I had a bad dream today so it made me think back to one of my therapists. In the dream I was arguing with T. I remember now that when I first started to see her, I was feeling extremely invalidated in life. I had tried to fit in with people, and I had tried it over and over again and I was sick of it all. I had felt I did not fit with my family, with my school, at work, I was always wrong, too shy, introverted, then we had moved and did not fit in within the culture, I had no friends in school, all these thoughts of not fitting in and me then trying to fake it and try to force myself to like things I did not like so I could fit in but a strong anger remaining behind it because it would be a reminder of me not belonging anywhere by nature, being wrong to my core.

So when I had met with this therapist, it all poured out, and transference was in play. I think what happened was that this therapist at first was fairly accepting and validating but I reached her limit way sooner than expected. She became vengeful in some ways and after a couple of months of validating me and me invalidating her (I did not like therapy, I did not like her, I told her she did not understand me and did not care about me and was just going by the book, not willing to make herself vulnerable enough to get closer to my world), she started to actively invalidate me, like criticize some stuff about what I believed or liked.

This shook me up. It also brought up tremendous anger. I started cancelling appointments quite frequently but several months later, with some improvements with my life at home at the time (early 20s) and with the return of a wonderful summer, I felt better and stuck it out and changed my way and started saying good things about her even though I did not really mean it and somehow we went back to "normal" cause it seemed she felt appreciated again. And I eventually came to like her more and accept her for who was a little more and more.

I saw her for several years and once I accepted her limitations (that she could not give me unconditional positive regard), things worked okay. But I was never able to forgive her for how she treated me those months and for not being able to be more patient and understanding with me. I had thought if you pay someone to give you regard, they won't need you to validate them too but apparently everybody has a limit and some people's limits you reach much sooner. It was like my mom all over again, but in her case it was not money but blood ties which did not seem to work either.

I still don't understand how that T did part of her training dealing with severe drug addicts. I highly doubt they were more understanding or validating towards her than I was. Or perhaps they were, perhaps they were so miserable that anything she said or did they appreciated. Maybe I was a spoiled child from her perspective, maybe I triggered something in her, maybe she thought my problems were not big enough, like she just saved a heroin addict from suicide, I was a spoiled kid with anxiety and depression saying to her you don't understand. She probably thought, I understand really well you ****ing unthankful idiot!

But none of that mattered. The one thing I learned from that experience is that I can't really trust anybody. She had told me in the beginning that I can say anything I want to her, nothing is off limits, and this is a safe place, only that I can't swear at her or hit her or break things, and I did none of those. Instead I disagreed with her method, did not like her, and resisted her suggestions. But after that experience, when I went for other therapy, whenever they said I can be myself and say whatever's on my mind, I did not trust them because I did not want to become so invalidated again. Anything but that! I would say a few things, then watch T's reaction. I did not want to experience the kind of rupture I experienced with previous T. I had even brought it up with her later but she just shook her head as if what I said made no sense, like she had no memory of it, or like it was only in my imagination that she had invalidated me.