Coming to Terms with Ex T

The more I share my experiences around ex T with new T, it seems like the more surprised and affirming she is of my side. This is very hard for me to take in. I know there are mixed opinions on here about whether the things Ex T did with me were wrong or not, and I for the most part have sided with those who don’t think she did anything wrong (however I know I’ve posted on here when I’ve felt angry hoping for some validation that what she did was wrong). For the most part though, I want to believe she didn’t make mistakes with me. I want to believe her when she said a billion times, “I haven’t done anything wrong!,” she was right and telling the truth.

I have tried to talk myself through this by telling myself that since she authentically did care, it’s okay that she’d tell me that she very appropriately loved me. How would she know how much distress that would cause? I tell myself it’s okay that she and I hung out in my dorm room after an exposure session in my college cafeteria. I try to tell myself that I misremembered when she told me she’d have to think about being friends with me, that she didn’t normally do this with clients but she’d think about it with me. I feel crazy. New T tells me that Ex T was gaslighting me and I’m having a really hard time trusting in my own experience as being real. Maybe I did make everything up? It seems like Ex T sincerely believes she did nothing wrong, so who am I to say she did? She’s the one with two doctorates!

I understand this dilemma. I wanted to believe, too. I needed help, I wanted somebody to care -- I felt I needed somebody to care, since I wasn't doing so well on my own. I expected and believed that the professional was there to do that.

Mine weren't. Your ex-T wasn't. So sorry you had that bad experience. I hope that your new T will maintain appropriate boundaries and can help you learn to trust your own experience. Even when you disagree with her. That way, you can have two separate people with two different viewpoints but it doesn't threaten the relationship. I never got to that with a T but I am getting to that with some people in a support group.

It has little to do with how many doctorates somebody has as I expect you know. It has to do with the kind of person the other person is. How solid they are in themselves or something. Frequently, clients are not in a good place to be able to see that clearly. I sure know I wasn't!

It sounds like your new T is solid and interested in helping you learn how to trust your own experience. Sounds more trustworthy to me than your ex-T, but that's for you to decide, even if you don't fully trust yourself yet. One step at a time.

To me this seems where judgment and nuance come into play. Not judgment of the judgey sort, but judgment as in professional judgment. Different therapists make different judgements about what to do in therapy. Other therapists, both with the benefit and the bias of monday morning quarterbacking, make judgments about those judgments. I think there can be honest disagreement without anybody gaslighting anybody. To me, gaslighting is often a misused term because it doesn't just mean that people see things differently, and just because people see things differently that doesn't mean someone is trying to delegitimize your view or somehow trick you into believing your perceptions can't be trusted. See the actual movie Gaslight, where the husband hides his wife's purse to make her believe she is losing her mind, and then puts it back after she goes off to look elsewhere from the usual place. Other examples of "tricks" include accusing someone of doing what you are actually doing; such as your partner and having an affair.

But lecture on gaslighting aside, I think your former T believes what she says and as to whether it is "wrong," I think you can trust yourself and your former T that her judgment about how to do therapy with you could be wrong. It doesn't seem like it is the kind of wrong where the intention was to mess you up or harm you in some way, just poor judgments about what might work. I believe you can trust your former T that she was telling her truth and what she believed (otherwise, why do these things?). You don't have to demonize her in order to see things as they are, which was a complicated therapy with different boundaries than most, with someone who has difficulty connecting with others IRL, where things obviously went off the rails until termination.

I also think you can trust your current T that this is how she sees things, and I don't think she's gaslighting you about the gaslighting. Some people think therapists can be inauthentic for all kinds of reasons, and this might be a situation where she's emphasizing certain aspects of your therapy as a way to facilitate any self blame you might have or to break your idealistic view on your former therapist. I find it easier to take what people say at face value. But this is her judgment, professional or not, on your therapist. It's not truth, and it has all the same foibles that may be present in your former t's judgment, just different ones. And if you went to 10 different therapists, my guess would be they would have 10 different judgments about what might have been right or what might have been wrong in your former therapy.

I'm not sure that your T's judgment is the most important one. I think that yours is. I think being able to look at what happened for what it likely was, which was a mishmash of things that worked, things that didn't, things that had no impact, things that harmed you, and to move forward in a new therapy that gets you closer to where you want to go is the issue. You being clear on what happened and its effects and understanding what affected you and why, that seems like the thing to me.

She tried to do right by you and I don't believe she was gaslighting you. If she did not care about you, she would not have gone so far with, and for, you.

However, it seems she was also way over her head. Countertransference, unskilled, call it what you will but in this case she did not keep professional distance enough.

Who is to say it was right or wrong. She clearly seemed well-intentioned towards you yet.. how could she not think of the consequences?