Quote:
Originally Posted by ChickenNoodleSoup
I find it interesting how many people have strong opinions on this topic on here.
I'll chime in here, I don't usually like replying to the in session thread.
I think whether a therapist works for you and how you do therapy is very individual. Yes, some therapists are abusive or not ethical. But the ones that are not still come in all shapes and forms. For example, some people might need a therapist that sometimes gets angry and really shows that. Because they have never experienced someone being truly mad. Others, like me, would probably run as soon as that happened. But neither getting mad or not getting mad is always wrong, it depends on the two parties that are in the room.
I also don't think it's necessarily true that after a year the trust should be strong enough to never freak out about things that might sound like abandonment (or anything else the person in therapy struggles with, really). Therapy is a process. Sometimes things are better, sometimes they get worse again. Trust fluctuates, as does everything else in life. For a lot of more complicated issues, some repetition is needed before things have truly improved.
Some people in therapy struggle with the same thing since they were born. Expecting them to just suddenly snap out of it after a set time frame is silly. Some people will take a few months of therapy and be fine. Some will take years and never be fine. It's not the same for all people. Some ways of solving an issue will work for some, not for others. Not all people have the same experiences in life, the same character, the same way of dealing with problems or the same response to a kind of treatment.
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I also find the mix of opinions to be rather fascinating. I agree that different types of therapists work for different people. And you might not know if a certain type works or doesn't work for you until you've experienced it. And it's also a case of where you are in your life or treatment as to what sort of T would work best. Had I gone to see this T 7.5 years ago, when I initially sought treatment after my D was born, I probably wouldn't have found him helpful and would have wanted to flee.
Incidentally, I'm one of those people who didn't really experience people expressing anger at me in childhood (including my parents), so dealing with that now is difficult. Really, my parents were pretty muted in any negative emotion toward me. So it's been really hard for me if, say, my H or a friend is angry with me. My T being more open with his reactions to me is thus really challenging, but also something that I feel I need to deal with. Because that will help me deal with it better in real-life relationships. I mean, I wouldn't want my T yelling at me for no reason or just being a a**hole (I know, some people feel he has been). At the same time, I can find it helpful that he does share how I "affect" him. (I mean, I clearly affected ex-MC at times, and he didn't share anything about how I affected him till the very end, and it's not like that turned out well...)
And I'm glad you also mentioned the thing about therapy being a process, and a year with someone doesn't necessarily mean I should automatically have full trust in them. The other thing at play here is the fact that, within the past year, I was intensely hurt by a T who I trusted deeply, ex-MC. So it makes sense I think that I might be a bit more scared to trust current T. And for it to not necessarily be linear, like not going on a straight line from trust at 0 to trust at 10. It might be a 0, then a 5, then something happens, so I go back to a 3, then it goes up to a 7, then to a 6, and so on. I still feel I'm ultimately making progress--and I think that's evident in the way I communicate with this T (especially if I look back on early emails to him and emails to ex-T and ex-MC). It's just not completely linear (thanks, anxious attachment style!).