Hi Jane... I'm so sorry you find yourself in this terrible bind. This is a lot of information to process but I have one question... what kind of requirements is she asking of you specifically. Are they therapeutic things or personal things? Your T actually sounds abusive and unbalanced and Ts should never force out of session contact on a client. That is unethical. It should be up to the client to initiate the contact and say when it ends if it's becoming a detriment to the therapy.

If you want to terminate with her and she tells you that you are terminated why don't you just let her terminate? Write a letter of official termination to her and send a copy to the insurance company and let them know you are looking for another T. If she causes any further problems then you need to contact your local licensing board and file a formal complaint. Save her unreasonable texts, voicemails, emails and whatever as proof of her instability.

I think it is blantant abuse to threaten a client to respond (making it about HER needs not yours) while this client is in the ER or anywhere for that matter. It is YOUR choice to respond or not.

I would also like to ask if there are transference feelings involved here? Has she ever expressed personal feelings towards you? Otherwise I have no idea what to make of her behavior.

No one should have this kind of experience in therapy.

TN

Oh dear, that does sound bad...
Why a therapist would behave like this? Is she having a nervous breakdown or something? I really don't understand. Requirements? What requirements? I don't get the idea of therapist insisting on more contact then the client needs/wants. Is she out of her mind? That sounds so cruel to me.
Sometimes I think therapy is such a dodgy business... You have to make yourself vulnerable for it to work, and where does it leave you if you do get hurt? Where do you go then?
I wonder if part of the reason why I read so much stuff about psychotherapy now, is to be able to defend myself if things go wrong way?
Can you get some support from your DBT therapist?
I'm sure there has to be something better, I'm sure there is.
I don't understand why a therapist would be so threatening and demanding. What exactly are her requirements if you don't mind that question?

Criminy, Janedoe, that sounds really scary and upsetting. My first reaction is that it sounds like your Primary T is not sane or healthy right now, and that you should do whatever you can to inform whoever you can, backed up with all the evidence that you can collect. That would mean laying out as much concrete evidence as you can for your DBT T, the insurance, and whatever complaints authority there is where you live. Just like doctors sometimes get sick, mental health professionals sometimes get mentally ill - and if she is, then there is no way that you or anyone else should be receiving treatment from her right now even if in session she seems okay. I would make the DBT T the first port of call, using all your evidence to get her fully in the picture so you have some support to do whatever next. A GP would be a good alternative if the DBT T doesn't help.

My second reaction is to qualify this by saying I CAN imagine situations where it is reasonable for a T to lay down the requirements yours is laying down. That would involve a client who is repeatedly in crisis situations that involve real, threatened or implied harm to herself or other people. This could include substance abuse, out of control public confrontations, or what I'm going to call mischievous complaining - presenting part of a situation, instead of all of it, to other professionals & thereby possibly damaging someone's career.

My THIRD reaction is that the demands miiiiiight make sense if they were in response to demands that you were making. So if you needed documentation from her for school, she might need other documentation from you to be able to give that.

I'm sorry to present such a range of responses - but there's so much that outsiders to the situation can't know. YOU know this situation, though.

On the basis of this alone:

quote:

At my last appointment with her we talked about the details of a sexual assult I had never been able to talk about. She said it was wonderful what I said and the connections and breakthroughs I had in that session. Then three days later she calls on a Sunday and says future appointmenst are canceled, no reason given, and hangs up before I can even ask why or say a single word other than hello.

I would suggest the first course of action - getting away from her and her influence over your treatment, as fast as possible, with support. If you know of some concrete reason why she would cancel like that (something you did), then it's a different situation - but as you describe, this is just absolutely not right and you need to protect yourself from it.

You have my full sympathy.

Hi Janedoe -

It does sound like things are not right with your therapist. I just want to check one thing - was her short-notice cancellation in response to your reaction at the nurse's office? Like, had she just found out about that or something else?

I'm NOT trying to establish, here, whether this is 'your fault' - you are obviously in pain and dealing with all the stuff that is coming your way as best you can - with the nurse, in therapy, across the board. You should be able to rely on the 'safe place' you mentioned to help you do that.

I am trying to get a concrete sense of whether your T is acting in a way that seems rational to me. As it is, even if in cancelling she was responding to the incident at the nurse's office, it's a really poor reaction, unless you were threatening or violent or very disruptive to other patients, and had had prior warning that this would be a consequence of that kind of incident.

So assuming she's acting weirdly, and it sounds like she is, I want to say it is not surprising at all that you are finding it hard to contemplate just walking away. You've trusted her with heaps of stuff, and that means you've got attached to her. It would be strange if you could just walk away. It's also really distressing to think of someone you've relied on as being unreliable. I want to reiterate that this may not be an issue of her being a 'bad therapist' - one possibility is that she's a good therapist who is having a mental health problem. That would be extremely confusing for any client, and could trigger all sorts of associations, especially if you were around people who were abusive or unwell when you were a kid.

Whatever the case, if you know she is off-beam, you need lots of help and support to separate from her and be safe. Don't underestimate this by thinking you should just be able to 'switch off' from her. Beyond the intense emotions, the logistics of your treatment and health are also really caught up in this, so you need to be careful, take your time, give yourself lots of care and get AS MUCH support from others as you can. At the right time you can start a therapeutic relationship with someone who is more stable and predictable, and continue your healing journey with them. But for now just take one little step at a time.

Jones

Hi,

I skimmed your initial post quite well and briefly skimmed several of the responses.

I'm so very very disturbed by the behaviors/interactions going on between you and your therapist.

It's perfectly normal to feel great attachment esp. when you have improvement and if you have problems with regulation as it seems . esp since you are doing DBT, then the more so dealing with this sort of situation has to be extremely confusing and hard to make a decision.

I hope that you have saved the emails and other written communication or text messsages if your phone allows you to send them to your email because it sounds to me that this Therapist Needs to be Reported to a board that gave her licensure.

It's obvious to me, that she and you have some issue going on and not that she is a bad therapist or maybe she is but it's obvious that issues are out of control and b/c of your insurance issues, you are trapped in this unstable threatening relationship.

You would have to provide proof... concrete information. examples of the situation and they will hopefully take it seriously. Most importantly ytou can get the help you need from a therapis tthat is HEALTHY.

Even if parts of the therapy were good and helpful. it's obvious that is is NOT helpful for the most part now and that something is wrong.

It's good to follow your instinct and from all you are aying... you are mostly saying you feel threatened, confused, hurt and it soudns really... wow odd...

Im sorry you are having such a intensive situation but I think that you will be able to take action to do what you need to do for yourself.

Sorry for my response that didnt take in all facts but I answered according to my skimming ande perception.

Butterfly Warrior

Just wanted to say that I am sorry you are going through this and I hope it works out okay. I know how you feel! Right now I am going through a unhealthy relationship with my P but it is something that I cant move on from. He doesnt contact me although I wish he would because of the transference I have for him, but if he actually did it I dont know if I would end up having a problem with it. But there is contant threatening on termination, and he and I fight back and forth about stuff constantly. It is a very rocky relationship. He is one of the most well known P's in the area and known as the best but there is something that is going on that has to change. He is very helpful to me and I am really focusing on what I need to do to to fix things so that after I change whatever I can than the rest is on him and if things dont work out at least I know I tried my best to be able to stay with him. I have been with my P for 10 years. Right now I am freaking out because I think he is going to stop seeing me anyways cause when I called his office yesterday he never returned the call, then today his secretary refused to answer my calls so I had my husband call and when she realized who he was she was rude to him but said the doctor would call him back instead of me so he left his phone with me in case my P does call yet we still have heard nothing. So I am freaking out even though I know it will probably be over nothing.

I am just ready for things to calm down and get back to a regular P/client relationship. So I know how you feel with whole cant stay/cant leave type feeling and having no idea what to do and I would never wish this situation or feeling on anyone!

Hi Janedoe,
That's sounds very complicated.
Do you know what kind of therapy is your primary T doing?

To reduce the transference...

Is your transference dangerous or something that it has to be reduced to resume the treatment?
I thought the therapy is all about transference and it actually kicks off then (however painful/annoying/difficult it becomes).
Maybe your primary T does not work with the transference.
Well, I don't really know. I don't have much of a clue mself. Hopefully when you meet with both your Ts something will get cleareer and you can have this situation resolved pretty soon.

Hi Jane, and welcome to the forums. I haven't been posting much lately, but I've been reading your thread, and I'm so sorry for what you are going through. From what you've said, this doesn't sound like counseling at all. I'm very bothered by several details of what your T has done and what she is doing to you, and also by the DBT's apparent blindness to it all. It's making me want to jump through this computer screen and rescue you

In my opinion, your primary T was asking for too much contact with you outside of sessions. When you realized it was getting out of hand, you put up some very appropriate boundaries...and now it sounds like she's trying to regain some control in the relationship by playing mind games with you, with emotionally manipulative texts and emails, calls to make sure you're checking your email, and threats of termination.

When you say you were "destabilizing" over the texts and emails, it sounds as if you are criticizing yourself, as if your reaction to her behavior is abnormal. But I don't think that's true. If a T did this to me, I would feel exactly as you do. Again, in my opinion, she's the one who is acting unstable. Your reaction is healthy. It's her behavior that is unhealthy. This whole business with "contracts" and "requirements" sounds like she is continually trying to knock you off balance so maybe no one will notice how unbalanced she is.

What really scares me is how she seemed threatened by what you were telling your DBT and tried to control what you were telling her. It sounds as if on some level, this T knows there is something wrong with her and she's trying to protect herself. If that wasn't the case, she would have no reason to feel threatened.

The requirement not to revoke releases to other providers really bothers me. Releases are your choice. That's the whole purpose of a release! It gives you power to choose who sees your information. Why does she want to take that power away from you? I suppose it might be called for, if you were maliciously trying to bad-mouth her to others (which I absolutely do not believe for one second, by the way), but even if you were trying to do that, if what you were saying wasn't true, she would have no reason to feel threatened.

And I don't like all the additional information she is asking for. I want to jump up and shout, Don't give her any more information!

Finally, I'm not trying to bad-mouth your T in any way. I think we are all quite empathetic with respect to mental illness...I mean, hello, look where we are! From what you've described, she really does sound like she needs help. I can feel her pain in your description.

But that doesn't mean you have to continue to be hurt by her. I really do not believe the problem is with you. I very much hope you can walk away from this T and find one who is healthy, who can help you not only achieve whatever growth you came to therapy for, but who can also help you recover from the pain of what has happened with this T.

And whatever you decide to do, I hope you keep coming here for support and encouragement. This forum has helped me too many times to count

Peace,
SG

Hi janedoe

I think dragonfly summed it up beautifully with:

quote:

You ask if others think this stuff seems controlling or if it just you overreacting...........oh my.....noooooo you are not overreacting, if anything I believe you are under reacting! I would have run for the hills if all this stuff was happening to me.

I would have run for the hills too.

I'm OK