Quote:
Originally Posted by MRT6211
What happened to me is that my T cried because I told whe that I didn’t think our therapy was helping me (objectively, it was not, it ended up with 4 hospitalizations and a serious attempt on my life, even though before I saw her I was never hospitalized, and I never have been after I stopped seeing her, either). She said it was deeply upsetting to her to hear that and her voice cracked and tears started streaming down her face and she had to get tissues for herself. She apologized but then I just sat there staring at the ground and repeating “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean it.” Over and over again. Although, I did mean in...I just felt like I broke my therapist. It made me feel even more awful about myself. It was incredibly damaging. That whole therapy relationship was toxic, though.
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MRT, this sounds like a horrible experience. What is striking is that your T cried over something to do with her (the possible implication that she wasn't a good therapist, because the therapy wasn't working), whereas in the story I shared the tears in my T's eyes were tears of empathy - the thing I was speaking about had nothing to do with him personally.
I think in all cases if the T starts crying it could be de-stabilising because then the client ends up feeling they have to protect the T and censor themself, but especially in the way it happened with you, because then your T really was making it all about her, in your session. There's a good reason why Ts generally do their own therapy to work on their own stuff, and also go to supervision - so that their stuff doesn't come spilling out like that into a client's session.