Did my T screw up royally or oversensitive me?

My T and I have been working hard this past month, we've had a few ruptures and we have really been working through them together. At times I have said to him, I think you F--- up here, and he is willing to here this and work through it to do better work....

***trigger**** for mention of SA

so, we have been very slowing getting to the experiences from my past, I went into actual details for the first time instead of generally refering to it....I stopped at a certain point but it was the begining of the uncomforatable stuff. HERE IS MY CONCERN: when I gave details, I left it (very much on purpose) gender neutral as to who the assaulter in this particular incident was. I never said he or she I only referred to it as "this person".

The next time we met, he brought up what I had talked about and went ahead assigned a gender to the assaulter, ---and he is wrong. I stopped him from talking and just didn't know what to think. I mean, maybe it is natural (on his part) to assume it was a male but it wasn't. Now, I know he was listening, but how could he not have known I was being very careful not to reveal the identity?

Is this a colassal f-up on his part? An understandable mistake? Does it mean he wasn't really listenting? I am not sure how to interpret this?

i think any T could make this mistake. however, it is normal to leave out details. I do that too. I only wonder how or what you are going to do to correct him- that is, if you still don't want to reveal any details.

I don't think he messed up at all. He made an assumption, but you had left the gender open so it is pretty natural to assign a gender in your head. I don't really understand why you kept it a gender mystery. That is important information that you probably need to share with him. Why not consider telling him basically what you wrote about your decision to not give the gender and you reacted when he mistakenly used the wrong gender (again, an honest mistake).

You did not specify the gender. He had to guess. He guessed wrong. I would not call this a massive f-up. If we want people to understand us, we have to learn to communicate with them and not make people be mind-readers, then get all upset if they're not.

Sorry for being blunt - feeling crappy today.

I didn't want him to guess. At this point, I am more comfortable if we use euphimisms like "it" or "that person".

I wasn't trying to keep it a mystery per se, it's just there is a lot of shame attahached to the fact that it was a female.....

Thus the reason you really need to share this with your T. Otherwise, you will just be skirting around a major issue for you and that just will slow down the process. Anyway, at some point he probably will clue in to the gender thing and it will be pretty obvious at that point. Cut to the chase. It will be excruciating once, but after that you won't have to keep bearing that burden by yourself.

So is the question now, how do you get him to use gender neutral words, without also specifying the gender. I see your sticky situation.

It's your therapy, your pace. You continue using gender neutral language. If T says "he" again, interrupt him and say, "IT - we're using gender neutral" and just keep repeating it until he gets the message. You can talk about the gender when YOU are ready - his not noticing it does not mean you have to talk about it sooner. I think my T takes it for granted that I don't want to talk about a lot of stuff, but really I think I'm just clueless, unfortunately.

precious, I get the shame of it being another female. I have had to correct my T at least once, and I was even pretty open in the beginning about it being another female. I think it is REALLY hard for people to think of a woman as a sexual offender. I still get the shakes every time I try to talk about it (or type about it, like now). I would not be too hard on your T. The gender of a sex offender being male is the predominant assumption most people make.

((((Precious)))) I get this. I am so sorry that you were so hurt. I had a doctor step over the line when I was 19. As I told my T, I was also gender nutral (and I am an open lesbian). But I had a very difficult time accepting that the one who did that to me was another female. My T did the same thing with assigning the doctor the male role. I corrected him and then dissociated. It was a very painful topic for me.

You don't have to say the words that hurt to your T. But you can say "You are wrong about an assumption you made." There are ways to indirectly acknowledge painful situations in therapy without stating facts.

BIG hugs!!!!!

It is very difficult to talk about someone in gender-neutral tones.
It is also very difficult not to guess someone's gender. (For many weeks I thought Stopdog was a man.)
I'm sure it was all unconscious on T's part.

You could call him on this: "I never said if it was a man or a woman. Please don't guess."

I like that phrasing. I think it gets the point across that we will discuss this later.

I don't think your T screwed up royally. I don't think this was a colossal f-up. I think your T made an assumption. You can correct his assumption if you like. I think this was a difficult topic for you to start talking about--maybe focusing on your T's words is helping distract you from continuing to work on this experience from your past. I have ways of avoiding hard topics in therapy too.

I hope you can get back to this really important topic from your past. Kudos to you for making a start on it. So hard...

I think an important part of communication is being very clear. When things are a fog, we have our hands out in front of us and we guess. They get it wrong. They are human doing the best they can with the information given. To continue to skirt the issue puts you in a place to continue punishing your T silently for getting it wrong, when he's not being given all the information it's hardly fair when he's trying to help.

I think it's an extremely important, sensitive topic. And every thing feels triggered and scary and inflamed. Look at ways T can soothe you and make this better.

I just want to diverge a bit from what everyone else is saying to you.

I don't think it is anything to have a rupture over or that it makes your T bad, but I think it is ok for you to expect T to have picked up on the gender neutral words. It is one of those things that deviates from the norm of description. For instance, I was once talking about verbal abuse and couldn't say the word abuse. I kept saying "verbal whatever". T called me on it the second time.

I just wanted you to know that it is not necessarily ridiculous to hope or expect them to notice.

Thanks, Fixated. I've been trying to phrase a similar post. That T did screw up - whether it was a huge screwup or not depends on your POV of course, but a T shouldn't make that kind of error.

I don't think saying "this person" necessarily implies gender neutrality that the therapist should have picked up on. It can also be used as a way to avoid saying "my father" or "my uncle" or "my male teacher" etc. The therapist may very well have noticed the use of non-identifying information but perhaps chose not to address it immediately since this was the first time Precious Things offered details and she was having a very difficult time talking about it. I think it's unfair to assume that he should have noticed but didn't, or that he should have used the same non-identifying words Precious Things used, because without asking him why, we have no way to know what he was thinking or what his reason may have been for assigning gender to the abuser. If he thought that Precious Things was being relationship neutral rather than gender neutral, maybe he assigned a gender to help her feel more comfortable talking about details. There could be many reasons for his use of the word "he" and I think, like Stormyangels said, it's hardly fair to blame him for getting it wrong when he wasn't given enough information in the first place.

Are you making an assumption (that he screwed up) based on his assumption (guessing the gender of your abuser)?

I thought part of a T's job was to go down the path with the client. Even if it weren't about gender and were instead about the relationship of the person to Precious Things, it would still be important for T to realize that and mirror it until he found an appropriate time to broach the why of the word choice.

I am not suggesting that Precious Things' T should be lambasted for this, but I wanted her to know that I thought her feelings about a T noticing those things was valid.

Good idea, and then talk about how it bothered you that he assumed, and what that is about.

Why should a therapist go down the same path if it leads to colluding with the client? An "appropriate time to broach the why" is very subjective, and without asking the therapist why he chose that time or those words, we are making assumptions about what he should have said or done when we don't have all the information we need either, because we still don't even know that he didn't notice.

I feel like you are taking my thought to an extreme as far as being right or wrong. It is not colluding with them to stagnate change. Let's say this issue weren't about words but about touch. What if the T was a hugger and the client hated touch. T hugs client but client doesn't hug back. T decides it must be the hugs so he goes to handshakes instead of no touch (I.e. Mirroring client) or asking and client is still uncomfortable.

I'm sorry but I don't understand the comparison. To me the whole issue was about not communicating effectively and then being upset when the other person appears to have made an assumption. Sorry if I wasn't clear about what I was trying to convey.

Offensive message removed. I didn't mean to cause offense. This is a hot-button topic for me and I apologise for jumping in with my steamroller opinions.

precious things, I hope you're doing OK, and I hope you can raise this with your T. To address your first question: from my POV you are not being oversensitive.

Huh? I think we're all jumping to conclusions now and I'm too confused to respond anymore.