Upset After I Left The Therapy Session - Now What?

[Justmehere]

I’m really upset about my therapy session yesterday. I woke up in tears about it this morning. I feel really upset. Nothing hugely bad happened in the session, and I wasn’t bothered in session. I was rather numb during the session, and my therapist noticed. I don’t know what to do. She allows outside contact, she encourages it more than I reach out to her - but this doesn’t seem fitting for it. I’m almost hysterically upset and I am not even sure why. I’m wondering what others do when they have a session that goes off kilter or is upsetting after they leave the session.

I think my therapist was saying I have a tendency to be more of a perpetrator than a victim, even when I really am the victim... ok, I didn't understand what she said at all. It feels like she said I'm a perp. But she doesn't treat me like that at all. Or say that exactly. So I'm confused. And really upset. I don't understand if she thinks I'm a perpetrator or not and living with that question on my mind for a week is daunting. But it's not enough to call her about, so living wth it is what I have to do. I'm not a perp, I can't be, I work with kids.

I know this all seems so basic. I really am at a loss as to what to do with this.

 

[greenleaf]

It sounds like she really doesn't believe you're a perpetrator, if she's not doing all the things she'd legally have to if you were! I don't know exactly what she said -- maybe you are having trouble remembering the exact words, too? (I almost never remember exact words, personally.)

But since this is scary and distressing you quite a lot, it's definitely worth calling. You don't deserve to spend a week extremely upset, your quality of life is important! (We ptsd folks often minimize the importance of our quality of life to an extreme.) Do give her a call!

 

[digger]

I don't have contact with my T between sessions. If I've had a session that's left me feeling worse, or bad, for whatever reason, and there have been a few, I tend to vent about it in my diary here. Sometimes it's spitting the dummy type stuff, sometimes it's more complex than that, but venting here helps me look, over time, at it a bit more objectively.

A week can feel like a long time between sessions when you've had a bad or confusing one, or feel like you need clarification on something. I guess I use my diary here to shelve some of that and contain it till the next week, or to work out exactly what it is I'm feeling, how reasonable or realistic that is and what I feel I need to know, in advance of the next session.

My guess would be that your T didn't mean what she said in the way that you're interpreting it. I think if you really feel that you can't manage until next week not knowing, then email her for clarification on that point maybe?

 

[Deleted member 20280]

@Justmehere ..... Santa:hug:s I know how draining therapy can be.

 

[mamachick]

Im sorry that you have come away feeling this way. Im not sure what she said or how she responded that caused you to feel that way, but Im betting that she would not intend for you to feel this way.

What comes to my mind is that there is a "shadow" side to all of us. We all have both sides within us, although one is predominant. When I was in grad school, a professor told us to write down 5 of our best qualites. EX; honest, loyal, brave, independent, compassionate. Then he told us to write the opposite of those 5 qualities. Then he told us that we have the opposite within each of us. Many were very offended. I am one to ponder over things, so I searched within myself. If I could find one example of the opposite, it is true. Further, it is easy to be a really good person when life is treating us well. When life is not treating us well and bad stuff seems to keep happening, its harder to be as good of a person.

This exercise was intended to help us be more empathetic and less judgemental professionals. It was not intended to be a put down in any way. Some people will not take this as a reality, I have because of my personal circumstances since. Most basic is for me to remain in a victim role, I may be a perpetrator to myself. I really saw this when I read a book called the Spiritual Divorce. It pointed out that the things you disliked in your partner exist in self. It takes looking really deep and being really honest with self.

I dont know what the situation was in therapy, so if this does not apply, please just disregard.

 

[ButterflyBean]

Call her if it's stressing you this much! She never would want you to feel that way, and chances are just a little bit of clarification or support over the phone will reduce your anxiety! Don't be ashamed to ask for help even if it's not an emergency, that's what she is there for! Sometimes sessions can leave us shaken for reasons we can't put our fingers on, and it is okay to work through them! I think we all have the same consensus that if your feeling upset enough that you can't function, then you have enough reason to reach out for support/clarification. You deserve it! Please let us know what happens and how you're feeling later!

 

[Sarah2732]

This is a really good reason to contact her. She's opened the door, she's invited you though it- and you have a really legit reason to need to go through that door. I hope you will.

One of the most valuable things about being able to contact a T between sessions is clarifying stuff like this. She said something, and you filtered it through defense mechanisms (numbness/dissociation) and then filtered it through a brain packed with trauma and negative beliefs about self and the statement that made it through to your understanding may be completely different from what she said or meant. Good T's get this and will be happy to rephrase or repeat what they did say, and clarify what they did not say or mean- and will be GLAD to if it means they get to move forward with you next week instead of spending weeks undoing the damage caused by a week of thinking that your T thinks of you in a negative way.

 

[Meadowsweet]

ok, I didn't understand what she said at all. It feels like she said I'm a perp. But she doesn't treat me like that at all. Or say that exactly. So I'm confused.

Trauma creates feelings of shame and guilt. But sometimes we internalise the trauma - a common but difficult shame feeling for me, is feeling like I have done something terrible. I know it comes from childhood and not comprehending what was happening to me, so I internalised the trauma as me being the bad thing, rather than the abuse itself being the bad thing. When those feelings flood up in me, I have felt like a perp, rather than the victim.

I think what you've said in the quote above is the part of you that is fighting to see things clearly. And I think that is the part that is clear here. The rest is the feelings in you that are being released.

I think it is big enough to contact your therapist, if she has said it is ok to do so.

 

[Seasounds]

1. You are right, your therapist is not having good boundaries, and this is even evidenced in how she doesn't apply discretion in her comments to you.
2. You therapist is triggering you, too much! Not a good sign. The T is not gauging her comments well, she is not emotionally attuned to you.
3. Your therapist sounds like she is immature, as a therapist and as a person.
4. If a therapist wants to have their client consider an idea that may be a big change in their clients perspective, they should have the skills to give their clients information about their idea, so they can think about it themselves, or come to a clearer understanding themselves, rather than pronounce a judgement that makes it seem like the therapist is not on your side!
5. A big issue here: you experience your therapist to not be predominately empathetic. Certainly, there is a time for both, but in a much kinder way-it is called therapeutic skill.
6. My point, made above, for suggesting you find someone else. Your therapist seems to have a style of making sure her opinions dominate the therapeutic process rather than assisting and supporting you, first working from your perspective, and guiding you, through wisdom, into developing greater self-esteem, where you will naturally gain, and consider, greater perspectives, and can judge, for yourself, whether they are true or not.
7. Example: Let's say, one child hits another child. Do we tell the hitter,"You are a bully," or do we give them support for their perspective and help them find another, more effective way to get their needs met?
8. My judgmental opinions enumerated, above, to have your back. :cool: Hope they help!

 

[Justmehere]

Wow, thank you everyone for the input. It is so valuable to me. I'm sitting here reading and thinking and journaling out my thoughts to try and make head or tails of my own thoughts. Struggling for words right now.

 

[Deleted member 20280]

@Justmehere As you are fully aware you are a special part of the Myptsd Family. Lottsa Santa:hug:ss wheenever you need them.

Laurie

 

[Justmehere]

My therapist is really good. She specializes in trauma and we were talking about why someone accused me of something my therapist didn't do.

We also talked about an incident a few days ago where I was walking home from the grocery store and a large guy hit me on his bike. He then told me, screamed at me that he had told me get off the sidewalk. My therapist was shocked and very much on my side. What I was focused on was that when he was standing there, I realized I couldn't run from him, he was way bigger than me, but I screamed at him and refused to move from the sidewalk. I have an eye disease that causes severe vision problems at times and I screamed at him, "you are going to run over the girl who is going blind and then you want her to get off the sidewalk?" I had my service dog with me and everything. He got in my face and I swear, had he done anything else... For the first time in my life, I thought I might hit someone if they hit me.

In general, I hate being helpless. As a kid, asking for help or needing help was punished severely. My therapist and I had already talked about how my family saw me as the scapegoat, the one acting out. While everyone else complied with my father who was in perpetrator role. But they blamed me.

So we had been talking about how a kid acts out. And then now this. This guy could have beaten me up. It was best for my safety to jail let him have his way and get off he sidewalk (and call the police and etc). But in that moment, I was done. No more running me over. I would have put up a fight and I felt like I was capable of becoming the perp. I was right on the edge of hitting him.

I think my therapist was trying to help me understand that even the desire to hit someone who hit me, that is a trauma response. She was telling me in the session, your stress cup is full. She told me that even perp energy, she is ok with working with that. She wrote down for me, on a piece of paper even, that I need to try to think, "maybe I'm not a monster. Maybe other people were stressed and needed someone else to blame." She told me that "maybe" was added so that I might accept it more, she said "really, you are not a monster."

She also said that in general, I hate being in the victim role more than any other client she has ever had or any other person she has ever met. She said, "you would rather be in control, even to believe that you are the problem, before you will let yourself be helpless or even be seen as the victim."

She is ok with me. I did feel like I would hit him. Yeah, yeah, I know what e did is awful and wrong... But when he picked up his bike I yelled at him. When he rode off... I kept screaming at him, "go ahead run over the girl waking on the sidewalk with her service dog going blind, do it again, come on!" I was insane! I was trying to pick a fight with a large guy! Very large, very muscular. This thing in me... I felt like I was a tiger. Ready to pounce.

I feel like the perpetrator.

My therapist said we all have an inner perpetrator, that given enough stress it would come out. She said most humans wouldn't be overwhelmed with what I am facing even without a trauma history.

She said that when she started trauma therapy work a decade ago, she never wanted to work with perpetrator energy. Now, she thinks that resolving those issues are essential and she is quite comfortable with it because of her experience and training since then. (She does supervise other therapists and teaches trauma therapy.)

And she kept saying, you are not a monster.

I don't want to be the perpetrator.

I'm probably not making any sense at all, but writing this out is helping me slow down and remember what she said and even wrote down for me.

I don't have the courage to call her. I might text her. I'm not sure what to even text.

(Edited to fix a typo)