my therapist cant handle my anger

i have been going to this therapist for a while now and we have a really good relationship however, lately some things have come up and maby transference issue i dont know but i am really angry and when i let it out in therapy my therapist kinda shuts down on me i dont know what to do with my anger i dont know where to put it and i dont want to change therpaists now
please advise
thank you

Welcome to PC. I would say that we all need to release anger.... I would ask you two things... Have you discussed how you are feeling right now> Sometimes therapists go into a protective mode though they are listening. Secondly, I would like to ask how you might wish your therapist to respond.

Jewgal, sometimes T's seem to shut down, but what they're doing is letting you sit with the anger. I know I use to want T to react to my anger, to take it off me. Could this be whats happening?

ok so i will answer both your questions together my therapist knows she shuts down she said to me straight out " i don't know how to deal with you when you act this way, tell me what you want so that i can give it to you, "

problem is i don't know what i want ......emotionally

so when i analyze my anger (intellectually) with my T she totally gets why i would be angry and why i react the way i do with other people however whenever i bring it into therapy (emotionally) she really shuts down.

i guess what i want from her is to tell me what to do with this anger when it surfaces and how to respond appropriately when the situation come up again that made me angry in the first place.

but emotionally i dont know what to do shouldnt she know that???

Hi, Jewgal, welcome to PsychCentral. I don't know that your therapist can tell you what to do with your feelings, they're just feelings/emotions and it's not like they can be changed/taken away; you feel what you feel. You don't have to "do" anything with them except, like Mouse had to work with her therapist on, know what they are and "sit" with them and check whether they're appropriate "now" or not.

Being angry now about some other situation in the past is "displacing" the anger. You first need to be able to feel angry about an incident that happened in the past but know it is/was in the past and not "now." That's a perception thing you have to learn and not something your therapist can really "help" with other than to sit with you while you work it out/experience it. I like to think about the analogy of an infant learning to fall asleep on her own -- the parents can't "teach" that or do anything to help, the infant has to learn to soothe themselves into sleep. An adult coming to the crying infant always and not allowing them the discomfort of learning something new and difficult, just puts off the learning. Your T doesn't have a "textbook" that says, when feeling A, do B or C and all will be well.

I use my anger as a "red flag" to tell me I have some internal problem other than whatever action I'm now taking. Usually I get a bad case of road rage and that tells me I'm anxious or hurt about something else in my life. The minute I do (or think) something really inappropriate while I'm driving; cut someone off or feel like giving them the finger :-) or start calling them names under my breath, I instantly stop and check the rest of my life to find what's really wrong. Usually someone I love is leaving or in danger (illness) or I'm anxious about a decision I've made/have to make, etc.

Jewgal, are you saying when you express anger AT or ABOUT your therapist, she shuts down? Or when you express anger about other people/events? My previous t used to get veeeerrrrryyyy defensive whenever I expressed anger about something she had done/not done. Kind of like it was taboo to be angry at her, but when it came to anger about other people or events she was very good at handling that and being responsive to that.

could you give her the posts that you have posted here?

i'm sorry that she hasn't been responding to anger so well... it might be something about the particular way that you express your anger that leaves her struggling... or it might be that she is unable to cope with anger more generally. anger is an emotion that people have, however, and it is an emotion that needs expressing at times. if you can't sort it out with your therapist it might well be that you would be better off with a different therapist.