The therapeutic relationship

01:15 AM

All that said, I still have faith and trust in my relationships, including my therapy relationships. They will all come to an inevitable end, sometimes without warning, but I know the positive memories and life lessons and experiences will be lasting from those relationships. Sometimes it takes time to get beyond the pain of loss, but I do get there in my own due time.

So Mona, back to your original post and dilemma, even after your therapy is over, given you have had positive experiences, you can reach a place where the memories are more positive than painful. Endings are hard, but we can move beyond them and cherish what was. I was quite attached to all of my three therapists, and had to end with two of them rather abruptly due to circumstances beyond our control. It was hard to say good-bye and frightening to move on without them, but it did work out, and the loss wasn't nearly as crushing as I feared it would be. I have no regrets for being attached and close to my therapists. That closeness was supportive and healing at the time I most needed it, and each relationship prepared me for the next phase in my life. I might not have been able to see it at the time, but eventually I could in retrospect. Value what you have now and try not to fret too much over what may come down the line. We can lose so much valuable time worrying over what has yet to happen.

And all relationships come with challenges; certainly therapy relationships have many. Hopefully we learn about ourselves and how we can better interact in our everyday lives as we navigate through the vulnerability and trust and exposure that therapy involves. I know I just had to learn as I went and keep working to transfer those lessons and experiences inside those office walls to the world outside those walls.

May 04, 2016, 02:57 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Walkedthatroad

For me, even after leaving or terminating with a bad therapist there was greater fear of future loss. Why trust? The feelings of abandonment heightened. I shut down and trusted no one. I wanted to act out, destroy myself. A second and last suicide attempt of 100 extra strength Tylenol refused to do the job, so I shut down instead. I lucked into the right therapy situation, and she saw me through to the other side. My life is not perfect, but it sure is better than what I ever thought it would be.

Healing is possible.

I am sorry you had to go through much to begin your healing. I don't think life is ever perfect but if we begin to accept it as it is and see more positives it will become brighter

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May 04, 2016, 03:16 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by lolagrace

People are vulnerable to hurt and abuse in all relationships. We encounter authority figures in the form of parents, employers, even older siblings and spousal relationships. Early abuse by one authority figure absolutely can make us vulnerable to similar abuse by other authority figures. Therapy relationships are not unique to that phenomena. Many of us here can attest to abuse by more than one authority figure over the course of our lives. We can possibly understand because we have experienced multiple incidences of vulnerabilty and abuse in our lives.

But, yes, not all relationships are alike, but the pains we suffer are more similar than they are different. We suffer trauma and abandonment and are left in pain. We can also experience terrible traumatic loss in our most positive relationships. Those losses can often be abrupt and traumatic and life-changing.

For myself, I have to keep relationships in perspective because I have lost too many people, torn from my life through sudden accident, acute or terminal illness, suicide, and outright abandonment. I do my best to appreciate every day with the people in my life, and I grieve deeply when their lives are torn away from mine. In some cases I can't make sense of why that person I loved and trusted chose to abuse me and leave me in the wake of their dreadful actions. In other cases, I can't make sense of why we were celebrating the graduations of our students one day and the next day that friend blew his brains out. In others, they were simply taken much too young and too soon by painful and traumatic illness. There are all sorts of traumatic ruptures in people's lives, so yes, many of us understand having been vulnerable in relationships and having dealt with the aftermath of traumatic endings.

The circumstances and relationships vary widely, but the trauma and pain is all too closely the same. You may not nave personally experienced the individual circumstances of my traumatic abuse and/or loss, but I believe you do understand that the depth of my pain is very real. I may not have personally experienced the individual circumstances of your trauma and/or loss, but I do respect and understand how clearly painful it has been for you.

Thank you for this Lola,
I do believe we have all experienced a traumatic relationship, be it parental, sexual, educational or therapeutic. They all hurt and damage us. Some more than others but what I have learnt is that we do have control over the amount of damage and we do have a choice to walk away but it takes years and much much pain to realise that. I can feel my past trauma within relationships being rein acted here with t, I should have left many times when I felt she was being abusive, blaming and shaming me. I stayed with her and that has helped because that wasn't her intention and we have worked through a lot of this together but relationships are complicated especially the therapeutic one, perhaps the most complicated of all.
Like Lola, I have had to keep relationships in perspective and this has come with great loss and suffering. I have felt myself withdraw from people for fear of being hurt, my t has hurt me but not intentionally. My ex tried to destroy me, she told me to kill myself so it will be hard for me and many of us here to trust another again but it can be done. I have learnt that ts are human too and they inevitably make mistakes, sometimes very painful ones. My t is not perfect but she has never claimed to be. She knows I am attached to her, why else wouldd I still show up. Every week. She never shames me about this and I have had Therapists who have shamed me about the amount or frequency of my therapy. I guess what I am trying to say although not as well as Lola is that every relationship has great potential for harm.

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May 04, 2016, 06:22 AM

For me I know no relationship is perfect, but I did not expect or anticipate retraumatization in therapy. I thought it would be a fairly safe place to deal with past trauma. For me it was like no other relationship. I have had a lot of loss and pain and trauma , but what I experienced in therapy hurt me worse, I think, because I was hoping to experience healing at least a little. I was so wrong.

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May 04, 2016, 07:22 AM

I think that's what's so tragic when it does go wrong in therapy is the fact that we go having hope and by trusting somebody again in the hope of healing, sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't and when it doesn't it really can traumatise and this is a sad fact of therapy.

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May 04, 2016, 07:31 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by monalisasmile

who says therapy is supposed to help us feel better? Is that the point of it, or is it to make us suffer and grieve all of our losses and to come out stronger, I am not even sure anymore. The uncertainty hurts.

I wonder about this too.

I wish therapists would tell clients from the beginning that therapy might make them feel worse or not better. I am not sure either.

December2015 · May 04, 2016, 11:59 AM

What I have learned and will carry forward from my therapy is that these feelings are possible in and outside of the therapeutic relationship . Letting go is hard because I don't have and I know that I can .

PinkFlamingo99 · May 04, 2016, 12:02 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by puzzle_bug1987

I wonder about this too.

I wish therapists would tell clients from the beginning that therapy might make them feel worse or not better. I am not sure either.

There's a difference between learning to grieve past losses, and adding to them. Why on earth would anyone willingly go into a situation that will just infensify their pain and make them more avoidant and afraid?

BudFox · May 04, 2016, 12:46 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by puzzle_bug1987

For me I know no relationship is perfect, but I did not expect or anticipate retraumatization in therapy. I thought it would be a fairly safe place to deal with past trauma. For me it was like no other relationship. I have had a lot of loss and pain and trauma , but what I experienced in therapy hurt me worse, I think, because I was hoping to experience healing at least a little. I was so wrong.

Yes that's the essence of it. I've had my share of loss and trauma also. Therapy trauma has been more damaging than anything. Has felt like a threat to my fundamental sense of else, my ability to trust, my ability to self-regulate, and my psychological coherence.

The danger, in my view, of therapy attachment is not just that it will end and the client has to grieve the loss, as in other relationships. In therapy there is potential for concrete and lasting damage because of the particular arrangement and meaning of the therapy relationship.

BudFox · May 04, 2016, 07:15 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by lolagrace

People are vulnerable to hurt and abuse in all relationships. We encounter authority figures in the form of parents, employers, even older siblings and spousal relationships. Early abuse by one authority figure absolutely can make us vulnerable to similar abuse by other authority figures. Therapy relationships are not unique to that phenomena.

I think therapy relationships have a dynamic that is like no other, though with obvious links to parent-child. The professional literature covers this at length, citing the quasi-parent figure of the T as the reason for transference, regression, dependency and attachment, and so on.

I would argue that the OP is struggling so badly precisely because of the unique characteristics of the therapy relationship (rather than just general relationship distress). Intense and exclusive focus on the client's needs, but in very small doses, with the T largely opaque and with faults hidden, causing the client to idealize them and project their lifelong hopes and longings on the T. Can be a setup for all sorts of pain, if the client becomes vulnerable and exposed enough. Hard for me to imagine this playing out in other relationships.

Some have compared therapy abuse of adult clients to incest. To me that tells everything about what is possibly at stake emotionally and psychologically.

PinkFlamingo99 · May 04, 2016, 07:41 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by BudFox

Some have compared therapy abuse of adult clients to incest. To me that tells everything about what is possibly at stake emotionally and psychologically.

I was trying to explain the feelings of shame to my current therapist and I told her it felt like incest without sex. That's really odd that other people have said that too.

Petra5ed · May 04, 2016, 09:43 PM

This sounds like me right before things started getting better.

Luce · May 05, 2016, 03:07 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by BayBrony

Its rare in life that ANY relationship lasts indefinitely. Spouses, siblings maybe.... Parents if they are good ones, but many good parents pass away while their kids are still relatively young. Friends move. Kids get jobs overseas. Lovers break up with you...I mean really ALL relationships are like that.

I'm sure in many cases Ts will still stay in touch in some way such as email.

But more importantly all those positive , intimate interactions and feelings grow to live inside you. Excepting if the relationship ends traumatically, you always have that. If my T moved to Japan or something, the connection we've shared will always live on in both our hearts. I will always have the words she has said and things she has done in .my heart.

I guess to me that is as "real" as it gets.

This is so very true. We were in t for a long time, and we were very attached and very dependent on our t. We went through all the ups and downs of attachment difficulties in t. We ended t a long time ago with some things unresolved.
Our t is with us always. She has become a part of us. We still miss her greatly, and still have times when we deeply mourn her, and wish more than anything to be back in that t room with her.
Every now and then we reach out to her for help and support still. When we need her she is always there. She is always supportive, always loving, always kind. She is our one person. Sometimes we don't contact her for years at a time. But when we do she is always the same.
She has given us the greatest gift any person could ever have given us. Those years of turmoil and push and pull attachment in therapy were worth every ounce of torment.

We know that one day we will reach out to her and there will be only silence, and we will know why.

Coco3 · May 05, 2016, 04:40 AM

This topic has touched me and made me cry. Such beautiful things are written here. Thank you all for that.

BudFox · May 05, 2016, 12:16 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by PinkFlamingo99

I was trying to explain the feelings of shame to my current therapist and I told her it felt like incest without sex. That's really odd that other people have said that too.

I'm actually talking about professionals saying this. Example:
"Because of the parent-like dimensions of the professional's relationship to the client, sexual abuse of an adult has some parallels with incest and may have severe and long-lasting effects." -- P. Susan Penfold, M.D.

That is the extreme end of the spectrum. Seems there are many more subtle ways in which a client can be exploited or traumatized in this vein, even with good intent. An infantilized or regressed client whose therapist withdraws emotionally could experience this as powerfully shaming and punitive. Been there. Or maybe a therapist who carries out so-called interminable therapy with a dependent client who finds it impossible to "detach themselves from the analysis even after long and unsuccessful work… just as it impossible for a child to runaway from home, because, left on its own, would feel helpless" (Sandor Ferenczi).

How many clients, when in the throes of deep attachment and dependency, are aware of these things? I wasn't.

May 05, 2016, 02:10 PM

I was very attached to my first therapist (on a friendship level), and I was extremely upset when she moved away. She wasn't even that good, but she was the only one I had. (I had/have no support system.)

After that therapy relationship ended, I started becoming attached to my new therapist. Around that time is when he said he was dating another girl, and I instantly became jealous (cause I'm a female and he is handsome). I had to teach myself how to let those feelings go, which was hard to do, but very much possible. Now I've let those feelings go, I'm not attracted to him and I could leave him without feeling too upset. (I'll still feel a little upset, but not as upset as I was when I left my first therapist.)

I guess therapists are "the perfect friend". They're always there for you during your highs and lows, they listen to you, they compliment you, they help you overcome your struggles. They just make you feel better. That's why it's so hard to let them go.

In some ways, I think the therapeutic relationship can be "toxic" if you're a client who doesn't know what you're getting into. It's "toxic" in the sense that the client becomes partially or wholly dependent on their therapist, which causes all sorts of problems in the future. So, I think this dependency should be cut at the source to avoid these problems. I don't know how this would be done, but I would assume it's possible if the therapist is smart and mindful of their clients.

BudFox · May 05, 2016, 07:20 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by bluebicycle

I guess therapists are "the perfect friend". They're always there for you during your highs and lows, they listen to you, they compliment you, they help you overcome your struggles. They just make you feel better. That's why it's so hard to let them go.

But doesn't a true friend expect you to reciprocate in the relationship, and bring their full and authentic self to the relationship, and give you real feedback rather than compliments to build you up? And doesn't a true friendship require shared vulnerability, which is a prerequisite to trust?

eta: My last T did the things you describe, but when the s**t hit the fan, she deserted me. A true friend would not do that. It was a business relationship. I had forgotten that, having been lulled into a false sense of security by the intimacy.

velcro003 · May 05, 2016, 08:29 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by BudFox

eta: My last T did the things you describe, but when the s**t hit the fan, she deserted me. A true friend would not do that. It was a business relationship. I had forgotten that, having been lulled into a false sense of security by the intimacy.

I will say, that isn't necessarily true. "true friends" can freak out and push someone away as well if some buttons have been triggered.

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