Quote:
Originally Posted by Jaybird57
As many have posted, I think your therapist is in waaaaay over her head in dealing effectively with your therapy. Nothing you describe is in any way abusive in a therapy relationships. The reason we go to therapy, in most cases, is because we're struggling to deal effectively with life situations, often relationships. The thing that really stood out for me is that you mentioned that your therapist stated that she "understood" maternal transference because she experienced it in her own therapy, and while telling you this, her eyes teared up and she had to grab a tissue. That is a pretty big red flag that tells me that your therapist has not dealt with her OWN maternal transference issues in her own therapy. This might be some of what is getting in the way of your therapy with her. She acts giving and empathetic, encouraging and fostering your maternal transference, but when you challenge her emotionally, she has a melt-down and lashes out at you verbally. "How dare you not be appreciative of my good loving!" That is abusive in my book. She's not doing this vindictively--it's her OWN issues getting in the way. Not okay in any way, shape or form for her to accuse you of being abusive. Being abusive is physically attacking her, throwing things, stalking her etc. and even then, a well, trained and capable therapist would know how to handle "acting out" behaviors like that. I called my therapist a "F'ing *****" under my breath when I left a session one day. I told her about it when I saw her the next time and she calmly said, "It's okay. Sometimes I can be an F'ing *****. But I think when you said it was because you often get tired of hammering away at yourself internally with those kinds of insults and name calling. Sometimes it's just better to direct it me and next time, I hope you feel okay about saying it to my face. I promise you that I can handle it. The world won't end and we can take a real look at it together."
It's fine for a therapist to have "gone through transference" (maternal, paternal, erotic etc) in his/her own therapy, but I sure wouldn't want my therapist to be so overwhelmed with personal emotions in my session that he/she needed to cry while describing it to me. My own therapist has responded to my questions about her own experience with therapy in a very straight-forward honest manner, but her demeanor and speech let me know that she had successfully dealt with the tough stuff and grew from it. It isn't an emotionally laden subject that reduces her to tears (at least she was able to physically and emotionally present herself in that manner). That allows the client to learn something about her therapist experience, but it isn't so emotionally loose and flowing that it impinges on the client's emotional needs.
I really hope you feel that you can work this through with her or at least find another therapist who is more supportive and trained to deal with the very very normal transference issues that you're describing. You deserve better!
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Thanks Jaybird. I hear you. I think I feel protective, though, of my therapist and the feelings she shared with me. In the moment, when she got emotional, it meant a lot to me that she felt like she could be vulnerable with me, and to think that we were both in the same boat. She wasn't an adversary; she was another struggling person, who understood what it was like to grow up with a ****** mother and attach to a therapist. I told her that I felt like it was "useless" to feel pained over my relationship with her, and that SOME people seem to be perfectly capable of just deciding, "You know what, this is a pointless feeling, I'm not going to have it anymore." And she said, "I think there are many more of us who just feel our feelings, and the best we can do is try to maintain some semblance of control" - and she said it with this sort of twinkle in her eye, like she GOT it.
But I guess I do wonder if she's worked through everything/if maybe something is surfacing now that's making it harder for her to maintain control. She's in her mid-fifties, so her mother must be older. Maybe her mom is facing health issues, and that's bringing stuff up for T? Maybe she identifies with me, and that makes it harder for her to keep her feelings separate?
I guess, ultimately, I want my well-being to be more important to her than her triggered feelings. If she feels triggered, I want her to be able to push through it and be there for me, for my sake. I want to be worth that.
I'm really envious of the story you told about calling your T an "effing *****." I couldn't say something like that to my T, unless I made it very clear that I know it's an inappropriate thing to say, I don't mean to hurt her feelings, I just want to examine it, etc. If I present something in a detached, analytical sort of way, she can pretty much follow my lead. If I'm emotional, she follows my lead, too.
