Ruptures

Mine was due to culmination of things. I felt as if my T and I were in two different worlds. To me she seemed to have gotten tired or frustrated with me. I was verbalize get my confusion and struggles with continuing therapy and due to her lack of response I felt unimportant and I like a bother. She never responded with concern. All I got was a "thanks for the info and good luck". That's where we ended. It was upsetting.

I once sent T1 a text asking if he was having fun on his combine. He did not think that was at all appropriate. I thought I was just checking in (checking in was fine with him). It took a few sessions to get thru that (but I was seeing him daily) and I felt rather gun shy about texting for quite a while.

T2 and T3 no ruptures. I've left T2 a few times mad at her, but I don't stay mad. There's a part of me that is pretty reactive to her.

If I had frequent ruptures, I would have to quit. I couldn't stand it. I have never had a t say that boundaries were changing or lie to me or put me down or do any of the rather horrible things I read about here. I am pretty sure that my teen ego state would kick in and I would be out of there.

If there is one thing my t does right, it's repairing ruptures. She always stays with me until I'm ok with what happened. We work it out together, doing whatever it takes to make it right. She always take accountability. My t has told me a few times that rupture repair done right will strengthen the relationship. I find that to be true.

I am sorry your t hasn't been able to take accountability for her demented actions and work with you to repair ruptures in a professional, adult-like manner, MonaLisa. I know it's a very difficult path to walk being so attached to a therapist that can't contain her own mental illnesses in the therapy space. I hope you can find what you need in going back to this t.

Has there ever been a time when you couldn't be ok with what happened all heart? What happens then?
I believe that too that a repaired rupture will strengthen the relationship.
My t does not even know the word rupture, I had to explain what it meant to her. She uses a term called a break in the alliance.
I need my t to be strong right now. I feel she is pushing me away and this hurts. Since her disclosure she has been very busy and my appointments have gone from weekly to fortnightly. This is what is causing me the most pain is that I feel abandoned. I think she realised her mistake and pulled away. I don't think my t has a mental illness she is just a very odd/ strange person! I think that she cares too much and pushes me too hard. She wants me to be happy but I need to do it in my own time, she took accountability for pushing me too much before and I never even had bring it to her attention. I need my t right now because the pain of not having her is too much for me.

I hate ruptures. They're the worst because they feel like the trauma.

So far there hasn’t been anything we haven’t been able to work through, but there certainly have been many close calls. I believe I am to the point now where if something does happen and I can’t be ok with it after trying everything possible to repair it, then I walk. We are very close so it will hurt like hell if it happens because I stand to lose more than just a loving t. My t has some pretty deep rooted struggles that affect our relationships and always will. I can’t control how or who she is so I accept that walking away to save my last bit of sanity may be my only choice.

It took me a long time to get to this point. I was extremely attached to my t for a long while so I understand not being able to leave your t quite yet. The detaching process is terribly painful and confusing. It makes you waiver. So it’s more than ok that you need your t right now. I know your t has some great qualities to her and that is what you are longing for. Totally natural. Just don’t let this pain distort the reality to the other side of this t. Mental illness, personality disorder, or whatever she has going on doesn’t matter because the bottom line is she becomes abusive and that is highly damaging.

What I am trying to say is make sure you honor the truth of what this t does and doesn’t do for you otherwise you are setting yourself up for greater disappointment. You don’t have to work to justify going back to her to us or to yourself. Just let the, “I need her” be enough for you right now and take it one small step at a time. No matter what, be easy on yourself.

Thank you Allheart ❤️that was a really lovely post. I either see t as good t or bad t and it is important to see both sides of her and to honour them both, they co exist together. She is human and never apologises for that.
You have a really good understanding of the complexity of the therapeutic relationship and how fragile it can be at times. It's easy to walk away from new t because there is no attachment but there was atone when my t was very kind and compassionate and I think the circumstances in her life prevent that now and that makes me very sad to realise she is hurting and going through her own trauma.

I've an ongoing rupture with my T currently. It's about how she thinks she doesn't need any LGBT training despite having none. While I have a lot of presenting problems, I've brought up to her before that I experience anxiety and self-loathing due to my sexual orientation. I have considered conversion therapy, even.

She doesn't seem to get it. She basically thinks "LGB, T or cishet - people are people!" while I'm arguing that LGB and T are a population facing unique cultural issues (eg White vs Latino, African American, Asian etc). Of course I don't have a doctorate like her but everything I've read about psychotherapy, counselling and social work talks about the need for LGBT training.

Other rupture which has been resolved somewhat was her insistently asking me "Do you want to remain a victim?" I explained my view of how I feel the "victim/survivor" dichotomy is shaming and harmful. She apologised for how her words hurt me the next session when I brought it up. I thought it was resolved but then I realised I still had anger because she was apologising for her poor word choice (I have delayed reactions) but I felt like she was implying the problem lay within me. As in my interpretation of her words was causing the hurt.

The next session, I brought it up and she apologised for hurting me. So it's resolved...though I still feel sore about the "remain a victim?"...

Are we seeing the same t Quiet mind. My t says the very same thing about remaining a victim and that gay people are just people. It's true we are but we also have some very different and unique issues to the people who have hetrosexual privileges

I don't like the false dichotomy of victim/survivor either. Saying that she doesn't need training is like saying she has no more to learn about people or her profession. All of my good t's have had additional training on a variety of subjects.

Agreed so much with you. In my opinion, my T thinks she's free of bias and prejudice, yet by virtue of living in a heterosexist world, we will have bias no matter how enlightened we think we are.
yeah, it's confusing that she's failing at such a basic thing like the need for training.

I agree. Most people seek help and go to therapy due to trauma and then some of us deal with the added issues concerning our therapist session and therpeutic relationship. I know for me I was seeking help with past trauma mad current issues. Then more issues were added to my plate. Then my issues in session and communication with my T was just over the top. I began to see that what I went in originally for wasn't even being addressed and now I was paying for sessions to mend the therpeutic relationship. It just didn't make sense.

for a long time, this had been my experince of therapy with my T. i felt like i was going from one rupture to another and not making any progress in the issues that i originally went to T to for. most frustrating to say the least...like repeatedly banging my head against a brick wall especially when i was the one paying for session after session to repair some ruptures that i felt were caused as a result of my Ts issues instead of mine.

its is so frustrating but at that point then how beneficial is it to keep going to the the same T. Did you consider switching to a different T?

We worked through every rupture by talking and talking and talking EXCEPT the "no touch" problem, which ultimately was a deal breaker for me.

So I terminated and told her exactly why.

I'm not sure if my T and I had ruptures or merely disagreements. The only one that qualifies, maybe, as a rupture, is when she stopped holding my hand because she thought it was becoming sexual for me. She hurt my feelings very badly when she said she could see it, and feel it in the room. She said, " You need to get that from your husband and you don't, do you?"

I couldn't convince her that holding her hand never felt sexual so she took it away from me for about a year. I kept trying to tell her. Finally I think she believed me, but it wasn't until she finished her EMDR training that she decided that it was okay for me to hold her hand again. She admitted that it may have been "her stuff", to do with her divorce. Now she will hold my hand whenever I ask, which isn't often. Though she was wrong about holding my hand, there was validity in that I looked to her to meet some of the needs I didn't get met by my husband. We agree on that, so I suppose the rupture got resolved, but it took a long time.

Dang, rainbow, that rupture with your T sounds so ****ing painful!

I'm a bisexual female and my T is a heterosexual female and I'd be SO hurt if she ever told me she feels me hugging her is sexual. Because me hugging her isn't sexual for me at all, more of child like even though I DO have erotic transference for her AND don't get hugs from anyone else. T is THE only affectionate physical contact I experience in my whole life.

I'm adopted. I don't demand T has training in that. We all have unique things. I expect a skilled T to be able to work work all of me. No matter what ones sexuality. We are all human. Yes our circumstances carry different obstacles. I liken it to AA members who wore their alcoholism like a badge of pride. They were more interested in that, then really getting to know themselves.

You have a forgiving nature rainbow becAuse if this had happened to me I would be very reluctant to forgive or go back to her but that's my own stuff.
I am glad she admitted that for her holding your hand felt sexual because I am betting the feelings were all coming from her. People forget that therapists have sexual feelings too and it's so blooming easy to blame the client.
I wouldn't hold a clients hand because I know I would get confused with my own feelings. I only hold hands with my partners and if I brought that into the room it would feel sexual. That was a long time for you to keep trying to convince her, I would have been out the door long before that. I remember one of my tutors offering to hold my hand when I was struggling in class one day and I refused, she got highly offended but I didn't feel the need to explain to her why but that was more about her need to soothe me when I have my own ways of soothing.

I'm probably touchy because whenever homosexuality comes up in the news in my homophobic country, I always feel under attack. I hope it wasn't your intention and I'm probably taking your post the wrong way.

In therapy I have had to educate psychologists and my psychiatrist about the very BASICS. My psychiatrist pushed conversion therapy on me as well and he's very well regarded in my country.

So YES I demand my T to have some training because she has told me she has none.

Sexual orientation is one of my issues and I do hope my T will be able to help me with it, because I'm sick and tired of having to educate MH clinicians I meet, have them doubt me, have them invalidate me, have them tell me I'm queer because of abuse, and have them tell me I can turn straight.

If you're implying I'm more interested in wearing my sexual orientation like a badge of pride rather than getting to know myself, you're being presumptuous.

I forgave my T but I didn't forget it. I felt like she shamed me in that session, and made me feel bad that my H couldn't give me what I wanted. But she continued being exceptional in other ways so I didn't see any reason to leave her. She never took away hugs, and we hug at the end of every single session. She always let me talk about my feelings even if she disagreed.

The last time I checked, there was no stigma or you know, socially sanctioned violence against adoption (or drinking for that matter) pretty much anywhere in the world.

Comparisons are not only odious etc but make little sense in this case.

And, for what it's worth, my current T (and my former T) has no training in LGBT issues -- however, I am in the US. And, my reasons for being here are in no small part driven by the fact that like QM's country, I come from a place where it's not even blinked upon to commit serious violence against gay folks. So, yeah I am safe and ensconced in my little bubble here in the US and have been out and waving the rainbow flag for many years now -- I don't need a T to help me deal with that issue.

But, I also personally know gay folks who've either been through harrowing experiences -- often started at a very early age and it's hard to figure out how much of it was caused by some early radar-type detection of their gayness vs. just f-ed up general family / cultural stuff. And, for folks like that, landing with a T who doesn't have the first clue on how to deal with any of it would be seriously re-traumatizing to say the least.

Finally, the harrowing experiences needn't always be egregious violence (although in many cases it is) but can also be a systematic, rigid homophobic response which can shape one's life choices throughout and one may not be aware of it until well, it's too late -- fish in water etc.

In general, I think it would help -- here on PC especially -- if we assume before we post that a poster is the ultimate authority on their own issues and so, any wisdom we choose to dispense (as hard-won as it may be) always comes with that caveat.

ETA: And, before we assume that a supposedly skilled T should somehow be able to tackle anything that comes their way, it would help to remember that implicit bias has been proven to show up in just about everyone. T's -- skilled or awfully unskilled -- are not exactly immune to it (much as I loathe the pablum of multiculturalism / diversity in the field of psychology [as everywhere else], the concept did originate for a good reason).

ETAA: To wrap up my soapbox on this issue, gayness -- unlike say, even race or ethnicity -- is not only invisible but is also an identity that one doesn't usually share with one's family / kith and kin. In the face of intense hostility from within those nearest to her, a gay kid would then usually seek refuge outside of the family -- except in a severely homophobic society, there's little of that to be found. So, even if you're looking at it from the lens of what does a safe space -- of any sort -- mean to a gay kid, there's nothing that isn't compromised given larger societal issues that are only mirrored and magnified in the personal space. So, again not really comparable to stuff that doesn't evoke the same sort of visceral hostile response in others.

I think from what how describe Your T needs more than 'training' in that issue alone. So perhaps find a T that is really skilled.

I think one is free to choose a therapist that has experience or skills or training in the sorts of things one wants a therapist to know about. I am not so certain that I, as a client, get to demand a therapist get training in areas I think they need to know about. I would see it more as I am free to choose a therapist who does rather than demand the therapist go get it. I am a lesbian but that has very little to do with why I pay a therapist. As long as the therapist was not all bent out about homosexuality, then that part did not really come into play with my choices of therapists. I know of other people who deliberately seek other lesbians or gay men as therapists because they have that as a requirement for the therapist they hire. I think one should have choices in therapists, but as for demanding a therapist go get training in some area just to deal with me -that is to me, something that is unlikely to happen. I don't see a therapist complying with such a thing and I don't really see that they should.

Fair enough. And, I would in general agree given how things are in the US or Western Europe.

However, QM's situation is different -- she isn't in a country that appears to have a great deal of choice in terms of Ts who are cool with LGBT stuff unlike in the US where the default is that Ts (at least in most areas) are unlikely to be homophobic (in this day and age -- the past is another issue).

She has also been working with her T for a while now and this has become a sticking point. Whether one uses the word 'demand' or expects that a T would make some effort to meet the client under these circumstances is open to debate -- but, I don't necessarily think that what she's asking for is out of bounds of what one might expect from a T in her situation.

Especially since the reason given by her T is not that she doesn't have the time / resources etc to do it but that she doesn't 'need' to do it i.e., because she already has the expertise / skills -- that to me is an incredibly false assumption and smacks of the Ts blindness which I suspect mirrors the general status of the homophobic society at large (I can't imagine most Ts in the US making a statement like that -- they may well say that it's beyond what they'd be willing to do but there's a general understanding that these issues do require more thought / expertise than may be provided in the typical curriculum). And so, this isn't just a general empathic / therapeutic failure but a specific issue that can be remedied with specific steps that the T is choosing not to do.

Also, I think it makes little sense to directly transport our understanding of things from a US / Western European context to other countries. At the same time of course, I do understand and see that it is possible to go too far with the cultural uniqueness argument -- I don't think that's the case here though.

QM -- apologies if I've misunderstood your situation or said stuff that's not accurate.