[Chopin99]

Thank you to all who gave me feedback in my other thread. I am now posting the entire session together so that it might make more sense. If you manage to read this entire post, thank you, thank you, thank you!! To those who respond, you do not know how much I appreciate it!!!!!!! I want to receive insight so that I can get to the root of my issues.

I sat down in the waiting room and she came around the corner and loudly *said my name. She didn't look at me as I entered her office and ignored me for a full minute fiddling with something at her desk before sitting down in her chair. This conversation commenced:

T: So?
Me: So...what?
T: *Silently glares at me.*
Me: Are you referring to my email?
T: Yes. How do you feel about it today?
Me: I don't care (she did not allow me to speak after these words).

She exploded: "Well fine then. That's your choice. If you don't care about it anymore, there's certainly nothing I can do about it." *She positioned herself in her chair somewhat sideways, crossed her arms, turned her head slightly toward me, narrowed her eyes, and glared at me breathing heavily.

She was angry. *While she was sitting there, her face turned red, a vein on her forehead popped out, and she began to break out in red splotches on her face and neck. *I had never seen her react this way and it frightened me. *I didn't know what to do. *I worried that the next thing that was going to come out of her mouth was going to be, "get out...I'm done with you."

Thankfully, she did not, but instead began to scold me like a child (speaking very quickly in a raised voice). *"You're just following your typical pattern. *Either I'm the best thing in the world or I don't mean anything to you. *When are you ever going to learn not to react that way? *Either things are wonderful or they're crap. *Well you know what, life sucks sometimes and that's never going to change!"

Woah. *In my email, I never said that she didn't mean anything to me. *I stated that I perceived her last session as aloof and distant. *I also said I knew it may not have been about me. *It was also not the reason why I said, "I don't care."

Finally, I said (calmly but firmly), "T, please let me finish my sentence. *'I don't care' wasn't the entirety of it. *I want to tell you why I don't care. *I think you've misunderstood me. *I don't care about the email anymore because I got past it. *I did have to numb my feelings somewhat to do so, but I moved on. *In fact, by yesterday, I was enjoying the change in my job. *I was working with my old clients again. *I've missed them. *I realized also that through this therapy process, I've learned confidence. *I was able to look my soon-to-be-employees in the eye and tell them what I expect and what they need to expect from me."

Thank you to all who have given me feedback.

In response to my explanation of how I moved past the email, T said (still sounding angry to me), "Well, this is just your pattern. Either I'm the greatest person in the world or you hate me. If I go back in your permanent file, where I've printed out all your emails and stored them, there are pages upon pages of this."

This surprised me. The only attributes I ascribed to her were that she appeared aloof and distant. I owned that as my perception. I did not ascribe love or hate, idealization or condemnation. I owned my own stuff in the email. While I realize she has every right to print out all my emails, she knows very well that I don't like it. I felt as if she were trying to throw that specifically in my face.

I said, "That's not true for this email, T. I simply said I perceived you as aloof and distant. The email stated that I realize that my perception could be untrue, or if it was true, there could be many reasons that have nothing to do with me. That is different than emails in the past. I also haven't sent you an emotionally-loaded email in months."

She was glaring at me the entire time.

I told her what bothered me the most was that in the email, I asked for an appointment and she did not respond. She said, "If you wanted an appointment so damn bad, why didn't you call the office? I don't handle appointments via email."

Once again, I was floored. T and I have been handling appointment requests and changes via email for a solid year. She told me that she liked doing it that way because the front office had screwed up her appointments (double bookings, not notifying her of cancellations, etc.). It never even occurred to me to call the office. The last time I did, they screwed stuff up.

So I told T that we had been changing and scheduling appointments for months via email so I never thought to call the office. I said I figured since she didn't reply, she was either booked or wanted me to process things myself. She calmed down some, but was still irate. She asked me if I realized she didn't always read emails when they are sent. I said I did, but she had always responded to any email requesting a session within 24 hours and usually much sooner than that. She said, "I try to read emails within 24-48 hours." I said, "Well, I wasn't assuming the worst this time." She said, "Most of the time you do. That's your pattern. You've lost 12 months worth of progress. I said, "I'm really working to break out of that pattern and I think I'm doing better." I was shocked she made the statement that out of one email, I'd lost a entire year's progress. It was at this point, I thought about leaving because I was so hurt.

I started to say something else and after the first couple of words, her phone went off audibly. That's only happened twice in my 20 months with her. Instead of jumping up apologizing for her phone not being on vibrate and switching it to vibrte, she just sat there. I completely lost my train of thought and said to myself, "Well, I feel stupid."

T became worked up/angry-sounding again. She said, "Because you lost your train of thought? How many times have I lost my train of thought and you told me you understood that. Do you actually think I'm stupid when I do that? Have you been lying to me" I said, "No T, you know full well I am harder on myself than anyone else in this world." I began to cry a little. It was all becoming too much.

She stayed silent for a minute alternately glaring at me and looking away. She calmed down a bit and asked, "How did you really manage to get past the email?" I said, "Like I told you before, I numbed out a bit which I didn't like, but honestly working with my clients again Monday got me out of the numbness."

I continued, "I didn't like the fact that last week, it felt like I was going backwards. Not a year's worth of backwards, but slipping a bit." She asked me, "Okay, so how does it all make you feel?"

I built up my "20 seconds of courage" and said, "I feel hurt." She asked me what feeling hurt meant. I said it makes me feel unworthy again, like I'm nothing and nobody. I went on to say, "I feel like a child again with my mother. I made a single solitary mistake (the email), and I get blamed again for things I've done in my past. It reminds me of my mother, overreacting and scolding me. I made one mistake and your behavior causes me to react thinking it's not safe to make a mistake or I'm going to make you angry. I don't like you being angry at me."

She reacted defensively/irately, "I'm not angry at you. I don't feel anything regarding your email. Your email doesn't hurt me. Clients can't hurt me."

That shut me down. I started crying. I was probably silent for 3-5 minutes. I managed to look around the room once while I was crying and T was looking up at the ceiling. Her face looked irritated. Her neck was still broken out in splotches. I just sat and cried silently, taking tissues from the box and blowing and wiping my nose. Which was fine until I realized the 3rd tissue I took was the last one in the box. I actually picked up the box and looked inside. T said, "Is it empty?" I nodded. She ran out of the room to the supply closet, shutting the door, but it didn't latch, so it opened itself all the way. There we're people in the hallway. I felt humiliated. I turned away from the door. T came back with a fresh box of tissues. She had opened the box for me. She took the other box from me and told me to place my used tissues in the empty box. She threw it away and sat down. I looked at her face. She was looking at me sadly.

So I looked back at her. We looked at each other for a few moments. She asked, "Why did you say you felt stupid when you lost your train of thought?" I said it was because I didn't want to appear weak to her. She asked why. I said, "If I appear weak, you have the upper hand in the argument. I wanted to appear strong because it would give me a sense of control over the situation." She replied, "Well for one, we weren't arguing. I was not angry. I was just telling you the truth. Two, you know you can't control anything. Control just doesn't exist. We're not in control of anything, God is." I said, "But we can control ourselves. We can choose how we react to things." She replied, "Well, I wouldn't call it control. I'd call it...oh, I don't know what I'd call it, but it's not control. Control doesn't exist."

My head was spinning because she was making no sense to me. She was presenting her opinion as truth and telling me that self-control doesn't exist. I felt a bit gaslighted. T has a pattern too. She owns every positive emotion she feels regarding and/or about me. She has never owned up to feeling negative emotions regarding and/or about me. She becomes defensive, then denies she feels anything. She's fine. She doesn't feel negative emotions about clients. We can't affect her that way.

So I asked if what happened at the beginning of session was a technique. She said it was not. She "knew better" than to use techniques on me because I recognize and thwart them because of my education and experience in the MH field.

By this point, I felt fragile, defenseless, and defeated. I said, "I feel like I am no longer allowed to need you; to send an email requesting help is wrong." She said, "There was nothing wrong with your email..."

My thought: Then WTF was the first 30 minutes of session?

"...there's nothing wrong with asking for help. You just have to realize that people may not be available all the time to help."

Fair enough. That's the truth. She again became agitated, "Why can't you learn how to manage your own emotions? You have tons of skills to use; make sure they are readily available. Don't you realize that life sucks and it's always gonna suck and you're not going to be in therapy forever?"

I said, "Just FYI, I don't like it when you talk about the end of therapy. I'm not there yet, and I haven't dealt with the worst stuff yet. I still need your support for that time." She responded, "The end of therapy upsets you? Why the heck would you get upset over the truth? I should be able to speak truth without upsetting you. And why do you need my support to talk about the hardest stuff? Why can't you just talk about it because you know you'll be better once you do."

I was speechless. My mind actually went to a couple of my own clients I'd helped Monday. One has OCD and being a former extreme sufferer of OCD and a mild sufferer now, my heart ached for her Monday evening. I tried to talk to her, give her strategies and help, but realized there was nothing I could do to help her. The OCD had taken over. I started crying again, harder this time. I looked up at T, chuckled and said, "I guess I'm thawing out." She smiled a little and replied, "Well, don't get my couch wet." I gave her a look that clearly said WTF and said, "I'm not crying that hard." She explained she didn't mean the crying, but if I was thawing, I was turning ice to water and I'd leave a puddle.

I explained about my client and trying to help her. T looked at me with tears in her own eyes. I thought to myself, "She empathizes with this. My T is still in there." That didn't last long.

"You know that sometimes what you do with your clients isn't going to work. You have to let it go. God has a plan for their suffering. You can't let your clients get to you like that."

There is truth there, but really, T? That's where you're going with this after all the talks during sessions past about how much you individually like and love every one of your clients and think about us outside of session? That you set aside time every day at home to pray for each one of us depending on our issues. That you work very hard outside of work on your own 'stuff' both internal and external so that it won't get in the way?

She then abruptly changed the subject and stated that I'd always lived by my feelings, I just didn't recognize them. I wanted to ask if she knew the definition of 'numb'. She then looked out the window and asked me if it was raining. I told her it was.

I felt so weary and beat down by this point, I went into sarcastic mode. I said it was nice to know that I'm acting "borderline" (she used the term earlier in the session...I can't remember every detail ), I've always lived by my feelings even when I was numb, and I've lost 12 months worth of progress.

She looked at me and said (dead serious), "I don't think you've lost 12 months; maybe 6." I said I didn't believe I'd lost any months, I just made a mistake. She then said, "Well, you're probably right." I asked her if she was okay, that I perceived something was wrong. She said, "Well yeah...it's been a long day. I mean a long day. I've had a scratchy throat for a couple of days now. And I've been eating pecans all day and they gave me indigestion."



She said the was one last thing we needed to discuss before I go. That sounded ominous to me. "You brought up a couple of sessions ago that you wanted to work on respecting my time boundaries. Let me explain something. You said in your email if I hadn't started setting up for my Skype session that you would have took a coupe of minutes to explain how you were feeling. That would not be respecting my time boundaries. If you have something like that, you need to wait until your next session, even if you're my last client of the day." I agreed with no qualms.

I reminded her that I didn't have a session scheduled next week. She said the only day she had a 4 pm available was next Thursday. I said okay, put it in my phone and grabbed my stuff to go before she opened the door. I wished her a good week and started to walk out. She stopped me with her arm and pulled me into a very tight hug. She said, "I love you." I was speechless for a moment and didn't say it back. I said, "I'm sorry I disappointed you." She let go of me and said, "You didn't disappoint me. Clients don't disappoint me. They frustrate me sometimes (frustrate is the only negative feeling she ascribes to clients). I hope you realize that no matter what disagreements, then quickly said 'mishaps' that happen in here, our relationship doesn't change. It won't change. I want you to learn that in other relationships too. Have a good week." I left.

[LoneWolfie]

Chopin, I read the whole post and I am speechless. My head is spinning just from reading it and would have run for the door at the first chance I got.

I applaud you for sticking through the whole session. Hopefully now that everything seems to be out on the table you can both move forward.

I know when my t/psychiatrist has gotten loud verbally about my self harm she scares the **** out of me. She has also come out with flippant remarks when she is frustrated I am learning.

I guess they are human after all but I still think she went way over the line and put you through the wringer.

[Asiablue]

Wow!

You did amazing to stay in that room. There is def something going on with your T. She was confusing and angry and withholding of her care in my opinion. I think it was sHE who was acting "borderline" lol the push and pull, the anger then the "i love you" behaviour.

You handled it all soooo well, it was like you were the adult/therapist and she was the surly teen child/client.
And her little mantra about clients not being able to affect her is B.S . In my opinion that's like a little safety mechanism she has when she's feeling overwhelmed or threatened . Like denial that she can be touched by her clients.

[Fixated]

Wow. If even just half of this is true, that's crazy. I am sorry you had to go through this.

Choppin, I know you have a deep bond with your T and that there are certain situational things that limit you in finding Ts, but I don't think she is totally healthy for you. Consistency really is a necessary quality for Ts to have. Yours seems to waffle a lot. It is causing you so much angst and hurt.

I respect your choices, but if a friend or family member came to me with this situation, I would adamantly tell them to look for other options somewhere.

I wish you luck in resolving this.

[struggling2]

wow, just wow chopin. im almost in tears for you and i never cry! her behavior was so bizarre. SO bizarre! And MEAN!

i also applaud you for sticking through the whole session. ive been with my T long enough that if she's tired or having a bad day or just seems off... i can tell right away. and it throws my whole mood off immediately and i want to leave. i cant imagine having a session like you just did....but i really think you stood your ground and didnt let her mood completely control you. any person would've been upset/bewildered/etc...but you stuck with it and didnt cower to it. GO YOU!

Whatever is going on with you T, I think she was a little out of line. Arent they supposed to be able to control/contain their emotions better than that?

[struggling2]

i agree with Asia too.....in that session it seems you were the therapist and she was being the borderline out of control client.

Chopin you completely were amazing to stay in the room. I am speechless too. I can't even imagine making it through something like that I can't even fathom what I would do if my t did that to me. Curl up in a ball and cry, or throw something at her, or just stomp out and slam the door I don't know. I agree with Asia her saying that clients can't affect her sounds like one of those classic "the lady doth protest too much" kind of things. None of us were there of course, but man, the way you describe it, sounds like your t has some MAJOR issues of her own, and I hope that she has her own analyst to help her figure this out so she doesn't have to affect you this way. In my opinion that was way unfair to you for her to dump all of her crap on you, the paying client. She owes YOU for this session in my humble opinion.

that really touched a nerve with me, I'm not usually so opinionated on here! I hope I didn't offend you or anybody else. But just wow. How awful for you. I'm so sorry you had to go through that! (((((Chopin)))))

[Syra]

I read the whole thing. My heart aches for you, and yet I also see strength and am proud of you. Maintaining what you know in the face of a judging therapist can be very difficult. Telling others is also scary - well, it was for me. It sounds unbelievable. I suspect I might question it, thinking how could she be that unaware and judgmental if she has a lot of experience and you are clearly attached to her. But I've BTDT - I think. I don't tell exactly the same story. But close enough. A therapist blaming and judging me and not being aware of her own feelings and her issues intruding on my therapy. Withdrawing from me while saying she isn't. So I know it can happen. That person is not my therapist anymore - that was due to her decisions until eventually I got a "Dear John" letter. I didn't want that, although I wasn't willing to do the few things she asked along the way. That would have required me to hide or repress something major about me and my experience of everything, and I couldn't make myself do that. It was probably one of the best things to happen to me. I'm with someone new, and learning lots of new stuff - and also learning I'm not near so pathological as I believed when I was with her. And I wonder about why I hung on so long. I want to say I won't do that again, but I'm not sure that's true.

I wish you grace as you go through this.

[mixedup_emotions]

Wow, Chopin....That sounds so awful.

I'm curious, though, how your T would describe the session. Might be a worthwhile discussion. Her perception may be very different - and there might be some value in exploring it.

I hope you can get another session with T soon so you can work through this. ((HUGS))

[skysblue]

'Stunned' is probably a word much too mild to describe my reaction to your session. For me, being very sensitive, this kind of 'therapy' would not be useful or helpful but damaging. So, I'm curious, do you find this therapeutic? If so, can you explain how?

[Anne2.0]

This is what I am mostly referencing:

I went on to say, "I feel like a child again with my mother. I made a single solitary mistake (the email), and I get blamed again for things I've done in my past. It reminds me of my mother, overreacting and scolding me. I made one mistake and your behavior causes me to react thinking it's not safe to make a mistake or I'm going to make you angry. I don't like you being angry at me."

She reacted defensively/irately, "I'm not angry at you. I don't feel anything regarding your email. Your email doesn't hurt me. Clients can't hurt me."

That shut me down. I started crying. I was probably silent for 3-5 minutes. I managed to look around the room once while I was crying and T was looking up at the ceiling. Her face looked irritated. Her neck was still broken out in splotches.

For me, anytime I feel like a child again, it's a big clue that I'm bringing something into the room that isn't there. I would also frame this interaction as partly about taking communication at face value, which I think you reference specifically in your last post (I couldn't find it in this one, at the least). It was in describing your T's reaction to your last email, that she didn't take what you said at face value.

This interaction would have been painful for me to experience because it seems like there is no win/win; it's only lose/lose. Either she is angry because of my mistake, and my perceptions are accurate, or my perceptions are inaccurate, and for whatever reason, I'm seeing things that aren't there.

One thing I'm pretty sure this isn't is gaslighting. Gaslighting is intentional crazy making by trying to get someone to doubt their perceptions of reality. Whatever was going on, I would have a hard time believing that your T was intentionally messing with you. There is absolutely no therapeutic value in this and I believe that she was being honest, maybe too honest, in what she said. Doesn't make her "right", of course. But I also have a hard time imagining that she would lie to you about what she was or wasn't feeling, and I also have a hard time imagining that she couldn't tell if she was angry.

So what would it mean if she really wasn't angry, and you were misinterpreting the multiple signals you identify as being associated with anger? One thing I know is that some women, when they get hot flashes, get blotchy and rashy-looking, faces flush, veins pop out, eyes bulge and look glassy. And sometimes when the hot flashes hit, they immobilize them and they can't talk or move until they subside. This could look like they are ignoring whatever or whoever is around them.

I have learned so much in the past year about accepting what people say at face value, especially with my T. I am always commenting on what I'm reading in his facial expressions or his words, and if I can do it in the moment, I learn about how distorted my ideas about what he's thinking and feeling are. It was years ago, and outside T, but a woman who served as a mentor to me on my first professional job helped me understand just how much I can distort what I perceive directed at me by other people. Actually, she didn't really help me understand directly, it was indirectly as I one day had an interaction with her that made me completely revisit the pattern of recent interactions. I had become convinced that she was coercing/pressuring me in a certain direction, until one day she said and did something that made me realize that she was encouraging me, in reality, to just follow my own path. It was like the pieces of the picture I was looking at broke apart and reformed into something completely different. I was stunned at how cleverly I could distort single interactions to conform to what I believed.

One session in T not that long ago, T was telling a story and I attached some emotional response he had to it. I was too chicken to say it outloud then, but I raised it the next session. As I asked him to confirm or disconfirm whether I was "right", I realized that being able to accurate read others was really important to me. It was a survival skill from childhood, and if I could read my abuser accurately, I might be able to avoid the ****storm that might follow or at least be able to prepare for it arriving. To be wrong about reading others felt devastating to me.

Since then, I've come to accept (in a general way, not completely or perfectly) that I can be wrong in reading other people. It is also such a relief to operate based on what people do and say, rather than my perceptions of this. And I've learned to check in with people and be more gentle and open to people telling me what they are thinking and feeling, and their perceptions of whatever interaction we might have had. It is such a truism that 2 people can be present for the same interaction and see it completely differently. I worry less about being right about my perceptions and more about just trying to see if there is anything useful in what the other person shared with me.

It's my sense that something important happened in this last session. Feeling confusion and distress and generally out of sorts doesn't have to mean that something bad happened. It might be a useful exercise for you to isolate the messages that she was giving you sans your emotional responses to them, and see if there is something there to work with. Otherwise, I think processing this session in your next one will be really eye-opening, I think. But it may require you to accept what she has to say at face value, as you expect her to do of your communications, and perhaps come to peace with this is one of those times where people just see things differently.

Finally, I'm going to recommend that you stop sending your T emails. Clearly there is something that she sees as a pattern in these emails and it doesn't sound like she knows how to respond therapeutically. I think your sessions will have better boundaries if you contain them to the spoken words in sessions. Or call her if you feel you need to communicate between sessions.

Peace and comfort directed your way, though.

[critterlady]

Oh, Chopin, what an ordeal.

The first time I saw anything about your T was back when I first joined PC. You were having an issue about her not being accepting of sexualities other than straight. Since then, at least, it seems that she has wild fluctuations in her boundaries, approaches, and moods. I don't know how you can keep your head from spinning. I know she's gone through some really difficult stuff of her own, but it's her job to keep that out of her work with clients.

One of the things I value most about my T is his rock-solid steadiness. I'm sure he's had his own issues in the time I've seen him, but I've never been able to tell by our work. He's consistent. I know that if I bring up something negative about our relationship, he's going to work to understand why I think the way I do, own his part of it, and explain how he'll do things differently to avoid the problem in the future. If it's an issue about me, he helps me to see the other choices I could have made, but always, always, accepts me.

I've never gotten a sense of consistency from your descriptions of your T. It seems like a rollercoaster for you. I really wish it wasn't.

[CantExplain]

T seems to be angry that you see things in black and white and keep flipping between them.

But a lot of patients (eg me) are like that at some stage in their journey and she should be used to it.

Also, I think she is reading your emails as blacker than you write them. This is always a danger with emails.

[SallyBrown]

Damn! Who's the crazy one in THIS scenario??

I think you put your finger on something really important here:

T has a pattern too. She owns every positive emotion she feels regarding and/or about me. She has never owned up to feeling negative emotions regarding and/or about me. She becomes defensive, then denies she feels anything. She's fine. She doesn't feel negative emotions about clients. We can't affect her that way.

What interests me is that she doesn't use "techniques" because she knows you will detect them because you're a MH professional -- but knowing that you are a MH professional, she also expects you to believe this. It's a bunch of poop, and reeks of denial. If she is not accepting her negative feelings about her clients, that is so obviously going to get in the way of her work with them. You feel negative emotions about the people in your care, and you KNOW the answer is not to deny your feelings, but to recognize them and work through them on your own time such that you can be present for them.

I mean with all of this:

"Well for one, we weren't arguing. I was not angry."

"I'm not angry at you. I don't feel anything regarding your email. Your email doesn't hurt me. Clients can't hurt me."

For one, I feel like you could take the second out of a poorly-written novel about a therapist who isn't coming to grips with her personal feelings about her clients. For another, she must not have realized that she was displaying physical signs of anger. We could argue about what specific facial expressions mean, but nothing says anger/embarrassment like red splotches. You know perfectly well she's angry and she's saying the opposite, and that is just so not... therapeutic.

And this stuff is just hostile:

"If you wanted an appointment so damn bad, why didn't you call the office? I don't handle appointments via email."

"Because you lost your train of thought? How many times have I lost my train of thought and you told me you understood that. Do you actually think I'm stupid when I do that? Have you been lying to me"

"The end of therapy upsets you? Why the heck would you get upset over the truth? I should be able to speak truth without upsetting you. And why do you need my support to talk about the hardest stuff? Why can't you just talk about it because you know you'll be better once you do."

That's some unprofessional stuff right there.

I will say that sometimes, Chopin, I get worried that you can be more preoccupied with T and what's going with her than with what's going on with you. But here, how could you possible be able to focus on yourself when she is up, down, all over the place? Putting words in your mouth and speaking for you? It's not a wonder you feel beat up.

I think you're right to point to what she says about not feeling negatively about clients. That's just not the way things work. And this shows pretty clearly how her failure to acknowledge and appropriately confront those feelings is just going end up exploding in the office. It sounds like she was using the hour to do just that, to vent those feelings and misgivings and frustrations, because she's so insistent that she doesn't have them that she doesn't use her own time to deal with them. Doesn't sound like it was therapy for YOU.

I'm so sorry you went through this .

[unaluna]

1. I like sally browns letter.
2. When your t asked you if it was raining out, I was really expecting one of you to say "squirrel!"

[~EnlightenMe~]

(((Chopin))),
I think you gained 12 months in that interaction I am really impressed with how you handled it. I hope you are able to resolve this with her and that she owns what is hers to own. Keep us posted.

[CantExplain]

Originally Posted by Chopin99

"You've lost 12 months worth of progress."

This is stupid, unprofessional, hurtful and NOT TRUE.

I've watched you grow. I've often been amazed at your progress. I've sometimes been envious. "Huh? She got past that in a couple of weeks? It took me a year to do that."

[elliemay]

I'm with CE. The "lost 12 months of progress" statment would have hurt me very very badly.

I would also likely feel very shamed and very chastised over her response to the email.

Sometimes it helps to try and see things from all points of view. Sometimes it helps to recognize what belongs in the past and what is now.

Sometimes, however, things just hurt. I see a lot in that session that would have hurt me.

I agree with you. There is something wrong with the way your therapist is interacting with you. I would likely feel as though I were being gaslighted as well.

I'm very sorry this is happening. I have absolutely no idea how I would handle it.

I wish you peace with it however, and wisdom as to what to think.

Is there anyway you can just let it "be" out there for awhile. Maybe it will look different in a couple of days?

[~EnlightenMe~]

Excellent post, Ellie May

[Lamplighter]

Chopin I’m relatively new here as a poster but have been reading for a very long time and have followed your therapy sessions with great interest. Haven’t read all of them but enough to know that you’re having a far from smooth time of it in your therapy .

Would like to say first thank you so much for posting your sessions in such detail, it’s REALLY useful and helpful (and just plain interesting too) to hear about what goes on in other people’s therapy. I learn a lot from reading about the details and the actual conversations that people have in therapy.

I am so sorry you had such an awful session. I’m not sure how you feel about it after the event – I get the impression that this kind of blindsiding and confusion is not unusual and so you might be more inured to it than I’d assume?

I have to admire you for sticking with this T, if it were me I’d have headed for the hills a very long time ago. But you strike me as having much more internal strength and self confidence than me so maybe what you are getting out of this therapy is actually helpful to you, where it wouldn’t be for me (not resilient enough to take the kinds of criticisms and boundary changes your T keeps making.)

I hope you can resolve some of the more negative exchanges that happened this session and can get back on track. And that you’re not feeling too blown away by what transpired

Torn

[Chopin99]

I keep trying to reply to all your posts, but I keep getting interrupted. Last interruption, one of my clients pulled down her pants and shat on the floor. In the living room. One staff was so close to her when it happened, she was splattered. I cleaned the mess up, my coordinator under me cleaned the client up. I told her afterward, "It's a good thing I love you."

And THAT is an appropriate mixture of frustration, disgust, and love; properly stated.

[SallyBrown]

Originally Posted by Chopin99

I keep trying to reply to all your posts, but I keep getting interrupted. Last interruption, one of my clients pulled down her pants and shat on the floor. In the living room. One staff was so close to her when it happened, she was splattered. I cleaned the mess up, my coordinator under me cleaned the client up. I told her afterward, "It's a good thing I love you."

And THAT is an appropriate mixture of frustration, disgust, and love; properly stated.

"I don't feel anything regarding your poop. Your poop doesn't disgust me. Clients can't disgust me."

[CantExplain]

Originally Posted by Chopin99

"Clients can't hurt me."

I don't believe this at all!

[Asiablue]

Originally Posted by SallyBrown

"I don't feel anything regarding your poop. Your poop doesn't disgust me. Clients can't disgust me."

Genius! lol

[CantExplain]

I'm reminded of a scene from The Lord of the Rings.

Boromir wants Frodo to give him the ring and is starting to talk wildly, menacingly.

Frodo: "You are not yourself"

And that's how it is with your T, Chopin: she is not herself.

Boromir redeemed himself before the end. I hope your T may, too.