Massive backfire in therapy - don't know what to do

[beaneeboo]

I think fear feels like unsafety which feels like or becomes mistrust.

I agree

No one can mind read, even for a T you are a unique person.

This is something I need tu get better at understanding i think... thanks for highlighting

So what feels awful for the person can be seen as progress for the T.

I'm beginning to see this play out in therapy alot...

 

[beaneeboo]

Yes, they have gone through a lot of training, but if they are unable to get the human part right, the training is--in my opinion--useless.

Really helpful to be reminded of this...I think he does have the human part and you're right that is worth far more than any specific therapy approach...

I just don't think some have the ability to stay open-minded and hear with the idea that maybe it might be a good idea to pursue.

Would be gutting to me if he didn't. But I guess also good to know where his boundaries are even if I don't like them.

Is he in private therapy or is he part of a group?

private therapist

I wonder if you could give him something in writing and keep a copy, so he could destroy that after he was done reading it? Or...give it to him in session, and then discuss?

I could bring my lap top to session. But I've had weeks where I've typed everything down in between sessions then either forgotten it, or someone in the system has decided it's too difficult to discusss/ too much / too overwhelming... so it doesn't get brought... then I avoid it... emailing it at the time makes sure that the part wanting T to know something gets heard rather than over ridden later on..it has to be addressed if he brings it to session.

Actually, all of the Ts I've seen (I'm DID) believed that any time a part comes out is good. No matter what the reason.

This is interesting. My gut tells me he was really happy that my parts came out. I think for him it was a Yay! moment - like a therapy triumph... but I felt annoyed that they had been triggered in the manner they had... by him... so i found his celebration of this a bit poorly timed as it was a strong and long dissociation with alot of distress...

I can't remember if you said--does he say this is something he treats? Because some don't, at all.

he's a trauma T... he knew about dissociation but I never explicitly asked if he had experience with dissociative disorders...I didn't know i had to ... him being the expert I would have thought he'd let me know if he doesn't, once I'd told him about my OSDD... he doesn't see OSDD as a thing to treat. Doesn't agree with the terminology.

This sounds like a great idea! How he responds may help you see where he is in his thinking and make a decision moving forward.

Thanks for all your help

 

[beaneeboo]

It is funny because relatively universally people hope to be seen, heard, and understood, and to have a voice. I think SI comes from missing the 1st part (at least in part), and perhaps 'fronting' does too. It becomes second nature and protective.

Wow this really struck a chord. My SI and urges to have been / are definitely due to feeling invisible as well as beliefs re punishment etc. But I'd never considered fronting as a part of that. Which is so obvious.

Reading more it sounds like he owned what he could to the extent he could understand and to the degree he also could share what he was feeling. Kind of sounds like he felt blindsided or disappointed (not in you), but I could be wrong. Perhaps he conversely feels his modality is working well for you.

I think his modality is working well. I think I wasjust throwing in my 2 pennies worth in addition and he read that as me thinking his modality isn't working...

 

[Liljulz67]

Went to T tonight. During the week, I sent him an email (which I'm not supposed to do) with info in it from another professional who writes/ does educational videos on dissociative disorders. (This person has a clinic which specialises in dissociative disorders and is well regarded). I told him about what I have found interesting about this information and that I think, as the videos suggest, that I should start trying to communicate with my parts.

I also wrote how I'm feeling stuck in therapy because so much happens during the week which i can't bring to the therapy room. Because I can't remember it, or, if I've made a log of different feelings / thoughts / states I experience, I then can't relate to what I've written and it feels too big to discuss in a 50 min session. So then I don't bring it. And the gap between therapy and what happens between sessions gets wider. I need more structure and options to manage this and him to help with this - didn't say that last bit. I hoped the videos would give us suggestions. Including working on my increasingly failing memory.

When I went in the room he was welcoming and asked me to tell him about it all which i felt relieved about because I thought I'd done something wrong by emailing. But he then quickly started questioning the material that I'd brought, in an consistent negative way. Didn't agree with alot of it. I felt he was gently challenging me on the other guy's view points. T's body language and eyes told me he wasn't interested in really hearing why I felt these videos struck a cord. He was waiting to prove they weren't as useful as I thought.

It then got more heated and he started saying he felt to blame (I think because I'd said I felt stuck in therapy?) and that we'd spent 9 months building trust and that I was now bringing this to session, and he didn't know what to do because he's not trained in those therapy approaches... and doesn't have access to this material (which is incorrect - all the videos are free on line)... I think he felt threatened that I was saying someone else knows how to do therapy and you don't. But that's not at all what I was saying.

At this point I dissociated really badly. For the whole session. A protector and young part came out (first time that's happened) and I couldn't speak hardly at all, move or say much during the whole session. I lost time. Couldn't make sense of my body.

I felt he was telling me that the trust was broken because of what I'd brought. I felt threatened and that he was angry and felt I'd done something really wrong. He told me I hadn't and he was my ally and that all my reactions were hard for me but really useful to share more with him so he can understand more about what happens and what triggers me/ how I react....I simultaneously felt gas lit because he said those things to me and pointed a finger which triggered that reaction, then the session was about me and my reaction - not how he had triggered it. He did say he realised he needs to be more careful and handle these things with more care. I don't think he said sorry but I felt he should have done.

We went over the session by 20 minutes because he made sure I was back in the room... and feeling OK enough to leave...

I don't know what to think now. I'm very confused. This is someone I've spent 10 months building a relationship with who I've told the most amount I have to anyone. And in 1 session I now don't know who he is to me, or whether I can trust him.

Do I go back? Or do I walk away from what feels like it was a breach of power and trust? Very confused and upset right now.

Don't leave,he obviously cares enough to allow time to bring you back into a safe or better place before leaving. My experience is I tried to make up reasons not to return,even today as my Therapist canceled twice for medical reasons in the last 2 weeks but it did not use to matter,I would take any excuse and build it to Nobody gives a shit about me and that's not fair for both parties so when triggered I try to remember I am Important,I know better than trying to make an excuse,nobody can do a better job at being awful to myself so I had to change my views of me.i deserve to trust regardless of the situation.no need to run as scary as it is sometimes.hope I explained this where it makes sense but if I had made a choice to leave I would have been dead.Mental Illness is not something I play around with.it is serious.you have to change perspective or else it is just not worth existing.difficult stuff.stay and make sure he knows your thoughts.

 

[OliveJewel]

the system has decided it's too difficult to discusss/ too much / too overwhelming... so it doesn't get brought... then I avoid it...

For what it’s worth, this here is such a huge part of the work. I can’t tell you how many times I planned to say something or focus on something and left without doing it. A massive let down, but really common and typical for the recovery process. It may seem like you would never say it without emailing, but the truth is that emailing/writing engages a different part of the brain than talking so while it may seem like you’re getting it out in writing it doesn’t have the same effect as talking about it. If he’s a trauma therapist then there’s a very good reason he doesn’t utilize email in his therapy modality with you at this point. If there are parts blocking you from giving him a printed out or written paper than that’s a recovery nugget to mine. Same thing with if parts are stopping you from reading something to him—then talk about *that*.

I know this thread is highlighting two main issues: one is whether or not you should be allowed to email and the other is whether he invalidated you. My response is focusing on the first issue.

I’m curious if you followed his request to only bring things in face to face, if you would have still felt invalidated, especially since you would have had to watch him process everything as you presented it to him, rather than expecting him to have already processed and prepared a response for you.

 

[Charbella]

he's a trauma T... he knew about dissociation but I never explicitly asked if he had experience with dissociative disorders...I didn't know i had to ... him being the expert I would have thought he'd let me know if he doesn't, once I'd told him about my OSDD... he doesn't see OSDD as a thing to treat. Doesn't agree with the terminology.

Trauma Ts absolutely should and do treat dissociation, it’s a fact that people do it even those who’ve never had big trauma. But OSDD, there aren’t even that many people who have it. I’m not sure why you think he should be asking that, nor why you’d assume he’d be able to treat it.

However it’s a huge red flag for me that you’ve been diagnosed (I’m assuming by a psychiatrist) with a condition and the person you’re expecting to treat it doesn’t recognize it. That would be like breaking my leg and then taking the X-rays to a doctor having them tell me it’s not broken but continuing to go to them expecting them to fix it.

My gut tells me he was really happy that my parts came out. I think for him it was a Yay! moment - like a therapy triumph... but I felt annoyed that they had been triggered in the manner they had... by him... so i found his celebration of this a bit poorly timed as it was a strong and long dissociation with alot of distress...

I don’t understand how he can be happy about your parts emerging when he doesn’t recognize the disorder you have causing them. That seems illogical. When you say he doesn’t recognize it what has he said?

 

[Tinyflame]

@beaneeboo , Idk if this is helpful but I was reminded of it today about myself. I really like the term 'imaginary
conversations'. It's the ones we have with ourselves that keep morphing following a difficult or confusing incident. And they end up rife with the past. And we second guess everything and ourselves. And especially since trauma has a way of making molehills in to mountains. But we are too busy unintentionally following through to worst case scenarios. After all, they've occurred before. even if we were just bystanders/ collateral damage.

I am in no way invalidating your experience, perspective or upset. in fact, I wholly do.

But I'll give an example I had today: they added last minute much extra work. One I also (semi-consciously) fear due to another factor, not the work itself, but was not added but could have been, at that moment I didn't know. Lucky for me I bumped in to a friend with his dog and he is pretty astute and said to take a deep breath and destress 1st. Well in short haste I was thinking about SA, young and older; speaking up and nothing changing. Things never changing. And how however I was believed even if it was useless, or minimized. But, I didn't have to deal with being not believed lucky for me, for that and later SI, which was a yucky thing to disclose. And how there were though 2 good cops- good people and good cops, a little 'unconventional', how they solved one problem. And so on and so on..

Then, I stopped, and thought how the hell did I get work assigned and end up thinking of SA??? Or childhood. Even when/ if there have been obvious times. And not sure if it's like that for you but my mind runs with it the same way if asking for help, hearing lies, gossip, threat, and other things. My mind goes to where it went in the past- the who, what, where and how (as in how the h*ll could I end up here). And I don't think of myself as a victim, but an unwilling participant who can't get away or make stuff stop is soul destroying and heartbreaking too.

I also understand why I don't feel anger as much, since one apparently has to have an expectation, or feel an unfairness. But that doesn't mean I won't feel disappointment, mostly in myself or questioning what I did wrong (again) to not be able to avoid or change the outcome (ask for help -> nothing).

If you can be curious versus defensive, step back for perspective, and not catastrophize but actually maintain some expectation instead of minimizing entirely what you need or hope to try to achieve, and communicate (versus imaginary conversations in your own head, which shuts communication down) it might help, not just yourself but maybe your T also. And also help you to know if it is workable for you. We want recovery fast but it's a maddeningly slow process. Maybe you need someone with more insight, or maybe his insight is greater than yours for the long term goal of recovery?

 

[EveHarrington]

we'd spent 9 months building trust and that I was now bringing this to session, and he didn't know what to do because he's not trained in those therapy approaches... and doesn't have access to this material (which is incorrect - all the videos are free on line)... I think he felt threatened that I was saying someone else knows how to do therapy and you don't.

A therapist isn’t going to spend thousands of dollars to become trained in a modality just because one client is interested in it and sends him a few videos. It’s clear that you don’t understand the therapist education and certification process if you think that having access to YouTube videos means he has access to the material he would need to learn in order to treat you. It doesn’t work this way.

then the session was about me and my reaction - not how he had triggered it.

Triggers are on you. Why would you expect the session to be about him and how he triggered you? So he could learn how to tiptoe around you and not trigger you again? His triggering wasn’t intentional, and any therapist who tiptoes around your triggers isn’t going to offer you any sort of actual healing.

This is someone I've spent 10 months building a relationship with who I've told the most amount I have to anyone. And in 1 session I now don't know who he is to me, or whether I can trust him.

This is a huge part of the problem, but to be fair, this is the BS that the therapy world pushes on clients, and it’s 1000% NOT necessary to “trust” your therapist in order to heal, at least not in the way that you are thinking. Yes, trust in them on a professional level, like you’d trust a cardiologist to treat your heart condition. IMO too many people think they need to trust in their therapist on a personal level like you’d trust a partner or a friend, and really, you don’t. You’ve spent 10 months searching for this mythical deep sense of trust in your therapist, and one session ruins it all? Maybe, just maybe, could you be going about this the wrong way? What you need to know is that a therapist can dump you in an instant, with no warning, so seeking out this deep trust which would take YEARS to develop is a fools game. I mean look, in comparison, even when you are dating or making a new friend, how long would it take you to trust someone if you only saw them for 50 minutes a week? See why it’s not exactly advantageous to seek this kind of trust in a therapist? And again, why make your healing dependent upon a relationship that can end in an instant (person dies, suddenly leaves, or just says “I don’t want to work with you anymore”.)

But T being contrary to what the specialist was saying felt invalidating to my perspective (like he was saying 'You're wrong!,) because I'd told him for the first time, I have someone describing what alot of my experience is.

You keep bringing up this validating stuff. I’m not sure if it’s because you are young, as I know that younger generations are very dependent upon everyone else validating them (in whatever capacity). The problem with this in therapy is that you are expecting your therapist to just agree with you about everything. And I’ll tell you that a therapist who validated you at every turn won’t actually help you heal (and it’s disconcerting that so many therapists now go down this route.)

T's response was 'Why do we need to make a distinction?' And that felt invalidating to me.

See above.

I feel this is what I did. My own research, brought it to therapy where it was rejected. I wasn't allowed to bring it in the room as far as he's concerned because he doesn't have that training / doesn't agree with some of it. But where does that leave me? I have a diagnosis of DDNOS (OSDD)...If he doesn't agree with it where does that leave me and my experience? Is it not valid?

See above, again.

Plus, did you specifically tell him that you want someone who specializes in trauma AND dissociative disorders? If not, that’s on you. Many people have multiple disorders and only want someone who treats one of them. Not everyone who treats trauma is also trained specifically to treat more severe dissociative disorders. Yes, people who have PTSD do dissociate, but that doesn’t mean that every trauma therapist also knows how to treat DDNOS or DID. You made a costly assumption it seems and now 10 months later you’re realizing that this guy isn’t trained to treat your dissociation.

All the while the focus is on my dissociation- not his role in it also.

The focus should be on your dissociation. You are the one who dissociates. Focusing on the outside world isn’t going to help you in the long run as it seems like you want the world to change. (Another reason I’m guessing you are young, as it’s very much a younger generations type thing to want everyone else to change so that you don’t feel bad anymore, but this isn’t how it works.)

The problem is, working with someone who has a closed mindset means he won't be doing training/ reading on dissociative disorders. Which means he won't get my experiences as much as a therapist who does try to understand more specifically about OSDD/DDNOS.

He doesn’t have a closed mindset so much as he doesn’t have training in how to treat your disorder. If you need a therapist who specializes in dissociative disorders you have no choice but to look elsewhere.

But I still feel he was invalidating because his aim was to prove this guy being wrong, rather than listen to what in that information was important to me and why.

Again, see above. Focusing on seeking out external validation isn’t going to get you anywhere as you require a therapist to agree with you on everything, and challenge you on nothing.



I will say that validation is something you should stop seeking. There’s never going to be enough validation in the world to make you finally feel ok to the point where you stop seeking validation. So what if someone doesn’t agree with you? That’s just one person. You need to find this all within yourself, and if you can’t do that right away, then you just learn to sit with the uncomfortable feelings. No, it’s not easy. Most of the time it downright sucks. But, I do know that seeking that reassurance is absolutely not the way you are going to heal.

 

[beaneeboo]

Don't leave,he obviously cares enough to allow time to bring you back into a safe or better place before leaving.

Thank you...I needed to hear this...

Mental Illness is not something I play around with.it is serious.you have to change perspective or else it is just not worth existing.difficult stuff.stay

And this... you're very wise...

and make sure he knows your thoughts.

This. This is the hard bit... but you're right and this is what I need tu work on...

Thank you for your input and keep going...

 

[beaneeboo]

. It may seem like you would never say it without emailing, but the truth is that emailing/writing engages a different part of the brain than talking so while it may seem like you’re getting it out in writing it doesn’t have the same effect as talking about it. If he’s a trauma therapist then there’s a very good reason he doesn’t utilize email in his therapy modality with you at this point.

I've never thought about it like this. You're right it's much easier for me to conceptualise and communicate what I think out of session in email - mainly because I'm not triggered in any way...I think it does have it's place to get things started but I see your point, it's not something to get comfortable doing ... and I need brave being able to do it face to face just speaking...0

If there are parts blocking you from giving him a printed out or written paper than that’s a recovery nugget to mine. Same thing with if parts are stopping you from reading something to him—then talk about *that*.

Revelation. Thank you. This i can talk about. I will discuss this with him.

I’m curious if you followed his request to only bring things in face to face, if you would have still felt invalidated, especially since you would have had to watch him process everything as you presented it to him, rather than expecting him to have already processed and prepared a response for you.

I don't know how that would have gone. I think I emailed because I predicted he would get angry (cognitive distortion) but in doing so it was possibly worse...

 

[beaneeboo]

I’m not sure why you think he should be asking that, nor why you’d assume he’d be able to treat it.

Pure ignorance i guess. He's the therapist / the expert. I told him I have DDNOS early on. I assumed he would let me know if he didn't feel he had the necessary skills rather than ask him outright if he does. That seemed rude and he's the therapist. It's not my place to remind him to do that? The other important point is that when I went into the therapy I told him about the DDNOS but I myself wasn't fully accepting of the diagnosis. So in a way, maybe in my head it wasn't so much of a thing for me.

However it’s a huge red flag for me that you’ve been diagnosed (I’m assuming by a psychiatrist)

yes

with a condition and the person you’re expecting to treat it doesn’t recognize it. That would be like breaking my leg and then taking the X-rays to a doctor having them tell me it’s not broken but continuing to go to them expecting them to fix it.

This is what confuses me. I think he recognises it but doesn't accept it... or think it's necessary to call it a disorder... so therefore doesn't need to treat my problems in the DDNOS framework. He doesn't deny the symptoms I have. Ithink maybe he just doesn't conceptualise it that way... but that leaves me thinking so lots of peeps (who don't have a specific diagnosis) have parts that drive their life?

I don’t understand how he can be happy about your parts emerging when he doesn’t recognize the disorder you have causing them. That seems illogical.

I agree 100%. I'm equally confused. I imagine he would say i just treat the person in front of me, I don't need to see the issues as a diagnosis

When you say he doesn’t recognize it what has he said?

This is probably what I need to get clear with him. But he's been open about not wanting to get weighed down by diagnosis, that he's quite anti medical model (I agree), that he didn't think there's enough evidence for dissociative disorders like DID / OSDD and therefore the therapy approaches... all reasons he didn't buy into the videos i sent as the language and terminology used was more medical and quite structured/check listed. His argument was that people are all different and a one size fits all approach doesn't work for everyone. Which i agree with. But that's not what the video was suggesting.

 

[Ecdysis]

I've never thought about it like this. You're right it's much easier for me to conceptualise and communicate what I think out of session in email - mainly because I'm not triggered in any way...I think it does have it's place to get things started but I see your point, it's not something to get comfortable doing ... and I need brave being able to do it face to face just speaking...0

I've found that a compromise/ a gradual step with this is to write down the stuff that I would want to email and print it out and then take it to the session and read it out loud. Somethings are too hard to "just say" for me and I need the crutch of writing it down. So taking my notes in and reading them can help me to verbalise something that I might otherwise stay mute/ silent about.