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Unfunny Funny Story - Therapist’s Reaction To Trauma Details

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Totally agree with the others. Its exactly what I was thinking when reading this thread too. And have thought at times previously. Will also add that it is really important when dealing with all situations in life too. Of course therapy is a boiling pressure cooker for this stuff. We can't expect others to read our minds and we cant read others minds. And we are all unique. There is no way that a whole lot of education added to a good dollop of intuition and empathy would mean that all clients she saw with a similar history would a/feel absolutely the same thing b/need the same response. It might be useful for you to put aside transference and counter transference and rather just keep this fundamental thing in the foremind. Mind reading both ways around and projection. And speaking out what you need.

The expectation often comes from having grown up in a family where our needs are not met and often others, and us are blamed or made responsible for others feelings.

Good digging.

So sorry that you werent cared for and loved as you should have been.
 
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I had interesting therapy this week. I shared a detail that I was sort of unwilling to share because it is graphic and gruesome but it just fell off me.
Well the reaction of my therapist was negative like I assaulted her. I recognized it right away and apologized for causing vicarious trauma which is something I suffer from as well. She defensively said in a stern (or seemed stern) "You do not need to worry about me. I can take care of myself"

I was like the adult in the room for a second. I had a dream after it that someone stole something from me and everybody knew about it and no one would help me find the thing or the person or help me call the cops.

Strange journey in therapy. Not sure what to make of it but I realized how much time I really waste thinking, dissecting and worrying about my past in therapy, on this site and how much I am not re-living that nightmare in my life. What gives?

Any take.

PS. I am not offended at the reaction but I am saddened by it. She could have expanded about why I was so worried about my words hurting her. It would have taken me to think about my siblings but alas, we did not and I am OK I went there alone again.

My protective part dissects every thing my therapist says, stores it, and it is irritating because it is used to determine whether I continue therapy - and particularily tracks/ recalls her reactions -Once I made a comment about her laughing at something I said, and it was silly and I was giggling but I thought she should be reacting differently. She just said sorry, she was having a human moment- we hadn’t laughed much in therapy up to that point. The same holds true- for sad stuff-and I chalk it up to she’s human- and sometimes our shit will impact the therapist-to empathize she has to feel it. I couldn’t imagine being a therapist and listening to so much sadness and weird crap all day. But I know what you mean- and I do also care how my stiff impacts her.
 
Can relate. Wasted a lot of T time concerned about upsetting my *normal person* T. Perhaps protecting him, I thought. His initial response was the same. Now I use some sort of preamble. The events are facts. But a little more reactive than the sun is out. Although not to me. So a few words first, a warning of words to come.
 
Can relate. Wasted a lot of T time concerned about upsetting my *normal person* T. Perhaps protecting him, I thought. His initial response was the same. Now I use some sort of preamble. The events are facts. But a little more reactive than the sun is out. Although not to me. So a few words first, a warning of words to come.
Normal person T-made me laugh!!!!
 
****Update*****

So I brought up my feelings from the last session and tried to come to some closure as I am also moving on from this therapist.
I listed the three questions asked me by her and she responded that she did not remember the context and I should bring up my feelings right at the time. It was good she said to bring it afterwards, but during the time is better. I noted her deflection or I perceived this response as deflection because she was dismissing it is also normal for adult not to always response to anger right away.
I told her that in most of my relationships (except my husband because we have access to each other a lot), I usually take my time and try to make sense of my feelings rather than just blurting them out as I feel them. I like to create a distance so I can assess and then bring up the issues in cooler head. She did not agree. (I will elaborate about this later).

I brought up the point that she told me she could protect herself (when I apologized about sharing graphic details of my past). I said I felt she was defensive and I felt the same after that and nothing she said after was heard. I shut myself to her but again, I needed to digest and make sense of it afterwards and that is why I was bringing it up in this session. I said you did not need to defend yourself because it was my story and me showing empathy or enough to care should not warrant a defense. She could not look at me so I took it as affirmative. She said perhaps then she could have kept her mouth shut and listen more. I did not reply.

The lessons I took from this session are few:
No one can really, in all fairness of the world, replace the miss-attunement with my mother when I was baby. I think the best thing that can come out of therapy for me is I recognize when I am aiming for mother feelings toward my therapist and that realization is a wake up call and what I do with it is truly my healing. but the recognition of my aim is the most satisfying to now I am stuck on some sort of a mill.

Just bringing up these feelings was very vulnerable for me because I already had sense that I was vulnerable talking about how hurt I was as a child and felt she could not really be there with me and at the end, even my lovely husband is not always there with me all the time and just the mere of acknowledging how as a little baby i was not there for and at the top of that I was assaulted if I asked for anything is enough to wake me up from the fog of trauma. This is the sense I got in this session.

Writing is a form of cognition so putting this online is kind of retroactive way of analyzing myself but I actually felt more empathy for the therapist for trying to re-engineer for primal attunement that only a mother and a baby can have. I think by recognizing this so consciously, I can no longer work with her because it means I have to force unconscious myself to repair that miss-attunment I had with my mother which in reality, I do nt have with my husband, for example. I feel it is sort of compulsion in me but not one that is over-arching all my intimate relationship. Definitely it is showing up more in therapy which in my head = to development phases.

In short, I decided to move on to a new therapist and start with the unknown.

I feel today that when I feel so much here & now with the therapist, there is no therapy anymore. We are just two equal adults in a room. I think for recognition of any lingering trauma feelings, I need to be more in the past tense as in transference and the therapist is here and now.
That unequal level of reality and the drive to equalizing is the healing process. But if we are both here and now, it is hard to create a therapeutic relationship; hence why my friends or my husband cannot be my therapists. We are all in the here and now. If I am so stuck on my past all the time, and only my husband is in the here and now, then for sure, we will be like therapy relationship or extremely chaos cause well...you get the gist of this I hope and I do not have to spell it out. we would be two different planets.

PS. this supposed to be a short term therapy as I could not commit for long term for other reasons but I do feel my bringing up these issues and termination at once perhaps I have a pattern of - when it gets hot, I am out! (something to ponder about). Also my recognition of how hard it is for me to stay in the past when I am in therapy. I am so aiming to be in the present and I seem to resist being in the past or maybe this is a crack of my split from the past and that itself requires a different form of therapy.

Lately I thought maybe I like to try CBT.


Thank you for all your thoughtful comments.
 
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