I’ve had a few ruptures in therapy. From what I’ve experienced, how well a rupture can be healed is dependent on your therapist’s response.

My most recent therapist was very defensive and we’d get into arguements about what truly happened around why I was angry and what her intentions truly were.. She sent a clear message that she didn’t appreciate working in the negative zone in both verbal and nonverbal ways. I typically received anger right back, and found any attempts at working through my issues to be invalidating and shaming. I’m sure she’d say I was behaving inappropriately and attacking her by getting angry, but she was also a total drama queen. Our arguments felt really circular, so nothing healed and I learned to stuff my bad feelings towards her. It didn’t bode well in the long run since trust was eroded and the level of filtering required by me was high.

I think ideally, a therapist should direct the focus away from what was done and onto how the client felt and processed the experience. And accept even the angry parts of the client. I think many people with anxiety and depression are used to hiding angry feelings, so if a therapist can allow the client to be angry and not let the client’s anger squash them or ruin the relationship, this is where the healing happens. Many therapists focus on creating reparative experiences with the client by showering love on the client when things are going smoothly... but it’s the responses to anger that are truly reparative. It requires the therapist to put their own feelings aside to help the client, which to me is the whole point of therapy. If the client can be angry in therapy, they can be angrier in everyday life and not turn the anger inwards so much.

Based on my own experiences and what I read here, it seems that there are way too many incompetent, overly emotional therapists that aren’t able to work their way through ruptures any better than the clients can. The blind leading the blind 100%.