Do you think it’s possible to hurt your T?

Yes my current T can be hurt. He'd never admit it, but I can see it. I've always thought that I have an intense power to hurt and worse, with words or thoughts.

I said it before: therapy always ends up being about the therapist. The theory pushed by therapists is that you can say anything in session (which sounds nice). The reality of course is vastly different. So yes of course you can hurt a therapist: all it takes is pointing out that therapists don't do much, that therapy doesn't help and that it's a scam. They instantly get very defensive and lash out. They seem to be the neediest, least self-aware people I have ever met.

Yes, this is certainly my experience.
Most of the therapists I know act out off their fragile ego’s, they need reassurance and adoration and when a client doesn’t give them that they get angry and blame the client for being ungrateful, resistant (whatever)!!!

I do think it's possible to hurt the ts, after all they are only human. I had this one art t a while back. I said something about how I didn't think she wasn't doing something right and perhaps I didn't word it in the best way and she said I hurt her feelings. She ended up going on early maternity leave so I'm guessing it was the hormones. Once she left I never returned.

In my experiences, therapists were if anything more fragile than the world at large because they seemed so invested in their power and wizard roles. When I failed to fawn over them, they dropped the empathy act quickly and combusted in anger and defensiveness. The two therapists I know outside a professional context are some of the most grandstanding, vainglorious, adversarial people I've had to suffer. One lies about her accomplishments and goes out of her way to troll me.

I can only base my impressions on a small population sampling, of course. But I see them functioning on an extremely shaky, self-deceiving foundation.

So in reading this thread my impression is that many more people than I would have guessed don't have positive experiences with therapists. In fact, it sounds like many who have posted here feel you have been traumatized by therapists. Am I correct? Also, what about pdocs...I'm curious to know whether those of you who no longer trust therapists feel any different about pdocs, or not?

I wasn’t traumatized so much as duped.

The realization that I was duped, and used primarily for their ego enhancement, by the profession and social institution I was looking to for "help" for 55 years, has been traumatic. But having made my way through that, with the non-rejection of the people in this forum, I am no longer so "fragile".

Meds didn't help much for my depression, and I don't have a positive feeling or trust toward pdocs, either.

Yeah, I've hurt my T. She thinks the world is mostly safe, I think otherwise. She has expressed hurt when I attribute malicious motives to her, like thinking she's out to hurt me, punish me, use my vulnerabilities against me etc. She gets especially upset when clients say she "doesn't care", or "only cares because it's your job." I feel like she feels I'm attacking her self concept of herself as "a good person." in my view, people convinced they're doing good can cause a lot of harm despite their good intentions.

Very well said. Why should I ever have expected differently?

Because of issues I went into therapy with, I guess? Only -- for it to take 55 years, on and off, of me going to therapy over and over expecting a different result, until I thankfully began to realize this? As I've said before, I think there has to be a better way.

This feels true.

I think that was me!

Completely agree. Therapists EXPECT their clients to fawn all over them or at the very least they expect admiration. "wow you must care so much about people since you became a therapist!". ********. I saw a dozen of therapists after my ex therapist termination and when I (slowly) started to point out that perhaps therapists were in this profession for self-serving reasons and not because they are altruistic saints, all of them were at first completely baffled. They couldn't believe a client was not all adoring and worshipping at their feet! I guess their other clients either lavished them with adoration or they didn't dare to say anything to upset the therapist. After the bafflement came the anger and the defensiveness, especially with my last therapist. And of course it was all about "my issues": I had problems trusting people, I was afraid of what therapy might uncover (lol). Having said that, I don't consider myself traumatized by therapy, it's more like I was foolish and got sucked in.

That last sentence says it all. I feel my therapists made a fool of me, particularly since I willingly handed them my vulnerability as the weapon.

To respond to the OP, I’ve definitely seen therapists advance power struggles, be extremely invested in dominance, etc. I think therapy’s asymmetry might leave participants susceptible to injury in dictating specific roles and expectations.

I said something like that to my T once and she blurted out "where did THAT come from?" in a surprised tone. I think I must have hit a nerve.

Mine works with clients with complex trauma and/or "personality disorders" (often due to the complex trauma) and while she's said she gets my accusation A LOT from other clients as well, she did say she feels hurt each time it happens.

Of course you can hurt a T, they are not robots or ufos. People get hurt often in intentionally hurtful situations. T's should have their education and possible supervision to help them deal with it but not to be able to hurt someone is an absurd idea.

I agree with this and I think the real issue is how they react to that hurt in terms of communication with the client. Whatever anyone feels inside is none of my business. But the way they express it to me is, and i think the rules for T's are different from the rules for regular people. On one end of the continuum is no communication about the client's impact on their feelings, and on the other end is termination and/or "punishment" and over-communication or focus on the client's impact on the T, or what people sometimes say is "making it all about them." I would hold T's to the side of things where their expressions of hurt should be focused on the client and not themselves. This doesn't mean that T's can't state how the client's words impacted them, as I think it's a misstep to allow anyone to dump on you and then refuse to hear or look at said dump. In reality, dumping on a T is a rife ground for how a client handles disappointment and upset with other people and a constructive dialog around this might be helpful to the client.

I had similar experience with a dozen+ therapists post termination. Some were baffled. Some got angry or defensive. Almost all tried to change the subject. The one I had the drama with literally wept on the phone when I made her realize what a mess she'd made. I thought her emotions were for me, but they were for her. I was duped and traumatized in var.

I think most therapists spend all day sitting there with clients because they badly need this controlled interaction in their life. They have a lot riding on it. In my experience, if you mess with this, they take it badly.

I saw a magnified edition of therapists' defensiveness when I reviewed an "ethics" book on Amazon. My careful argument around the book's ridicule of clients was met with recrimination, from the author, a vitriolic colleague and even a past president of the American Psychological Association who later was in the national spotlight for his own ethics lapses. I've never experienced therapists as open to give-and-take between peers. The ones I've interacted with or read from seem staunchly invested in maintaining authority.

This thread is particularly interesting to me because I accused my therapist of not caring many, many times. It was a go-to line. She didn't like it, but to her credit (and I'm quick to bash her, so this is unusual), I don't think it was about her ego being bruised.

Once, when I suggested something about her ego invading the office--I can't remember the context--she said something like, "I'm not such an insecure person that I need your validation to make me feel good about myself." I wish I remembered the actual quote. It was kind of bada** and speaks to some of the recent posts about therapists needing validation for their egos (which I still agree with... I'm just sharing an anecdote).

When I first accused her of not caring, she'd skirt around it mildly: "If you think you're not cared for, you're hugely mistaken" was her usual phrasing. I did competitive speech & debate-- I know what it sounds like when you're trying to sound like you said "I care about you" but you didn't actually say it. So that annoyed me immensely.

But on the afternoon I terminated, she was quite vocal: I know you think I don't care about you, but I do care. I worry about you. I think about you a lot when I know you're going through a hard time. I'm invested in you. I know (big project) is going to make it, and I'm going to be the first one in the crowd cheering you on... etc etc.

(And by that time I wasn't paying her anymore because I had no money in my pocket because I've decided to go into the arts-- which is a whole other issue-- But she wasn't asking me to stay on so she could make money. She was saying she wanted me to stay on for me. I think about this a lot. A lot. And she did say she was really sad that I was walking away from a relationship that wasn't mutually ending. Agh, this situation stinks.)

Boundary issues aside (!) this gigantic monologue was just to offer my experiences with accusing a therapist of not caring. I still think she didn't give two s**ts about me. But maybe she gave half of a s**t. (Haha?)

Your description evokes a relationship I had with a family member, who insisted she was my biggest booster. In my case it seemed so...performative. I do care about you; aren't I playing that character?

I'd think a truly caring person might be more open to conversation. I'm sorry you don't experience my caring; how can we remedy that?

In any event, I'd think the defining the caring--belongs to the recipient and not the performer. If the message is sent by not received, it's lost mail.

T's can definitely be hurt by what we say. Whether or not they tell us or not is a totally different story. In my case I suspect I did say things unknowingly that triggered one of T's issues. She never said anything other than explain why my generalization of a certain group of people was unfair. I told here I disagreed. A while after that T was in the groj p of people I was very upset and angry with. Had ahe not told me of her past I would have never realized that my previous statements hit really close to home for here because ahe neber let on.

To my T's credit, I did tell her I feel she didn't "care deeply", citing an analogy similar to your lost mail one. She insisted she was demonstrating care in a lot of ways but I stood firm about not feeling I'd received it, and she asked how she could remedy it. And we talked, and she has taken note and tried to be better at conveying care.

I’m happy to read that. Yes, it is to her credit.