Shut down with my therapist.

[Justmehere]

Yeah, I’ll go back in July and tell her again. Not now when life stressors and symptoms are super high.

 

[grit]

This is the wrong therapist for you! sorry. If you are feeling triggered by the physical closeness and she is pushing, she is not attuned. Would she do the same to a traumatized child? No!

Every time there is a resistant, IT IS NEVER THE CLIENT'S ISSUE. It is the therapist's rupture and no repair issue or the therapist not being attuned to you. Rather than pushing you to be close which is super intrusive if you are saying no...then she needs to just let it go and come back. Wrong therapy.

But I also want to add one more thing: Every time one feels intense feeling toward the therapist, it means something is triggered. If you are feeling strong toward her, try to name that feeling and then find where it came from in the past. It is possible she is reminding your body of experience and that is why you are resisting. a good therapist would have recognize this and work around it but she is all about her and what she learned in school not about you as a person.

Maybe take time off and come back to her but to me, IMHO, transferences. resistance, defenses are all the things a good therapist should keep track of. There will be no trauma if you could keep track of those so easily already. She is failing you and you are noticing it is same failure you experience in the past but there is no repair in sight right now.
I am sorry you are going through this. To me when this sort of thing happened, it is like implicit memory is becoming explicit and it is dangerous if I am not invited to recognize and work through it. It is painful.

 

[blackemerald1]

This is the wrong therapist for you!

With respect @grit - I don't agree. Therapists are not always going to get it perfectly right every time. Now is not the time to make massive decisions like this anyway.

@Justmehere you have done a load of work with this therapist. She is away right now. Keep yourself safe and comfortable until you can see her again. You will move past this moment and this feeling. We are looking out for you here.:hug:

 

[Justmehere]

Every time there is a resistant, IT IS NEVER THE CLIENT'S ISSUE.

I can’t disagree more. Resistance to closeness is of course my issue. It’s why I’m going to therapy in the first place. She is aware of the resistance. Very aware. Working with the resistance was the whole point.

You will move past this moment and this feeling. We are looking out for you here.:hug:

Thanks. I think I need to really remember that things will get better, this will pass.

 

[grit]

I can’t disagree more. Resistance to closeness is of course my issue. It’s why I’m going to th...

I hope it works for you. I understood resistance was your issue because you said saying no was easier for you than yes. I think you have a great handle of your issue so I wish you the best recovery.

 

[Suzetig]

IMHO, transferences. resistance, defenses are all the things a good therapist should keep track of.

You do know that not all therapy modalities work with the concepts of transference, resistance and defence? Many excellent therapists will have a very different understanding of what’s happening with their client and won’t at all attend to transference etc because it’s not the theory base they work from.

I don’t think you can say this therapist isn’t right for @Justmehere - my understood that the T is actively working with the difficulties she has with closeness which is going to be triggering. You may not do that to an abused child but the client in this case is an adult, responding to them as a still abused child is denying the reality of their situation keeps them in a place of still being the abused child.

Exposure is a proven therapy for working with trauma, the T seems to be pacing the work in the context of the relationship, which seems fair enough.

 

[Justmehere]

My therapist’s tool belt actually includes a method that involves working with transference too. Negative transference. Not avoiding it, not consoling me out of feeling it, but learning to manage it and work it out. As an adult, where I am the one that meets any developmentally stuck needs.

Maybe when she was saying I can’t hear her comments about “regulate” the right way right now, she was recognizing we just stirred up some negative transference. Maybe she felt like I’d be mad about anything she said.

Which is possible.

Geez. I don’t know why that one word that comment so got to me. But it did. As I think about it, if she had said to me, “now bring your nervous system back down to baseline before we try again” - maybe I would have been more ok with that?

It would have still been frustrating, but felt more like she was there coaching. I think “regulate” was hard because it *felt* like a very clinical command.

I did regulate in the session.

Maybe I do need to go to my appointment when she gets back, without the delay until July, and tell her I need to pause on exposure work until I can risk another symptom spike, and I need her to talk that one through with me.

 

[grit]

My therapist’s tool belt actually includes a method that involves working with transference too. N...

I really like your description of the session where your therapist said "regulate" and also that you may not understand this now or something like that because she may have thought or you thought that was transference. I had very similar sessions like that and they drove me insane...until I realized they were negative transference and I recognized the clusters of feelings they contained.

I can relate your feelings of aghast about your therapist because maybe (and this could be just my take) that rather than saying "regulate" she could have gone there with you and be one with you in the experience so it did not have to be so raw.

As others pointed out, I truly hope this is one time only and you feel so much better place in July. I too had as mentioned above similar experiences and change my sessions to every other week so the recovery time is longer. After all, I need to live, work and cannot afford disintegration of this level every week for one hour...but that is me.

 

[anthony]

Every time there is a resistant, IT IS NEVER THE CLIENT'S ISSUE.

Incorrect. The client is the most likely part of the therapeutic relationship to be resistant, especially with trauma. MAPS has proven this ten fold, just introducing MDMA into therapy sessions. They reduced client resistance to be honest and forthcoming with the real facts as they know them. It took average outcomes from 60% averages to +80% average success rates.

 

[scout86]

I have absolutely no clue what she was doing, or what the reasons were. She's been pretty good though, so I wonder if it's not worth following through,, like you're thinking, to where this going.

I've had a few "wtf is he doing NOW?" moments with my T too. Eventually, it makes sense. At least so far.

Having said that, sitting next to sometime seems especially scary.