The Early Years - script for my next session

There is some left-over pain from the early years that I have not yet resolved.

When I first came to you, I suffered from a number of limitations, including:
1· I was largely blind to love
2· I received silence as hostility
3· I receive explanation as blame
I can summarise this by saying that I was profoundly pessimistic and sometimes paranoid in my emotional perception.

In response, I needed you to very warm, flexible and clear. That is not how I saw you. I saw you as cold, inflexible, and inarticulate.

In my heart, this is a fact. You were cold, inflexible and inarticulate. I responded with incomprehension and anger. I still feel today that you failed to compensate for my limitations. I don’t even know if you were trying to do so.

I never felt that you were taking my pain seriously. I told you that, often, but it made no difference. I don’t recall that you even acknowledged my complaint.

Now we come to the ruptures.

I don’t recall that you have ever accepted any responsibility for the ruptures. You always remind me that it was my choice to leave. That is true, of course, but it feels like you are blaming me for the whole thing.

When a client, especially a client who might be emotionally fragile, feels that his or her therapist has been either insensitive or doesn't hear or understand what the client is saying, the client often experiences this as a rupture in treatment.

The most important part of repairing a rupture in treatment is for the therapist to be able to acknowledge that he or she made a mistake. Except for the most narcissistic psychotherapists, most therapists can and will do this. Even if it wasn't originally perceived as a "mistake" by the therapist, once the client feels misunderstood or not heard, the therapist needs to acknowledge and take responsibility for it.

Can't,
Why are we all going through similar issues? I'm so sorry you are in so much pain. I've been where you are, and am in an agonizing place at the moment, but I hope I will be able to help. I do the same thing, research articles, etc., to help explain what is going on with me/in the therapeutical relationship. I apologize if I am projecting, but I identify with you coming up with evidence to support and validate how you feel BUT then not believing it. Do you need your therapist to own what is his, because you don't know what is yours (I do)? When my xtherapist and I have been in ruptures, and he has been vulnerable/courageous enough to own his stuff, it is so reparative and felt like a mountain was lifted off my shoulders. Now that I will never have closure, I am stuck spinning my wheels, compulsively trying to solve this problem that will never be solved.

I don't know your story of how/why you left your therapist, but ruptures are a two-way street. If you feel like he wasn't validating your experience, or your sense of self, then he wasn't. Period. If he was, you would have felt it. Of course, there is always our stuff that we bring to the table, but one thing about psychotherapy patients is that we know when we are getting what we need, BUT we don't know when we aren't getting what we need because we don't believe in ourselves as we are fragmented. We try to change the therapist that isn't giving us what we need (as if we were going back in time and repairing the old relationship). We want our therapists to admit their faults and accept us for who we are so we can process that all relationship ruptures aren't due to us being repulsive. I know I'm projecting, but I felt like maybe this is what you are experiencing, so please let me know if this is how you feel. We can all compare notes on our agony experiences.
I'm annoyed, quite honestly, that your therapist told you that it was your choice to leave, as if he is completely innocent. It may be factual that you chose to leave, but he is failing to own his part and his own empathic failure. I wish therapists would understand that it would be helpful to say, I want to meet your needs, but because of who I am, not because of who you are, I don't know if I have the resources to pull from and I don't want to commit to you and then up and leave. Instead, they say, I can't be who you want me to be, when really it is us who can't be the independent people they want us to be.
I hope things get better for you. I feel like I keep rambling the same words over and over.

Is this referring to initial work with current T or an old T ... if it's the current one that's good you are trying to work through left over hangover effects from old ruptures I hope she hears and responds to this and works with you

is this the only T you've ever had? Yalom says the hardest thing to do is to get the client to accept responsibility, as in creative ownership. My previous T's used to ask me, what was the payoff for continuing down my path, for not changing? Can you answer that question for yourself yet? I think when you can embrace that answer, your anger will both right-size and correct its direction.

ETA: Ms Ferraro is somewhat "therapy light". She describes one very minor type of rupture. You would blow her butt out the window the first session.

I'm not anything like as angry today as I was eight years ago when these events happened.

Watching other people go through their ruptures reminds of how I felt.
And other people's Ts seem more willing to admit their mistakes and apologise. Why not mine?

Yup, that's exactly what I'm saying.

I'm not one where the T "admits" responsibility all the time. I've been seeing him for over a year, and honestly, we don't think in terms of responsibility, blame, who's at fault, etc. I'm not sure why, but I simply don't think in those terms. I learned a while back to accept responsibility for my own actions, so at least there's one hurdle I've gotten over.

We have misunderstandings and miscommunications, but it does not come down to blame. He does something, I am hurt. Or I do something and he is hurt. Where is the blame????? Neither one of us intentionally means to hurt the other. I just don't get where everything has to come down to one party is GUILTY (i.e., to blame) and the other party is innocent (i.e., requires an apology). I must be missing something.... How about the concept of equal responsibility for a simple misunderstanding????

There is a transference under this. I worked with too many powerful women (beginning with my mother) who never admitted mistakes and never apologised. This is T's opportunity to show me that a different outcome is possible.

I am experiencing your post as hostile.

Now this makes sense to me. This is what therapy is all about. The chance to discover these things and work them out. Having someone close to you with that kind of power and never admitted that they were human - that's powerful stuff. I hope you're working with your T on this, and I'm pretty sure you are, from other posts you've made. Always feeling "in the wrong" can make you feel powerless and insignificant - not good!! The power differential with your mother was totally skewed - you were a kid, for heaven's sake! Total imbalance. Thanks for clarifying this.

I agree with you CE. The therapist should step into the client's reality and apologize. It's doesn't matter if what happened was a cognitive distortion or whatever. The acknowledgment of that can come later as and when the client is ready.

FWIW, I think the last thing most therapists want to do is have ruptures, or misunderstandings, or inadvertently cause hurt to their patients.

But it happens.

Once the therapist does apologize, however, some of the hardest work *we* have to do is accept that apology. Fully. And without blame or shaming the therapist.

It helps to model and understand conflict resolution and really can move the relationship forward. It really can be a corrective experience, not in a "I won" type way, but that the relationship can withstand bumps and bruises and still be strong.

Good luck. I hope this ends up productive for you.

I don't recall my T ever apologizing for any of the ruptures that we've had that his words/actions played a role. Instead, we focus on the result - how I felt, how we handled the situation, what worked and what didn't work.

I grew up in a household where I was the scapegoat who was "blamed" for a lot. I've had the desire for T to "own his piece" of the rupture and to apologize....but I've learned that it's a lot more powerful, for me, to understand that blame doesn't have to play a role.

I'm sorry, I didn't mean it that way. What I was trying to say, was that I complained a LOT to my current T about prev T's, asking him, "Why didn't they TELL me y when I told them x? It so obviously follows!" Only to realize later, they DID tell me y, only I heard it as z. That is where I "felt" my responsibility.
If that does not jibe with your experience, then fine. That's why I asked if you had other T's or just the one to compare. Dummy me, I had several telling me the same crap. I think it was a conspiracy...

I've had one minor rupture with my T, which I attributed to me being paranoid and not understanding why he did something. When we talked about it, he totally took responsibility for triggering my mistrust. He said he should have realized how what he did would look to someone with my background of manipulative abuse. The fact that he did that blew me away. I had never put any of it on him and yet he took it all on his shoulders.

I never had a rupture with a previous therapist. Either I wasn't ready for ruptures or I wasn't sufficiently attached. Which may be two ways of saying the same thing.

Or maybe they just didn't piss you off? Seriously, attachment doesn't equal anger. Relationships have their ups and downs, but frustration and turmoil don't have to co-exist with attachment. It kind of seems like you want to be right. You want her to be wrong and admit that, what if she wasn't? I really don't believe you can blanket all therapy and say the T is always wrong and should always apologize.

I hope you can work thru this CE. I am just posting an opposing thought, not coming down on you. I appreciate the hard work you do with your t.

I guess that's the sort of thing I'm talking about.
I'm not getting it from my T.