Great thread learning1! Yep, I had a T who started acting really weird about four months in. Every fourth session or so, he'd stare at me with a crazy look, start responding to me in speeded-up, clipped speech, and look at the clock every five minutes. When he would announce we were done, it was with an expression that said, "Thank gawd, I'm so sick of you, please get the hell out of my office immediately!"

The first time he did this to me, I was so stunned that I went home and cried about it for the whole week. I remember that the next day was New Year's Eve, and I was so upset about it that I didn't go to a party I'd been invited to - I just lay in bed, feeling sick over what had happened.

When I saw him next, I asked him about his behavior at the previous session. He looked puzzled and said he couldn't possibly remember everything he'd done in every session.

I did my best to tactfully describe his actions and manner, and added that his behavior had caused me to feel really bad. He said something therapisty like, "What kind of space were you in, that my behavior on that day made you feel worse." I'm sort of paraphrasing, but it was one of those therapisty deflections.

I felt angry that he was denying that anything had happened. "So you're saying this was all my perception?" We went back and forth on that.

I left the session simply furious. The next few sessions were much better, with him giving me unusual suave smiles and laughing (which he never does) at my little jokes. So it seemed like something had sunk in, and though it felt like my T had been replaced by a pod person, I was mollified - it seemed he was trying to not be such an asshat.

And then - another bad session, with a resumption of his distracting, rude, ticky behavior and a sense of him needing to end the session quickly and get me out of the room. Again, I went home as the experience of the session began to sink in.

When I went back and complained about his behavior, he again denied that anything was wrong on his end. He remembered nothing, in fact. And he not only did that, but had had a special request for me: "When something happens like that again, and you feel there's something wrong in our session, would you tell me while it's happening? Don't wait until the next session. Tell me while it's going on, okay?"

And I just saw RED. I said, No, I couldn't do that, because when the weird things happened, they were so strange that I was totally thrown for the whole session. Only later, when I went over the session again in my mind, would I realize what had happened. I told him I didn't like being given instructions, and that I would tell him my issues when they occurred to me. I couldn't possibly do it sooner, because I had to become conscious of my own reactions. And this would take time.

We went back and forth for a number of sessions - I BEGGED him to tell me whether the problem was something I was doing, or something interfering in our sessions from outside.

He would give me this puzzled look, like, why would you need to know that?

So I'm trying to explain it to him like he's a frickin' four year old. I said, "Look T, I need to know whether your occasional weird moods have something to do with me, or whether it's you. If there's something I'm doing that's triggering your bad mood - like I'm putting my foot on the couch, for instance - then you can tell me that, and I won't do it anymore. Problem solved.

But if there's something going on in your life that's parachuting into our sessions and messing things up for me during my session that I'm paying for, then you NEED to tell me! Because that's something that I CAN'T fix, and if it's going to continue, we need to discuss our options."

He continued to screw up, and I finally had to terminate.

I never did figure out what his problem was! But he lives on in my pantheon of terrible therapists as Evil T.