My T is a cold b****

And only you know what you can handle today. Therapist are wrong LOTS - and a sign of being wrong is a sign of KNOWING that you know better than the client what the client can do today, and handle today, and want to work on today.

This is us outside her office

Get out while you can.
Don't give her a chance to talk you out of it.
Take an extended break.
Interview other T's.
If you are wrong you can always go back.
But if you are right you will not know until you break free.

Best of luck to you. I hate T's that make people feel this bad.

Thank you. This was very helpful. If you have more, I'd love to hear them.

I don't know. It hurts so much to even think about going through this all over again.
I do often think I would be able to face hard things if I had a warmer, more supportive T. Idk though. I am so thoroughly confused and second guessing myself. I don't know what my true motives are. I just don't know.

Today, it was pretty much an accusation. She basically said, out of the blue, that I wasn't doing work today. That I wasn't being vulnerable. I wasn't giving her the opportunity to be supportive. She said I was just talking and talking about how hard therapy was and trying to find ways to make it easier.

My jaw literally dropped.

I will concede the fact that I wasn't going terribly deep or vulnerable, but the things I was asking/talking about were important to me. I need to understand how to relate to T so that I can understand myself more and how to relate to people in general.

Right now, I just want to be done with it all.

Thank you so much for this. It holds a lot of wisdom. This is so painful. She say's that I'm virtually the only client that has talked of leaving her because she is not supportive enough. I just don't know what the truth is.

[COLOR="rgb(65, 105, 225)"] It sounds like you are doing a good job of sticking with what you know in the face of an authority trying to undermine you.[/COLOR]

My former T (the one that abandoned me) said something similar (I later learned it wasn't true). I also think it is/was irrelevant. And it seems to me a very bad sign. I can't imagine what the therapeutic value of placing blame on the client is. that's how I felt when I happened to me, and that's what I think when I hear your story.

It's the therapist's job to provide an environment in which the client can do their work. You can't MAKE a child walk, or ride a bike or throw a spiral. YOu can provide the environment (some sometimes gentle guidance) that encourages and supports developing new skills. And lots of time for practice, practice, practice. That's the best way to "teach" experiential things.

Therapy with a sledgehammer isn't all the effective, or kind.

Thank you, Syra, from the bottom of my heart. Thank you for helping me to feel more strength in my gut feelings.

Sorry you had such a bad experience.

When my ruptures started with my T, she yelled that I wasn't trying (many times).

She asked me what I wanted to do to reward myself and I struggled to be honest and tell her I didn't feel like I should be rewarded, and that was it. Yelling. Lecturing. Comments included comparing me to my mother, and T's other clients (who do better than I do). Telling me she expected better of me after four years. She told me she does all the work and I don't do enough. She told me she takes too much control of the sessions. When I told her she was making me feel like a number, she told me "it's just the reality". All sorts of highly damaging and unhelpful stuff. T thinks that working with me and my resistance for four year pushed her to say certain things. She also now claims she was trying to provoke me into action.

Yeah, sometimes T's get things really, really wrong. My T has helped me so much in four years...but if there wasn't that background, I absolutely wouldn't have stuck through all this horrible stuff. Particularly after some of the highlights like the "if we were in a lifeboat together and the wave hit, I wouldn't be thinking of you" statement.

Yes. Yes. Yes. Your story feels so true to me and my current experience.

How long ago were these ruptures? How did you begin working through them? The lifeboat comment is just disgusting, but now a days, I could imagine my T saying the same thing.

I have been with my T 2.5 years. I've changed a lot and made steps in the right direction. My problem is that I think part of the reason I stayed so long and worked on certain things was because I wanted T to like/love me. That pull is very strong.

The ruptures started in early November last year I think...and there is so so much more bad stuff that has been said. It's not all fixed...bad stuff keeps happening...but there's a small bit of hope. She's genuinely the first person I've EVER felt attached to...so whatever happens...I need it not to end on this bad note!

It's taken a huge amount of persistence from me to get T to start hearing me again. Sometimes she hears a bit...some things she's still missing. I needed to stay long enough so that I could understand exactly what she meant and how much she meant of everything. Sometimes she's made me feel so insignificant. It's a mess...and it hurts to deal with it. It took my T a long time to see that she was actually begin very defensive.

I still don't think she really understands how deeply she's hurt me...or how deeply it hurts someone like me to lose someone like her so completely one day...even on a good note. And on a bad note? How horrific. I don't even know how to survive it.

The same thing for me. I think it's hard for therapists to see that they have hurt their clients. Well, I don't think that's universal. My current therapist is very responsive. But then he doesn't say things like "I've never had anything like htis happen before" (suggesting that it's not her fault) or some other very judgmental, and angry things. But I think it's easy to justify those kinds of things - not because they are therapists but because they are people and lots of us do that (although that doesn't let them off the hook - they are paid not to let their stuff interfere with your therapy.

I'm sorry she doesn't recognize the hurt, and I applaud you for sticking with what you know about yourself and not letting her define you.

You know, I normally tend to fall on the side of giving Ts the benefit of the doubt. But this:

She say's that I'm virtually the only client that has talked of leaving her because she is not supportive enough.

seems very telling to me and a very bad sign. It reveals a T who is feeling inadequate for whatever reasons, and blaming you for it, rather than examining her own counter transference issues.

Good luck.

Thank you. This comment is very helpful because that's exactly what she said, not my interpretation. I think you my be right about what it reveals.

I 100% agree with feral on this. Her statement is just wrong to me. Why on EARTH would it matter to YOU what her other clients think or say.

Good luck from me as well. You deserve much much better than THIS.

Yeah. Idk. I mean I think her point overall is that my issues are causing me to see her in a bad light. That my need for control is clouding everything I do. So the fact that I'm the only one who say's she's not supportive enough means I am likely wrong.

On one level, this is total BS. On another, I just don't know if she has a point. The truth is probably somewhere in between her view and mine.

Really?!? NOW I'm ready to say bad things about her.

So she thinks that you (I/we) can just waltz through the door and unzip our outer self and jump right into vulnerability. What a dreamer she is.

In my opinion, she is the one who was not doing her job! grr

hahaha, that is AWESOME and it's exactly what I've been thinking about my t for the past six months. I wish more than anything I had known better than to keep trusting him. How can t's believe it's ever acceptable to be so blatantly nasty? People don't post about t's who do that on here much I don't think, but you are not the only one. I really do hate more former t and I think the world would be better off if he tripped over his ego and hurt himself, but I didn't have the humour to say it like you did, so thanks

ugh, I'm sorry. your t sure doesn't sound like she deserves you.

I actually disagree with this, although I do think it is a possible interpretation.

But I think when you're responding to feedback, one thing that people do that is legitimate is to run through the feedback they've gotten from other people. Several weeks ago a friend of mine was responding to my point that she was being really critical of her husband's behavior. I don't like him at all but I told her that she can sometimes be over-critical. Her response was, "well other people in my life have said something similar to this, so I should consider that."

I don't think it's blaming someone just to say that the feedback they are sharing isn't something they hear from other people. It's not as if the response means anything more than just what it is. It isn't the equivalent of "you're terribly wrong" or "so, it's your problem then." It's a straightforward response that I think is relevant and provides some kind of meaning in a discussion about whether someone is supportive. It's not definitively client-blaming or evidencing counter-transference. In my opinion.

Tell her, "I'm going to face the hard stuff but not with you."

This is telling. Go with this thought, and not with how you feel. I wondered myself sometimes about Stockholm Syndrome Leave although it feels wrong. Interview other T's even though it feels wrong. Deep down, you KNOW it is right. There is a T out there who can treat how you feel with respect instead of trying to shame you out of it. Keep us posted.

[COLOR="rgb(65, 105, 225)"]I think if T wanted to explore with the cl whether this sort of thing had happened to the cl before it might be helpful, although even that would not mean that because it happened to cl before, and never to T, that it was cl's fault. It certainly would be worth exploring, but not even that would determine the issue. When the T says it's never happened to her(T) before, with the implication that therefore it must be the cl, I don't think the T is doing therapy anymore. Perhaps I missed something in what you said?

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Wow. What an empowering thing that would be to say to her.

Exactly. Thank you. It's like she doesn't get why I still don't feel immediately, 100% safe. I think she truly believes this is one of my control issues.

I keep thinking that she has never really done anything big/specific to make me think I can't trust her (other than her weird behavior lately), but there's also not been anything telling me to trust her.

Sharing information you aren't ready to share isn't trust. It's obedient (even if reluctant) compliance. THat doesn't sound very healthy.