When your therapist "acts out"

I'm on my fourth T (I have to switch every year) and I've never experienced such a thing..

my english is not good enough to understand what "act out" means. can someone explain?

When a therapist is "acting out" in therapy it means that they are putting the feelings that they are not aware of about their patient into action instead of processing their feeling with a supervisor/their own therapist or communicating their feelings to the patient.
For example, a therapist might be angry (but is unaware of their anger) towards their patient. They might show this anger by coming late to the session.

Oh, I see. My therapist had a lot of depth therapy, so I wouldn't think he has (as much of) a propensity to act out. When I wrote my last post, I was thinking since he doesn't talk with someone about his feelings (he doesn't tell me about his feelings and told me he doesn't consult with other therapists) he might have more opportunities to act out. But that is given the propensity...if someone already has those tendencies.

The way you framed it here makes me think about a therapist losing their objectivity due to their feelings, which could be a form of acting out I suppose. I have thought my therapist's interpretations were way off at one point, not sure if it was a form of acting out or countertransference. I did confront him on it. He got defensive. It was really bad.

We are working good together now, but I feel this issue is still hanging. We talk about it here and there still. I don't think it will ever be resolved because he doesn't tell me his feelings. I can't understand/process/deal with the issue without having the full scope of information; only my side of things. I kind of gave up though revisit parts of this from time to time.

Adding here-in these therapy, especially surrounding the example i mentioned above, I would get feelings of 'needing to be the therapist' from time to time when things were off. I think this may have been my picking up subtley his acting out and that perhaps his feelings weren't contained by him. I used to get those same feelings with my last therapist when he acted out in positive ways. I did tell my current therapist when I got those feelings. It is sort of like role reversal, becoming the parent. I really think he is good at keeping his stuff out of sessions for the most part.

My last therapist acted out in positive ways, like giving me gifts. It doesn't seem like you are looking for those kind of examples though.

Sorry I have no good examples to discuss, but I just thought this topic is really interesting. In all my years of therapy, I never thought of framing therapists' issues this way.

I would not be able to stay with a therapist who acted out in ways that could harm me-it's really a sign of no insight into oneself, someone who hasn't worked through their issues. It would just be really triggering to me, and I would be afraid of being harmed all the time and get flashbacks. I think I haven't come across this issue much because I choose therapists who had years of their own depth therapy for my long-term therapies. That doesn't guarantee that they won't act out, and everyone does it from time to time, but it sure helps weed them out.

Sorry if you are dealing with this. I would keep bringing it up.

My first therapist did that quite often, especially towards the end. The form of it that really put me off was often pushing his agenda and pet theories on me, which I did not feel they fit at all. (He believes that they are universal issues and everything can be worked though with them.) At the same time, he did not seem very interested in my biggest issue. It was very disruptive and I left in the end because I did not find it useful at all and it increased my stress level. He also sometimes said and wrote stuff that were quite inappropriate from a therapist, IMO. I complained about some of these things but not all and then I just left. I actually just scheduled a single session with him for next week to discuss some of these things.

Can't think of anything significant from my second therapist. Maybe that he sometimes talked too much about random things in session and I often had to interrupt and remind him what I wanted to discuss.

My former T acted out once or twice. One time I hold him about a male online acquaintance and he knew some of my past. T raised his voice, looked angry and said "Your suppose to be talking to me not him!" I told T this online male doesn't counsel me.

It made me feel weird.