Question

Are you satisfied with regarding your therapist only as a paid professional?

One therapist I didn't "bond" with asked me if I wanted to be "special" to her..

Having been severely burnt by the previous therapist, (and the parental units ) I had "too many defences" and no, I didn't have this wish ..

I consulted this therapist for a year. Maybe partly because she had worked for the NHS she didn't disguise her impatience and disappointment

For those with early childhood trauma and neglect, how long does/did it take you to begin to trust a therapist? Or do you ever trust them fully

The trust should be felt pretty early on. If it is not there, then you are not a fit and should find another therapist. Sometimes you just don't click, and that is okay.

I don't trust anyone 100%

Yes but you should feel comfortable. I am the same I don't fully trust people either.

I felt a strong connection straight away. It took about 4 months though to dip my toes in the water really as far as trusting. (I'm thinking of how my T said I could call, text or email if I felt upset. It took me four months to take him up on this.)

Trust is still an issue though. I think it always will be. But it's a lot, lot better. And trusting T more has translated through to trusting other people in my life more, and this is really good for me.

No, I do not feel a need for a bond with the woman. I am fine with a therapist being a paid stranger.

With mine, it took me 7 or 8 months to even begin to trust. I have a long history of trauma, for reference.

It was an interesting process- while I didn't trust him at the beginning, I had a feeling in the back of my mind that eventually, if we worked hard, I might be able to trust him. The difference between me and another therapy-goer might be that I've never trusted anyone, at all. So coming to trust this person was a big deal and involved a little bit of him earning my trust, and me learning that some people are worthy of being trusted.

I still have regressions where I or another part panics and then there's much reassuring to be done. I think for me learning that he could be trusted was a big part of our work together.

I think for a person with a trauma background, the timing of the trust process is very individual. The key for me was thinking I might possibly be able to trust them someday.

For the record, I have another T who is mostly a paid professional to me. We are not really bonded. But it's ok, just a different dynamic. For that T our work is more external and does not intrinsically involve our personal relationship with each other.

It looks like I repeated myself a lot but.... I don't feel like fixing it right now... you get the idea, I hope

Thanks anais anais, I appreciate this post

There are some good replies here and I couldn't put it any better. I'm sorry you got burned by a T and the parental units ( same here ). I felt a connection with my regular T very early. He did ask if I trusted him and I said as much as I'm going to. I don't trust anybody 100 % , sadly from the childhood neglect but also in adulthood as well.

They reality is our relationship started out professionally. Do I wish we could just be friends maybe but it isn't realistic. Besides if she were just friend the dynamics would be different. With even my best friend I do but dump all my problems to work though. I think to some degree it is a great setup. I get to talk about all my problems without guilt..but we also exchange info on our hobbies, talk about our families, can laugh and have fun..efc for the most part if is T the dnd/after my appointment and through email.

Trust is a hard one. I felt a connection early on and felt she was somebody I should be able trust. To actually have trust it took a while. Trust will always be an issue with anybody even my husband of 22 years. I my level of trust is the same level as my husband and best friend in my head O know I can trust them but O have days where I doubt everyone

Well over a year before i even trusted her enough to get into my childhood stuff.

She asked you if you wanted to be "special" to her? In what way? In my therapy experience, I knew within just a handful of sessions if I was going to click with the therapist or not. The one I am seeing currently, I clicked with right away, the very first session. I think I just knew. When you walk away feeling like you've had a long term professional relationship with a therapist, even though it hasn't been long term, that's when I knew. And with my current, I walked away after that first session hour feeling like I had been seeing her for a long time. We just clicked immediately. I think the feeling of safety and trust comes differently for different people, but in my experience, I definitely know it when it happens. I am not one who usually trusts easily, or fully, and there are some things about myself I don't think I could ever share with ANYONE, I think a lot of us tend to hold a little something back....

It took me about 2 & a half years to even mention to my T that I had some 'stuff' in my past. I tested him so much & in retrospect, I'm surprised he stuck with me!! There's no time limit & as we know too well, trust is earned & not just handed out! I've still not told him my whole story. I have this way of just chucking out the odd thing & then shut down again. I'm now 3 & a half years in. Probably by the year 2077, he may just have the whole picture!!!

My long term t once said that it usually takes people five to ten years in therapy to reveal their worst traumas. It really can take that long

However, with most of my better ts I had a sense right away if I could work with them or not.

It took me a while to trust my T to the amount I do now. Not fully now or ever I think but it's pretty good right now. He's probably the person I trust the most. I think by him telling me not to just take his word for it to test him out and see if he follows what he says or if what he's saying really makes sense and is true. I think when he said this often it made me feel like he was more trustworthy because he wasn't just saying to trust him blindly. But then I started doing what he said and would test what he said and what he did and when I saw him do exactly as he said and when I tested his theories and they seemed accurate I trusted him more. Then when he started helping me figure out what was going on and sometimes would say how I felt without even a word from me or he'd justify how I felt without me saying anything about it then I started to trust him a bit more. So it really was his words and actions that made me trust him. It took a couple of years for me but now in the 4th year of seeing him things are going good for the therapy relationship.

I am highly satisfied with my current therapist as being a paid professional. I understand that she is in my life as my therapist only; this is her paid role. And I pay her to care enough about me to put my needs first by way of upholding respectful, healthy boundaries that keep me emotionally safe, and to support me without judgement while I work through my issues. <--- complete opposite of my old t!

I was also severely burnt by my old t, have childhood trauma and neglect. Learning to trust my new t is surprisingly not as difficult as I had expected, though it is certainly difficult (only been seeing her for about 3-1/2 months). I guess I trust her enough to have faith that the trust will grow enough so I can eventually do deep work with her. I kind of feel like I don’t have a choice but to see a therapist to help me make it through to the “other side.” I'm at an age where I've simply had enough of this ****. So I have to learn how to surrender and take the risk of trust. Current t has so far been excellent and I believe it will happen. I'm sorry you had bad experiences and I hope you can find a t that suits you well enough to trust!

I also have one t that I felt like I "knew" right away that I could come to trust. My trust grew very slowly, and sometimes even now I don't trust him. T3, I really didn't like at first. I didn't like her style, didn't want to trust her, didn't feel comfortable. I only stuck it out because I was desperate and she has some training and experience that I believed (correctly) would help me. I still don't trust her a lot. It's been close to 2 years, I think, that I have been seeing her. But despite my lack of trust, she has been immensely helpful.

No, I don't feel satisfied with T being a paid professional, but that has less to do with trust and more to do with transference. I trust T to the extent that I'm able with anyone. Also survived childhood trauma and unethical Ts.

I have a lot of problems with that model. Seems awfully parasitic.

Anyway it took me about three months before i felt i trusted the one enough to divulge sensitive stuff. But it was trust with an asterisk. Real trust comes from mutual openness. In the end it was misplaced.

I trusted a bunch then got disappointed with all of them.

The therapy idea SOUNDS good, and I guess it eventually worked because now don't want a T any more. I'm as mad at them as my family of origin as the whole world now. Plus, it took 20 years with a bunch of different therapists and I was largely dysfunctional the whole time. There's got to be a better way!

Hardly an outcome I wanted. But . . . I'm not pushed around by other people's needs any more and I do have some friends in my life that I trust. I didn't have that in my life 20 years ago when my husband passed away.

What's your biggest complaint or problem, Fuzzy? Is it anything you could work on with a T you DON'T trust, or have to trust?