Googley, I can't count the number of times I've left angry voice mail or email messages. My T generally doesn't respond to those messages -- he waits until I'm calmer and then, if I ask him appropriately, he will sometimes respond to my concerns between sessions but most often he expects me to ride it out and sit with the feelings until my next session. And then we usually talk about whatever made me so angry or upset. Most of the time I eventually realize that something from my past got triggered and that's why my reaction was so intense and out of proportion to the situation.
He rarely takes it personally when I'm raging at him over something, because most of the time it's not so much about him as I think it is at the time. But he expects anger from survivors of any kind of abuse, and he expects it to be directed at him sometimes because that's part of the process. I used to worry about being kicked out of therapy for it but my T has been working with survivors for about 30 years now so he's pretty much seen and heard it all. Expressing anger is something he expects even when it's misdirected at him. He has a few rules about physical safety that his patients need to follow so that our anger doesn't become destructive but his goal is always to help us understand it rather than pretending it's not there.
|