comfortable with your T?

What made you feel safe? Was there something in particular that happened and you just knew you could trust this person? When did you know or just feel at ease with your T? Or even the opposite. When did you realize you couldn't bond with a T and moved on to find someone else?

What did you talk about to build that trust? The bond or connection with your T? Was it something they opened up about themselves? Or was it just comfortable right from the start? Do you always feel that connection or do you feel distant at times?

I ask because there are times when I feel at ease with my T. I will just talk. But then there are times when I don't feel connected at all. I don't know why I have felt like that.

I felt comfortable and safe with my new T right away. When he told me he felt some anxiety about me (after telling him how last T didn't want to treat me), I felt instantly comforted. Of course I didn't want him to feel anxiety, but still it was comforting to know he would be totally honest and upfront with me. I have issues with authority figures who are dishonest or abusive or betray me, so this was very reassuring to me.

We talked a lot about honesty, and how I needed him to be totally honest with me--even if it's not positive-as opposed to telling me 'what I want to hear'. He kept reassuring me he'd be totally honest and open. His words were backed up by his actions. He also told me some revealing things about himself, his shortcomings/imperfections, which encouraged my trust in him.

Every time I tell my t something really bad and he doesn't freak out, I feel even more safe with him. Like there really is nothing that I can say that he can't handle. I have had other t's and you see them getting all agitated or riled up when you tell them things they don't want to hear. The security that comes from my t just accepting whatever I say with perfect calm and moving on from there - it means everything to me. It makes me want to trust him with other real things in the future. With the t's that freak out, I just don't tell them anything that I think will upset them....and that means I don't get to talk about what I really want and need to.

But no - I didn't know I could trust him (or any t right away). I just test and test and test them with more and more to see how they handle things - and then I adjust accordingly, depending on how safe they are.

For the most part, I felt safe with my new T from the second session. The first session she was just asking about my symptoms so there wasn't really time to bond, but the second session was a real therapy session and gave me a sense for her therapeutic style. I guess what made me feel comfortable was the sense that I got from her that she was genuinely interested in what I had to say. I could tell just how carefully she was listening to me, and she never had difficulty understanding the point I was trying to make. She was very insightful, which was clear from the beginning. She was also self-disclosing, when appropriate. That was a contrast from my old T and really disarmed me. Also, she goes overtime with me, by ten minutes to a half an hour, almost every time. I know she doesn't have to do that for me, so it shows me that she genuinely cares. I haven't seen her long, so I don't fully trust her yet, but every session I feel safer and safer.

i liked my t as a person right from the first phone call..and even more once i met her. felt safe with her? well that took longer...as a person with a history of abuse safety takes time...trust even longer....even now after 3 years sometimes it vanishes in scary moments...sometimes even in non-scary moments.

that said...i feel blessed to have found t...she is great with me. her background or "schooling?" damned if i know...nor do i care. it works for me...i know she genuinely cares about me & the peeps and wants what is best for us...not what is best in her eyes for us.

we have thrown about a million different things at her and she keeps juggling them and hasn't dropped only but 1 or 2 balls yet and that's pretty good...so i have no complaints.

i think if she wasn't my t we would be good friends...but alas that won't happen outside of the t thing & thats okay. ...as long as things are good inside the t thing.

I liked my T right from the start, but it took a LONG time for me to really, truly trust him. My history of abuse is just too far-reaching and all-encompassing for me to feel very safe with ANYONE very quickly.

From the start, T was so careful with me. He wouldn't even walk across the room for a receipt without warning me first that he was going to move. I liked that he looked out for me in those kinds of ways.

I probably STARTED to feel a little safe after our first rupture, a few months into therapy. The way he handled it - listening to me, hearing me, owning his part in it without being defensive, apologizing - made me realize that he wasn't the sort of person who used to abuse me.

I've been with him for two years, and I really, truly do trust him now. It was a gradual process, and there were lots and lots and lots of moments of trusting him followed by complete distrust. A lot of push/pull, a lot of running towards/running away.

In two years, he has shown me in more ways than I can list here that he cares for me, that he would never intentionally hurt me, that he can love me and have good boundaries at the same time, that he is really *with* me, that he genuinely wants the best for me. It would have been nice if I could have felt safe sooner, but I had to EXPERIENCE being safe before I would really believe it. So, it took as long as it took.

How long have you been with T, polarsmom??

That was my question too, polarsmom. I think for a lot of people it just takes time. My experience was a lot like treehouse's. I liked my T early on, in the sense that I thought she was smart and kind and that I could learn things from her, but I did not feel comfortable with her for a long time. I remember early on, she was talking about someone else I know being in therapy, and how "the first year or two can be spent just building trust." So that made me feel that she was in it for the long term. I also like when she has shared little bits of herself with me, that definitely helped early on. Over and over she's done considerate things for me (ex. being so generous with email, calling me a few times just to check on me after a hard session, giving me a book on a topic we had discussed, always trying to make sure the office is the right temperature and comfortable for me), that have showed me in different ways that she cares.

At first, these things helped me start to want to connect with her, but there were lots of ruptures as I would then start to feel unsure about things and that would set me off. This was often the case when there was any discussion of the therapuetic relationship. But we somehow got through it, and like treehouse describes, seeing how she reacted and tried to be considerate of my feelings even when we were having trouble helped make things stronger in the end.

Now I would say I'm finally comfortable with her. I don't get nervous before appointments any more. I feel like I can count on her. I don't have doubts that she cares about me. And so I just don't get upset anymore (I'm not saying we will never have misunderstandings again, but it just doesn't seem to happen much anymore). I think if you're working with someone that you like and respect and want to work with, then the missing ingredient may just be time, and having enough experiences where your T proves to you that you can trust him/her. At least, that's how it worked for me. Good luck!

I was somewhat comfortable from the first time I met my T. She just puts out this comfortable energy overall, and it automatically made me feel at ease.

Fast forward: the thing that ultimately made me feel 100% comfortable with her was when I told her about my SI. I know that seems odd, but just the way she handled it, and the way that turned out is what ultimately let me know that I could trust her with anything. To me, I think that was the make-or-break moment in therapy, and needless to say, that's what I feel like ultimately "made" my therapy.

The first time I met my T, I liked her, but I thought she sounded as if she didn't like me. I actually asked her last session what she thought of me the first time I saw her...she said she thought I was "intriguing"

Now, the thing that makes me comfortable with her is that she goes out of her way to help me. Last week she stayed 15 minutes past closing because she wanted to talk to my mom. The receptionist kept buzzing her because they wanted to leave, but my mom said she just rolled her eyes and kept on talking

I liked my T from the beginning and my unconscious reeeeeally liked him. The second session, I shared a dream I had with him in it and I think the next session too. My unconscious had a really significant relationship with him before I did. I liked the way he responded when I told him the things that happened between us in my dreams. Also, he self-disclosed very early on, at my unconscious request and this just made so much fall into place. I think I trusted him more because he was willing to add some reciprocity to our relationship. I also had some hard things to share and wasn't able to at first, and he was very patient and respected my reluctance. When I did share little things, he responded well and showed he could handle it, and that encouraged me to share more and bigger stuff.

I did know pretty much right from the start that we had a connection and that if anyone could help me, it was going to be him.

We have had a couple of ruptures, but not too many. I remember once I got angry at him and that was really hard for me to express that since I don't really get angry at people. But he was really encouraging and helped me get it out. It was quite an amazing experience for me to get angry at someone and not have there be really bad repercussions. All this contributed to trust--T wanted to know all sides of me, including the angry one.

I read somewhere once that the client usually knows within 6 sessions or so if the relationship is going to work.

I felt safe with my T right away. I remember her saying "You can tell me anything, even sexual fantasies about me. Nothing shocks me." With other Ts I had, I always wished they would reassure me that I could tell them anything but they never did.

My T talks easily about herself, and that helped me feel safe too. It still took awhile to talk about certain issues, but she made it easy to tell her anything, just by the way she reacted, or maybe because she didn't react. She accepted everything I said.

I didn't feel as safe with the first T I went to because she didn't tell me much about herself, so I felt like she was a stranger. It took a long time for me to open up to her and feel safe.

My trust in my therapist is different for different things and it varies a little over time, too. It took a while for me to get to know him and I thought that getting to know him was something about my being able to predict how he would likely respond (ie kindly) and then coming to have some trust / expectation that he would respond that way to some disclosures that were hard for me.

I guess I mostly trust him with disclosures that are hard... Though disclosures about how I feel about him are much much harder. Not sure how much I trust him with those yet. I guess I come to trust him as I take little risks and he responds kindly. Or even if he kind of misses the mark I can kind of tell that he is trying and that kind of means something.

Sometimes I feel disconnected from my therapist because I've withdrawn because... I'm detaching myself from something about myself (some thought or feeling or something) that is hard and so I've kind of gone numb... Losing myself... Losing my connection with him. Sometimes it helps me feel more connected to him to think to myself 'what would be the hardest true thing for me to say to him right now???' and then... To try and bring myself to say it.

It is hard to know when to bail and when to persist... Basically... If you are able to bring yourself to talk about stuff that is hard for you and for you to feel some connection / comfort from that then... I think it probably is worth persisting...

Yes. I feel distant at times. There are times when I don't feel connected. There are times when I really feel that I don't trust him at all. In fact... I finally... Trusted him enough to tell him so last session. Sigh.

I have been with this T since July. The first couple sessions I really wasn't sure if what to think. Didn't really accomplish anything. Was trying hard to avoid talking about stuff that mattered. And then he was gone for a few weeks. So basically it was starting from scratch when he came back. It ended up being helpful for me. Like a do over. I found out we had something in common. And we understood what each other was going through. Which was helpful. I've had a few tough sessions. Gone through a few difficult situations the last couple months which really knocked me off my feet. But haven't felt comfortable enough to truely open up about the situation that crushed me. Its so personal. And hard to talk about.

I am glad to hear that it takes time to get to that comfort level. And that what I am experiencing is normal.

This is my 2nd T. I went to one a few years ago. I didn't like her from the start. She was just too clinical, cold or something. She was jotting down notes the entire time. Which is fine..... but then say the wrong name when talking about the person I was talking about. Which just annoyed me. I just kept thinking..... it is your job to listen, you are writing this stuff down and you still can't get it right!! I was being a total B**ch about it in my head, but I couldn't get past it. I think I went 3 or 4 times and then quit. So my first T wasn't a good match for me. And I wasn't in a hurry to try again.

That's really interesting, Sunny, since I vividly remember that it was my 7th session when I first told T something very personal that I'd never shared with anyone else - that was my first big disclosure.

I've been seeing my T for 6 months, and I think I've tested T over and over again during these 6 months. We've talked up, down and sideways about our relationship, especially recently, and I really feel like T is there for me. I do trust my T 100%, I just sometimes get in my own way of opening up to T - I'm working on it, though! What I'm realizing is that we will continue to have ruptures, but we'll work through those, and our relationship will continue to build and strengthen.

Polarsmom, I think what you're experiencing is very normal. I also had a T about 9 years ago who was nothing like this T - I only saw that T for 9 sessions. She did help me at the time, but looking back, I see that we skirted over the major issues and didn't even touch on some of my deepest issues. Good luck to you!

It took me a LONG time to become comfortable with my T. When I first started I tried hard to find some fault with her, but couldn't really come up with anything objective to dislike her for. I honestly for about the first 6-8 months could have bumped into her on the street and not even recognized her. But everytime I tried to convince myself that she was a fake, not a good match, didn't really give a crap about me or my issues...she would do some little thing or something she had told me weeks before would make sense and the argument I have built up in my head would fall apart. There wasn't any one thing that happened that BOOM! I realized I was exactly where I needed to be and seeing who I needed to see. With me is was a slow painful process of breaking down my resistance to being comfortable. When I look back now I can see that my T really hasn't changed much in the way she deals with me...the change has mostly been within me.

I think what my T did most was provide a very consistant professionally careing environment and waited patiently for me to see it, explore it in my own way, and learn to use it to heal.It's taken me 2 yrs to get comfortable, but I feel very grateful for her patience.

I have felt this way too, about learning to use therapy to heal. It has been a learning process and I really cast about a lot at first ("explored" is perhaps too purposeful and functional sounding for my experience ). It took a while to learn how I could use therapy and my therapist to heal. Here this thing is before me that he offers, what I am going to do with it? What can I do with it? How can I use him to heal? I think people who have been in therapy before and go to a new therapist don't have to go through this whole learning curve again. They are better able to hit the ground running and make use of therapy to heal and progress. I don't think I learned any of this with my first therapist (my current T is my second). Now, if I went to therapy with a new person (God forbid ), I think I would be much more able to use it well. Kind of like learning to ride a bicycle--once you know, you never really forget.

Yes, this was the way for me, too. I mean I obviously felt a limited amount of comfort and trust that allowed me to keep going back, but the first few years were rough. Lots of tortured silences, lol. Whenever I talk about what T has done that worked for me, it comes down to one thing: He waited. He was kind and caring and did not push and he waited for me to bring the trauma into the room, and he waited for me to bring my feelings into the room, and he waited for me to choose to speak. Nobody ever waited for ME to take the lead before, and it's taken me a damn long time to do it, but I DID finally do it. And I am forever grateful that someone, for once, let me be in charge.

I really liked the way he was always so human with me. He was very down to earth and real, like the guy next door. I felt comfortable with him fairly quickly.

I took a risk and told him something huge. He was very gentle, supportive and didn't ever rush me. He allowed moments of silence. He spoke quietly and soothingly. All good things.

I think, just like with any relationship, it takes some time. I got to know his non-verbals...quirks, expressions, sounds. We just had good rapport. Once I began feeling the connection, it was always there with me. Sometimes there were moments when it was stronger than others, but it was always there in some respect. I think that every realtionship in therapy is different, though. There's no right or wrong way to be as long as it's working for you in a positive way.

Sunrise your comment about "casting about" in therapy made me think of the following quote.

"I am not afraid of the storms for I am learning how to sail my ship." (Louisa may Alcott)

EXACTLY! I don't know how she deals with me sometimes. I'm very grateful for that.

I have been thinking about this for a few days since first seeing the thread. I have tried to compare how I became comfortable with the different Ts I have seen over the years.

When I was a teenager I didn't really feel like I had a choice in who I saw. I was so distressed that I knew that I needed to get help, and so trusted my T (bad experience). In college I had two Ts. The first one I also didn't feel like I had a choice. But then the second one I felt like I had a choice. For me it was a process of trusting a little more each time, especially when big issues came up. Like a lot of the others said, it was a lot of being able to say things and having my T stay calm and be supportive. With each new disclosure it was a test of whether or not my T could "take it" and understand and not reject me.

Since that first good experience with a T, I now trust my gut from the first couple of sessions if I feel like the T is going to be understanding and is able to deal with my history. If they can't deal with my history it is an automatic no-go. Then the comfortableness comes with each session. This doesn't mean that there aren't times where it is still hard to share new things.

Good luck.

Chaotic and Skeski--i am RIGHT with you guys on this topic! It has been close to 2 years I've seen her, and I am just beginning to start to trust her...a little bit. I don't even like using the word "trust"...in my head I don't have trust issues:its not like I think she is going to blab anything about me, and I know probably anything I would say she wouldn't judge--yet I still get nervous before every single session!

I have commented on that I think my body must be telling me something that my head isn't getting, otherwise why would I always get so nervous? She whole-heartedly agrees

What I do agree with is that she is one patient woman. She has repeated time and time again that she is not going anywhere. I have always dismissed it, like "well, SURE, I am paying you!!"...but I think she meant it as reassuring. Lol. Another thing I liked was her saying to me once (or twice) that I don't really seem to believe in therapy. That talking isn't going to do me any good. She says this as an observation and hasn't seemed to take any personal offense to it.

All that being said, its HARD! I've never been like "yes! I like her!" I have waivered between feeling neutral or her thinking I am the most pathetic/whiny client ever. I just figured out that I am afraid that she sees me as this person with no REAL problems-there was no abuse, life went pretty smooth...etc--and yet I'm stuck and afraid of life. That she will give me suggestions and then get annoyed with me if I don't do whatever it is to help myself.

I felt very comfortable with my tdoc from the very start. I've always been most comfortable with a male therapist. I have found that female therapists are to mushy for me. I need the straightforwardness and no-nonsense that I've always found in my male therapists. I'm an extremely stubborn person and I need to be pushed, sometimes quite hard, to make progress. None of this soft touch, lollygagging around for me.

I've tried two female therapists who I felt were just not direct enough for me. I like a very direct therapist who challenges my irrational thinking.

I can't say that I feel entirely safe, even after 2 yrs.

I don;t hold things back from her because of it, but I am well aware that there are things I have told her at which she fell silent; at which she gasped; for which she looked as if I'd socked her in the gut; for which she looked at me very severely.

One thing I even got up my courage to refer to later, saying that it was awful, and she said only, "that was awful" (yes I know it was, but I was hoping for some other response from her of all people).

What can I say, she is very genuine and I guess I shouldn';t be surprised that she could be daunted at the sight of so much rot and corruption. So if I still look for her to run screaming some time, well it doesn't seem all that unreasonable.
i bet she wishes she had a different client. The thing is, I want to be different too - that's why I keep coming.

Hi sitting, I think I'm a little confused by this. It sounds like you weren't happy with her reactions there, and that it kept you from feeling comfortable with her? I'm trying to understand because when I read it, I get the sense that she was empathizing with you, feeling it right along with you, and validating your feelings. When my T does those things it makes me feel better (like she's there with me, rather than just observing me), but it sounds like it's not having that effect on you...Maybe I'm missing something...

hi NM9,
I only know how I receive it; I receive it as dismay, at times maybe even shock (not good considering that she's been in this field for about 40 yrs). You think maybe I have been misreading her? that would be good news, but I can't even ask about it - she will of course say no, I don't judge you. Of course we both know that these are things that any good person woudl find revolting. I don't blame her for reacting like a normal and good person.