What if my T isn’t good enough?

I can define my own role on this board, thanks.

The best we can do is share our own experiences and try not to judge paths that we might not agree with. I believe that LIFE is the teacher and if therapy is a part of that for someone, great. It’s not the be-all-end-all path to recovery. In some cases, for some people, it can be the opposite.

Yes that comment was a reference to what you said. I disagree with the above but, as you say, there is no point in arguing if there is no description and explanation and we are supposed to accept a mystery that also sounds like generalization.

And I don't think I've written anywhere that everyone should go to therapy and benefit from therapy.

If it was your thread I would be probably not responding at all but I was responding to OP based on what I understand about her and then you for some reason started this conversation with me. I suppose I don't really understand what do you want from me???

There's really no mystery here. It's just that if someone is not able to distinguish between apples and oranges then I don't think it should necessarily be my role to teach them the difference.

I just don't get why do you feel the need to start arguing with me. I was just responding to OP and I suggest you do the same.

I don’t need anything from you. However for whatever reason, your responses make me feel like I have to defend myself. Perhaps something to reflect on.

I think I’ve mentioned in other posts that I tend to deal with life on my own even though I’m surrounded by others. My T has said more than once that he assumes I’d be more comfortable in his chair, meaning that I’d rather be the one helping others than the one being helped. So it turns out that that may be what I need to learn from therapy right now. I’ve had a teensy bit easier time practicing this with my husband and maybe it’s been easier because of my therapy relationship but certainly my husband’s own therapy has also helped. He’s doing DBT and no longer runs away if he sees that I am sad. In fact, he jokes that he wants me to cry so he can show me that he’ll be there for me. So I feel like there’s hope for us, but I guess it’s nice to do it in the context of therapy. I know that I ultimately want this type of emotional intimacy with my husband and others, but it’s nice to be nudged along by my T because I’m not sure I’d do it without his help. I do have a great fear about not being able to be emotionally intimate or reach any sort of depth with my T and what that would say about me and my ability to do that with others. I mean, it’s a therapist’s job to do that, so if he can’t do that with me, does that mean that I’m innately flawed? I do assume that having this experience with him would help me have it with others.

But I never even responded to you in the first place?!? If my response to the OP made you feel that you have to defend yourself then surely there is something for you to reflect on!

Yeah, I know that it can very hard and I know the snail pace. Unfortunately I don't really know any good method to speed it up. If the T stays as consistent as he has been then over time the safety in the relationship should increase, even if very slowly.

You've been other-focused most of your life, which I think would prevent a more balanced/two-way/intimate way of relating, so it may take some time to change. That's you're whole sense of self. You've only been in therapy a little over year?, and you've been sending your innermost thoughts in email for a long time, so you haven't been at it for that long. So from that perspective, you're just starting but are on the right path.

I spent 13 wasted years in therapy. I spent 5 years in excellent therapy & 2 of that also included DBT group therapy. That was when all my learning & learning how to apply skills happened. I didn't see the progress while in the middle of it but NOW I can look back & see how far I have come. I still see my T monthly in order to have her coach me through some still difficult things & remind me what I learned sometimes.

Not sure there is really a good way to tell if a T is good enough. Sometimes monitoring progress helps.....but in reality most of my therapy work & sorting things out I did in my own quiet thinking in my own quiet home after getting out of the bad environment I had lived in for too long.

Would the improvement happen on it's own? To some extent YES because we are always learning & changing. Does it help to have a "guide" through this? My personal experience says YES. Even my wasted therapy was probably ground work to the final success even if it wasn't obvious

You’re not flawed.

A few things are really positive in what you post. You want to do therapy, even if it’s painful. You want intimacy. You self-reflect. Your therapist sounds super-competent, non-reactive and willing to help you. You show up, even when it’s uncomfortable and trudge through the tough stuff. It’s really hard to accept help when you’re normally the one giving help. I know a lot about that.

Trying out different therapists is always an option, but there aren’t perfect therapists. The fact that you’ve bonded with this one enough to do the work you’ve done is remarkable. I’d try not to compare your therapist to how other therapists self-report.

I think your posts are really interesting - you try to quit, question etc but in the end you take the feedback (all kinds of feedback including passionate bickering) and make the right choice for you. That’s a good thing too.

You do seem to know what you are doing. Whatever choice you make, trust it as the right one.

I've been seeing my T about five years now and it's taken that long for me to feel very connected with him. And he still says I should trust him more. So for some people it is just a long slow process.

IMO it's worth trying to talk about, even though I can see how it would feel awkward to bring up. But it also seems like it might touch on some really important stuff around vulnerability, and how difficult therapy is for you. You don't have to say all of what you're writing here--you can edge into it, maybe try first with whatever small piece of how you're feeling about therapy and the therapist seems accessible and possible to bring up.

The fact that it's difficult, and that you struggle with feeling understood by and connected to your therapist, isn't because you're doing something wrong. My guess would be that it's because that difficulty with vulnerability is a key part of what you're working on in therapy. It's not merely an impediment to the work, it's the work itself.

That's my situation as well, and it's hard not to feel like I'm "bad at therapy" or something, because things always seem to me like they're moving slowly, like I'm stubbornly impeding my own progress, etc.--but there are real reasons that it feels that way for me, and they're central to therapy, not a distraction from it.

Well, I brought this up today and it went better than I thought. I just said I’ve spent the past year and a half feeling all sorts of angst and frustration and anxiety around therapy and over the past few weeks it’s lifted and I’m not sure what I’m left with. I’m not sure how I feel because in a way that was my connection with therapy and now it’s gone. I told him I was worried there might be nothing left now.

I can’t remember exactly what he said but it seemed good and he was open to talking about it. I can’t remember exactly how he worded it but he said something about how the idea of finding relief in therapy might have been uncomfortable for me. I think maybe it was negative transference and now it’s gone which is nice, I think. Not sure what comes next. Thanks for your thoughts everyone!