Things you wish your T would NOT do:

delete delete delete!!!!

Chopin, this is funny b/c last session, I would look up at T and notice that her face would twitch, and it looked like she was trying to stifle a yawn. I wanted to ask her if she wanted to yawn and tell her that she could if she wanted to, but then I would feel bad if she just had a face twitch or something.

Oh franki, that's funny! see, that's why honesty is the best policy!

After reading some of these posts about Ts answering phones, I have a lot more respect for my T. Her desk phone/answering machine has only rung once in a session. She immediately jumped up to silence it and apologized several times for the disruption.

The other thing my T does that actually doesn't bother me is occasionally she'll take off her shoes and put her feet up on the coffee table. It actually makes me feel much more relaxed. I just wish the chair I sit in had a footstool so i could put my feet up too!

I'm with you, there. It just gets so tedious to have to remind them of this stuff. It is not just so simple as tell them to turn it off. Because they often don't remember and each session it's the same. Does it come down to each time you start a session you have to run through a checklist of stuff you don't want them to do? I am not into that at all! A T shouldn't have to be nagged by his clients, and I don't want to be put into that position. They should just be polite and turn their phones off (or whatever) and not have to be reminded each time, like a kid. I tell you the times I have come to session and T remembered to not have his laptop open next to him on the couch just made my day! He remembered! He cared! I'm important! Silly thoughts, but yeah, it is nice to have him remember. Anyway, Kacey, as I wrote before, I've taken to using a combination of direct and indirect communication to get my T to turn off his gizmos.

That reminds me of this other thing I said to T once. Before he got his laptop, he had a desktop computer, so he would often start our sessions with him still sitting at his desk, doing email, and I would be over in the sitting area, waiting for him to join me. Usually he just spends a couple of minutes wrapping up correspondence and then comes to where I'm sitting. But sometimes he tries to start our sessions while doing email and calling over his shoulder to me with random comments--"so how have you been?", "what's new?", etc. But it is just these token questions. He really isn't listening to me or wanting to start a discussion. Because I have tried answering these questions, and he is so caught up in his email, that he doesn't hear what I say and then says "what? what?" And if he were sitting with me, he would never say "how have you been?" because he doesn't ask that kind of thing. So I got to the point where I would not respond to his questions when he was at his computer, since he didn't want to hear my replies. I would just wait until he was done and could join me. But one day, he said to me from his computer, "what happens next?", referring to an ongoing issue for me. This is how I answered, with a very patient tone of voice, "what happens next is you finish on your computer, come sit down with me over here, and we do therapy." He kind of barked out a laugh, but yeah, I think he got the message! He finished up pretty quickly and joined me. Therapists!

sunrise, from everything (in general) that you've wrote about your T, he seems like a good T. But my G*d, everything that you've written in here would make me absolutely CRAZY and mad at my T. It is SO unprofessional! My T has looked at her phone a few times throughout the 4 years of therapy with her, and they mostly when her kids were off from school and they called or texted her. I think they are old enough to understand that they can only do that when its important.

Reading this thread has made me appreciate mine more She doesn't really do anything that bothers me, and I have a lOT of stupid pet peeves. Then again I don't really look at her. Once we must not have shut the door all the way because it started opening in the middle of my session, and I don't think I've seen her move faster to get it shut.

My T has his stupid iPhone on his desk, right next to where he sits. It will ring once in a while, but he has never answered it...he grabs it up, turns it off, apologizes for not having the ringer off and that's the end of it. He also has an office phone, and sometimes the receptionist will buzz him but he answers it. I assume that means he has a call going to voicemail or something? He ONCE took a call that was an emergency; the other clinician in the office wasn't there and my T had to take it. He explained and apologized right away.

I always have my phone turned off in session. It makes me CRAZY that people have no discretion sometimes. Like they don't realize it's OK to be unavailable sometimes.

My T will sometimes say, "let me play devils advocate for a moment" when he feels the need to show me another perspective. That pisses me off.

Once my psychiatrist answer a phone call from her daughter who was asking her to order a certain kind of pizza with toppings for supper... The conversation lasted 2-3 minutes... I never took another appointment in the afternoon when her kids would be out of school. Never had another problem.

My has done this a couple times but before session started she told me she had to stay close to her phone because of a family emergency.

My sons play therapist told me when we first started therapy with my son that she has a daughter that has medical issues and she keeps her phone near by at all times in case her school or daycare need to get a hold of her. Last week during my sons session her daughter called from school. She apologized several times, but I really don't care if I know it's for good reasons. She also let us go 5mins over to make up for it.

I wish my T was not doing things late/ at the last minute. I am still waiting to see if we are meeting today or not. Shes just soooo busy all the time-- time management isnt her forté

I had a therapist who seemed pretty good, and I we'd established that we would work together long-term. At the fourth session, he stood up and said he had to go to the bathroom. He left me sitting there for fifteen minutes.

Way rude, even slightly - you know - gross. I couldn't imagine why he'd done that. I mean, you really can't empty your bladder (or whatever) in the ten minutes between sessions?

My next therapist said it was signal that the guy was unavailable.

No $hit...

OMG, this guy is really bad news.

Please< no more pleated jeans!aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarghhhhhh!!!!

Kitten, what's with all the judgments about other people's therapists today? It's almost like you're going from one thread to another and proclaiming to know whose therapists are great and whose are awful, just based on a couple of particular incidents that arose during long-term therapy relationships. What's up with that?

I can't think of anything my T does/has done that's bothered me. I used to sincerely wish she wouldn't keep trying to get me to do EFT - but it was for my own good, so I can't hold it against her anymore...

Erm, also... pleated jeans?!

I was surprised she might have heard of anyone spontaneously combusting!

Pleated jeans *shudders*.

One reason why I didn't mention it. I swear that was what she was doing, but on the off chance she was not...

Hi PreacherHeckler, are you a moderator?

Yes, therapy is a subject dear to my heart! I love it when it works, and I think it's important and valuable. And I find myself doing without it for long periods, but I always end up going back! I think these forums are a great way to compare notes with other people going through something similar. I don't know anyone IRL who is also in therapy right now, so I'm relying on the forum a lot these days.

But a lot of things can and do go wrong in therapy. I've always believed that there's no such thing as a harmless bad therapist, so when I read anything that sets of alarm bells, yeah - I respond. That's kind of what the forum is for - response, yes?

I've had incompetent therapists, and I've had unethical ones. They can waste your time and money, and if you're in a vulnerable spot they can seriously set you back emotionally. If I think there's anything about my experience that can help others, I like to offer it up.

Sometimes I see people not sticking up for themselves against their Ts. A therapist who wants his client to "feed her obsession" with him? A therapist who is constantly answering the phone, typing on their laptop, or filing their nails in session? A therapist who says "I love you" to their client? These things are really awful to read about.

It's painful to see the confusion and distress that Ts who lack boundaries can create in the people on this forum. Here's one that stuck out for me recently: a client wrote a termination later to her T, apologizing for not being a better client. That's something no one EVER has to do. The burden of ethical treatment and every other kind of responsible care is on the therapist, not the client. That a client would feel so disoriented and saddened by what they've been going through at the hands of a poor therapist, that THEY would apologize to that person, just floors me. I try to offer sympathy - maybe it comes off as anger. But it's anger at the therapist, not the people on this forum.

As for my writing style, I'm pretty sure I haven't violated any official or unofficial rules of posting here - otherwise my posts would have been removed.

So in the end, I'm just another internet stranger, and my input and advice is exactly as valuable (or as useless) as anyone else's here. I often say Your Mileage May Vary.

The PC forum is for support - giving of or asking for. We bend the rules a little in the Psychotherapy forum because we want to be free to explore, but it's not carte blanche to judge? I think that's the distinction, the fine line of difference. Sometimes we DO say, "it's not you, it's T" but again, that is in support, not anger. Not that we don't sometimes lose our heads.

So maybe the preacherheckler is just asking (and if she's not, maybe I will!) if the T's can't hear you, why are you yelling at them here? I mean this gently, because I so identify with this - who are you trying to save from what monster?

Sometimes ts read this stuff. I rarely take offense (even though I have been told many times I am doing therapy wrong and should stop going) at what is posted on here. Disagreement is not wrong and it is not like anyone can make anyone on here see or not see a therapist. Perhaps a safer way is to preface things with "if it were me, I would..."

No Kitten, I'm not a moderator; I just noticed that you seemed to be making very quick judgments about people's therapists, based on incidents that were taken out of the context of the entire relationship, without necessarily knowing what the relationship is like as a whole.
I've had some awful therapists myself, and I've certainly read about some horrible therapists here too, but sometimes therapists also just do stupid things without thinking because they're human, and it doesn't necessarily mean they're awful, especially if they accept responsibility for the mistake and don't continue to do the same thing again.

Yeah, about the judging thing - of course I judge. So does everyone else here! People who post here (me included) want to know what others feel about their situations. They're asking for our judgments. How do we do? It varies. Some people give a lot of information, some people not as much. Some have trouble expressing themselves, and others need encouragement and successive posts before they can bring themselves to describe what's going on.

So - If I'm jumping to conclusions without a lot of evidence, that's pretty much how it works on a message forum. All you get is the information you get. That's how it is on the nets

Hankster, I think you and Preacher may have picked up on something about my attitude toward people who are having trouble calling their Ts out on borderline unethical behavior or incompetence. Yes, I do get annoyed at the reluctance I sometimes see to take on a bad therapist (though I've been guilty of this reluctance myself).

When someone on the forum asks, "Should I tell my T that I have a problem with the fact that they hugged me when I said I didn't want to be hugged," I do sometimes feel like screaming YES YES YES YES YES YES YES!

Therapists have too much power. Clients are vulnerable. That's why the therapeutic situation is a powderkeg right out of the gate. A therapist doesn't have to be a predatory jerk to do damage to a person who's hurting and vulnerable. Incompetence can be every bit as damaging as hostility, and it's more common.

So yeah, therapists have TOO MUCH POWER. On the other hand, a therapist has to have power in order to be able to help their client. But we shouldn't grant them that power until they've earned it. It's ultimately up to the person paying for the session to exercise a normal degree of judgment and self-care in this situation. So I find myself urging that here, because I see it lacking sometimes.

Therapists are our employed helpers. They're not teachers or parents or gods or angels. There's no pressure for us to perform for them or to be "good enough" clients. They have to live up to what we need. There's no shortage of therapists, so if one doesn't work out, we're free to find another. Therapy isn't jail, but I see people just clinging to unhealthy situations as if there were no alternatives. It makes me sad.

On the forum recently, someone was having trouble extricating himself from a therapist who claimed that he couldn't leave her. To me, there's no gray area in a situation like this. If the person is asking my input, I'm going to give it!

In a perfect world, every therapist would be gifted and caring, and every client would be on the way to enlightenment and recovery. Since it ain't necessarily so, we have a forum for complaining, venting, ranting, encouraging, supporting, occasionally celebrating, and giving reality checks when they're desperately needed.

If it was a perfect world, all the posts would be: "Wow, my therapist was so amazing, I had such a great session." And all the responses would be, "Hey, that's great!"

Unfortunately we're not there, so why not call it what it is?

My one wish for everyone on this board would be:

Trust yourself.
Take care of yourself.
Exercise good judgment.

And - if your therapist sucks, kick 'em to the curb!

Oh - did you see how many views this thread has gotten? I don't seem to be having any kind of negative effect on your discussion by that measure.

Did DocJohn change the guidelines when I wasn't looking? You're right, we can all judge; it doesn't take any effort at all to write, that's wrong, T's an a s s hat. But to squeeze the positive out of a situation, to put yourself in the other person's shoes, to try to find another choice or perspective, takes time and thoughtfulness. And again, the "desperation" is coming from you. We were tuned into each other from the beginning, the same wit, the same quickness, etc. Have you started a thread or are you just a commenter, like me? if you could help me figure THAT one out...

Oh gawd yes Hank, I've started tons of threads here! And you've helped me on quite a few of my questions! You don't remember? Oh, I'm hurt, lol

Yeah, I appreciated your take on my new T - you know, the huggy guy? He started out as a bit of an asshat, but he's pretty promising overall, so I'll give him a fair shot, as per your admirably even-handed assessment of the sitch

Love your humor too!

"Therapists are our employed helpers. They're not teachers or parents or gods or angels. There's no pressure for us to perform for them or to be "good enough" clients. They have to live up to what we need. There's no shortage of therapists, so if one doesn't work out, we're free to find another."

I agree