[CantExplain]

Hi! I'm having trouble with my therapist challenging me.
I know challenges are important, but they can be very painful.
Sometimes I get overwhelmed. I feel anger, shame, failure.
What's the point of giving me a challenge I can't cope with? She's just hurting me for no reason. I've asked her to be more gentle with me, but she says, "I have to challenge you or you won't grow." I don't feel heard.
I get more and more paranoid and I just want to walk away.

[SoupDragon]

Hi, sorry to hear that you are having a difficult time with your T. How long have you been seeing her? Does she really get how distressing it is for you?

I know that it is good for us to be challenged, but my T does this very gently and checks with me how I am on that particular day - some days I am more up for it than others. T has also told me to say if it is too much on any particular day and he will respect that.

If we are having a more challenging session, T will check with me frequently, how I am doing and we do grounding stuff if it is becoming too much.

I think if I went and T was too pushy, I would back right off and would probably feel so anxious about going back. Therapy is hard for all of us and I assume T's are aware that if they make it too difficult for us we are likely to terminate our sessions.

If you experience any difficulities making your T hear you (I know I am not good at telling my T how I am) - could you write it down and let her read it?

Take care - Soup

[Ygrec23]

Originally Posted by CantExplain

Hi! I'm having trouble with my therapist challenging me. I know challenges are important, but they can be very painful. Sometimes I get overwhelmed. I feel anger, shame, failure.
What's the point of giving me a challenge I can't cope with? She's just hurting me for no reason. I've asked her to be more gentle with me, but she says, "I have to challenge you or you won't grow." I don't feel heard. I get more and more paranoid and I just want to walk away.

Good morning, CantExplain!

You yourself own your own therapy. You have hired T to help you and guide you but the ultimate decisions have to be made by you. And T has to accept that. She may feel she is doing what she does in your best interests, but in the end only you decide what your best interests are.

It sounds like you do need a serious talk with T about adjusting the pace of therapy so that it's more comfortable for you. Tell her that at the moment it's just too painful for you and that both of you have to ease off until you catch your breath.

Take care and have a good day!

[CantExplain]

Originally Posted by SoupDragon

could you write it down and let her read it?

She refuses to read anything. But I'm allowed to read it to her.

She's right about this. When I read aloud I get a physical reaction or burst into tears, and that's very therapeutic.

[missbelle]

Along time ago I had a wondeful therapist that also challenged me and I walked away because it was painful. Wrong decision....I should have then faced my fears It would have helped me to get better so much faster. It was a million years ago and I still remember. It was about my father. I couldn't deal with it

I hope you go on even though its painful Don't give up like I did then.I should have told my "T" how I felt but I just stopped going!

[CantExplain]

Thanks guys!
I'm feeling a bit better at the moment - my paranoia ebbs and flows.
Also, I've thought a bit more about which challenges are most difficult and why.

I'm starting to see T not as a demon, not as an angel, but as a human with human strengths and failings. That's got to be good in the long run, right?

[Sannah]

What does being challenged mean to you?

[CantExplain]

Originally Posted by Ygrec23

You yourself own your own therapy. You have hired T to help you and guide you but the ultimate decisions have to be made by you. And T has to accept that. She may feel she is doing what she does in your best interests, but in the end only you decide what your best interests are.

True, but she is a forceful personality and mostly I trust her. Not easy to say no!

[CantExplain]

Originally Posted by Sannah

What does being challenged mean to you?

Oho! A challenge about challenges! Or were you making a joke?

[skysblue]

It's interesting how we each face challenges. Sometimes I wish my T challenged me more. Sometimes she is just too gentle. But then, I probably wouldn't like that either. I guess the best thing is to talk to your T about it. I think one of the points of therapy is to learn to communicate our needs.

[sunrise]

I like the question Sannah asked about what is a challenge to you. I don't think my T really challenges me but I don't think he's really gentle with me either. He's just kind of normal or "in between" with me. So I'm not sure what a challenge even means. Last session we were talking about something and I was ready to move on and he said not yet. He wanted to get me to agree to an action plan before we left the topic. So I let him talk about it a while longer. Was that my T challenging me? For a moment, not just letting me choose our direction?

I'm not very good when people are rude or unpleasant or angry with me (I exit quickly), so if being challenging means any of those things, I would not do well with it. But if it means bringing up alternative ideas and interpretations to my own, then I am open to this. I like to have T's more balanced, outside perspective. But this doesn't feel like a challenge to me, just his sharing his own perspective with me.

I realize I don't know what a challenge is! Would like to hear what this means to you, Can'tExplain.

[PreacherHeckler]

I always think of challenges in therapy as being opportunities for me to grow and change by learning or by trying to do something new or different, combined with my T's belief that I can do it even though I feel very anxious, apprehensive, and uncertain of my ability at the time. But my T's belief and confidence in me propel me forward to a place where I am willing to try because he knows me well. I trust him and I know that he would not push me to do something unless he knew I would have an excellent chance to succeed, boosting my own self-confidence and helping me learn to challenge myself. My T has challenged me to do things that I would never have tried on my own because I would never have felt capable of doing them if he hadn't challenged me. It's been my experience that the times when I thought he was absolutely nuts and had expectations that were far too high were actually the times when I gained the most by trusting his judgment.
I think if you have a T who knows you well enough to have a good sense of your abilities, then being challenged is a wonderful, albeit frightening at times, opportunity for growth. It has been enormously helpful in building my self-confidence and has brought me closer to my T as we share in my successes and learn from my failures.

[Sannah]

Originally Posted by CantExplain

Oho! A challenge about challenges! Or were you making a joke?

I'm serious! The answer to this question is very important. Now I see how you respond to "challenges". (I never thought this was a challenge).

[CantExplain]

Challenges range from, "Are you sure that's what he said?" to "Why does it matter that you're in pain?"

I'm OK with the first, but the second is a slap in the face, especially if I'm not ready for it and feeling paranoid.

[Sannah]

Originally Posted by CantExplain

Challenges range from, "Are you sure that's what he said?" to "Why does it matter that you're in pain?"

Not sure that I like these either. A nicer way would be to say "what exactly did he say"? And why would anyone ask you if it mattered if you are in pain? That is bizarre. I think that it always matters.

[Perna]

Originally Posted by CantExplain

Oho! A challenge about challenges! Or were you making a joke?

An interesting response, CantExplain, most people would see it as a question to get more information from you so their responses could be more helpful?

I was like that; I was so use to my stepmother questioning everything I did and asking me questions for which I had no answers back then ("Why did you do that?" :-) in an angry fashion that when my T would ask me a simple question, "What do you consider a challenge?" I would see it in the same way as "Why did you do that?" (said in a way that implied I'd done something wrong or stupid) and think my T was questioning my idea of what was challenging, would not find it challenging "enough" or would say my idea of a challenge was not really what a challenge was, etc. I had not learned to differentiate between a "challenge" and a simple question from another who wanted to know me better, know more about how I thought/felt and was interested in me and helping me learn and grow.

Too, what happens if you are challenged by another? Theoretically you know who you are and what you are doing and why? So, another questioning it doesn't really matter. You are doing what you are doing for your reasons and because you think it best at this time. There may be other ways of doing something, even better ways and maybe you will learn how to do whatever those ways but right now, you have decided that you'll do it this way! If you are doing the best you can, that's all you can do! Other people's expectations of how you should be don't count.