Quote:
Originally Posted by monalisasmile
I don’t like your ex t from what I am hearing. Sounds like he doesn’t practice what he preaches as you rightly pointed out. Has he done much of his own work because he is still very defensive when other people try to engage or challenge his views.
Somehow my t has been very good for me. I have learned so much about my relational patterns with others and especially in the here and now with her. We explore what happens when I shut down and try to support that when it happens again. T is far from perfect, she admits she has her flaws and that she working on a lot of her own processes such as trying not to control conversations. Which I remind her of when she interrupts.
I know it’s far from perfect therapy but for me that doesn’t exist because nobody is perfect, no t will ever be perfect. She is good enough for me.
She is owning her part in things a lot more and we are not as defensive with each other which helps when there is a misunderstanding.
I think in the past my t had tried to push me beyond my level of support but I have reinforced my boundaries and always tell her when she is going too far. We are both open to each other’s dynamics and this has been really helpful for me to stay and learn to express myself and not just leave with all of the hurt and pain to deal with alone. Also t has thought me to see how I am in relationship can sometimes evoke others to be in control more because I am so passive so I can see relationally that this has been extremely difficult to tolerate but so good for me in a lot of ways. I still think t tries to provoke me at times but that is her dynamic not mine and I can support myself enough to tell her I am not going there today.
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I don't like my ex-T either, I guess it is obvious from my many posts about him across the forum
As for how he has managed a practice for >30 years in a city where therapists of all kinds are very abundant, I cannot easily discern but what I imagine is that the people who accept, tolerate, or even appreciate him are people with similar backgrounds and issues to his, at least some, but also those that are willing to see him as an authority figure as he badly needs that. I image many of them are very emotionally traumatized and damaged - that much is actually clear from the cases he likes to discuss online. I even imagine him being helpful and the experience insightful for some of those, or at least I hope. The most interesting lesson I've learned from my experience with him, around the time when I was also very ***ed up and saw him for a while (a bit off and on), is a first hand experience how traumatic, unhealthy bonds and repetition compulsion are formed and then can become very persistent and emotionally blind. This is what we most typically associate with childhood, and of course my ex-T also tried to do that with me, but it never made sense, at least not in that simple, classic textbook form. For me it started way into adulthood, in my early 30's, alongside a substance addiction issue, both the substance and relationship problems ran through ~my 30's, and that T was the last bit of it and also the clearest. For me there are no roots to be found in earlier life, these two things just developed and co-existed with fluctuating severity in parallel over an ~8 year period of time in my adulthood, and definitely the substance addiction was the primary culprit. I was not prone to any of that when younger. Once I resolved that stably, my mind and default values became crystal clear again and even more with these lessons and no drive whatsoever to find similar people; what remains now is a desire to share the stories when I can do that safely, really as lessons. I believe I speak easily about these things as they did not happen during a very young, vulnerable, helpless period but in a phase of adulthood, prior to which my individual personality, motivations and values were already firmly established. I think this is also why the experience with the T (and other manipulative and unfair people) did not really traumatize me beyond some temporary annoyance, but it cemented some of my values, which I consider as useful outcome.
Based on your last post, mona, it sounds like you do find worthwhile and beneficial things in this therapy. I guess what confuses people here on the forum is that you tend to start posts about this T that highlight something very negative and then we dissect that. Of course, this is the nature and function of this forum, we tend to discuss troublesome experiences more. If the sum of the whole thing is beneficial as you just said, I guess it's more part of a rocky growth process than a destructive, mostly abusive experience then?