Things therapists do that fall flat and fail

The NICABM people have a seminar that they advertised like this (calling clients "challenging"):
When a client seems unable to make progress, and your tried-and-true strategies don’t appear to be working . . .

. . . what do you do?
Next Level Practitioner Program - NICABM

The woman always seemed puzzled when she tried idiotic things that failed.

1. Asking me if I would say X to a friend (No, but I would think it)
2. Telling me others do/do not do X (so ****ing what - why would I care what
others do or don't do?-I was not telling her about
x because I thought I was a special little ****ing snowflake)
3. Telling me what she did/would do (like I thought she was someone to
emulate? Was I supposed to go all like if a therapist does it then it must be
okay? What sort of insane ****ing nonsense is that?)
4. Telling me she thought X was a good idea or bad idea (Like I ****ing cared
what she thought about it)
5. Pointing out the obvious and treating me like a slack jawed drooling idiot.
7. Playing dumb (she really could not have been as dumb as she pretended)

Related to your #1:
Friday my therapist was trying to get be to stop being so hard on my childhood self and said "I can't imagine that you would tell any other 5 year old child that they're being annoying and pathetic and needy for wanting their mom to tuck them in" and I was like "well, no, but I would be thinking it."
He still hasn't quite gotten my intense dislike of children...

Amazing! Great idea! Ask the best “experts” – but of course not any clients! Who could possibly imagine that a client/patient might have anything useful/help to offer.

Also loved the guy in the video who said “if you have an excessively differentiated default mode” then if something goes wrong, it’s all about the other person, always his/her fault, unless the person is “masochistic” in which case it’s all about them, how bad they are, like in a Woody Allen movie.

As someone who spent a long time in therapy, blaming myself, I find that extremely insulting and condescending. Or perhaps mostly, inexcusably ignorant. Do therapists really think that clients don’t make observations like this themselves, even when we don't know what to do about it, or how to see and feel things differently?

Very interesting. The panel of doctors are the biggest names in the biz. Why don’t they just let the clients watch these videos and cut through all the BS, since everything we say is all issues they hear time and time again anyway? Thanks for posting!

This is very bizarre. Do therapists actually tell people what to say to a friend? Do they believe themselves to be so admired by a client that they will do anything for them? Weird.

Lol, that video sounds like gibberish to me.

My first T said things like that. That was, actually, how I started really disliking him before he became a mess and then we had constant direct conflicts. It was very condescending, I often felt like he was talking to a stupid kid. I asked him not to talk to me as though I was a kid because I was neither a child nor an idiot. Then he said that feeling was my transference - ridiculous. I don't recall anyone ever talking to me like sometimes he did, there was nowhere else to transfer it from.

Second T sometimes said what he did or would do but that did not bother me, I also often speak in that way when I am trying to give advice. I personally don't mind advice in therapy if it makes sense. He never said the other things and wasn't condescending at all in his communications.

Mine never seemed to play dumb but the first one certainly wasn't very smart. He was also very sloppy, for example his emails were often full of errors (same for a lot of his online media). When I complained about it and asked if he could make an effort to communicate better (sometimes I did not even understand what he wrote), he said that he uses dictation for writing and sometimes it's technical error. And that I was perfectionistic and it's likely because my parents scolded me for being sloppy. Again, never ever happened. What I mention here are some of the things where projected onto me and tried to manipulate, but there were lots of much worse things in the end.

Radical
Acceptance.

For me it feels like giving up, throwing my hands in the air. I have to tell t that I can’t get to a place of radical acceptance unless I’ve tried everything I can to fix a situation or sought help to improve the situation. When he pushes radacial acceptance I have to try not to scream. It feels like learned helplessness to me.

When I’m feeling bad about myself or sui and he tries to tell me to identify qualities I like in myself/things I am good at/reasons I want to live. I get what’s he’s going for by trying to shift my thoughts towards more positive things, but it honestly just makes me feel so frustrated and like he’s not hearing me at all. I want to talk about my negative feelings with him since I can’t with anyone else since I don’t want to negatively affect them or have to worry about their responses.

I can 100% relate to this!

Yes, I never understood the whole "but would you say that to a friend?" bit. Of course I wouldn't. But I'd hope they are thinking it to themselves.
And "acceptance," too, like growlycat said. I'm so depressed that I can't get out of bed and function as a human being, but if I just accept it, everything will be fine! La di da!

Yes, and there are things that happen in life that are just so unacceptable that I think it takes major cluelessness to push this on a client.

One T advocated "radical acceptance" to me and I simply said, I am not the Buddha. That kind of put a stop to some of the cheesiness.

My T doesn't normally do things I would consider ridiculous, which is one primary reason I stay with him. I've tried other therapists and found many were unsuitable or just weren't very bright. In line with what someone else said, I think social work degrees are among the easiest to get. ( I also think nontherapist social workers are undervalued in our society)..

I think it's like any profession- a small group will excel at the job, others will be mediocre, and a number aren't so good what they do. Also depends on how high or low the bar is and whose looking. If no one's looking, perhaps the bar is too low.

Those "experts" in the video are so sure that you don't know what your own feelings mean, and that they do.

They've taken anti-social traits -- e.g. being overbearing, presumptuous busy-bodies and nags -- and turned it into a career.

Interesting observation. It seems to me like females exhibit their anti-sociality in those ways more than men do, although men can, too, as is clear in the video. Nevertheless, in today's world it seems like only men can be "bad guys" and the ways in which women more typically are is overlooked.