has the therapist you hire put a limit on what you may talk about and for how long?

I doubt he would. If it comes up with me, it's usually important.

I voted "not so far," but I think that she probably would never tell me what I can or can not talk about, and for how long. I would be very shocked if she did, and not sure how I'd handle it.

I don't think i've ever showered my T with any sort of adoration...and she doesn't seem to expect it. I have told her a few times when she was "in my head" in certain situations, and I listened to her voice and chose the healthier (for me) option...and even then I am like "I am not happy that you are in my head!"

when i read the title I could not help but remember one special therapist I had. I was having a problem and totally avoiding the issue by talking about the news... you know go in and sit down and after the hi's say hey did you see on the news last night that..... and I would bring up the most outrageous \ fun article on the new the night before...I think this went on for 2 or three sessions. when the therapist turned the tables on me.

he had purposely watched the news the night before and found a report on the issue i was avoiding. when I walked in before I had even sat down he said last night on the news I saw something that reminded me of you. and I said oh yea what. and he told me what it was and asked so what do you think of that article. He noticed I was extremely uncomfortable and lightened the mood with how about we agree not to talk about the news and stick with what your problems are from now on. no more news reports.

usually the only times a treatment provider has put limits and boundaries on our discussions is

one.... when the same issue comes up and we have already discussed the problem many many times, which leads them to think Im either avoiding a present issue or havent used the tools and suggestions to solve that problem to begin with. as one therapist of mine put it...therapy is only as good as what the client chooses to carry over to their life outside of therapy sessions. therapy isnt for remaining stuck in a problem rehashing it over and over again. therapy is for learning how to cope with ones problems and learning how to apply tools that can help solve those problems.

two when its very clear i have been using something else to avoid discussing a present problem. everyone has their coping tools and sometimes changing the topic or avoiding the topic is a coping tool many (including me here) use during therapy.

My last primary T tried to stop was the conversation around the ways that she harmed me, made a mess of therapy, and took no responsibility. She didn't achieve this by limiting this topic, but rather by cutting off all contact with me.

She would also try to get me not to read from notes I had written down, thinking that I needed to be more spontaneous or present. Thanks mommy.

I checked “Yes, and I quit that one.” It’s more about how I talk about things. I expect that I’ll be generally looked down on and possibly lectured to here, told “You have a choice”, etc. Or people don’t believe in dissociation, haven’t experienced it for themselves, so it can’t possibly be true for others. But. . .

I’m old and have a long history with therapists and got diagnoses that were progressively more serious as time went along. The last therapist I saw diagnosed me with Dissociative Disorder Not Otherwise Specified. She also diagnosed me with Personality Disorder Not Otherwise Specified. I think those were conditions that were with me from the beginning, never diagnosed or treated well.

It’s my experience that I have 2 components of myself, as well as my more usual normal self, that are generally socially unacceptable. One is grandiose/narcissistic – male and perhaps an “introject” from my father, egocentric but not hurtful. The other was pretty much hidden from me, I worked hard to try to make her conscious. Think evil woman and this is pretty much her character – Cruella de Ville, wicked witch or stepmother from fairy tales, etc.

But the thing is – by compartmentalizing my “cruelty” it didn’t enter into my consciousness as an intention and it also could not “clue” me when other people were perhaps feeling cruel toward me, so that I wouldn’t pick up on stuff and frequently felt like I was walking into a minefield with what was to most people, I expect, “normal” social interactions.

So – I got in touch with that component in therapy and by serious soul-searching outside of therapy. I would try to talk about what “she” was feeling in therapy, as much as I could tell. But the only way to really know was to allow her to act out. In therapy. With warning ahead of time that I’d been trying for weeks to explain something that the therapist didn’t get. Even with a specialist in dissociative disorders. And I guess the therapists felt threatened – I wouldn’t have because I had frozen out the feeling of being threatened when my mother acted like that. And when therapists were threatened, I guess, they put me down or freaked out and even when I would try to talk about it, or criticize them for treating me so badly – they continued just to put me down.

What I’m talking about isn’t anything physical – just mean-spirited, narcissistic rage. Called the last therapist a “*****” once. Cursed at her once.

I first went into therapy over fifty years ago, over-controlled, perfectionist, starving myself with anorexia nervosa. Therapists encouraged me to express my feelings and “get in touch” with them. So I took that on as my new “goal” (as opposed to “being a good girl”) and finally did!

What a farce. I’ve quit the last therapist and, yes, quit therapy, too. Therapists might well say “It finally worked!!” But at what an enormous cost, in terms of money and being shamed by therapists that I took on myself, which was part of the pattern that certainly needed to be treated to begin with!!

YOUR FAULT, THERAPY! I can finally say that. But the notion that it needed to take more than 50 years and countless therapists for me to be able to that is, to me, outrageous.

Sparky who was Cbt oriented started asking me to pick two topics per session to focus on. I think he felt overwhelmed by my rambling. I think it made him feel like he couldn't help me without a focus. It felt a little controlling to me but I tried it as best I could.

No I don't think he was overwhelmed, I think this is part of CBT. The psychiatrist I saw for CBT did just that. We would start each session with a quick drawing up of an agenda - and we stuck to it. If there was something else that came up it was noted and put on the next week's plan.

I could not vote on this at it would be entirely different for each of the two psychiatrists I see. There's the one (above) I see for therapy and then my primary mental healthcare provider. I wish we would decide on what to talk about before hand. As it is now we kind of hop all over the place sometimes glossing over or sometimes avoiding altogether matters I wish to discuss.

No, quite the opposite actually -- sometimes when I find myself rambling I apologize and say "Sorry, I'll move on" and she always tells me that I'm the one paying, I'm the one in charge, and I can talk about whatever I want for as long as I want.

My T says anything goes in therapy and I can talk about whatever I want. There was one time I was talking about something and she cried so I diverted the topic and revisited it another time.

Other -- My former Ts have tried to put limits. My current T doesn't.

My first T was a counselling psychologist. He really wouldn't let me talk more than a couple of sentences about anything (bullying, sexual harassment...I never talked about the traumas I experienced) before chiming in with "Don't be a victim" or "Stop being a victim."

My second T, a clinical psychologist, I felt she was trying to rush me past the "anger and blaming" (her words) stage of grief. She was pushing me to forgive the parents for their emotional neglect (I hadn't recovered memories / received corroboration of regular beatings with welts and bruises then). She would keep saying "while it doesn't justify them not giving you what you needed from them, perhaps they had poor parenting skills because [reasons]". I KNOW why my parents are poor parents - they lacked parenting skills, they were harshly raised themselves...and they also CHOSE not to read the numerous parenting books I would repeatedly try to get them to read as a teenager...

My current T, also a clinical psychologist, said (when I asked her for the first time recently) she will not put limits on what I may talk about or how long I talk about something. What happened was I brought up a rupture which happened a few sessions ago up (Her insistently asking "Do you want to remain a victim?") once again in a session. She said "I thought we settled that?" and we talked about it a second time. In my last session, I felt the need to talk about it again a third time and she asked "Where did the 1 hour of talking about it the last time go?" and I asked if she was going to stop me from talking. She clarified that she wouldn't and that she felt that we can talk about it as long as needed because clearly it was unresolved.

Ugh, T's asking clients if they want to remain a victim makes me SO ANGRY. Eff them! That is such an invalidating and dismissive statement.

I've never had a T say I could or couldn't talk about anything. I've occasionally been redirected if I am dwelling or talking in circles, but usually I am in agreement because I don't like getting stuck on things. I've also never, ever showered a T with, or even given, a T praise. It's a concept I find quite weird outside of certain circumstances and haven't encountered one who has expected anything of the sort. I got mad at my pdoc once when I felt he cut my appointment short and called the office to complain. By the next session I had gotten over it but he was a little confused and insisted we talk about so it didn't happen again. It wasn't a big deal. I would never stay with a t that had such a big ego that they couldn't handle a transgression like that. It's not a good quality in anyone, really.

She has at times suggested putting topics on hold for various reasons. If I'd wanted to continue nevertheless, I'd have said so and proceeded. The main reasons for suggesting we put something aside have been a) to try to avoid opening a new difficult topic toward the end of the session and b) when I need to focus everything I've got on a survival-oriented task and unpacking a painful or intense issue might prove overwhelming or distracting.

I appreciate that she does this now. In the early years of therapy with her I expressed some anger that she was not helping me control the intensity of the work. I felt she was allowing me to leave sessions dissociated and helpless in the face of the crap that had been dredged up. I effectively asked her to take more control and responsibility for the way we talked about things. It took some trial and error, but we've both learned how to modulate the pace and depth of sessions so that I generally leave therapy feeling calmer, lighter and reassuringly connected whereas I used to feel thoroughly devastated, unmoored and disgusting.

It's not something that has really ever come up and I just can't see where it would.

Now, if I'm struggling to talk about something, my therapist might suggest that we spend just 5 minutes on it. That doesn't mean she's limiting me to 5 minutes, I'm free to talk as long as I want. She's actually giving me a stopping point so that I won't feel overwhelmed with the topic. Usually, if I can say, "this is hard but I only have to spend a few minutes on it," the subject becomes more manageable to talk about.

There have been some topics that I have been talking about since I first started seeing my therapist, 7 years ago. They still get brought up and we still talk about them. Things have evolved over the years, I talk about them differently or have different understandings of the topics, but I still talk about them. My therapist has never indicated that it is an issue.

No, but if I get stuck and ruminate, she nudges me to get unstuck and process it to move on.

Actually, my therapist has done similar, I just didn't consider that limiting...but, yeah, I guess it fits. I guess, I was thinking when I responded that the therapist was limiting something I wanted or needed to talk about. When I get stuck ruminating, I don't actually want to talk about it, I just can't stop, so the therapist telling me we're not going to talk about that right now is very helpful and honestly very needed.