The "Therapeutic Relationship"

Yes, you're right Hankster. My husband is what helped me decide to start therapy over a year ago, but we rarely talk about him right now. I think I have such an avoidant personality in general...I really try to avoid conflict of any kind. Therapy has helped me improve on that. Hubby and I don't argue or anything.... but really, there's no connection/very little communication at all. We sleep on separate floors, and don't do anything together. We're roommates who happen to be married, basically.

I believe a person can be both stuck and have a therapist who is not capable of helping - and the latter part is the therapist's fault and not that of the client. Not all therapists are good for a client.
I say this as one who sees two of them = both psychodynamic and yet light years apart. If I could only afford one - I would choose the one who is better for me- the second one. Because I can afford it and the first one is good for some limited things in some ways that the second is not- I keep going to appointments with that one too. But for what people here describe as therapy - the second one comes much closer for me (not exact - I would never want the sort of thing Hankster, for example, describes - much like I imagine she would not like mine) than the first. If I listened to people here - I would be a failure because the first one is not right in that way for me (I was told time and time again to quit and that I was failing at it by posters here). It is not true = the first one fails me in a lot of ways - I took charge and quit letting her by finding one who was better for me. The point is that sometimes it IS the therapist.

Believe me, a salami-breath therapist is not exactly my first choice either to me its more important that i feel empowered to change. I am not fighting against him. I am fighting against the old me and my past, to become a new me in the present, and hopefully influence my future trajectory for the better. And he helps.

I don't get near enough to a therapist to have any idea about their breath.

Oh my gosh, this post scares me so much. I have almost all of these and I relate so much to the OP. I wish I never would have started therapy to be honest.

I have had many of these and it scares me also. What in the end made you quit therapy? How did you know to end it? If you could share more it could really help people.

You said this so well.

I would ask if you get like this about new love interests? Cuz i think this just shows a person has abandonment issues. The therapist doesnt CAUSE them, the person had them going in. Like going to a medical doctor doesnt cause diabetes or a broken leg. Altho it might cause high blood pressure. But i think thats the exception that proves the rule

I think a therapist can cause them - not all - but certainly some.

Okay, maybe you DO read past the first sentence of my posts but you usually reply to just the first sentence. You wouldnt by any chance be a graduate of the Evelyn Wood School of Speedreading? Or do i have to ask that as the first sentence of another post??

I had no reason to respond to the rest of it this time - I don't find the analogy to work.

But more importantly - I hate when people are encouraged to blame themselves for therapy/therapist not working well for them or being a struggle. It really can be the therapist and not because the client is to blame.

Glad my post might have been helpful to you

I just want to re-iterate (and you know what I've said about therapy before, nobody here would call me a cheerleader for therapy) there ARE better therapists.

There are therapists who are on point, focused and genuinely helpful. My new one is great. He really is. And I'm getting SO much more out of every session. Places that had become dead ends are now actual pathways.

I get that you're attached. It makes sense. But I guess, what I'm saying is, when you find a good therapist, I don't think you'll miss what you have with her. I think you'll look back and go 'oh my god I can't believe I put up with that.'

Because it's far more cruel to pretend to care for someone and then drop them the moment it no longer suits you, than to help them find the care they want in their other relationships.

Your therapist isn't supposed to be a substitute mother/lover/whatever they're someone who helps you facilitate healthier relationships in general.

Also, I don't believe for a second that the illusion is all most people will have. But the belief that it is is certainly a major barrier to finding it.

Oh, and one last post. All the work you've done won't suddenly disappear just because you switch therapists. She is not the vessel in which your self work rests. You are. You don't have to 'start over' to start anew.

Please don't chicken out. It could be important. Maybe talking to a new therapist would encourage you to quit this one.

Now feel free to tell me to not bring it up but do you in general have hard time leaving, such as leaving marriages or jobs

Living in a marriage that is probably far from perfect being like roommates. Staying with less than effective therapist etc is this all the same pattern? Not wanting to rock the boat and move on? I don't know how old are you but life is too short not yo take risks. Do see this different t and talk about your patterns

Good luck

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Skyscrapers long post expressed what I too was thinking. There are people on here who have gone on for years with therapy which was destructive to them. Seeing my ex-T was destructive to me. I carried on for too long with her hoping it would get better, that we could work it out, during that time my motivation for life diminished and I became a person who cried daily. Quitting was hard. My wonderful new T brings out a completely different side in me. She has talked of how therapy can sometimes be a re-enactment. I know my ex-T thought she was helping me and really wanted to help me, I don't know how a T who is as sincere and genuine as she was can get it so wrong.

Well, I've never left a marriage.... as for jobs, no, I never really had a problem leaving jobs. Or transferring if things weren't working out. I'm 41...

I just wondered about patterns. 41! You are young!

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

This is such a complex question, but I'll try to explain as best I can with my story...

There was something about my first therapist that I connected with almost instantly. I felt like I knew him from the first phone consult, and I was really excited to find a therapist that I was such a good 'fit' with. He also strongly resembled my father, which wasn't a good thing in retrospect because without getting into too much detail, I have deep 'father issues'.

As our therapy progressed, my T turned out to be the most loving, caring person I had ever met... or he had a really good therapeutic technique... Based on the physical similarities between him and my father, and the way our personalities seemed to just fit together, I fell head over heels in love with him in a paternalistic, non-sexual way. I felt alive again - like some kind of purpose and excitement was brought back into my life.

And then, the let-downs started. Therapy intensified, which only increased my strong feelings towards him. I was letting out my deeply troubling past, and he was comforting me - in his usual beautiful, gentle, nurturing way. Between sessions started becoming problematic. I felt like I couldn't function without him. His vacations sent me into a tailspin. I would send him really scared, emotional emails because of all the trauma feelings coming out, and sometimes he would reply and sometimes he wouldn't. I'd wait by my computer with bated breath. The only time I would be happy is when I was with him. All day before therapy felt like getting ready before a big date, and I'd cry all the way home when our therapy session was over. I couldn't focus at work. I became a zombie at home with my husband and two kids. I started doing really self-destructive things to deal with abandonment feelings.

And the SHAME. I hadn't found this board yet, and didn't have a clue what transference was. I couldn't believe I was feeling these things for a paid professional. All of this was unspeakable to anyone.

Thank god I found this board - you can look back at some of my first posts here - all were really emotional, confused, and hurt.

Anyway, after nearly a year, I had made very little progress. I decided to consult with a few other therapists, and found one that I thought I could work with. I got the courage through my second therapist to do what I knew deep down needed to be done - leave my first therapist. I had determined it was a totally unworkable situation that would have caused me years and years of pain to straighten out... IF it could be straightened out... and I started valuing myself in a way where I didn't want to torture myself anymore.

Then, I let the first therapist go. The grief was intense. I cried for about a week, and my new therapist was able to fit me in for some extra sessions throughout. The odd part was, even though I was deeply grieving, I also had a new found sense of empowerment and freedom. He was GONE. Which meant all the things that mattered before - holding tightly on to him, his vacation schedule, his other clients - became totally inconsequential. My deepest fear - losing him - was actualized, and I was still alive. I was breathing. I was still me. The world kept turning.

On to my second therapist - as expected, my issues, transferences etc do bubble up, but not with the same helpless desperation as with the first therapist. But it's a workable relationship, not a binding one. I can speak more freely, because I know that if this therapist leaves, I am strong enough to find someone else.

Anyway, hopefully this helps!!

Therapy is not for cowards!! ((Clementine))

Musing, have you ever gone back to look at your very first posts? After having just started therapy, you were concerned about others who become attached and dependent on their therapists, and you were determined not to let that happen.

Do you think you were influenced by other people's posts, or were other people's posts cluing you in to a potential problem with this therapist?* Because from what I've seen, your therapist read you from the beginning and encouraged a vulnerability and instability that led right into the very situation you feared. You knew this from pretty much day one. I would say your instincts about what you need are very good.

You went there to work out relationship issues, a void in your marriage, but instead of empowering you, therapy has done the opposite, fed right into that vulnerability and void. That is not the way it's supposed to work.

Because you are so attached, you may not be able to leave until forced (as meow pointed out). If you must stay, is there a way to get back to the reason you entered into therapy? After all, therapy is for working out issues in real life, not creating new ones with a therapist.

If you haven't gone back to read your posts, please consider doing that. One of the other things you said was that your therapist first wanted to set you up with her colleague. Is that where this is headed? If so, please think about seeing someone unrelated to this therapist for an outside opinion.

*I often wonder how much reading about other people's bad experiences here have a corrosive effect on the reader's experience with therapy, or how much we (the reader) key in on elements that strike an underlying and valid fear/concern.

Do you really think a colleague that works with your T is going to be neutral?
While I don't think it is a bad idea to see someone else, I just wonder what the value is to talk about your T with a colleague of hers.

You can say that again. My t told me, at that point when we really started working deeply that "This is the place where most people quit." I am so glad I did not quit then.

Clementine, thank you so much for that post! I think plenty of us appreciated reading it! Ruh roh, interesting, I did recently go through my first posts on here... and I'm wishing I would have continued doing that throughout, to remind myself. I don' t think being here swayed me in any way...I found it helpful, and I recall asking about attachment, because I know what kind of person I am...I easily become attached to people who are good to me. So one thing being here in the beginning taught me is that people can develop attachment to their therapists that was absolutely crippling. I was shocked by people texting their T's, and being held by them. SHOCKED. Then, gee, my T texted me for the first time, and then that became "ok." Then T held me for the first time, and that became ok too. I felt safe, valued, not so alone. But, I kept posting here throughout...maybe I need to go back from the beginning and read all of my posts (because I haven't read them all). But I went from being shocked by how people had such a crippling attachment to their therapist, to becoming one of them. Thinking back, I'm pretty sure her actions helped that...she had told me she did these things to help earn my trust. I guess once she thought it was stable enough, she discontinued what I grew to become accustomed to, and that ended up being even more crippling. I have a cousin who is a psychologist. I told her the whole story. Her husband is also a phd. She ran it by him. They both concluded that they were quite sure, given the facts, that my T became attached to me, and once she realized it, she spooked and bailed. Maybe that's true. It would explain why things happened the way they did. Knowing that would help me not carry the blame, because I do, I'm quite sure disclosures at that time caused it. But I'm quite sure a T wouldn't admit if they became attached to their clients. She told me not long ago that she wouldn't be saying "I love you." Then, a couple of weeks later, she said it out of the blue. So maybe her thoughts get the better of her sometimes too?

Believe me, I've thought about quitting. I was so close that I actually had a quit date a month off (which actually was going to be last Thursday!). I see her twice a week, and have for about a year now. I started off just once. I'm so alone. The only time I talk about anything of importance to me is here, or in Emails with a couple of gals I met from here. I don't have anyone else to talk to. So my T, showing me care and compassion, maybe wasn't the best thing for me.

As far as seeing her colleague, I think I will cancel. I came to that conclusion before your message. Firstly, I just see no way he can be unbiased. Secondly, yes, this is THE colleage she originally tried to get me to see, what if I see him, then she tries to transfer me to him, because I've already had a session with him after all. If I continued therapy with someone else, I surely couldn't do it with someone who works for her. I'd need a clean break. So I don't think seeing him is a good idea. Thank you SO much for your feedback!!

What makes you think the two ts are anything alike? That is just your fantasy.