Harbour,

Good question and worth some reflection. My T told me she didn't think it was good for me to spend time here. I didn't have the wherewithal to ask her why at the time but maybe I will ask her next time I see her.

I have conflicting thoughts about this subject. Many times, I have built courage to address issues in therapy as a direct result of reading the experience of another on this site. On the other hand, when I start expecting my T to be just like so-and-so's therapist then I might miss what my T has to offer.

deeplyrooted

Interesting. On one hand it sounds like the controlling abusive spouse not wanting any interference from the outside world. On the other hand maybe it has everything to do with your T wanting YOUR authentic and individual response to what goes on in therapy instead of a reflection of someone elses. The thing is life is about reflection. In some cases (and I am not saying yours) a persons outside influence and/or support structure may be toxic to their healing and they may not even be aware of it, so including potentially toxic opinions in the healing process might be detrimental.

I would say if your new T ever gave you the same advice as your old T it might be worth having and open discussion about what they feel the potential concerns are.

B2W

No, I have never been told that. I think some T's have had doubts about people being on this forum, but to be told universally not to discuss therapy with anyone else, to me is a red flag. We've heard of particularly abusive T's who actually misled their clients into thinking that confidentiality meant the *client* wasn't allowed to discuss therapy with others, which is of course completely false and only meant to keep people from finding out how bad their T's are...

No, I often worry T will say those sort of things, but he doesn't. Sometimes, if I am getting lots of outside information, he will wonder whether it is helpful or harmful to the process (e.g. right after diagnosis, reading a lot about my disorder sent me into even worse denial than I get on my own, but later on, actually has helped me combat denial). We usually talk about it, and I get fears about his disapproval, but in the end, it's mostly in my head. He does think it's important to ask whether the outside stuff I do is helpful to the process I'm in, but it's a collaborative exploration (or sometimes him asking me to decide that on my own), never something he has determined for me. There are times it actually has been detrimental coming in with preconceived notions about what therapy or psychology or my diagnosis should and should not be, but I'd say that was less than 5% of the time. The other 95% of the time, the outside information has helped me understand the process I'm in, feel relatable, feel safe. My T has never barred me from anything, and when I felt "should-ed," he has always made sure to clarify it is actually an open-ended question for us to work through. "Don't talk" was a rule from my childhood that I sometimes project onto him, along with others. I could not trust that I'd be safe with any therapist who was replaying destructive rules and messages from my past like that...

PS - When I have actively described something as helpful, T actually encourages me to do that. When I took a few breaks from this forum, reading about therapy online in general, and told him about it, he asked why, since it had previously been so helpful. I explained the reason I was getting triggered by posting at the time, and he understood. He'll ask about that kind of stuff, very occasionally advise caution about things he knows might end up triggering me, but doesn't tell me what to do.

i did share this site with my T and he said that he is always looking for this type of thing and he thinks it is helpful in "normalizing" the feelings and the experience of being in therapy. i agree with him. if it weren't for this forum i'm sure i would have quit therapy afer only a few months.

Maybe it depends on what kind of therapy you're in. I think mine was what they call TFP (Transference-Focused Psychotherapy). When my T said that I should not talk to anyone outside about the therapy he said that it was because that it was important to keep that special energy within the therapy, to keep the tension there. I don't know. There are so many things I would have done differently in my therapy if I'd had the chance. That is one of them. I was stuck for the last 12 years and had a bad end. Shocking! Maybe if I had found this café or talked to someone outside it could have helped me. I could not see any way out or any way back into the track for all those years. I don't think that my T was abusive. He just made some bad mistakes.
It's a little late for me to use the café in that way. But I do find that it is helpful here to discuss certain issues from my former therapy and the serious crisis I struggle with now. It helps me see things in a different light. Until I found this café I blamed only myself for everything that went wrong in the therapy, also for the bad end. I still do, but I have started to realise that my T probably didn't have the skills to handle it properly, thanks to very wise and experienced people here. I have so many regrets. This is the only therapy I ever had. And it feels kind of absurd that I need another T to help me out of the old one. If I find one I will not forbid myself again to talk to someone outside or to use the café if I feel I need it.

Neither of my T's asked me not to speak about my therapy with anyone, although I do think that oldT felt threatened by my posting and sharing here. That was HIS problem of being insecure about our therapy and he had reason to be. My current T is VERY supportive of my being in this group. He says groups like this educate and could be some protection from bad therapy and bad therapists. People get to see what good therapy should look like and learn the red flags of ineffective or abusive therapists. He said the only T's who would fear this site would have something to fear about what they were doing. He likes that I share my experiences in the hope that it would be of help to others.

TN

My T openly encourages me to post here and to give and receive support. She LOVES hearing about issues that come up and how that has affected me. Every week I take an issue from here as it is relevant to me and we discuss it. I share resources and links to internet pages. I sent her AG's attachment blog this week and my T loved it and had a lot to say. We then used that as a basis to review our relationship and to talk about our attachment and how we do things in our therapy. I spoke a lot about the out of hours contact we have and how it works for us. We also discussed how far we had become and how difficult things have been for us.

So my T is the absolute opposite. But I do believe that my T feels very secure in herself. We openly say that we are inventing our own therapy style based on OUR relationship and what works for US. She isn't scared to try something new, or to accept criticism and is not threatened by new ideas.

Somedays

I wanted to clarify, in case it sounds like my T is down on me being on here, that he is not. Whenever I tell him something that is helpful to me, he is very encouraging about it. He just asks questions about whether I am finding things helpful or not. He loves the idea of me experiencing the stuff I'm going through as relatable, normalized, etc. And he also seems to really enjoy my willingness/ability to learn about therapy and psychology and reads all the articles I send him. Sometimes, I feel scared he doesn't want me having outside influences, but I think that's because it's how my mom was, and my paternal grandmother too.

(((HARBOR)))

I think it's unfair and unhealthy to ask someone NOT to talk about what happens in therapy with other people because it's so emotionally charged. I agree with everyone here who said it's a red flag and that this place has been incredibly helpful in terms of dealing with therapy. If it wasn't for the internet and psych cafe, I would have bolted from therapy a long time ago. Therapy can be a really isolating experience. Why would anyone make it more isolating than it has to be? It's like the "family" that keeps secrets. It's nice to be able to share, support, learn from and educate one another - as well as to help each other spot red flags.

I'm so sorry you went through what you did and that you blamed yourself for it. It wasn't your fault. He was a bad therapist.

Thanks to all of you. I really learn things here, and whenever I read your suggestions and thoughts about my T's mistakes I feel an immediate relief, as if I'm relieved of some of the heavy burden of guilt, at least for a while.
I can easily recognize what you're saying, Cat, when you say that it alienated you from outside support never knowing if what was happening in the therapy room was normal. What your T did when he suggested that you write to your parents about their neglect sounds very unprofessional.
I had and I have the sense too that my T punished me, and that he was angry. I think he felt rejected by me and couldn't take that. And I felt rejected by him. I remember one day years ago that I said to him that he was angry with me. He answered that I was the one who was angry with him. I said that I didn't feel that at that moment. He didn't respond to that. No answer. He said many things that made me feel very guilty. It is very confusing. I was the one who was dysfunctional, so when I felt rejected or being punished or insecure or stuck or whatever, it was always, always a sign of my sick mind. His behaviour was never to be questioned. NEVER. How would I know when it is about my dysfunction and when it is about his inability to deal with it? I saw him as almost a God. I believed every word he said, unconditionally.
I am still very confused about everything, because he did seem to care and to sincerely want me to grow and to get better. He also seemed professional and skilful. That was my impression, at least the first 8 years. Maybe he got disappointed. Things changed for the worse. Something was not quite right.
Maybe I am still too kind to him as you suggest. I'm very confused about it.

Maybe he had some unresolved issues about women. Someone here on the café, don't remember who, made me consider that. She mentioned that she suspected her T to hate women. Just before my T terminated me he mentioned his husband, obviously to let me know that he was gay. I have never for those 20 years had the thought. Maybe he revealed it to me as a last attempt to resolve the transference. It didn't work though. It didn't change anything.

Your T ought to pay for your current therapy. I didn't pay anything, because it was in a hospital. That kind of long term therapy is no longer possible in the hospitals in Denmark.

Liese, you ask why anyone would make therapy more isolating than it has to be. Very good question. Why? It doesn't make sense to me any more.

I hope that I will have the courage soon to reach out for another T and that I will be able to trust her or him. But I also have serious problems trusting myself.

I have learned not to accept certain things about a T. But it is a high price to pay for that lesson. And I'm afraid that I've still got much more to learn about what actually happened in that Therapy.

You are all so good at expressing difficult things and putting the right words on them.

Cat

Do you think that your T somehow wanted you to be and enjoyed you being a helpless and confused woman who couldn't cope without him? That's terrifying. It reveals a lot about him. This makes me think of another absurd thing. It seems that some T's are badly in need of therapy themselves.

I can see that my T failed, but it is so hard for me to recognise it fully. I wonder if I´m trying to keep the good picture of him. I think maybe I'm afraid that if I destroy the therapy I go down with it. Sometimes when I actually see where he did wrong I find myself feeling sorry for him. And then I feel awfully sad for both of us. I remember I had a dream, while in therapy, where I was carrying my father on my shoulders. Later I dreamt that I carried my T on my shoulders.

I don't know why I feel I should find another T as soon as possible. I feel a little panicked. I guess I'm afraid maybe it will be too late. That I'll be too lost if I wait. I write letters to my T. I've written more that a hundred since we terminated 10 months ago. But I haven't sent any since I sent my fourth letter last summer. I feel this writing to him helps me, as part of my digging myself out of the mess. So does the café. I still have a very long way to go. Maybe forever.

Hi,

Just to put a different experience out there - my couples' therapist, who has generally been effective and professional, says she prefers clients not to talk to others about their therapy, including husbands and wives. She says she likes to 'plant seeds' in the therapy and then let them 'bubble up'. Seeds don't bubble, but I get what she means because often I notice our therapy working like this. To be clear, she's not suggesting my husband and I shouldn't talk to each other about relationship stuff, but more that our individual therapy should be private. She doesn't work with either of us individually. She's big on boundaries.

She also puts that as her professional perspective/preference, rather than as a request or demand. It doesn't feel like there's any pressure with it. Certainly I think one should carefully evaluate advice like this.

Cat, I would very much like to read the letter your T sent to you. It's incredible that he actually wrote that he enjoyed your helplessness as his little girl. That is very scary indeed. It tells me that he did not want you to heal and grow. My T never said things like that. On the contrary. He was so keen, I think even desperate, for me to become independent or autonomous as they call it, that he became much too distant for the last 10 years, being complete passive. I just felt hopelessly stuck and like a deserted island. The only kind of interventions he did, if you can call it interventions, was to sometimes give me a simple, critical comment without further talk about it. Like the comments I've mentioned here before. This only made things worse. But again, it confuses me. Because why did he let me continue for so long if he wanted me to become independent? It is still so hard for me to really see who was responsible for what. Whenever I even think of his behaviour, attitude and comments, I feel wrong and something in me roars: FORBIDDEN! You're supposed to look at your own stuff only. And then I feel I fail in my working on becoming an independent and responsible person. The problem is that I see the point in looking only on my own stuff, reactions and motives. I mean, am I not only trying to avoid the pain and the responsibility of my own personal tragedy when I ponder and speculate over his reasons for doing or not doing what he did and said? I'm confused about this and I feel stuck in that. However, there is one thing I will not take the whole responsibility for, and that's the termination.

Yes, I think you're right when you suggest that my rush to get a new T has to do with validation. I can hardly breathe in my extremely low self-esteem and self-confidence. I'm so afraid to "drown", and at the same time I find it hard to accept that I need to get a new T. It makes me feel like an even more hopeless failure.

I have been reading a few things about abuse in therapy on the internet, and till now I can't relate my own therapy to that, because as you said, my T didn't abuse me in that way. The things I've read are all about sexual abuse or outrageous emotional abuse, like in your case. I Think it would have been less confusing if he had abused me. It would have been easier to just blame him for my suffering. I would like though to read some more about it. So if you know of some good books on the subject I would be glad if you could recommend some.

Stockholm syndrome? I've read the link, and I'm not sure if it is relevant in my case. Then I should see myself as a victim, and I don't think that this will get me anywhere. Stockholm syndrome, victim and abuse are very strong words.

Jones, it seems to make sense what your therapist says about the subject. But she is a couples' therapist, and maybe the situation is a little different here, when it is about a couple talking to one another about their individual therapy. In general, I believe that it depends on the whole situation in each case. It certainly wasn't constructive for me to keep silent outside the therapy about it. I cannot know if it would have helped me, but staying stuck and feeling more and more impossible and miserable for many years in therapy didn't help me either. On the contrary.