One of best things I've ever done to work with anger is to buy a set of stress balls. One for each hand. Holding them in a squished position takes a surprising amount of muscle power, and you can channel a lot of anger into it while you allow the anger to settle and discharge gradually.

((((HELD))))


I can appreciate your dilemma. It's clear that the late phonecalls have triggered some anger in you that needs exploring. However, T is guilty as charged. The intensity of the anger could be from years and years of suppressing anger and hurt when you've been dismissed or not treated the way you need and want to be treated. On the other hand, I don't see anything wrong with telling T that you feel she is not being respectful of your time when she calls late. Her lateness and disregard is a flaw. It's likely that it has been a lifelong problem for her and she has been confronted about it on other occasions by other people. That might actually be causing her defensiveness and lack of finesse when you talk to her about how it makes you feel.

Standing up for yourself is so incredibly hard when you have been mistreated or dismissed as a child. There is much pain there. I don't see anything wrong with telling her how much you would appreciate her timeliness due to the difficulty it takes you to set aside time for a session. You could also tell her about your fears of being terminated if you express anger at her. That might give you some reassurance.

Emotions are tough. Strong emotions are even tougher. Is this a phone session?

((BLT))

Thanks, getting some stress balls or a hand exerciser or whatever is not a half bad idea now that you mention it, especially since so much of the experience of anger is physiological. I hadn't thought of that before. I like that you bring so much of the perspective of what you've learned in somatic therapy to the table, because thinking of those things just doesn't come naturally to me a lot of the time. You know I read a quote recently I think from St. Gregory Palamas, who said "the soul is not in the body, the body is in the soul." Isn't that neat? It made me think of the SE therapy somehow.

((Liese))

Thanks for the validation and kind words. Yeah, T is somewhat to blame although that is clearly not all that is going on here. I have some stuff from earlier in life and childhood that might legitimately have made me angry, although I tend not to feel that much (the suppression, I guess). And of course there are some present day stresses too. But when I'm actually *in* the anger, it's impossible for me to sort out what comes from where and who is really causing it all. Maybe if I explain all this to T she can help some. Upon reflection, I think I really startled her at my last session. Maybe from her perspective it was coming out of nowhere, I'm not sure.

I'll be going in person tomorrow. Thought this might be kind of confusing to deal with over the phone.

HIC I wonder if your "quitting" is more to do with rejecting your T before she can reject you once you've displayed how angry you are at her? It is a hard but crucial lesson to learn in therapy that anger is normal and healthy and can be weathered and held in mind without destroying love and care.

I think walking/moving, having something nice to eat and the stress ball strategies are good suggestions. But as my T has said to me, sometimes the best thing to do is just bear it and feel it and be with it until it passes. You can't always manage it or put it aside. But it eventually runs out of steam and you come to the other side and can look back on the experience. The more you do this, the less intense and long the anger periods will last and the more quickly you will spot what's going on and why and it won't freak you out because you know its not forever.

Hugs xx

You could ask your T what your anger is about, and how she can help you express it HIC.

Hello, HIC. I hope you don't mind me commenting on your thread. I think it's because anger is an emotive subject for me and your post hit a note. I think one of the hardest thing for me at times is to express anger and feel comfortable doing so.

One of the things I have talked a lot about in therapy is the role parents have in helping young kids contain their emotions. I think like a lot of people in therapy, my folks didn't tolerate my anger well. It wasn't allowed - I was emotionally responsible for them, not the other way around, so I stuffed it down out of sight. Fast forward to adulthood; eventually some of the walls started to come down in therapy but every time I felt angry it felt like it was going to get away from me. I had a deep-seated fear that I'd end up annihilating everything in my path it was so overwhelming. Or worse, people would abandon me.

I think Muff and Cat's ideas about working out with your T how anger can enter the therapy room sound like good ones. Perhaps before you dive into the nitty gritty about what happened you could talk first more generally about your concerns about having that particular conversation and what might be helpful. I like the idea of using a stress ball too - it's not something I've done but I would definitely consider it now I've seen it mentioned.

That said, I do think your T needs to carry some responsibility for her part in what's been happening. It could be very easy to make this all about you getting to explore anger in a safe environment, which is of course therapeutic, if really very scary. But her flakiness isn't IMO all that ethically acceptable and personally I don't think it's therapeutic for that to be brushed under the carpet.

Eek, a bit opinionated for a first post. I do hope you manage to work this out with your T. I very much empathise with your position.

Mallard

((Green Eyes)) ((muff)) ((cat)) ((mallard))

Hey everyone! Thanks for the supportive and considered replies. I don't have time to write much in response at the moment, because I leave for the dreaded session in half an hour and need to get ready. But I wanted to at least say thanks, and wish me luck!

And it's nice to meet you, mallard.

(HIC)

How did it go?

Thinking about you.

Jillann

i like the responses you've gotten so far, HIC. for me, i avoid anger at every turn. my anger as a child was laughed at, being the youngest girl of 8 kids. i was little and cute, and how can you be little and cute and mad and not laughed at? i could never figure it out, so i learned how to suppress my anger pronto. of course, now i'm paying the price.

great question and great thread, HIC.

how did your session go?

((Jillann)) ((CD)) ((everyone))

Hi people,
Thanks for asking about my session and thinking of me. It's funny, but after all that tension and build up this turned out to be one of the mellower sessions in my therapy history. I think I first felt my ill feelings dissipating on the drive to therapy. It was a pretty day and there was a light early evening rain falling. I always find rain very soothing. And then, there was surprisingly little traffic on the road and I enjoyed the quiet. I suppose these things all contribute to setting the tone for a session. . . I'm atmospherically sensitive.

Anyway, so I was feeling more charitably towards T when I got there, and she greeted me with a very sweet and friendly smile. We spent the first few minutes chatting about my kids, and she told me a story from when hers were little. . . then there was a pause and I said I was so sorry about the blow up on the phone the other day. T nodded and said, "And I am so sorry about all the things that happened that contributed to you reaching that point."

It seemed a very simple and sincere apology, so I just said, "Oh well, that's life."

"Yeah. Life. So, how's yours?"

And then I talked about my life for awhile. Mostly "superficial", present day things like some of the stress going on with my brother's wedding, my aunts, the bride. . .I also updated her on how things are going with H and I (better).

Then I told her I thought she was going to make me process my anger from the last session. She told me she figured we'd process it, but following my lead rather than hers. So I asked her if she thought I had an anger problem. She laughed and said no, that just because I got angry *once* she would not say I had an anger problem.

Then I said, I thought maybe it was. . . repressed anger from childhood? She said that was a possibility and wanted to know what I thought.

So, I told her I didn't know, but that I don't get angry very often, but I had been *very* angry at her, and the intensity of it had frightened me. She just nodded attentively and didn't say anything. I took a breath and floundered on, trying to describe exactly what I had felt as each "event" over the two days of shoddy communication had transpired. I didn't get angry when talking about it as I had feared. I felt more self conscious than anything. But T just listened and murmured, "I"m so sorry" from time to time. She didn't seem defensive, but she didn't seem like she felt guilty, either. She was just sort of . . . chill. I don't know. Just to be safe I asked her if she was mad about the things I was saying, and then she looked surprised and assured me no, not at all.

She didn't seem big on making a tie back to my childhood, although she admitted it occurred to her that she may have seemed to me like the latest in a long string of people that have discounted and abandoned me. I suppose she meant emotionally. I haven't been literally abandoned. She said that "it seems to be generally agreed that when people are angry it is not only about the present occurrence, but a whole past as well." However she did not know that one could effectively separate it out. She didn't seem to think it was necessary to do so. (I don't know. Maybe she's right. Just deal with stuff as it comes up?)

She also mentioned that when people have a strong relationship, they can get angry and express that without having to throw everything away and end things. I said, "Ah, you were surprised when I quit." She replied that it had seemed a bit extreme to her, but she realized I was very mad and that I "might likely contact her again to discuss things." Ha. I bet she never took my quitting seriously for a moment. I told her I hadn't exactly believed myself either, but that I was so caught up in the drama of my emotion at the time that it seemed like the appropriate finish. That made her laugh.

So, I don't know. All's well that ends well? I have a feeling we could have gone deeper with this, but I wasn't sure how and T was not leading things that way. Is it because she is not psychodynamic? But maybe this is good enough. At any rate, I feel better, at least for now.

((((HELD))))

That sounds like a great resolution. Maybe the fact that you could get angry with T means that you feel safe with her?

Hi Liese,

Thanks for commenting. Yes, still mulling it over after a few days and I think it was good-- experiencing in the context of our relationship that anger doesn't have to be annihilating-- to her, or me, or to our connection.

Truth to tell, I'm not sure T cared very much. I mean, not only that she wasn't grievously offended, but I don't think she had a lot of empathy for the distress my attachment system was in, either. I have the impression it was more a detached taking note, "Held pitched a fit today. Check. Next client."

She even told me that it did not seem like a big deal to her (her failures of the previous week) but that that did not mean it was not a big deal to me. So, I'm pretty sure this is going to be happening again. She did say she was very relieved when she received my email saying I wanted to come back. I thought that was nice.

Storm in a teacup, maybe?

Thanks for reading.
ttyl.

I'm glad the session was positive and that she apologised. I think I felt quite strongly that this needed to happen - the therapeutic relationship is two way and even if your T isn't big on using the relationship (you mention she doesn't work psychodynamically? I'm curious about what theory she works from) then it's common sense that a rupture needs to be worked through or you end up stuck in an impasse, which is no fun for anyone; T or client!

Regarding her perceived lack of empathy for the level of distress you were in, is that something you would be able to check out with her at all next time?

I am glad it went okay and that you got some resolution.

quote:

even if your T isn't big on using the relationship (you mention she doesn't work psychodynamically? I'm curious about what theory she works from) then it's common sense that a rupture needs to be worked through or you end up stuck in an impasse, which is no fun for anyone; T or client!

She pegs herself, when asked, as eclectic but primarily Rogerian. I know she works in a lot of CBT-ish techniques and interventions as well, depending on the client and the issue. So, I wouldn't say that she doesn't use the relationship, but she tends to use it in a more limited (imho) and hear and now-ish sense. She doesn't do a lot with symbolic aspects of the transference, or making the kinds of interpretations that would extrapolate outwards from our relationship to the rest of me. Sometimes we go in that direction, but it's usually because I drag us there. I suspect that if she were psychodynamically oriented it would be different, and that it would facilitate my processing and transformation more, but I don't really know because she's the only T I've ever worked extensively with. I may have grass is greener syndrome when it comes to therapeutic orientation.

quote:

Regarding her perceived lack of empathy for the level of distress you were in, is that something you would be able to check out with her at all next time?

Er, I don't know about that. I'm a little scared she'll run out of patience with me if I keep pushing the issue. I will think about it, though!

Thanks for the good wishes and for reading/replying.

quote:

annihilation. thanks for naming it for me, held.

((RT)) you doing okay? or were you just talking about anger feeling annihilating? (you don't have to answer here if you don't want, just wanted to check in)