Awful email response from T

Hello there NTLF, thanks for posting. I very much agree with your thoughts about the motivation behind using 'I'm sorry if...'. In part yeah it is a professional defence, and I imagine that my T, given that I have a lot of things I'm angry about, probably is feeling very wary of blindly taking responsibility for every criticism I level at her (this is me trying to be balanced by the way - my actual feeling is, just say you're sorry THAT, if you are, don't mess me about with ifs and buts and maybes, that just confuses me and makes me feel very very defensive, which just feeds my anger and resentment .)

Funny yeah I hadn't thought of that, about the idea of therapist failure. That they might experience my negative stuff as some kind of failure on their part, or an indictment of their competence. Jeez it's so clear to me that it's my stuff, that it's my anger that needs addressing and not what they're doing 'wrong' per se. As I said in a previous post, I've had a hell of a job finding a T who is comfortable with anger - it's obviously not something they learn about in psych 101. I should amend this sentence to say, I'm still having a hell of a job... though this T has been the most accepting so far - another reason I'm feeling devastated at the thought that maybe she can't take anger after all, it's seemed to be a potentially good therapy up to now

Thanks for the heads up about my listening to the intuitive part of me - on one hand that is something I know I should do, on the other hand if I listened to it all the time I'd be totally alone isolated alienated and in a very very black place indeed. It's why I get so screwed up by things like my T's email, I just don't have the ability to trust my own perceptions...

Lol about Ts and taking money, I have to say that's probably not what my T is doing, though of course how would I know . I do think that it was a bit of a freudian slip on her part and hopefully she'll allay at least that fear tomorrow. Well I live in hope...

Thank you Live

Feral I’m not sure how to respond to this latest post of yours – my first reaction was ‘ouch’ and having left it for a day my reaction is still ‘ouch’. I don’t feel at all supported or understood by you here and in fact feel attacked and criticized .

Um I have to ask where did ‘blind trust’ come from? I believe I spoke of having faith in my T’s competence and abilities as a professional, in the same way I would have to assume faith in the first instance in the capabilities of a doctor, dentist, solicitor - this does not seem to me to be the same as the ‘blind trust’ you are talking about – I therefore resent your categorical statement of apparent fact that my ‘blind trust’ is not at all benign (I don’t get the connection here anyway between benevolence and trust) and that I am ‘idealizing’ and that such apparent idealization is ‘unforgiving’ – a combination of words I’m not sure I understand either. I thought I was very clear that I neither trust nor idealize .

I also am surprised at your comments about my anger – again I thought I was being very clear that that IS the thing I constantly bring to therapy to be worked through – it’s not hidden or underground or passing itself off as something else, so I don’t understand your allusions to crazy making and controlling. I am very up front and honest about my anger in therapy (insofar as it’s safe to be so of course). So my T’s comment about walking on eggshells is actually on many levels undermining blaming and controlling. Whether she actually feels as you did when you had to walk on eggshells around your father is an entirely moot point because I believe that I am not and never should be held responsible for her feelings, and unless her self disclosure about her feelings serves some useful therapeutic purpose, it’s just making me responsible in a way that is most decidedly untherapeutic.

I just want to make it clear that I do appreciate very much people who have posted positive alternative perspectives on my T’s email and that it’s helped me enormously to keep a sense of balance in the overwhelming feelings I’ve been experiencing since Monday. Just about everyone has managed to make me feel that I’m understood while at the same time pointing out alternative interpretations so please don’t anyone think I feel bad or unsupported by comments that didn’t just reflect how I feel .

Update for today – my feelings haven’t changed, and I’m going to email my T and forewarn her of my reactions to her email to me. It won’t be the angry one I’ve already composed, but it won’t be a touchy feely one either. I think she’s gaslighted me big time and I have a terrible sense of betrayal that I’m struggling to overcome. I am not looking forward to tomorrow

One thing that kind of strikes me here is that you seem to be working yourself up a bit. I call it "kitchen sinking". It's when one thing happens - a poorly worded email for instance - and then this one thing calls in to question the entire relationship. Everything but the kitchen sink gets added on.

Let's take this one email okay? Look at it and ask "okay, is this one email enough to derail the entire relationship. Is this really the straw the broke the camels back or was there not much on that camel to begin with?"

No relationship is perfect. In fact, far from it. What you have to look at is the relationship as a whole, good AND bad.

FWIW, I do not think that the "trying" comment indicates that she is trying to keep you there to get your money. I'm a known leaper, and that's a leap in logic even for me.

On balance, good>bad? Yes/No?

What is "gaslighting"?

Comes from the movie GASLIGHT.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaslighting
a form of psychological abuse in which false information is presented with the intent of making a victim doubt his or her own memory, perception and sanity.[1] Instances may range simply from the denial by an abuser that previous abusive incidents ever occurred, up to the staging of bizarre events by the abuser with the intention of disorienting the victim.

I would say that her perception--not feeling--that she's walking on eggshells is her characterization of the interaction between you. In that sense, it very much serves a therapeutic purpose because therapy is a relationship for which both parties have responsibility.

I understand that you're feeling very raw right now, but I hope that as you get distance from this crisis, you will be able to give some consideration to the contradictory thoughts you've expressed here. You've said you've experienced the same issues with every T you've seen: you know those patterns have meaning, and working through those meanings is the only way to get the satisfaction you deserve.

Elliemay are you asking me whether on the whole my relationship with this T is more good than bad? If so, I'm not sure I can answer that - I may be better placed after session tomorrow to be more sure of my answer. I plan on updating tomorrow anyway, providing I'm still compos mentis .

LOL Pachy!

And if you really didn't know, Syra (thanks Syra) has kindly provided a link for everyone. Sometimes I know the word gets used a bit indiscriminately and possibly incorrectly, but it certainly is meaningful!

Hi again Feral, thanks for taking the time to reply further, and for the hug .

I have to say I didn’t realize that my original post had come across as seeking advice about whether or not to post my angry email to T – I’d written the post as a kind of stream of consciousness of the overwhelming feelings I was (and still am) experiencing about her response to me – while I appreciate whatever supportive advice or suggestions people come up with, I think I was more seeking emotional support and understanding of my situation than anything else. I always intended to send T a message to forewarn her that I had issues with her response, the only real question was whether to send an angry (but spontaneous and sincere) message or a more censored ‘reasonable’ (but contrived and fake) message.

This is coming down to semantics isn’t it. By blind faith I mean that it’s unfounded, it’s an assumption of faith in the other’s (in this case) professional capabilities without any grounds in the first instance to actually have faith in them. A suspension of disbelief if you like… I rarely use the word trust, as it doesn’t figure much in my life .

I’m also aware that many contradictions will be apparent in what I say (and feel and think), if I were all of a piece and had the same response consistently to different aspects of my life, I’d be either dead or a zombie (or perhaps levitating blissfully with happiness – I wish ). I don’t see any inconsistencies however in my attitude to anger and to therapists generally – it’s a given (at least it is for me) that how I automatically interpret things in the here and now is heavily influenced by my past – but neither one nor the other is ALL that’s involved in each moment. So there never is nor can there be a definitive ‘truth’ or a genuine certainty – some sessions I would be very upfront about the red flags I perceived coming from my T, other sessions I’d suspend judgement because I was acutely aware that stuff from the past was operating. That’s what I meant about coasting for 38 sessions – the red flags have simply mounted up and last session and her email response were several dozens of them too many .

I also have no problem explaining to a T that I’m feeling angry or resentful or whatever, it’s being denied the space and acceptance to express negative feelings that is one of the core issues in all my therapy. Perhaps that’s semantics again… but for me there’s a clear distinction between talking about a feeling and expressing it.

I realize I’m being a tad defensive here, but it does feel uncomfortable feeling like my comments and questions are being used against me to prove a point. I seem to have an overriding need to be transparent about my motives and feelings – I always think, possibly naively and stupidly, that if only I explain things clearly enough, people will get me...

Hugs right back to you Feral

Torn -just want to express my wishes that your next session with your therapist will give some more clarity about whether you will continue on with her - even if it's a decision to continue at least one more week. Good luck

I wondered exactly what your t was doing to deny you the space to express your anger, for example, when the first red flag came along. I hope your session went well.

(((((((((((((Torn)))))))))))))))))))))))
Hope you are okay.

Thank you Sky .

Thanks for the good wishes too Learning . Haven't had my session yet so no update.

Good question you pose there - in fact this T is the first (and only) one to try and accommodate my need to express anger - most Ts are reasonably comfortable with clients expressing anger about things outside of session, none so far barring my current T, have been even remotely comfortable with expressions of anger directed at them.

Current T has taken some direct anger from me already and dealt with it quite well - but even she manages to find ways to redirect or sidetrack or avoid giving me the space to hear my own anger - it's a sneaky kind of way of doing it - I start talking about something I might be annoyed about or resent or feel frustrated with (not necessarily to do with her either) and the next thing I know we're into either lengthy explanations about psychological concepts that seem completely irrelevant to what I'm trying to say, or she's asked me a heap of leading questions that have steered me inexorably AWAY from focusing on my angry feelings and ending up in the realm of speculation about external reality (other people's motives and intentions for instance). It's all very subtle and I'm not quick enough and far too defensive still to realize that I'm being sidetracked so I end up after session feeling obscurely unheard and dissatisfied with the way things went - then when I think about it I can pinpoint all the little things along the way that denied me the space and silence and encouragement to go into my feelings... (not just anger, this includes other feelings too...)

Other Ts' manoeuvres however, if you want a few examples of how they've stonewalled me in my attempts to have my anger heard - actually I'm not sure you do, but I'll give some anyway , include an immediate apology before I've even managed to explain what I'm angry about (a very good way of denying and negating the perceptual reality of the client); an outright statement that anger at T will in no way be accepted or tolerated in the therapy; and deflecting the conversation back onto me, as in - I'm trying to say how angry/resentful/frustrated I feel at T or about something T has said/done not said/not done and the T either just sits and looks and says nothing, acts uncomprehending as if they don't understand what the hell I'm talking about, or asks questions as if to understand but in fact the questions are not directed to or about what I'm trying to explain (sorry I can't remember specific examples without backtracking through thousands of pages of journals ). Oh and yeah, retaliation! The one time I raised my voice slightly and said to a T that I didn't think he understood what I was saying at all, he went all huffy and puffy and said in the end, I will not be patronized! That actually broke the therapy, I continued for a few more months but was never able to trust him not to retaliate again...

In my current T's case, it's mostly the endless talk talk talk coming from T that makes the whole session feel breathless and like I have to grab whatever pauses do appear to try and say what I need to, and she tends to talk so much that she practically interrupts me to say her piece. None of which I think is deliberate to prevent me expressing my feelings, it's just the whole CBT solution focused training coming out, but I'm getting very tired of trying to explain to her every session that I'm needing my feelings heard and accepted and could she please focus on how I feel and not go off on these to me irrelevant tangents. Emotionally though last session got me to the point that I felt it was becoming dangerous to keep trying to be vulnerable with her, because she just wasn't getting me on that emotional level. And she didn't seem to understand what I meant when I tried to explain it, hence the email exchange...

Sorry for such a long reply, I'm sure I've said way too much that you didn't want to know in the first place

Thanks Anti - haven't had the session yet, though I'm due to start the four hour round trip in about three quarters of an hour . Plenty of time to work myself up into an anxious wreck .

Thanks for your support

Just a quick update - I sent off my response to T's response yesterday and she replied later in the evening. This time she was very reassuring and categorically stated that I am not responsible for her feelings, she doesn't think I'm unfixable, and that she has no intention of quitting on me. She also said that email was maybe not a very good way to communicate, which is my basic feeling as well though I'm not sure I want to lose the option.

Anyway I felt immeasurably reassured by her reply and though today's session is going to be really hard and might still end up in a bad place, I feel much more sure about her commitment to trying to help me. On that basis I tell myself that what I need to do is to just keep on going to see her no matter how rubbish it is or how angry I get, and hope that the healing will arise from that. I think it was my absolute terror that she was pulling the rug on me that sent me into such a terrible spin. So long as I can count on her to be there, maybe there's a chance this therapy could be the one that helps me...

Thanks everyone for listening to me ramble here, I will still post an update later

T M - you are very brave. this is good work!!!

Just wanted to say I read your post with interest, but I don't know what to say. I'm afraid I'll project my horrible experiences with a t who insisted on speaking over me all the time. But unlike my t, the things you've been writing give me a really strong sense your t cares about you. I'm glad you feel better.

Learning you needn't have been so sensitive to my sensibilities after all as of my session yesterday I am now once again without a T .

What can I say, I'm feeling totally devastated and reeling from the about face she made on her second email response. The first email from her that I originally posted here really did reflect more accurately what was going on in her mind.

You know I could have put up with all her interruptions and incessant irrelevant talking, I could have put up with her clinical coldness, her detachment, her total lack of compassion, the absence of all empathy, her superficial CBT approach - all for the sake of having my anger heard and validated, that was and is always my chief need that I seek to get met in therapy. And a clinical detached po faced 'professional' seemed the perfect candidate for not taking personally anger from a client. Appearances and protestations of professionalism deceive, as ever...

She pulled the rug on that completely yesterday. She set conditions and expectations on me that made it impossible for me to continue in therapy with her - it ceased to be 'therapy' in the moment she set out her demands of me.

For a big part of the session (in amongst really negative stuff related to other issues) she judged and criticized my 2 emails to her this week as extremely critical and highly destructive and therefore unacceptable . Ironically she later said the first email (which in my eyes was a very reasonable and reasoned and not at all angry email) was very critical, but the second one which I thought was critical because I didn't censor my anger in it, was not critical . This after spending half the session repeating ad infinitum how critical they both were .

And to really put a few more knives in she labelled the very first email I'd sent her several weeks ago outlining what I'd thought had gone wrong in a particular session - at her request I might add, she's the one who was adamant that I send her an email to warn her of any bad feelings or issues I had with a session - as equally highly critical and highly destructive . WTF? Talk about holding grudges and being dishonest and inconsistent - I felt really betrayed at that bit, if she'd found it so 'highly critical and destructive' weeks ago why didn't she talk to me about it at the time?????? Trust stopped even thinking about peeking into this therapy after that undermining backstab. And I might add, not once did she take responsibility for this being about HER feelings vis a vis my emails, she just continually repeated that they and I were extremely critical and highly destructive .

For what it's worth, and I know there will be many here who will automatically assume that because the T has judged my emails as critical then they must be, they were not. SHE experienced them as critical, though they were predominantly about ME and MY FEELINGS - she took them personally, and that was very evident from what she said and read out to me from her written but unsent response to my first email this week. Therapy was becoming more about her all the time and less about me

The bottom line was that she said that I must from now on express my feelings to her 'constructively'. Which totally destroys the foundation of my being in therapy in the first place - I'm actually very good at behaving like a good little girl in the real world and have done so all my life, it's the pattern I'm trying to break - and completely destroyed all faith and trust and respect I might have been nurturing for her. She demanded that I behave in a manner more acceptable to her and that if I didn't she wouldn't work with me. All the time telling me that I would be making a mistake if I 'quit'. So covering her own back actually, a sneaky ploy indeed, saying on the one hand, but I'm not quitting on you (this to maintain her ego image of being a therapist who 'never gives up' to quote her own oft repeated words to me from early in the therapy) but on the other hand setting out personal demands that make it impossible for me to continue...

I tell you what, I don't pay someone seventy quid an hour to kowtow to their emotional expectations or to make them feel good or to accede to their demands and expectations of how I should behave, feel and think in order to make life easy and comfortable for them. I am torn between absolute rage at how this woman has screwed me over emotionally, and profound desolation at having been made to experience myself once again as unhuman, unacceptable and fit only for rejection because of my angry feelings.

Talk about repetition compulsion - I keep bringing my anger to therapists like a pathetic puppy growling over a huge bone pleading with them to accept it and me and not take it personally, and it feels like they promise the earth and then they turn around and say that bone is ugly and offensive and too big, you are not allowed to bring it in anymore...

Well actually, thank god for my anger because it allows me now to say to them go **** yourselves.

Sorry PC I won't be around very much for a bit - firstly it just upsets me unbearably to be around people with a therapist when I'm out in the wilderness again, and secondly because I just feel so completely overwhelmed with despair right now at being the agent of my own rejection and pain because of who I am, that I need time to try and deal with all of the horribly conflicting stuff coming out of this last therapy, and I'm going to be hard pushed to be supportive of anyone right now...

Torn Mind, I am so sorry you are hurting! That must have been awful to have to hear!!

I hope you can see that this is just one T, not all T's. She was not the T for you, because she wasn't offering anything close to what you need and what you want. I truly believe that the right T is out there for you. Maybe of another orientation besides CBT.

But for now, please be kind and gentle and take really good care of you

Torn Mind

I'm so sorry this has happened.

Some of this is very similar to what happened between me and my xT.

He also wanted me to continue therapy with him, but doing so would have implied that I accepted what had happened and I didn't, so I terminated.

It was a decision in which I let my head rule my heart - I was very attached to my T so terminating hurt like hell. It still does, but I don't regret it.

Hang in there, TM. There will be many people here to support you, including me, when you're up to communicating again.

Bluey

In the middle of the large ruptures with my T, she kept telling me how critical I was being and how much she hates being critisised. All I was doing was trying to talk about the hurt I experienced as a result of her mistakes. She told me she felt like I was beating up on her. My T has always been certain I'm very angry unconsciously. She's always encouraged me to express my anger. When I did, it pushed her away (these are her words, not mine) it made her feel beaten up on, it made her feel critisised. It made her say some awful things. Yet I never yelled like she did (right at the beginning of everything going wrong).

If we didn't have a really solid four year relationship then the relationship wouldn't have survived that stuff (and all the other mistakes). I fought because we had a solid relationship. Because these was a chance that she would hear me and realise what I needed again.

It was much later that she apologised for what had happened (though more mistakes happened after that). It was much later that she told me she realised she was being very defensive at times. It was much later when she supported me in fighting for the relationship rather than working to push me out the door. It's still not all resolved. A lot of bad stuff happened and I'm a little concerned that I might end up exactly where you are in the not too distant future. A lot of trust has been lost and it's hard to know what to expect of T, even with the four solid years behind us. I had no idea she would ever react to me like this, or hurt me so badly and then leave me with all the hurt.

I'm really sorry that you're in such a bad place right now (the place I'm so afraid of). I'm sorry things are so awful. I hope you're able to find a way forwards and find the right help for you.

I don't assume that. I know it can happen. It happened to me. In very similar fashion. the therapist didn't own her feelings. The therapist blamed me for things I don't think were true and wouldn't discuss it. The therapist put me in a box that I didn't like, and then when I wouldn't go in the box ended discussions. Some therapists don't do their own work, and are in it for the wrong reasons. I'm sorry this happened.
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I fully believe you. I don't think the client is always the one who is wrong.