T hunt (in more than one way)

The trouble is, the thing that scares the %)*#$ out of me is, sometimes I can express it, sometimes I am completely unable to even think it. I cannot count on myself whenever I have to deal with a therapist or any other person. I feel I cannot have any close friends because I cannot guarantee who I will be at any given time.

Here is what happens to me in therapy, and everywhere. It was the way my problem presented itself originally, and it is similar now. I try to think things. The comments that other people make get inside my head and conflict with my own thoughts. There develops a battle between "me" and the other people, or their thoughts, their comments about me. I want someone to listen so I can explain and develop "me" and don't always have to "justify" myself or what I think.

There got to be a time in my first therapy when there was only one person inside of me -- me. (Actually, I guess I could imagine others, friends.) My therapist at the time did not like it. He tried, and almost succeeded, in convincing me that me was sick, me was bad, me was dangerous, me had to be "controlled". By him. All for my own good, of course.

I crashed.

I understand the feeling of fear of not being in control of myself. It's an awful feeling.

I have taken some risks (it feels) putting out all this "stuff" here. It is probably a mistake, and will come back to bite me.

No biting allowed!

I am glad that you are sharing here. I am learning that feedback that is hurtful and judgmental says just as much about the person giving the feedback, and that I do not own it. I used to absorb way more than I needed to.

I'm also still of the mindset that feelings just ARE. We are all unique and have the right to feel what we feel....and to just be....

I hope you will find a way to be ok with just being...

"The comments that other people make get inside my head and conflict with my own thoughts. There develops a battle between "me" and the other people, or their thoughts, their comments about me. I want someone to listen so I can explain and develop "me" and don't always have to "justify" myself or what I think"

Oh Pachy...I so totally understand this feeling. People always giving advice even though they haven't walked in our shoes (even though they are mostly well meaning). Have you ever considered keeping a journal to just get it all out without interruption?

I don't have any answers for you, but I hear you and feel the same way. When you open yourself up to another person you have to sort through their emotional baggage. I imagine even the best therapists have baggage too.

Please know that you are heard and understood. I love my family, but I have found if I open myself up too honestly to them, they can only listen through their own experiences and at some point stop hearing me...they do mean well though.

You are not alone....

i think you have taken a risk here and i think that's cool. i hope you won't get bitten as well. if you do, i bet someone here has some anti-poison antidote. i have a great bug ointment from when i was in india to deal with the mosquitos. maybe that will work! it feels all cool and menthol-like and removes the sting.

do you find "let's agree to disagree" helpful? if so, then maybe that could be your mantra.

I have a problem when the psychologist only sits there & listens without any feedback. The psychologist I had in California for many years before I moved 3 years ago it was about all he did was listen. Even when I was going through the trauma with my Mother & the home care person, all I got was his ear when I really needed some real support & suggestions (even if it was only ideas) on how to handle some of the problems I was experiencing. When I was in the medical hospital for a month at that same time, my GP provided me with a psychologist daily in the hospital & he seemed to be good at feedback & asking questions to get me to think things through.....but the problem was that they had their idea of what was wrong with me (anorexia...not stress related like it really was) & really didn't hear what I was really saying either (grrrr), but it felt so good to at least to be asked questions that I realized that was seriously what had been missing all those years. The psychologist I had been going to had back surgery while I was in the hospital & was not practicing for awhile after that, so I went back to a psychologist in the town where I lived.....nothing but invalidation for the trauma I had gone through & was still experiencing depersonalization symptoms from. Only thing worse than someone that only listens on one that only invalidates.

I had only bad experiences with T's/psychologists from 1994 on.....also hated the one that promised to "be there for me until I got better"......ugh.....what a line!!!! Within 2 weeks, I wasn't seeing him anymore. I didn't give them much to work with at the time though because I didn't want to get better & just wanted life to end which I kept trying to do. Not much they could have done for me even if they wanted to at that time I guess.

When I moved to KY, I went to one T in the large town, thinking that would be a good thing & they took Medicare but charged a huge amount on top of that, so when I ran out of money after 2 months, I quit going to T......but after a year & when fall hit, the time of year when the depersonalization seems to haunt me, I tried to find another psychologist. I went to a T that was recommended by my friend. She was one that really gets in there & asks questions & provides her patients with much food for thought. Intellectual therapy seems to be where I feel the best actually....looking at my thoughts & trying to analyze them.....just where my mind is at.....brain is just a computer that needs to have the program debugged....but have to find out the path that's broken before it can be fixed......T/psychologist asks questions, provides thoughts & works with the reality of my mind & helps me figure out where the problems are so I can come up with what works for me to fix it....ugh, my engineering technical mind.....what a pain but it's the way my mind works best). I thought I found the perfect match until my first session with her when we talked & she realized that the problems I have were too complex for the T training that she had......wow, was I disappointed as she really seemed to have the technique that matched my needs & she also took payment on the sliding scale.

So I got a list of other people she suggested might be able to help (all were psychologists). None took Medicare so wouldn't take me as a patient except one guy who said that I could pay what I was able to pay (almost nothing?). I decided to give him a try. All he did was brag about the treatments he had done & then told me how much he charged per hour & that I could take as many years as I needed to pay him off. His philosophy on life was way out of line from where I was coming from....sounded like a lot of BS to me. I never paid him fully for that first visit. I chalked off the rest of the money to it being an interview of him to see if he would work (NOT, NO WAY!!!!!). It took me almost another year before I decided to give the local community mental health treatment center in the neighboring town (not about to go to the one in my little town which is located right in our little down town area).

I had a recommendation for one of the psychologists being really good there but my concept of community care was so bad from California that I procrastinated about doing anything about it until right before fall hit again. I finally called & was assigned a psychologist (not the one that had been recommended but another one). My first meeting with her went really well. I was so pleasantly surprised, I couldn't believe that I could find anything of quality through community treatment. They also lowered my payment & waived my deductible & with all the problems I was having, she also got one of their T's to come out to my farm on the weeks that I wasn't able to get there so she could work on the issues I was dealing with around the farm so that my psychologist could work on the deeper things that I need to work on. I have never experienced such a quality psychologist in all the years since 1994 of dealing with therapy. She doesn't invalidate the things that I am dealing with, she asks questions that I have to think about to really answer honestly & provides thoughts (not demands but ideas that I can take or leave) when I am feeling so overwhelmed that my mind shuts down. The ideas are just enough to trigger my mind into functioning & coming up with it's own ideas if I don't agree with her's or if I need to adapt them to the reality of my life. They offer a DBT group at the facility which she suggested that I go to to at least try it. They have pdoc's but she understands my problem with meds, so is only pushing my getting back onto the supplement that really worked well from my California Pdoc (Omega 3 - EPA extra strength).

It's amazing to find a Psychologist who is really working with ME, not just her thoughts of what works in general but really working with the real me & reality, not just her preconceived notion of what she thinks.

What I realized is that I just needed to keep on trying until I found the right one (trying not to get frustrated, angry, or give up before I actually got to this point).

Sometimes the best ones are hidden, very well disguised in the middle of a place where we would refuse to even look because of our preconceived ideas. I hope that you will be able to someday take a risk & end up as pleasantly surprised as I ended up being. I know that the chances of this happening are low, but we never really know until we try & keep on trying (along with trying not to allow discouragement to take over).

I can so relate to how you are feeling about finding a psychologist. Now that I have the experience of having a good quality psychologist, I know how bad the others I went to really were.

The worst part is that sometimes all our analyzing & minds eliminations can end up eliminating the one who is just right.

Hope that you will be able to come up with the right Psychologist that fits the method that you need for therapy & not the text book methods that many don't know how to go beyond in order to help. Those that step outside the box & work with the actual needs of the person are few & far between.

Hope you will be willing to talk yourself into continuing to take more risks until you are able to find the right T/psychologist that really clicks with what you need. It isn't perfect all of the time even then, but for me, it seems much better than all the other options.

Who would think that I would ever find the best psychological help in a Podunk town in the middle of KY when I lived right in the heart of UCLA & other schools that claimed to have the best training & most up to date current treatment's available. One never knows where the right help will be found. It seems like it's just a matter of continuing to search until we find that right person with the right personality & method of treatment that works. I always had a hard time giving them a one time trial unless it was obvious they weren't right......I always felt like I needed to give them a chance to see if it would be better the next time.....but I realized that wasn't going to happen & it's OK to judge on the first meeting. I also guess after enough experience with looking for the right psychologist, we do learn how to judge accurately almost immediately.

Wrong about what? Right about what?

That sounds like a great description of what you are looking for. It didn't take pages. I do see though that reading therapists' website descriptions is not going to find a match to what you wrote. I think a phone call or in person session would help you answer the question, but I understand that would be hard and you don't want to do that. I would have a hard time calling a T I found on a website. Can you ask around and identify someone through the grapevine? Other practitioners? Friends? People with similar concerns? Just grasping at straws... Is there a T training program in town that you admire and whose philosophy you like? I have found that training programs vary tremendously and the Ts that come out of a particular program seem to be aligned with each other philosophically in fundamental ways. So if you had a program you respected locally, you could look specifically for their grads. (My T has sent me to two other Ts for referrals and both were from his same training program. They all have some things in common.)

Again, this refrain about being wrong. Wrong about what?

Pachy, I am intrigued by your comments about therapists' web ads not saying what they actually do. What would fall in that category that is missing from the ads? For example, if a T said he did EMDR, would that be the sort of specific information that you would find helpful? I wonder if therapists don't bother saying what they do in therapy because they assume people know? Like for physicians, they usually don't say on their web ads what they do, just that they are a dermatologist, or a gynecologist. They assume potential patients will know what it is that a dermatologist does. Perhaps it is the same with these Ts--they assume that people will know what it is that therapists do so they don't believe they have to explicitly state it. I think they should state it. I knew NOTHING the first time I went to a therapist (who I found through my employer's EAP--not a method I recommend).

Pachy, have you heard of compassionate listening? I wonder if a therapist trained in this would be able to provide some of what you are looking for?

Pachy, I hear pain, I am sorry..Please keep looking for a t, i went through about seven or eight. One i saw for a year, another a couple months, mostly one or two session, then the kids pediatrician recommended one and i have been seeing him for a very very long time...I am hoping there is a t out there for you!

So you are afraid when you get angry? I can just imagine what feelings get triggered up when you are angry because of your mother and your past therapists. There is nothing wrong with being angry. Working through these triggers would be a good idea and could be very liberating.

Or instead of trying to do the impossible task of trying to control what everyone else is doing in response to you, just work on the triggers. You are obviously getting really triggered when people respond to you this way.

Maybe here you just want to be all knowing about the future so that you can keep yourself safe. This is also an impossible task. What worked for me was to learn how to handle situations so that I could feel confident that I could handle whatever came up. Now I don't need to control situations or other people.

Again, I think that if you diffuse your triggers you will be able to move forward much easier.

Needing to control again (this time yourself, though?)

Very unfortunate situation with this therapist........

Do you feel that you have this battle between what you think and what others think because you feel that your own identity isn't very strong?

Well, when I first searching, I did something similar, then sent the short-list a list of questions. Some never responded to my mail, and with others, I just didn't like what they had to say.
I eventally found my current T through a recommendation, and I am particularly happy!
All the best in your search P!

I was referred to my T by the residential treatment center I was in.
I checked her out on psychology today website, and then found her own website. I really hated her description, and her picture. It is the cheesiest and most annoying description. (ok, not as bad as the plant example you gave, but almost) The pictures of her office looked like a cluttered mess. Obnoxious.

I've been with her a year now and there has been ups and downs but I think she is a good T. Her office doesn't bother me anymore - it is kind of cozy. And she really doesn't look like her picture at all.
I still don't like how she summarizes herself and how she has described her practice, but IMO that wasn't a real reflection of *her* and what kind of T she really is.

Pachyderm, your fears are real and understandable. No one can really understand the depths of how hard this is for you.
It will take a leap of faith and lots of courage to keep trying.
But there's no doubting that you are worth it.

Yes, there has to be some kind of feedback! I like the way you described how a person could ask questions, questions that were designed actually to obtain information!

I am going to post something here that I composed yesterday, to try to explain what I want, but don't expect ever to find:

Since I talk about therapists who do not seem to know clearly what it is that they do, I no doubt will be asked what I want in a therapist or helper of any kind. I am going to follow something that I read a long time ago, in a description of a therapy, but I will use my own words. The therapy I read about took place in an inpatient setting, so it did not have to deal with artificial limitations such as 45- or 50-minute sessions once a week or so. It could concentrate on what the patients needed, rather than on schedules which have become accepted practice -- even though those might make therapy much longer and much more difficult than otherwise might be the case. Incidentally, this therapy was reported to be the only one for which the patients, when surveyed, said they had been cured. It took maybe twenty sessions over several weeks, sessions which lasted usually several hours. (I think the lessons of this therapy could be applied to other situations, however.)

The therapy sessions were normally initiated soon after the patient woke up -- at a time when she was somewhat calmer and more favorably inclined to the therapy. Otherwise the therapist should try to first establish a calm state by taking actions (not just making claims) so the patient could comprehend that she was safe.

The therapist would start a session by asking the patient to enter a state of watchful self-observation, to report to the therapist on what she observed internally, and to avoid worry about what society or other people would think about what she observed. The therapy consisted of a dialog in which the patient continued to report, with occasional encouragement from the therapist not to judge, but to continue to report. If the patient became agitated or wandered off the track of observing and reporting about what was happening inside, the therapist would gently push her in the direction of calm observation and reporting. This was virtually his entire role: not to comment, not to judge, not to correct. He was there to reassure the patient that reporting everything she observed was the course to take, and to reassure her that that was safe.

As I said, sessions in the therapy I am writing about typically seemed to take a couple of hours, during which the patient was encouraged to reflect on what was happening inside her, and to report. Over the course of these sessions, the patients became calmer and were able to report more and more. They themselves began to remember more, and began to change. Once changes began, those started to become more rapid, until quite a full relief from symptoms occurred -- often quite quickly. The patients achieved, towards the end of the course of treatment, the ability to reassure themselves (rather than having to rely on the therapist always to do it). With the aid of the therapist during these weeks the therapy did not turn into a long stretch of "advance and fall back", but each session built upon the previous ones, until stability was achieved.

Afterwards the patients themselves, in a survey judged that they were cured. The therapy was reported to achieve something like an 80% success rate.

It feels to me as though this is the kind of therapy that would work for me. However, I do not know of anyone who does anything like this, or anyone who I think would even understand it and why it works. I expect only objections -- why it cannot be done. I think this therapy and how and why it worked has been virtually lost to the profession.

What happens to me, in almost any kind of interaction with other people, but certainly has always happened in therapy situations, is that instead of getting moved gently towards a stabler, more reassuring condition, exactly the opposite happens. I always get diverted from what feels like a truer "me" to a state of loss and confusion. This seems not be be recognized by anyone I know; in fact I don't even know anyone who cares. That is what happened in my first therapy: instead of moving towards a more rewarding state, my therapist "pushed" me towards instability, confusion, and increasing panic. And he would not recognize that he was doing anything wrong. I have never been able to get anyone else to understand what I am talking about. I have tried. I am unwilling to continue to beg for someone to listen.

I gave the ones who mentioned something like that a minus 1. At least they gave some indication of what methods they used. But that is just a name. It doesn't say what they actually do. I have found that the names people give (e.g. psychotherapy) do not actually distinguish what they do in a session, what they do that makes the difference between success and failure.

As a definite therapy technique, no. It sounds nice to be "compassionate" but I'm not sure that really tells me much except how the therapist wants to be seen.

Of course. (My mother told us that she would "break" us. Or at least break our spirits.)

Let me tell you something that happened in one of the first nights of my breakdown: I wrote out a note and left it by my bed at night before going to sleep. I wrote what my name was, who I was. I did this because I was afraid that when I woke up in the morning maybe I would not be there -- I would have been "replaced" by another person. That would probably be the person that "everyone" seemed to want, a person who had all the standard, accepted ideas, the person that I could never be, the person that I was not. Someone who would discover me in the morning would at least have a clue if I left a note who I was. Because "I" would be gone.

Such things are really possible. Ever heard of amnesia? I believe that it could happen, after having that experience. I do remember very little of my childhood. It still always lurks in the background as a possibility -- that such a descent into madness could happen again.

Someone asked if I ever journalled. This is my journalling. It seems to be the only way it works for me.

SAWE: If you do go to interview someone, you are free to leave.
Come on now, we're not talking about walking out on a T you have been seeing for some time; just leaving after an interview. If you can't leave the room at the end of an interview, then what? You can't just stay there. Repeat: If you interview someone and you sense they won't be a match, YOU ARE FREE TO LEAVE.

I was reading there are certain personality disorders that find critic with therapists, they spend their life finding whats wrong and not whats helpful to avoid becoming vunrable enought and accepting perhaps someone else may know something we don't. Its hard to get past that sort of thinking.

(((((((( pachyderm )))))))))

I have been listening and reading quietly in the background.

I'd like to give you my thoughts if you don't mind.

I personally feel that you have been through so much horrendous stuff with past therapists (and your Mother) that did not listen that actually going to see a therapist is like going to see your abuser. I'm not sure that seeing a therapist is the answer for you.

What I think works for you is sharing with other people who truly understand on here! The benefits are huge for you. You can take your time. You can be honest and say, hey folks I'm scared, I'm getting triggered. You can walk away for a bit and when you are ready you come back and try again. There is a wealth of people here that have been through therapy or been through similar situations to you.

I wish you lived in the UK and then we could meet up have a cup of tea together and chat, chat, chat.



If you were going for therapy you need a very calm intelligent therapist. The first year will need to be introducing real good coping strats so that you can cope with the heavy stuff. You can't deal with triggers until you know how to calm yourself. You'll note that I said for YOU to calm yourself. That's what coping stratergies do. Eventually you won't need coping stratergies so much because you'll no longer get triggered. Once you've got those coping strats (your tool box) that's when the therapist will start to go through the heavy stuff with you. The aim being that you graduate from therapy no longer getting triggered and feeling confident in yourself.

OK, I've rambled when you asked me to listen, I'm listening and here for you as are many others.

This is exactly what happened to me in therapy. Almost verbatim. THings got a lot worse before they got slightly better at all. I can't tell you how many times I actually said "I thought therapy was supposed to make things better" And yet there I was circling the drain.

I'm still not sure exactly how or why my therapy made things so much worse before they got better - and they did get better - but I suspect that sometimes you have to disassemble a structure to make it stronger. I don't know. Maybe I just needed to grieve. Maybe I just needed to get lost. Who knows.

Reading this thread made me think about the times I have gone back and read my T's description since I started therapy. I do it periodically, I'm not sure why. It always feels a little...weird, I guess?...because I guess the most basic outline is there (something like "the therapist and client work together to find out where problems come from and how to solve them" - can't remember exactly). I guess I can see the curiosity he brings to session in his description...but my REAL T isn't there. It doesn't say "I will listen to whatever you say", "I won't judge your feelings, your thoughts or your actions, but I will seek to understand", "I will be patient for as long as it takes for you to build trust", "I won't tell you what to do, I will witness as you develop the strength to figure it out for yourself", "I am willing to change how I work to meet your needs", etc. THAT (and more) is my T. Of course, those are the parts of my T that matter most to me and my healing. Another client might pick things like "I have good boundaries" or "I see a therapist myself to help with countertransference issues" or whatever as the most important things. None of those things are in his description, but all of those things are "him". Honestly, maybe therapists need a little training in how to describe themselves to potential clients. Like Sunny, I had never been to a therapist before, so I had NO idea what the heck they DO. I guess I'm just musing out loud here.

I really appreciate that you keep coming back and sharing how you're feeling and what you're thinking. I know for me, even conflict (or what feels like conflict to me) can help me understand more deeply what *I* believe and what *I* need.

Hang in there, pachy

I just had another thought. In one of my first sessions with T - maybe my first session, actually - I was talking about my mom and I said, out loud, "honestly, I just wish she would die". I was so scared T would latch onto that and call the authorities or something, but it ended up just being part of the conversation.

I know that for ME, the things I need to say are much bigger, scarier, more pathological, more "bad" then they actually end up being when I say them out loud. We judge ourselves so harshly, you know? And that judgment gets all mixed together with fear and the next thing we know, we're stuck in the same place we've always been. SO hard.

Treehouse is SO right about this, Pachy. I heard it again yesterday myself.

Sometimes I get the feeling, in therapy, that T and I are working on the same tapestry, set on uprights between us; only I am working on the reverse side of it, where all the threads are knotted and crossed, and look confused and don't make any sense, but she's on the side where she can see the pattern as the work progresses, and she's satisfied with it.
One of these days, when we are "done", or maybe even before that, I am going to run around to the other side and see if I can get a look. I am very much hoping that we are working on something beautiful, even if it is taking a long time.

You have so many people here you care about you Pachy. This thread isn't even a day old and it has 8 pages already. I am very interested in getting to know you and your inner world. I think that it is great that you are exploring yourself on this thread.