Responses To Your Therapist That You Will Probably Never Say

[shimmerz]

Me: Okay, so you said I didn't have DID but that is confusing me as I feel like I have two parts, what do you think about the Structural Dissociation theory?
T: God I hate it when patients search the internet!
Me: God I hate paying $200 per hour to someone who hates having a patient who actually wants to figure this out.

 

[ms spock]

Shoot them! Shoot them all!

 

[zaniara]

My T says he NEVER find me annoying or being 'too much' and also tell me he will never give up on me. Of course I think he is lying,

Oh.. I actually managed to make him angry after 2 years of therapy. Twice!! :D It probably shocked him more than me. But I take it as a compliment, and we worked our way through it, and that was a really, really good experience. Learnt so much from him! Am so very grateful!

 

[joeylittle]

Dear Therapist,

Do not repeatedly emphasize that I am to call you if I am struggling with the residue of things we processed today if you cannot get a pager system that works reliably. I would like to tell you: you, sir, are an irresponsible asshole.

Sincerely,
Joeylittle

 

[digger]

T: What do you need from me?

Digger: I need you to stop needing me to be able to identify what I f*cking need from you. I. DON'T. F*CKING. KNOW!

 

[Nighthawk]

@digger amen to that

 

[Ellabella44]

T: hmm where did that come from? I've never used that word before, talking to you is expanding my vocabulary.

Me: Youre welcome, meltdowns, sarcasm and expanding others vocabulary are just a few among the services I have to offer.

 

[Nighthawk]

T: You don't need to hide you not a child
M: Thats not how I feel I need to vanish ummm how old am I now?:eek:

 

[moonbeam]

Digger: I need you to stop needing me to be able to identify what I f*cking need from you. I. DON'T. F*CKING. KNOW!

This! This! This! That is exactly what I will never say.

Also:

T: due to today's bus strike I won't be in the office can we have your session by phone?

What I said: okay that's fine.

What I wanted to say: No, can we just take the week off and resume next week in person, in your office which feels like a safe space and I don't have to worry about silences, filling the silences, or if other people can hear me, etc.

Also also:

Me: My brain is being mean to me and telling me to do horrible stuff to myself because I am a waste of food and oxygen.

T: where do you feel that in your body? What does is feel like, warm, cool, hard, soft, etc.

Me: I feel it in my F*cking brain. Not my toes or my spleen, MY BRAIN. No it doesn't have a temperature or texture. What do you want me to say: "Newsupdate my current desire to self harm is a balmy 96°F and feels like silly putty in my lower intestine region, a mild panic attack is expected later out of my right kidney area at 5-10MPH"?

 

[sun seeker]

Slight digression: a while ago I identified one of the biggest things I was needing from therapy as having someone really hear what my experience is. I feel that the problem-solving aspects of therapy are secondary to this (for me - I know some people disagree). I have the sense that once I have that, I'll be better at thinking through how to solve my own problems, and that it's pretty much a waste of time for her to sit there suggesting things I could do to solve my problems, partly because the suggestions show me just how far she is from understanding how much my symptoms get in the way of doing some of the things she suggests . I told my therapist about this and she seemed fine with it, and I've been slowly working on expressing what my experience is like and she seems to hear me at the time. But then when she came up with this question about what I love to do (we were talking about my anxiety around looking for work) I realized that to be able to ask something like that, she was still miles away from understanding what I'd been trying to convey.

I love this thread and it's a great catharsis. But most of these conversations we're reporting come down to the same feeling, which could be expressed as "Aarggh! How can you help me when you don't get it?!"

The question is, do you think it's possible for a therapist to really understand the hell many of us experience? Again, whether that's a legitimate need is a separate question. For me, it's a need. Just, is it possible? Unless they have been there and are one of the success stories, maybe they can't. Maybe going there even in imagination is too much for anybody. Maybe they'd burn out and quit. Is it possible for them to have that mixture of imagination, compassion, and good boundaries to really get how bad it is and not take it on as their own? Have you experienced this?

 

[digger]

The question is, do you think it's possible for a therapist to really understand the hell many of us experience? Again, whether that's a legitimate need is a separate question. For me, it's a need. Just, is it possible? Unless they have been there and are one of the success stories, maybe they can't. Maybe going there even in imagination is too much for anybody. Maybe they'd burn out and quit. Is it possible for them to have that mixture of imagination, compassion, and good boundaries to really get how bad it is and not take it on as their own? Have you experienced this?

Probably deserving of its own thread?

 

[Changing4Best]

@sun seeker

My therapist tells me about problematic events in her own life and then tells me how she solved them. These things help me to see how her solution would work in my life, if I were to try it. Since a lot of her solutions tend to be things that seem possible for me to do, I guess I both get a possible solution as well as the feeling that she really understands where I am coming from. I told her I like it when she does that, so she does it quite often.

I think I have tried her solutions on my problems a few times (and I think those problems are gone now, though I cannot recall what they were). Sometimes just knowing that there is some kind of solution, if that thing should happen to me again, helps me.