I Was Blamed by T. Is That Right?

Part of me just wants to give up. Why go through all this effort? It's not like T is part of my life anyways - why struggle so much to get along with her? I'm tired of it all. It was much easier when we discussed issues that didn't involve her. I am so tempted to quit.

you'd be surprised how often the issues that play out in the relationship with the therapist mirror the issues that play out in relationships in the rest of a person's life.

i take care of myself emotionally, i have my own therapist and i have self-awareness. when im feeling a particular way towards a client and ive explored it and i know that its not "my stuff," that tells me that it is likely the client's stuff. i dont just assert that "this is how you are," but i absolutely talk about it and ask questions.

every time ive ever talked about what a client's behavior brought up for me and asked if they've ever heard that from someone before, the answer has always been yes. and yes, i think its part of my role to make my clients aware of how they may be perceived by others. not how they are definitely perceived, but how they may be perceived. a lot of the times they are not aware of how certain things can come off, and most of the times it was not intended to elicit that response. i would be doing my clients a disservice to not at least explore it.

has anyone close to you ever said that you were introverted or hard to connect to? if so, maybe its something to explore with your therapist. if not, also something to explore with your therapist, since it would mean she might be reading something into you/your behavior that isnt there.

Then don't discuss issues that involve her, after all your the patient and you need to address the things that YOU feel you need to talk about.

Dont be hard on yourself, therapy is good and gives you the opportunity to work out you personal struggles, we all have those.

Open Eyes

I'm wondering if it would be more fair to T if I left her a message with the contents of that 'letter'. I don't want her to feel ambushed.

i can understand the hesitation, but your therapist's feelings/reactions/etc just can't be more important than your own, skys. its difficult, but the only way to break patterns of conflict avoidance is to face it head-on.

sometimes when my clients have been angry at me and hesitant to say so, i give them permission to not look at me while they talk....so, i turn around and they turn around so that we're back to back and we face each other again when the client feels safe. do you think that's something you might be able to do?

I will be talking to her about it this week - for sure. And, I do look away and look at her bookshelf instead of her when there's difficult stuff to say.

But do you think I should prepare her by leaving a message with her? Maybe she needs time to think of a response. Like I said, I don't want her to feel ambushed. On the other hand, it might be informative to see how she handles it in the moment.

When we do IFS my T always has me close my eyes. I find it's much easier to talk when I'm not looking at her. So I agree you could try not looking at her rather than emailing your letter.

Oh yeah, I close my eyes a lot. Emailing is not an option - T doesn't allow that. I had thought about leaving her a voicemail to prepare her. I don't want to cause her any distress but I don't know how to best approach this.

Choices are: #1 voicemail so she is prepared for discussion

#2 read letter at session this week

#3 don't read letter but let my concern be communicated more organically by natural discussion

this isnt an attack, so im not sure i see a reason to "warn" her that its coming. i think reading the letter to her in session is a good starter for a conversation

You're not "ambushing" her, you think your feelings are a lot scarier than she does. You will both be fine dealing with it in the moment, I guarantee. It may take more than one moment, one meeting. Oh, and she probably doesn't plan out her responses ahead of time? And "informative to see how she handles it in the moment" - I think my T's reaction to this would be, if you want to know something about T, just ask. This sounds a little like what 3rdTimes is doing, being overinvested in what T's reactions are moment to moment, instead of your own reactions. T's ARE trying to keep a blank face pretty much and make it about YOU, especially when we had to stifle ourselves per our readings of our caretaker.

I would look at the original incident as dispassionately as you can, you "tuned out" your T and she did not like it and try to think of it in some way that works, in the circumstances. Do you "agree" that your action was something someone could conceivably not like? Would you like it if you walked into T and she was wearing headphones? If you understand her point of view (on the original incident, not what has happened since, I'll get to that in a moment :-) and can whole-heartedly agree that you might not have liked such a thing too, then you can move on to the next series of actions.

But if you are still feeling your needs should trump other people/T's feelings about your actions in relationship to themselves, then you are stuck there and can't get any further along until you resolve that conflict.

Other people have a right to feel what they feel just as you have a right to wear your headphones into T for the start of the session. However, if you wear your headphones into T, T might not like it. I think you get that.

That you think of the problem in terms of who is "right" or "wrong" (blame) rather than what you want might be a source of confusion for you.

Making a mistake is not about being wrong! It's about learning. You cannot learn without making mistakes to show you what you do not know or understand yet. This whole situation can be a great learning opportunity for you if you want to see it in a much pleasanter light.

I think you made a mistake wearing your headphones into T, coming into another person's presence without being present yourself. Your T got angry but did not immediately discuss it with you and later admitted she made a mistake in how she handled her anger.

The problem with thinking in terms of "2 x 4 to my heart" is that makes your feelings paramount over the "action" of the situation. We cannot control how we feel, except by how we perceive the action; if you are "glad" when you make a mistake because it teaches you something, the whole painful heart problem goes away? Even the worry over whether T will get angry goes away because, if you don't understand why she's angry, you can ask and trust she will tell/explain/teach you and you get to have a really interesting discussion on how someone else you care about perceives things.

When I get anxious and confused I try to remind myself to tamp down my imagination so I look at the situation in a more mundane/literal sense without all the flowery feelings and what I think they mean (anger = out-of-control-yelling, hitting, ripping-my-heart-out, etc.) and remind myself of what I want: I want to understand the situation, not just "feel" about it and the only way I can understand what is happening between me and another is by discussion with the other.

You are being triggered by people who are angry with you. This is something very important to work through so that it won't happen anymore.

I guess it feels like I'm attacking her because I'm going to tell her again how her response to me felt so bad. She's already apologized but I'm bringing it up again. What more can she say? Will she try to defend herself? Will she try to understand my reaction better? Will she be able to explain why she wasn't able to just observe my actions without having her own emotional reaction? Will she be able to help me get past this once and for all so we can proceed? I had thought I was over it but it keeps coming up.

So, we'll be discussing her reaction at that time - a reaction she realized was wrong and was a mistake. So, for me to keep dragging her emotional reaction up DOES seem like an attack - rubbing her nose into a misstep she took. I really feel I shouldn't do that. It doesn't seem right or fair.

OH! It's the, what if YOU did something wrong problem! Remember 6 weeks ago when I said you guys (but esp you sky) double-dog dared me to go say something hard to T? I felt -I- had done something wrong, almost fatally wrong. I had talked to my pdoc about my June rupture with T, and I had convinced myself that she was going to talk to her supervisors, and it was going to end up with my T getting disbarred and losing his retirement benefits which he was just on the verge of getting - except that I was completely wrong about his age, for one thing, the conspiracy theory was all in my head, and when I brought the topic (rupture) up, he said, "I told you before, that is completely yours to talk about to whomever you want to, as you need to."

THAT'S what you need to talk about, what YOU did wrong, not what SHE did wrong. The thing that makes YOU feel like hurling. That you killed her - common psych topic. But you might have to stay in therapy for another 30 years, unless you can move a little faster than I do!

Thank you for that explanation Dr. Muffin I had no idea that therapists put so much thought into it before sharing it with a client. I could definitely be called introverted in some ways- I love people and teaching and helping and love being part of a group.... but one of the issues I brought into therapy was social anxiety which my T knew. So it was a little hurtful for her to say "I am having a hard time connecting to what you are saying" and the other thing was, "Sometimes when you talk I have a hard time getting through it." (With a vigorous sawing motion). Lol. I don't talk a lot. I think she just meant she couldn't figure out why I was so unhappy and upset based on the sort of stories I was telling her. Anyhow I think 6 sessions is too early to jump to "I don't get you, you're a weird client!" But part of me wishes I were still in therapy so that if that really is a thing, I could really understand it better. Sorry to hijack sky.

Just read the letter! Sky I think that is a fine idea to share that with her. She needs to know. What about starting a conversation about it so she gets to reply too? I would say "Can I ask you something? Why did you get so upset when I came in wearing headphones" so that way she knows that you get that you did something that upset her, but then you can also talk about what it meant to you. I hope she is empathetic this time around!!!! It is clearly a huge deal for you and your relationship.