Email response from T

I'm sorry you're so affected. I think your therapist's response is quite gracious, even though she does indeed really "get real" talking about sitting with your feelings before sending them away. Still, I think she combines that with empathy and good wishes for you. I say this because I know that, when I am feeling triggered or otherwise affected by something my therapist does, everything he says to me starts feeling much worse than I would otherwise think (and I perceive it as being okay after a while).

Did your therapist usually respond in a detailed manner before? As far as I understood your situation with what she was wearing, this was about your feeling triggered, not about a therapeutic mistake she made or a misunderstanding to be clarified. I think the different clothes in and out of session sound like a symbol as well as a path to exploring your fantasies about her role in your life, the needs that are fulfilled by this fantasy, the rejection and grief you feel. It seems to me that all this is way too complex for an email. It is deep therapy work. So perhaps her not acknowledging it might have to do with the need to explore more. At least this is how I think about it.

I hope you can clarify this the next time you meet and have a good session.

Actually I think it's not a rhetorical question, and does have an answer - which is that the qualification comes not from any intellectual merit, but from the authority invested in therapists by society, by clients, and by therapists themselves.

It's kind of like whoever gets elected president has by virtue of being voted in access to nuclear codes, however qualified that person might or might not be objectively.

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I have struggled with emails between sessions with both of my Ts. The first one handled it really poorly I think, in a very inconsistent and messy way. He would go through cycles of telling me no email communication, then other times inviting it and getting engaged in it in ways that were far beyond a therapist's role. It really did not help me and often would drive me nuts.

Current T allows emails as much as I want to send them, and encourages it somewhat, but he keeps a minimalistic and practical stance in a very consistent, predictable way in the quantity and quality of responses. However I desire more interaction with him, I like this much better in the context of therapy. I also find it much more helpful than previous T's messy ways to foster positive change in my habits. Of course it is not always pleasant and far from linear, I go through cycles of writing lots to him about random stuff and then tempering it and keeping it focused and minimalistic myself. The key element for me that, I feel, facilitates progress, is his consistent behavior. I think that if he fed my desire for more (and more varied) email interaction, that would do more harm than keeping it low key and practical. The way it works for me, I think, is that it allows me myself to regulate my emotions and expression rather than trying to influence me externally. So I get to examine my feelings, reactions, desires etc on my own most of the time and we can discuss anything in sessions. But my T is not there to provide constant attention and companionship, is more a guide and a person who maintains a certain kind of relationship with me in order for me to discover stuff about myself using the relationship. Of course sometimes the maintenance of the relationship involves that he purposefully triggers me with some words or gestures. One thing I've noticed is that I am much less reactive to these things than I used to be, not only in my expression and contact but also internally. I feel that I have become more stable and less affected by my environment and events, or at least do not project my feelings into those so often. It often takes white knuckling but after a while it has become much more even and manageable.

Wait....I mean my T has a PhD in psychology.

Are you saying she learned NOTHING in all that training?

Because she knows a good bit more about psychology than I do.

No, of course I'm not saying that. I don't know why you would think I would. I was not making the point that all therapists are unqualified, I was saying that objectively qualified or not, at least part of the qualification comes from the authority other people grant them.

It's the same in most professions. A doctor could be horribly bad, but is still vested with authority because they wear that white coat.

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Emails can work great when both people see the value in them and they don't cause misunderstandings--so it is possible. In rainbow's case, it looks like her therapist is deciding that emails aren't helpful, so she doesn't make her email responses very useful--it's almost like negative conditioning. The messages have been mixed. At first, r8's therapist said she did not have to stop, and now she is encouraging it. I find it troubling, but I'm not there to know the in person dynamic.

It's worth being curious about--trying to sit with feelings--but this email is more directive and parental. So it has the opposite effect of empowerment, placing r8 in the child role. Seems confusing to me. Maybe I'm reading it all wrong. I just hope you work it out with her, rainbow.

If it's common sense, why pay a therapist to give it? When I wondered out loud about how a T is qualified to do this, I was asking a rhetorical question. There is no answer. A person cannot be trained to have more common sense or wisdom about life.

Also, the hypothetical example you give above, as well as the real examples given by Rainbow, sound to me very much like an adult talking to a child. Adults in healthy relationship just do not say such things. Her T did not acknowledge the original difficulty that prompted Rainbow to write, which is also patronizing.

If Rainbow feels hurt and rejected, that speaks for itself. Why rationalize this as a necessary step to some future enlightenment? I've been talked to this way in therapy a little, and it felt quite damaging to self-respect and autonomy, unless I protested.

If I were the T, I'd say -- pay no more attention to the horses**t coming out of my mouth than you do your own inner wisdom. Trust your gut first. Of course that would be giving advice...

If it's common sense, why pay a therapist to give it? When I wondered out loud about how a T is qualified to do this, I was asking a rhetorical question. There is no answer. A person cannot be trained to have more common sense or wisdom about life.

Also, the hypothetical example you give above, as well as the real examples given by Rainbow, sound to me very much like an adult talking to a child. Adults in healthy relationship just do not say such things. Her T did not acknowledge the original difficulty that prompted Rainbow to write, which is also patronizing.

If Rainbow feels hurt and rejected, that speaks for itself. Why rationalize this as a necessary step to some future enlightenment? I've been talked to this way in therapy a little, and it felt quite damaging to self-respect and autonomy, unless I protested.

If I were the T, I'd say -- pay no more attention to the horses**t coming out of my mouth than you do your own inner wisdom. Trust your gut first. Of course that would be giving advice...

Bud, I don't want to argue about it. Your opinions are welcome! But my T is not going to do therapy via email. She knows that she sometimes triggers me and what it's about. She wants me to learn how to comfort myself. I'm a slow learner. She's been trying to get me to learn for 6 years. I will talk about feeling hurt and rejected IN MY SESSION. It's just that she doesn't want to do that via email . Yes, it made me feel worse but I should have known she'd reply like that. I don't feel like a child from her email. She wants me to be the adult and comfort my hurt child parts. I understand your disagreement.

Ok, I certainly do not mean to cause you any more distress. I think part of what troubles me to no end is that it seems from the outside like some people are getting hurt and rejected by their therapists over and over and over. And then they are encouraged here to keep tolerating it and to rationalize the pain in various ways. And I just want to shout -- therapy is causing you to suffer! I don't see that you are doing anything wrong or that you deserve to be suffering because of therapy. Anyway good luck sorting through this.

Ok, I certainly do not mean to cause you any more distress. I think part of what troubles me to no end is that it seems from the outside like some people are getting hurt and rejected by their therapists over and over and over. And then they are encouraged here to keep tolerating it and to rationalize the pain in various ways. And I just want to shout -- therapy is causing you to suffer! I don't see that you are doing anything wrong or that you deserve to be suffering because of therapy. Anyway good luck sorting through this.

Sometimes suffering is good. You go thru some pain to get rid of other pain. Or to get a greater gain. Life isnt all sitting on the couch and eating bonbons.

Sometimes suffering is good. You go thru some pain to get rid of other pain. Or to get a greater gain. Life isnt all sitting on the couch and eating bonbons.

I guess one can rationalize anything. Dangerous game in my opinion. Inflict too much suffering in the supposed safe place of therapy, and perhaps the person is never the same or breaks under the weight of it.

Youre not going to be the same either if you just keep eating bonbons. Change or die. Stay the same and die anyway.

Sometimes suffering is good. You go thru some pain to get rid of other pain. Or to get a greater gain. Life isnt all sitting on the couch and eating bonbons.

I learned nothing from sadistic therapy except, eventually, how narcissistic and inept the therapist was. I've dealt with enough hateful, dishonest people in work and life I didn't need to hire one to "learn lessons."

We lost that when adam and steve got kicked out of the olive garden or wherever...

Decades of suffering is not good. Sometimes a spade is a spade, suffering is suffering, and endless therapy which reduces fully grown, smart people to being unable to function over a tank top is unhelpful.

People in the thick of adoration and transference and need and dependence are NEVER going to admit that therapy is bad for them. They're going to say that suffering is important. They're going to make any excuse necessary to keep the transference going - until the therapist dumps them.

And that part is inevitable, because therapists tire of hyper dependent clients and inevitably wean, transfer, or outright terminate them. There's not a single story on this board of anyone who was super attached who worked through it. Not one. There are people who are still hyper attached, or people who were dumped. The only people I see here who claim that therapy really worked are people who came to therapy pretty independent, and left that way too.

If this pain and attachment meant anything, this board would have regular reports from people who became attached, worked through it, and are now independent. How many stories have you seen like that here? Seriously?

If this pain and attachment meant anything, this board would have regular reports from people who became attached, worked through it, and are now independent. How many stories have you seen like that here? Seriously?