suzetig]

It is not a therapists job to make you never have to feel bad about yourself. There are times we all need to be able to feel bad about ourselves; that's called healthy shame. Have you read about that?

I'm struggling a bit with this - I don't think it's the therapists job to make me never feel bad, but I don't think shame has any place in a therapeutic relationship. There's no circumstance in which my therapist has made me feel shameful - and I've pushed our relationship quite far at times.

The therapeutic relationship is exactly the place to test things out, to push boundaries and express rage/anger etc. I don't think it's inappropriate behaviour at all and the OPs email may have been quite hard but it's not by any means the most extreme test of a therapist. The "therapeutic work" though is in him coming to an understanding that that's what he's doing - that he's railing at her for a wrong fine elsewhere. Which doesn't mean his complaints about her aren't legitimate, just that there might be another way to resolve them and that not all the anger belongs to her. I know when I feel that level of rage or strength of feeling about something, there's generally a memory or old script fuelling the fire.

@UniversalBeing i know you feel done with this therapist but I can't help but feel that arranging a last session to talk through this process with her, your sense of what it was about for you, could be very therapeutic and help you in your work with new T. There's some very sophisticated, mature processing going on in this thread and in you - which is exactly how therapy is supposed to work. The hour session we have is meant to spark off the actual processing work outside of session and it might be helpful to use her more reflective presence with you to consolidate the understanding you've gained here. But no shame please, there's nothing to feel shameful about.

 

[anthony]

with Dr. David Burns who is author of 'Feeling Good', a very popularly promoted and used book to share CBT techniques

Yep... big fan of his no bullshit, can do, attitude -- lets no make excuses for our own piss poor behaviours and blame other factors for our choices.

 

[Ariadne]

I'm struggling a bit with this - I don't think it's the therapists job to make me never feel bad, but I don't think shame has any place in a therapeutic relationship. There's no circumstance in which my therapist has made me feel shameful - and I've pushed our relationship quite far at times.

I think perhaps what I wrote might have been misunderstood. I was not trying to suggest that a therapist should ever cause shame, only that they also should not prevent it in our lives in general. And in this case I'm defining healthy shame as akin to humility; the ability to perceive the discomfort of knowing we still need to grow. That is very important as adults to manage our ongoing growth and not have brittle self-image that cannot hold up to self-scrutiny.
And I do agree that a therapist does need to be open to criticism and even expressions of rage; but not passive-aggressive emotional manipulation. It would never be appropriate for a therapist to allow a patient to abuse them.