[stopdog]

Do you see the therapist/therapist's office as a "safe place to land" or not?

[Echos Myron redux]

Yes mostly.

[TrailRunner14]

Yes I do!

Yes. It is very uncomfortable to feel my defenses weaken too just because I am there. Vulnerability and safety is not easy is not easy for me to accept.

[Taylor27]

Yes i do

[piggy momma]

Definitely.

[fille_folle]

I put maybe. I don't feel that my T is an unsafe person or anything, but that doesn't necessarily translate into therapy/the therapy room/the T being emblematic of safety for me. I don't know that I can think of anything or anybody that feels like that other than my bedroom.

[RaineD]

I don't know. I don't usually think of people or places as safe or unsafe. (Unless it's 3 am in a bad part of town, which I guess would feel unsafe.)

I always loved to see my therapist. I liked his office because I associated it with him. Was it safe? I was never concerned that someone would break in and kill us, but I don't think that's what you're getting at.

My therapist was a teddy bear. A mean teddy bear who often scolded me and sometimes yelled at me. But he was also sweet and compassionate and very obviously cared about me.

I don't know if his office was a "safe landing place" though. I'm not entirely sure what that means.

[downandlonely]

I put Other. I have had several therapists and didn't really care for any of them. Now I do support groups, and I like them much better.

[Waterloo12345]

I ticked the spiky porcipine option. It's ****ing difficult work. It derails my life (even if that was a car crash to start with).I've negative transference to her. I rage against her methods as too harsh.

But I keep on going. I'm open to her, even if I struggle with articulating it, I trust her to be there. I'm looking forward to my next session.

So maybe it is also a safe place to land.

[seoultous]

I do. When I first started seeing her I would have to take a deep breath and convince myself it was a safe haven before entering but now it's an escape from the ugly world I believe I live in.

[WarmFuzzySocks]

Yes. I chose the "warmth and understanding" bit, but yes.

That's part of the reason I go. I have supportive friends who can listen, and who are also warm and understanding, but even the friends who know almost all of the issues I am dealing with don't have the same kind of experience with abuse and trauma. The confidential environment and the therapist's experience give me a safe place to process my sh** with someone who is able to be supportive and still occasionally give me a reality check in a way that doesn't seem judgmental.

[zoiecat]

I said no. My T is very strict and goal/progress oriented. Sometimes he does not take well to what I need to talk about and while I know he means well, I can't trust that it is safe to be honest.

i chose the quiet haven of warmth and understanding. (MOST of the time, anyway!)

[susannahsays]

The therapist's office is just a room to me. I don't get all this talk of landing. The therapist's office is not a runway and I am not an airplane.

[Amyjay]

I put other. In my experience they are two separate things.
My Ts room is awful. Her room is entirely barren of anything but awful chairs and a table, and it is completely "unsoft" and uninviting. The room itself is often triggering for me.
I do view my therapist as a safe place to land. I do experience her as a safe person.
But the therapy room and therapy itself is freaking awful.

[Spangle]

I put yes as when I go in there, I feel so differently. It’s not always felt like that & has taken many years for me to get to that place of feeling safe.

[divine1966]

I said other. It’s just an office. It’s quite ugly. Every therapist I had had an ugly office. But it’s neither here nor there. Just bad decor. But I suspect question isn’t about how the office looks.

Safety or lack of it isn’t something generally on my mind unless we are discussing we are talking about some specific safety measures like not driving on icy roads or leaving house doors unlocked

Not so much her office as her face.

[HD7970GHZ]

In theory: effective therapy aims to provide safety so that vulnerability can be shown and deeper issues can be addressed and dealt with.

Unfortunately the inherent power imbalances in therapy are a breeding grounds for abuse. You SHOULD be able to trust your therapist - but your therapist is a human bound by the same human condition as abusers. Seems there is a trend in therapy - there is a tendency to abuse patients because it is easy to do and therapists / mental health professionals have zero accountability.

I urge EVERYONE who seeks out therapy to research the profession. It is NOT safe. It is legal suicide - everything you say can and will be used against you. It is a travesty that therapy has ever been considered safe - considering those who seek out therapy need and deserve a safe place to show vulnerability more than anything. Yes - there is always room for good therapists - but that environment can corrupt even the purest of hearts. This is an epidemic and a cause for action, unfortunately many people don't take interest in truths because it is easier to believe the common illusions that therapy is safe.

Wolves in sheeps clothing everywhere - therapists are no exception. You're talking to a complete stranger. Don't be fooled by the credentials nor the "ethical" mirage that encompasses the mental health profession. That industry is disgusting and it is only getting worse because there is zero accountability or acknowledgment for abuses.

Thanks,
Hd7970ghz

[ArtleyWilkins]

HD7970GHZ: Since you seem (from your other thread) to be interested in activism about therapy abuse situations, you might want to consider careful use of absolutes in your statements and arguments. Basically, when you speak in absolutes, many listeners automatically stop reading and stop listening because absolute statements inevitably ignore the other viewpoint. While your first two paragraphs respected the fact that there are two sides to this, your last two paragraphs negated the first two paragraphs when you launched into your absolutes, discounting the many therapists who are professional and not corrupt, and discounting those clients who (in your view) have illusions of safety are not interested in the truth, committing "legal suicide," and under the spell of a "mirage." That is not everyone's reality (and is frankly, insulting of peoples' intelligence") and even though you slightly admit that, you mostly discount that acknowledgment with your absolutes.

[hopealwayz]

Yes, definitely.

[guilloche]

No. I think my therapist is a great person, and has been better than my previous ones, but... she kind of freaks out easily over stuff, which makes me feel very much like I need to be "OK" and guarded when I'm there, because I can't deal with my own stress plus hers.

For example, a couple weeks ago, I had to miss a session because I was sick with a cold. On top of that, my family came to visit (planned from before I was sick). And work was stressing me out. It was a lot of stress, and I have trouble holding on to any kind of relationship (such that it is) with the therapist when I miss a week anyway...

So, when I got back, I was kind of not very "there". Pretty withdrawn, but I think that's not surprising considered being sick, missing therapy, dealing with my crazy family, and dealing with work... it was a lot, and I was kind of shut down. Part of that was feeling unsure about the therapist/relationship after two weeks without talking, even though that sounds weird...

So I go in, and she picks up on me being different/down. But kind of freaks out... tells me that I need to be on medication, she's never seen me this low, and in her perfect world, she'd put me in a hospital (I later confronted her on that, and she clarified, "well it would be a nice one!") - OMG. All this made me feel even less safe.

It seems obvious to me, but apparently it's not to therapists - all that felt really threatening to me, and the message was clear, "if you seem worse, I'm going to have you medicated and/or locked up." So, I'm pretty clear that I can't really express when I'm feeling bad.

The stupid thing is, this is just a normal state for me - it's not that awful, it's just withdrawn and cautious. I've gone in to my piano lessons like this, and my teacher is great at reconnecting with me. The first thing he does is to just be his normal self, so there's a sense of consistency, a sense of "even if I'm gone for a couple weeks, this person is still acting the same way as before" which, for me, in incredibly "safety generating" (if that's a thing). He basically just re-establishes the norm, rather than reacting to me and pulling us both into a downward spiral of doom.

This seems like it should be basic therapy 101, but apparently nope.

Sorry to go on, thanks for letting me talk about it though. It's been rolling around in my head a bit since then, obviously.

[SlumberKitty]

I put no. With my former T, I think she was safe, the office, not so much. With current T, I don't even know if she is safe, much less the office. There's more to look at in her office and I don't feel "monitored" but IDK if it is safe.

[Anastasia~]

Yes, I definitely do see it as a safe place. I can talk to my T about anything.