Argh I forgot to log out again it looks like I’ve been sitting on the forum all day. Don’t know why that bothers me but it does. Everything is bothering me right now I can’t BELIEVE how badly I am affected by this T that terminated.
And actually that’s probably a big reason why - precisely because SHE terminated. I’ve never had that happen with any therapist before so I think I went into that third session thinking only, that if she didn’t get what I was talking about I’D be the one who had to finish it, didn’t for one moment occur to me that she would be sitting there judging ME as not ‘good enough’ for her to help. (Yeah I note the way I’m saying it, but that’s exactly how I feel.) I think for the first time I can begin to understand some of the pain some of you have described when your Ts have terminated you - how much more excruciating and unbearable that must be when you’ve had a long term relationship with them - it terrifies me to think of it.
For what it’s worth I totally agree with you guys telling me it’s so much better to have finished with this woman now. Rationally I can see that, it’s what I was already thinking when I went to that third session (though obviously I hoped otherwise, I really thought if I explained to her as clearly as I could what I needed that she would at least make an effort to understand.)
I did get a chance to go over the issues I had from the second session and I have to say she was really not happy about it at all - neither acknowledged that I was feeling bad about some of the things that had happened, nor at any point accepted that maybe she had contributed to what might have been my ‘misunderstanding’ of things she’d said - for instance when I told her how I felt about what I saw as her being sympathetic to my family and seeing their being traumatized as the reason for the way they treated me - she flatly said ‘No YOU felt the sympathy, I wasn’t feeling anything I was just making a statement’ (those were her words and that was all she would say about it). Gobsmacked me that one and immediately wrongfooted me because she was neither acknowledging that it made me feel bad (rightly or wrongly) but was practically accusing me of making up experiencing her being sympathetic (instead of checking with me why I did) so I felt like oh yes I’m assuming she was being sympathetic and really that’s just me projecting or being defensive or whatever and talk about feeling undermined…
And when I was talking about needing to get in touch with whatever I was feeling in the here and now she said why didn’t I bring up how I was feeling in the previous session instead of saving them up to bring in this session? Had I done it in the previous session we could have worked on it in the here and now that’s exactly what she does in therapy and really I couldn’t stop myself I burst out BUT I DID DO IT LAST SESSION several times, especially with the sympathy thing and you just said ‘we don’t do blame in therapy’ and that was that.
When I’d finished going through my list of issues, to which mostly she didn’t respond, she sat there and said, well castration, I’m not a male but that’s what you’ve just done to me telling me how everything I’ve done has been negative for you. Hm. Lots of other things like that but if I go into them here this post will just become a tedious rehash. I’d thought I would point out all the stuff she did ‘wrong’ just so it might help others who are struggling trying to pin down precisely what might be not quite right with their Ts but now I seem to be losing my memory of all the specific things and anyway it’s probably dead boring.
Have to say I DO see her point about my list of Don’t Needs in therapy - basically I was saying look everything that most therapists aim for in therapy, the fundamental goal of your training and work, to ‘help’ a client understand their own internal processes, to make connections, to look at their pathology and try and change it, is exactly what I DON’T want you to do.
It’s possible that by being so up front about it, before there had been a chance to establish trust on HER part for ME (after all she didn’t know me at all at this stage for all she knew I could have been some egomaniacal control freak
) that that really put her off. In fact I realized afterwards that that’s effectively what I was doing which has made me seriously rethink just how much to tell a therapist in the initial stages of what I think and need and don’t need in therapy. Better to worm my way into their good graces by being all grateful and acknowledging their professionalism before starting on a covert programme of trying to get what I need. Sigh.
I have to say that looking objectively at how she was and what she said, you couldn’t really fault her. She didn’t actually DO or even say anything particularly damaging or wrong - it was all in the WAY she was. I came up with a word that described it - insidious. Like a smiling snake. She’d say all these things in a seemingly innocent way that actually held a criticism, some kind of negative assumption or implicit blame. For instance, when I said in first session that I’d been married for 10 years she said ‘oh just a short time’. Now nothing wrong with that really is there, just that it registered at the back of my head as somehow critical or a bit of a put down. And again in an email I got from her confirming the termination ‘it became apparent that you didn’t like my way of working which left us no way forward.’ Again nothing wrong with that, true in fact. BUT I just get this uncomfortable sense of blame in it.
Stuff like that repeatedly done all the time really makes for a sense of being criticized or to blame in a global way without being able to pin down any specific thing. Don’t know I can’t remember other examples well enough but it certainly gave me the sense that she is someone who uses her position of power as a therapist to get away with being really judgemental and critical without actually appearing to be. Kind of passive aggression. At one point she made a great protestation (the only time she’d come anywhere near to stepping away from her cool detachment) of how she is TOTALLY on the client’s side, that everything she does in therapy is ENTIRELY for the benefit of the client - and I believe she really believes that. I had this image of her standing in front of the mirror congratulating herself and feeling really good and warm because she’d been able to insidiously point out all the bad things about a client, be really critical and judgemental in a subtle undetectable way, and yet believe that she was doing it all in the name of good therapy. Pats on the back all round. Well that could be just me trying to understand her motives. I’ll never know anyway.
Ok the real problem with this woman is that she was exactly what I’ve been looking for in a therapist all my life (not exaggerating there). Someone who is in control, confident, knows what they are doing, has a good grasp in their head of what therapy is about how it should work and knows the goals and how to get there, someone who is able to take charge and direct and guide and keep focused, knowing exactly what they are doing and how it’s going to help in the long run - so I can stop trying to come up with ways to help myself and trust someone else and let them do the guiding and just go along with it KNOWING they know what they are doing. When we met in the first session she was like a big magnet to me - glom clunk ATTACHED. And I use that word deliberately because I feel now like I actually got attached to her in the way you guys describe it - she seemed to be everything I needed and wanted in a T and that’s what’s making it so painful for me now - because she really did come across as super confident and sure of herself, knowing exactly what she was doing and where she was coming from so I’m feeling like this overly demanding needy stroppy badly behaved BAD subordinate who’s really stepped out of line and is totally to blame for alienating the one person who could help me.
I’m seeing all sorts of things in this - it feels SO familiar, patterns, needs, blame, alienating the ‘good’ people by being too demanding by not being grateful enough by daring to think I know what’s best for me by daring to question authority by daring to think I deserve to be taken seriously or wanted or treated with anything remotely resembling respect gosh these kinds of feelings run a LONG way back. And she was so NICE with it all - never raised her voice just told me I was rubbish and unacceptable in this very bland uncritically sounding way that really sank in.
You know what, it bloody hurts. Over and above and beneath all the rest, ESPECIALLY beneath what I rationally know is her failure to put the client at the centre of the therapy - is this profound sense of hurt (never experienced that with a T before). Like I’ve not been a good enough client, I’ve been a bad client, look here’s all the goodies she can give but by god she’s not going to give them to ME I’ve blown it by being nasty and selfish and demanding and not seeing in time how good for and to me she really was. ARRGHH I can see a pattern here but I’m damned if I know who the original person is.
I think I’ll stop there. It’s all sort of faded into a big ball of crap feeling and I’m losing my sense of the bad stuff about her - story of my life - unless the other person confirms what I’m seeing is true, it stops being true for me and I end up buying into their view of things - in this case, I’m the bad one. And I just know I’m accepting that because I can see so clearly how she could be and would be such a good therapist for someone who was prepared to look at all their failings and accept her judgements about those failings as accurate and correct. So of course I feel like I’ve been bad by resisting the ‘tough love’ she specializes in.
Sorry I know I haven’t said anything much in this post which people can respond to - just needed to vent about it a bit more.
Oh one final thing (promise!) SG and Mayo about person-centred therapy, the Rogerian approach. I actually sought out client-centred therapists when I started looking again last year, and even had seven sessions with one - that most definitely wasn’t useful to me because they tend to just sit there and let you ramble on and on and on no questions no direction just parroting back to you what you’ve just said to them. Since then I’ve looked for therapists who include person-centred in their approach rather than just specializing in that one modality, I just assumed this woman did because she called herself humanistic and integrative. Humph!
He he thanks STRM, as threatened here’s a mega post for a little light bedtime reading.
Lamplighter
