I hate them. They are so painful. I find them almost worse than a fight with a romantic partner because you have to wait a week or however long to work it out. They end up consuming all of my waking thoughts. I have trouble sleeping. It's horrible. And I'm only moderately attached to my therapist.

I just worked one out, and I feel like a million times better than I did last week. What I did to deal with it was to write out what I felt and also what I wanted him to differently. I spent a lot of time on it and I was extremely careful to avoid blaming language and to take responsibility for what I thought my part in it was. I did that because even though a therapist should be able to deal with criticism without getting defensive, I know they are only human and I wanted to feel like I was dealing with it in a healthy way.

He was very receptive and nice about it. He acknowledged his part in it and I noticed that he modified his style with me...more empathetic and less lecturing. So it worked.

But I did once have a huge therapy rupture that ended the relationship. I did try to talk to him about how triggering his style was to me, but he wouldn't modify anything or acknowledge that he had said/done anything wrong. Everything was all my fault according to him...and the thing is in any relationship problem, is anything ever all one person's fault? So I fired him. I called him up and told him how scary his style was to me, and quit. Then he was actually kind of nice. Maybe he thought I was going to make a complaint about it...still, I had decided to quit, and I did. Most healthy thing I ever did for myself.