Does therapy hurt your feelings?

If it does, is that a good or bad thing? Is it ever okay if your feelings get hurt in therapy, or should it never happen? Can you grow from it? What is the threshold between good and bad? Kinda based on various recent threads.

Sometimes! And, for me, it's an essential part of therapy, and I definitely grow from it.

Because I struggle with severe attachment injuries from childhood, a lot of the time when my feelings get hurt in therapy, it's because my therapist said one thing and I heard something else. For example, my therapist used to ask me, "why are you here?" He's trying to get me to remember/think about my motivation for going to therapy, but what I heard was, "why are you here? I wish you would leave." And I would feel hurt.

So feeling hurt is a part of therapy. It shows me what I need to work through.

I think the difference between good and bad is, well, it's "good" if the hurt feelings are mainly the result of the client's issues and point to things that need time be worked on, and it's bad of the hurt feelings are caused by the therapist's unresolved issues, unethical conduct, or personality disorder. There are in-between scenarios too--for example, where the therapist fails to properly manage their own counter-transference and hurts the client's feelings as a result but the therapist isn't abusive or unethical or personality disordered. In those situations, the therapist's mistakes and the client's hurt feelings can be worked through, and both parties can grow.

Yes, it does sometimes. For my experience, I think it needs to. I have to look at those difficult parts of myself in order to heal them and in order to grow. T told me one time that it's her job to love my shadow. And she's done that well most of the time. I've been able to start facing my shadow parts and working with them and have grown tremendously from this entire therapeutic process.

Yes! My feelings get hurt by those moments that show I am work to my T, and that he forgets details about me, goes on vacations with his "real" people, or cuts me off at 50 minutes exactly, sending me out to the city streets in floods of tears.

I’ve been seeing my T for nearly 4 years, most of that at a high frequency. I think there have been a few different ways my T has “hurt my feelings”.

1) inadvertently hitting on a sensitive or tender place in me via humor or off-handed remarks.
2) labeling something in me in a static way.
3) assigning negative intent

In any given relationship with there is some amount of vulnerability, I think some amount of hurt feelings is inevitable. The big deal has been learning that I can bring those feelings back in and we can work through it. While my T hasn’t said sorry, she has worked really hard to understand what was hurtful and help me be curious as to why. What was it about that comment, on that day? What old patterns are being repeated? What is the something new to work towards? For the record, I think I’ve hurt her feelings st least once.

To me, hurt feelings implies a misstep or moment of friction with another person. That does happen with my T, and I think it's good to talk through those things and learn from them and have the experience of resolving an issue in a satisfactory way. But most of my pain and intense distress in therapy comes from the reactivation of painful things from my past, including falling into old habits and relational patterns with my T. That usually has nothing to do with my T or anything she has said or done, so it seems different to me than hurt feelings. But separating out what's "real" and what's my "stuff" is incredibly complicated, and that is definitely a major part of my work in therapy.

I also tend to do the thing that RaineD describes where my T says something and I feel like she said the exact opposite (sometimes going as far as misinterpreting her actual words, always in a negative way). I can't help but wonder how often I have done that automatically with other people in my life and needlessly distanced myself as a result. Probably a lot. If my T is always on my side and I can convince myself that even she doesn't like me, then I don't think a real, complicated person would have a chance. So there are a lot of layers, and many of them are quite unpleasant. I think I'm in the thick of one of these situations right now, actually, so it has been useful to think this through.

una, these are interesting questions.

Do you mean do the things the t says to me hurt my feelings?

Not really. She's pretty good at being direct and clear in what she's got to say, and I am mostly good at receiving whatever it is. But I think my t is careful about how she gives feedback because she understands the ways that my filter got skewed in the first place.

And yes. It is harder for me when she doesn't quite understand what I am saying. Misinterprets, doesn't quite "get it," a session goes sideways because I'm talking apples and and her feedback is about oranges. It doesn't hurt my feelings in the traditional sense, where I feel criticized, but it's frustrating and feels invalidating.

I don't know whether it's good or bad, or okay or not okay. It just is. It would be freaky if we had some kind of mind meld and my t was always on the same page and always said exactly the right thing, I guess. Often, in mentally sorting through where the misunderstanding lies, I get more insight and clarity than I might have if she'd just nodded and "got me."

These are interesting and thoughtful answers!

For me, therapy as an institution or activity has not. A specific therapist has done so, not as a legitimate part of therapy, but because she was either a ***** or an idiot.

I experience my own feelings of hurt. I don't feel the T has hurt me. But I've felt hurt. The hurt that I've felt all my life from my childhood gets rexperienced when it hooks, in to something that happens in therapy. It Doesbt bother me in the way some here seem to be effected by it. I feel safe enough with T to know I can own it and talk about it and get through it and know I always come through stronger.

I cannot explain exactly how my T does therapy (it’s a mystery to me!) but she is able to do it in such a way that it never feels hurtful or offensive. I can honestly say I’ve never gotten hurt. As a result, I’ve come to expect this and not just from her but any possible T I may have in the future. I just know I have experienced tremendous self-growth without therapy feeling hurtful.

Therapists have been abjectly arrogant and tactless. The process itself re-opened wounds. Neither were helpful, and the latter put me into an obnoxious, deep-but-shallow, self absorbed phase.

All the time.

I’m a sensitive soul.

So is Blondie, according to her.

My first therapists actions in the end really hurt my sense of responsibility and I was often very angry at him. It did not help my therapy at all, quite the opposite, because they were mostly reactions to how he did things that really clashed with my values, not some old wounds.

Sometimes I felt hurt that my last T did not engage with me as much as I wanted between sessions via email, and that was part of the process to tolerate that and let the obsessiveness go. That part was beneficial and I never blamed the T or demanded more because I knew that minimal engagement was in my best interest. I did not even experience it as rejection, just lack of reinforcement in my obsessiveness, like not satisfying a craving. It was unpleasant initially.

My T doesn't hurt my feelings, but I often feel hurt because of what we talk about.

What I appreciate most about my therapy in its later stages (not saying I'm quitting just saying that this second round of it in middle age is distinct from when I was in my 30's) is that I've learned to be more accepting about what other people say to me.

I used to be very hard on people, especially when they screwed up. This is a better problem than being silently resentful and/or uncommunicative. Better for me, not necessarily better for those not me. I found my voice a long time ago but I used it to shut people down, including my current T when I first started. I was forever correcting him and "schooling" him (as he said until I told him to stop using that word) and he used to say I liked to be "precise" in my words (and his). But I used to beat up other people, especially those closest to me, when they "wronged" me in some way, insisting on repeated and specific types of apologies and probably some subtle coercion to state things just the way I wanted.

I'm not sure how or why I changed but it was gradual. My son was growing up from a small child, and I'm glad now that I've learned to say my piece but also be able to hear what he's saying. Focusing on the message being communicated and being okay with that has been positive for relating to a teen-- which I don't think is terribly easy no matter what a sweet child or honest relationship you have. My relationships with people are easier, more open, more fun, and I can't remember when I've last had an interpersonal conflict with the exception of the power hungry and controlling person who thinks she has something to say about my soon-to-be-quit job.

But the change is about that thing of "hurting your feelings". My T has never stated this directly, consistent with the way he (or I) does/do therapy. Instead, he's helped create the space (I would not give him even most of the credit) where I can truly observe myself and the impact of what I say. That has helped me change in ways that have been good for me.

My T never hurts my feelings deliberately. And she's only hurt my feelings on accident a handful of times. Most of the time, it's my projection, we talk it out, and things are good.

The question was posed as therapy but it seems most are responding about therapist. Are they interchangeable? They would not be for me.

No, neither therapy nor the therapist has hurt my feelings.

There are no wrong answers.

Eta - But the people who answered right get a golden ticket...

Eta - just kidding about the golden ticket.

Well, that's just a fail on reading comprehension on my part. lol

To answer your question, I guess they're interchangeable to me in this question as, for me, therapy cannot hurt my feelings because it is a context. Or, well, maybe my answer should have been no then instead of sometimes.

Una, my answer is really no and not sometimes. Sorry for messing up your poll.

I am pretty sure you will be getting the golden ticket.

I wasn't directing my post at you specifically - I just noticed it was a thing posters were doing.

I thought it was about therapy causing hurt feelings, which I don't understand. I don't see how it can hurt my feelings. My therapist can, though, and has a few times. But when that's happened it had nothing to do with therapy or anything therapeutic.

Absolutely, yes! My therapist has hurt my feelings a number of times. However, we have always worked things out.

Most of the time, my hurt feelings have been because I took something my t said or wrote the wrong way. Usually, I misinterpreted her meaning, or what she said with no negative intent ended up triggering my old traumas from the past.

At times, though, my t is the one who made the mistake and/or we both played a part in a misunderstanding. We've only had one terrible rupture that occurred during an especially trying time for me. That time, it was my t's fault, and it was almost a deal breaker. I was ready to quit and had even begun researching other therapists. We had to discuss it over and over for 4 months until we worked through it.

A few times, I know that I hurt my therapist's feelings too, although she usually didn't say so. I could just tell.

Now that we have worked through that terrible rupture, we are closer than ever before. I am doing better work in therapy too.

Oh I know! More just amusement.

I'm not sure I want a golden ticket thought. That tends to end badly for most winners.