What is T's apology worth?

Of course, there are Ts who are incompetent and act out of their own issues. But I don't see every intention and action of a T as negatively "manipulative" simply because it attempts to exert an effect upon the interaction. That can, after all, be the point. Nor do I believe most clients are well-served by defending against entering into relationship in therapy.

"Nearly a third of the therapists reported hating at least one of their patients, and 46 percent said they had been so angry that they had done something to the patient that they later regretted."

- See more at: Many Therapists Feel Rage, Fear, Desire Toward Patients - Chicago Tribune

So? Nobody's perfect. What brought it on, is the question. The answer is usually, the client was acting like their parent. The t is basically getting angry on the client's behalf. Yes, it does sting. It's like, I can call my mother names, but nobody else better try! This IS in the article. Kind of unfair to quote it out of context to prove your point. Ie to try to prove your point. boy I got out on the wrong side of bed this morning!

You and I disagree as to what the question is (questions are - there is rarely just one).
I gave the cite to the whole article. And my point is that it is common and not due to any therapeutic reason on the part of the therapist.

Right. The therapist can be human during therapy and do stuff without a therapeutic reason. So that is what led to my further question, how can we look at this or any incident therapeutically. That is what I do in session.

So when CE asks, what is a Ts apology worth, I would answer, how can I use it in session. Interesting. That article seems to take it outside the frame of the session room? What is its intrinsic worth? And when you do your work sometimes, you take it outside the room. That must be difficult.

So fine. Two thirds don't hate their patients and more than half have never acted out of anger.

If you're looking for 100% guarantees, all human relationships should be avoided. The article also makes the point that the stats reflect an inadequacy of training, and that psychodynamic/psychoanalytical training produces the lowest incidence of negative results. But you discount that credentials matter.

You seem to need to distrust/demean therapy by definition. That's your prerogative.

I do distrust therapy/therapists. No different than someone else's need to trust/over-believe it or therapists. I don't see it as a need one way or the other. It simply is.
And yes, happily it is my prerogative. I am only pointing out my perspective. I am not trying to convince anyone I have the one true answer. Just that neither does anyone else. And therapists are not always right or good. I do not understand or agree with a the blame the client attitude that I think goes on both by therapists and people in therapy. I think the therapist is no more deserving of the benefit of the doubt THAN the client - perhaps give it to both. It is the automatic siding with the therapist I do not believe in. It is not a matter of looking for a 100% guarantee. It is a matter of knowing that just because someone is a therapist does not make them special.

It is a matter of knowing that just because someone is a therapist does not make them special.

Of course, it's not automatically conferred with the job title; but is it possible? For me, trust is revealed by words and actions; it can grow, be gained, and lost. It's a matter of degree, not blind absolutes.

Does that possibility exist for you? Or are all therapists/therapy distrustful by design?

And I don't see that clients are always blamed; that just isn't my experience. I would imagine though that your cases are necessarily weighted towards that experience.

My observation/experience comes from this forum in large part as well as from reading books written by therapists about their clients.
And of course, from one of the things I do for a living.

I think it is important to understand what the apology is for/about. If you do not understand what I am saying, I can be sorry for that but, looking at it, not see any way I can "make" you able to understand me better or that I can say things in a way that will help you be more likely to understand. In that case, I have to wait for you to "catch up" and have the experience and thought processes able to understand what I had to say.

I use to have a whole lot of "Oh, that's what T meant!" reactions, 2 days after seeing T

I think expecting something to happen in the other person, because of an apology on their part is not very workable as we can't know exactly what another is apologizing for, since it is their apology. "I'm sorry I hurt your feelings" does not necessarily translate into someone else not "trying" to hurt our feelings; our feelings are ours and no one else can influence them, just one's own thought processes and experience. If our feelings are hurt by others often, it's a clue that we may have a problem, not the rest of the world? That's why we're in therapy, to not see everything as an assault on ourselves when other people clearly don't seem to have the same reaction.

If someone apologizes to me, it is for their benefit, not mine as I am not the one who is sorry. But being sorry does not mean the person feels they caused whatever the situation is that caused them to apologize, often it can just be a general "I'm sorry you see the world as beating up on you, I hope we can help you develop a more pleasant perspective."

Too, "I'm sorry I called you an idiot" if they keep calling you an idiot, tells you about the other person; they have a problem and it does not necessarily mean you are an idiot. But people aren't one way or another; they can have problems themselves (keep calling you an idiot and apologizing for doing so) but also be sorry they accidentally triggered you by moving their arm too quickly when around you so you ducked, thinking you were going to be hit (a situation that happened to me with my group therapist) and from then on, they are careful (but not necessarily perfect) to not move their arms too fast around you.

I believe each "I'm sorry" should be treated independently and not lumped together.

Is this black and white thinking? My t likes to say that he is just a regular guy, nobody special. Then again, when he's right, he's right. Then again, he would get defensive with me, and I would laugh at him, so he finally stopped that nonsense.

But we tend to look at our parents as all right and all powerful, so this necessarily transfers onto the t, doesn't it? I had many bosses tell me I had a problem with authority. In a nutshell - nut being the operative word here - I acted out my unresolved family issues at work. I never felt safe or appreciated at home as a chIld, so I never felt safe or appreciated at work. The farther I got from home, the better I did. But as Michael said in The Godfather movies, "Once you think you're out, they drag you back in!"

So the t is a tool. For sure! Seriously, the t is a tool for working these feelings out.

T's are individuals, just like lawyers Some T's are better than other T's but they are trained in therapy and we go to them because of that training, in the hope they can help us in therapeutic ways. However, we aren't trained in therapy but like to think we can read books and have 30 or 40 one-hour sessions with a therapist (instead of the therapist's multiple client, multiple hours in a week experience) and then be just as good as a therapist. The problem is, the map is not the territory and the book is not the experience practicing therapy, nor is the experience of being in therapy with a particular therapist experience, practicing therapy. I went to school for 20+ years but that does not make me a teacher, just maybe gives me a mindset to be able to say what I like/dislike in a teacher, base on my idea of what teaching is/is supposed to do (or what I would like it to do for me). A therapists or teacher's view is always going to be different from what we think it is until we become therapists or teachers and can experience things from that point of view.

I can have an opinion on how well my therapist does therapy but that is based on my interaction with this other person, who just happens to also be trained and work as a therapist; but that is not all, or even most of what this person is. I made that mistake once, was jealous of my therapist being able to go home and "be" a psychologist/therapist in her private life and she very quickly corrected me on that. Sure, there are ways of perception learned in any trade; Stopdog questions and analyses everything, wants the facts of the matter; a teacher thinks in terms of students (my husband hated going to school nights at his sons' schools because the parents were treated like school kids), we all have default mindsets we carry around, including the ones our parents/caregivers gave us just from the fact we grew up around them. I think therapy is working to become aware of these multiple mindsets so we can pick and choose responses rather than doing the default.

How we think about apologies is probably going to be part of particular mindsets but may also be a function of our relationship with the person apologizing. The trick is to be aware of all the strands and make sure we see them as clearly as possible so we can make the best decision/evaluation in THIS instance.

I don't see how it would be black or white thinking. My only point is that I don't think the client should be blamed while giving that client's therapist the benefit of the doubt. Give both the benefit of the doubt. The client is not always wrong and I think it is the client in each instance who gets to decide whether the therapist is being beneficial to that client or not. I don't go along with the therapist as parent thing. It may be useful for some. If it is useful for you - have at it. I am only giving my perspective, and mine is the therapist hurting a client is not necessarily therapeutic just because the therapist takes the stance that it is.

My T takes the stance that she isn't anymore powerful than me while acknowledging that the roles do in theory put her in a position of power. She also says that she is not always going to 'get it right' simply because she's a t. She embraces her humanity and I like that. She doesn't pretend she isn't as flawed as the rest of us. She may have done some training and have some skills to try and help me become aware of myself but she acknowledges her limitations.

I think a lot of people, myself included, have an unconscious desire for the t to own the power so there's that sense of being in the hands of an 'expert.' It is really hard to admit that actually ts can also get it wrong and screw up at times. They don't always know what is right for us. My T is usually quite thrilled when I challenge her and tell her she's got it totally wrong. She sees it as a sign of progress because I am learning to trust myself.

Therapy as a profession needs to take into account the humanity of both client AND t in my opinion. That doesn't mean to say every t is going to screw up because as with any profession some ts are better at it than others. But it's important to recognise that clients aren't always wrong and ts don't always get it right.

I would agree with that statement. But I would not see the transaction ending at that point. It seems more fluid or open-ended to me. I want to know what happens next. That someone is hurt doesn't mean game over. It used to, for me. That's how my parents controlled me. Don't ever do anything that they disapproved of. So if anybody did anything I disapproved of, I handled it like my parents did - you're cut off. If I find out about it. So I either lied or dissociated. You and Mkac stayed present and protested. Which is probably why you two have/had more normal lives than I. The only person I get along with is my T. But even that is an improvement!

The apology I'm thinking of would mean faster recovery. For a T to acknowledge they made a mistake is a real-world example of how to get along in the outside world. And that's what you are paying them to help you with, ultimately, to have healthy relationships in the real world.