Can you give me a perspective on this - my reality not being validated?

I am continuing to discuss with my T the fact that I feel she ignores how I see things. Sometmes I have tried to say something and I have felt that she did not understand what I had been trying to say, I gave her a specific example of a time when she thought I had meant something different. She didn't acknowledge that this had happened and the next week said that I feel that she does not understand because of my mother. My reply to her is that she is ignoring my reality. She says she looks at things in terms of the unconscious.

What I feel like saying to her is : you've been doing this so long I think you've forgotten about listening to the client first. Also you have so much valuable insight, but I need something else as well. When I said you didn't understand what I meant when I said X I wanted you to acknowledge that you didn't understand me then.

I'm in such indecision about whether to continue with her as I feel she is invalidating, and it feels wrong. When I say this to her she doesn't agree, not surprisingly. I have a dream of a T who really spends time understanding how I see things - but then would something else be hard? I don't know whether, if I keep on and on discussing this with T if we'll come to an understanding, or will it cease to be important to me? The main thing we discuss theses days is the things I'm unhappy about in our relationship.

The first one I pay does what you are talking about (in a way, not the exact thing) if I am not careful. I have learned not to tell her those kinds of things she does not understand and is dismissive of. It was a big part of why I went looking for the second one. The second one I see is much much better at this sort of thing.
My point is - a different therapist might work better than trying to get the first one to do it right. I now use the first one differently and can use the second if I want to be understood.

Brown Owl, I can relate to what you say here. My previous therapist did not understand me, and she kept rephrasing and retelling what I said in ways that had nothing to do with what I meant or thought or felt. She was a very competent therapist - I have seen very positive testimonies from her other clients - but she just didn't get where I was coming from, and I never got the impression that she was trying to understand. To me it felt as if she was trying to get me to fit into her view of what people are like. Eventually I left her, and started therapy with my current T. And he does try to understand, and very often he succeeds. Not always, and there are other things about him that are not perfect, but for me it was a huge improvement to get a T who actually tries to see the world as I see it, instead of just trying to convince me that I'm not seeing it that way.

I don't know whether changing Ts would be the best thing to do for you, but I know that for me, it changed things and made them so much easier when I got a more understanding T.

I sometimes tell my t he is going too fast, in terms of skipping steps, to get from what i said to what he says, and that i need to hear the steps.

Being misunderstood is worth exploring. If the T doesn't explore than what good are they.
i will say that on forums we only have a clients 'reality'.
What good is it to advise? It could be a client is resistant but wants that responsibility to quit negated out.
Therapy is the best place to work through everything.

Is she the only one that you feel doesn't understand you, or is this happening in other relationships (not just your mother)? If it's the former, I might consider seeing another therapist. If it's the later, then I would want to stop making therapy all about the therapeutic relationship and get back to dealing with real life issues where this is showing up.

I'm wondering if perhaps a therapist's approach on validating a clients reality fall somewhere along a continuum, with therapists who simply listen and reflect back what the client is saying on one end, therapists who give their own interpretation and thoughts constantly on the other, and with many T's falling somewhere in the middle, both validating a clients view and gently giving some suggestions?

Lickety I don't generally feel misunderstood by people. I'm wondering - does it matter if we focus on the therapeutic relationship? Maybe it is a positive thing to do? When we talk about it I am expressing my feelings and thoughts? Maybe to do so is good therapy?

Mouse I agree with you that we only get the clients perspective on here. I'm hoping that a discussion on here will equip me better to discuss it with T - help me to understand myself.

Hankster that might be what my T does - kind of skips the step of acknowledging what I have said and comes straight back to me a few steps on.

Mastodon, I too wonder about my Ts other clients, how her methods manage to work for them? I wonder if they are more passive than me or just have different needs so it is not an issue?

SD - As I drove away from my appointment I imagined myself returning with a PowerPoint explaining to her the impact of her approach and asking her what she thought about alternative responses a therapist might give.

I recommend the power point approach - if nothing else, it did let the one I see know how I was seeing the situation in a way my attempts at explaining in just words did not.

I recommend my approach - its a lot less work for the client!

I think that over the course of a decade, my T only shared about a half dozen deep insights. Understanding the unconscious very much informed the way he thought and how he conceptualized a client's situation. But he would engage with me about whatever my presenting difficulties were, and by working those issues through over and over, I would get to the point of readiness to hear an insight in a way that was open, non-threatening, and useful to me. That's the work of therapy. I don't see the effectiveness of using insight in place of working through. It seems to me that insight used in that way interrupts the process. The insight is the end of the road, not the beginning.

That would drive me crazy Brown Owl. I wonder if you tried looking for Ts who have a more person centered - Rogerian - approach?

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That sounds like really good therapy. I had always thought that therapy would be more about me seeing things for myself than being told things by my T.

That has crossed my mind Shakey. On the other hand I also see benefits in the relational approach.

I don't know why therapists think they know stuff that is accurate to tell the client. I have never found the woman to have insight/intervention/talky stuff that was useful or particularly applicable or unknown to me. I had to be quite firm in getting her to quit talking.

Could you try a couple of other ones out while still seeing the one you have? I found that quite useful also. It is quite interesting to me that both of the ones I see call themselves psychodynamic but how very little the first one gets of what I am trying to tell her and how much the second one does seem to understand what I am saying (the second does not always agree - but I do usually leave not feeling completely misunderstood like happens with the first)

Yes, I think that's what I want it to be like, too. T can tell you things until the cows come home, and then she can tell the cows, but unless those things resonate with your reality, they won't necessarily do anything to help you.

Of course a client (I'm not saying this applies to you, Brown Owl) might have views or opinions that are harmful or far removed from reality, and a T might want to try to help the client change those. But again, that requires that the therapist first gets to the point where they know and understand what the client thinks and feels!

Exactly--the insights may be 100% right, but are not real until the client is ready--on the threshold--to discover them themselves. I've read that Ts who see the benefit to working in this way send out "test balloons" to help them assess when that moment of readiness is about to be.
I find it to be very similar to the pedagogy I use in teaching: presenting content to students is easy, but developing them into autonomous learners takes a much more intuitive and recursive approach--and at the conclusion, they own their knowledge because it really did come from inside themselves.

And of course, sometimes their so called insights are simply wrong.

Yup--that's why due diligence is a good idea. But I think the client's control of readiness can provide a bit of safety against looney tune insights!

It's up to you, of course, but I think good therapy is what's helpful to the individual; and if you don't have this kind of relationship problem in real life, why pay for it? Has it gotten you off track for why you're there?

Those are the kinds of things I would ask myself.

The other idea is while I could not make the woman I see do it correctly, I could stop her from actively screwing it up all the time.

The best answer I can give you is this post I wrote recently on gaslighting in therapy. Am I Crazy? Gaslighting in Therapy | Therapy Consumer Guide Read it and see if it resonates with how you feel about being invalidated by your T, because you are correct, your reality is being invalidated. There is no doubt in my mind about it.

This part, so are you saying she interprets the unconscious instead of listening to actual content, so saying what your unconscious motive is, instead of what your present complaint it? I am a little confused by reference your mother as well.

Thanks for that link Ididitmyway. I 'be had a look at it, I really don't know what to make of my T. She is very genuine. Is she misguided? That is the question I wish I could have answered.

Partless, I think she brought my mother in because it may be that my mother didn't understand me when I was a child. But yes, she is looking at my unconscious motive.

There are a lot of positive things about my therapy, but one of my problems with the therapy is I have been sleeping badly since I started, 9 months ago. Before I started I was sleeping solidly through the night.

The point I make in my post doesn't mean that the therapist who invalidates the client's reality is a bad person or a bad therapist in general. The therapist may be quite a decent person and still do things that are not helpful because yes, they are misguided, as you say. They are misguided by their training that teaches many things and many methods that don't have any scientific backing and that often contradict common sense and basic emotional intelligence. Sadly, I've met more lay people who could listen better than therapists and who had enough basic wisdom to know that pushing their interpretations of the other person's reality doesn't help anyone.

I find it very difficult when I feel like my therapist just isn't getting what I'm saying. But at least when that happens she acknowledges how hard it must feel for me.

At the beginning I used tell her how inarticulate I felt when she didn't get me. And she was like "you're inarticulate? Maybe I'm just dense! Maybe you just explained it perfectly and my limitations don't allow me to fully grasp what you've said yet. I have faith that eventually I'll get what you're saying but the fact that I haven't yet isnt your fault."

I wish for you brown owl that your T will ultimately figure out how to one down you like that. I hope they can let go of the need to be clever and in control and acknowledge that it's frustrating for both of you when you're not understanding each other. And that they'll be with you in your frustration. And take all the time it takes to get there with you --whenever that may be.