It would never in a million years have occurred to me to talk to a therapist about anything that he was doing that was making me feel bad (or uncomfortable, or scared etc) - I just assumed you talked in therapy about your feelings but about things outside of therapy. Having read so many brilliant insightful and honest posts here has given me a real understanding of how therapy actually works and I’ve now been able to apply that and am going wow oh yes this is how it’s going to work for me, this time.

Every therapist I’ve ever had has not once mentioned that a big part of what we were doing involved my being able to say how I was feeling ABOUT the therapist or what the therapist was saying or doing or not doing. In fact I’d even been told off once for attempting to discuss with a therapist what I thought would be helpful of her to do to help me (‘don’t you tell me how to do my job!’) so fingers burned big time there.

I’m talking specifically about confronting a therapist about how things the therapist says and does make me feel - and while my current T is the first one I’ve ever had who has actually openly said you can say what you like to me you can tell me whatever you feel about me I’d be happy for you to get angry with me and to keep getting angry with me - it’s only having read the posts here that have let me see that that’s actually important to do. I did actually get angry at my T in several sessions and to complain to him about how what he was saying was not actually helping me (feeling at the same time that I was being very critical and therefore ‘bad’) but it’s only because I had the knowledge and understanding of what people had written about here on forum that actually allowed me to do that.

Without the things that people have revealed in their posts I would still be struggling under the belief that every bad thing in therapy would be my fault and that I’d have to analyze understand and change what was wrong with me in order for the therapy to work. BIG GRIN now I can happily blame the therapist for everything and know that that’s all part of the real work of therapy. Doesn’t make it any less scary and threatening and hard but at least I’ve got the posts on here to remind me I’m doing the right thing.

So a big thank you to everyone for being so brave and so giving and so honest about your own experiences. It has really helped me so much.

Lamplighter