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Old Oct 05, 2019, 04:55 AM
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cinnamon_roll cinnamon_roll is offline
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Member Since: Sep 2013
Location: Europe
Posts: 272
Sarah, like feileacan, I think your question misses something important.

It sometimes seems to me you are not really interested in forming an actual relationship with your therapists. Your idea of relationship seems to be that it has to happen on your terms or it won't happen at all. Your criticism of the therapist's behaviour is all about controlling the situation. Again: if they don't "perform" to your standards, they are a bad fit for you and you are out. Ultimately you're hurting yourself with this attitude, it's not about you hurting the therapist with your criticism, it's about you hurting yourself.

This is not how a therapy relationship works. This is not how any relationship works. I read a lot of pain and suffering and loneliness in your posts. At the same time, with your rather rigid ideas of how things (relationships) ought to be "done", you alienate yourself from the same connections that you seem to yearn for so very much.

I can totally understand that this situation with the therapist feels strange and uncomfortable. It does for me (in fact it does for me with any sort of "new" relationship, in the sense I don't know the person very well). Especially because it highlights my own difficulties with relationships and I feel so much dependent on the other person to create the circumstances that feel comfortable enough to me. Because I feel totally out of depth. But the other person doesn't have to. And outside of therapy this controlling behaviour won't help you much with your relationships (in therapy it won't help you either...)

Why not try a different approach?
Why not try to sit with those difficult feelings, to start exploring them, to start thinking about what YOU (instead of the other person/therapist) could do differently to change this uncomfortable situation? It won't kill you, I promise! But that's where real change starts to happen. And that's real change that has a chance to transfer into your life outside of therapy. Another starting point could be to consider why you want to change/control the therapist's behaviour so desperately? Why is it so tremendously important, that everything else is depending on it? Bringing those feelings into the room as well, might be worthwile. Because it is not just saying to the therapist: "I want you to do xyz or else..." But instead it would be saying: "This situation makes me feel uncomfortable (inadequate, lonely, anxious etc...). I keep thinking if you did xyz that this might change..." And then to explore things from there. It doesn't mean that the other's behaviour will actually change. But it does give you the chance to take a look at what's really happening there. And believe me, there's much more happening than this T displaying the "wrong" behaviour (in your eyes).

[edit for typos...]

Last edited by cinnamon_roll; Oct 05, 2019 at 06:08 AM.
Thanks for this!
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