Very well said. I was really put in a situation with conditions like the ones you describe. My ex T didnīt take her responsibility and she acted like some things didnīt happen.
Only a couple of weeks before the termination she told me we did real therapy and that Iīd connected with her. Then, after I told her a couple of things I didnīt like, she suddenly said "I donīt really know you" and that I should try another kind of therapy.
When we discussed what happened she didnīt even mention the fact that she very recently said we did real therapy. If she thought we were, why couldnīt we solve things then?
By that I mean many T:s donīt know what theyīre doing or saying, they act in a certain way and when a client gets upset, they just find ways to get the client to leave.
I have been so hurt by this. As an example I canīt go into town without thinking of this T. I both miss her and hate her for what she did to me. I feel Iīll never get restitution and my only hope is to find another T to be able to work through all this.
Another example of how harmful therapy can be is when I saw a T in evaluation and I were about to enter therapy and then because of a minor comment I made she said I showed negative transference towards her and she just said we couldnīt start therapy. She talked about noticing transference thorugh an
e-mail I sent her.
As I say, there are a lot more bad T:s than there are good ones.
Quote:
Originally Posted by missbella
Harmful psychotherapy, at worse, can be a rigged game because the therapist often is ascribed the power and authority. A client goes to a therapist seeking relief from distress, then follows the therapist down the hatch into a murky abstracted world of jargon and ritual that often is never explained. The client bares her soul while the therapist remains inscrutable. Sometimes the client is encouraged to surrender her judgment. And as we said, she's told she has to feel worse before she feels better.
I'm a functioning professional who provoked an extremely destructive dynamic when I questioned my therapists. I learned the hard way how frail and vain they were. If I was a fool my therapists were far larger ones, and they were the ones with the training.
The profession has a rich tradition of client blaming. Freud and early analysts had laundry lists of nasty things to say about the unfortunate patients with " "negative therapeutic reaction." The fault was everything from client narcissism to their unconscious desire to sabotage their therapists. I didn't find practitioner error even considered in that early arrogant analysis.
I learned many lessons from harmful therapy. However, I respect and don't think "fools" those faced with the task of sorting it out. My therapists were utterly oblivious, defensive and accusatory about the harm they created. They told me, in their most professional postures, that I couldn't discern reality. I half believed them because these "authorities" told me so. It wasn't until much later that I realized they merely were covering their own rears.
When I search for consumer information about harmful therapy, I find it only a sliver of their literature. I find almost nothing on the aftermath and most written by consumers.
I wish well to others who struggled or still struggle with extracting themselves from harmful therapy. Sometimes it's straightforward; sometimes its unprecedented entanglement.
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