Unjustified Anger At T

hugs to you SE

everything you wrote here could have been written by me when i reached this exact stage in my therapy....i find it disheartening to read because i know how real this struggle is for you at this time.

it sounds like you are at a crossroads.

when i reached my crossroads, it was the catalyst that forced the agency of change for me. that change involved taking taking a six week break from therapy and my therapist to clear my head and comfort my aching heart while sharing many of my confused feelings with my supportive husband and starting a new modality of therapy (neuofeedback) that i did in conjunction to remaining with my ex-T.

i won't tell you what you should do, because this is your journey and your decision to make. i just wanted to let you know that i completly empathise at where you are at. it's a scary and confusing place to be, but there is hope of escaping from the grips of it.

Because of your example, I did try neurofeedback, but it upset my T, so I stopped. I did email nf person on Friday, and I am going back on Thursday. I dont know if I have the courage to break from my T like you did, although right now it feels out of control like it is heading for bad end no matter what. It is like he has some life or death power over everything that I know is an illusion in my heaqdbut not my heart. I feel completely frantic, but all around me the sunny day is perfect normal. I wish I could blink off consciousness for a few days, and wake up rested and clear. That's not how works though, and I have to keep it together through this work day.

I am sorry you are going through this. It it is an awful place to be at. It is confusing, completely illogical in the scope of everything. It is also a valid feeling.

I also do not want to tell you want you should do, because as koru kiwi said, this is your journey. Well, other than to take care of yourself the best you can and to remind you that it is your journey.

After my obsessive therapy relationship fell apart, i talked to a LOT of therapists. It's great if you want to continue the cycle of subjugation. And learn all the ways you caused the failure. The blaming will be delivered subtly and with looks of concern.

Also, even open-minded therapists only tolerate so much scrutiny of the situation. They are programmed to make it about your "transference", or failing that make it about the prior therapist (bad apple). If you are inclined to dig deeply into what wrong and have your own thoughts about the relationship itself being poison, good luck.

The only thing that helped me was to talk to people without ideological and financial attachments to therapy. That meant no therapists, no long term clients, no mainstream doctors.

ps: This guy sounds like he has commandeered therapy and made it about him. But then that seems true most of most therapists. Maybe he should be paying you.

exactly, it felt like T had a life and death power over me, and for me, that was about as low as i could go. and because of this, it did become a matter of life or death as i started to seriously see SI as my only way of escape from the mind F' ing chaos i was trapped in

i'm not sure why your T was upset about you doing NFB the first time, and again, that sounds like he is making this more about him and his needs than yours. when i decided to do the NFB, both hubby and i explained to T that is what i was going to do, with or without his support. things had become too dire for me to let his sh#t and his feelings get in the way, once again, of my therapy and the healing in needed to do. fortunately, T was willing to continue to work along side of me while i did my NFB and i used that time to start breaking the unhealthy trauma bond that i had formed between us while also working on some of the original issues i came to therapy for years prior. so when it came time to ending, it was on my terms and i knew i was clearly ready .

does your T know you are going back to see the NFB practitioner? if not, do you think it is something that he necessarily needs to know at this point, especially knowing how he reacted last time?

I just want to say I'm with you, too, no matter how this works out.

I think koru_kiwi said it well. Also feileacan "I think it doesn't help to submit to the T". Your OP really scared me in that regard, but of course that may be just me.

Also wondering if this hasn't triggered or reenacted something from your way past? Doesn't help a lot to consider that, still have to make it through, at least that's how it's been for me. But you likely can and will.

Hang in there.

I’m so sorry SE.

I agree with most of what’s already been said.

My only advice would be, set some guard rails on therapy. Establish limits to how you are willing to feel, how long you’ll let it continue for, and what it would take for you to leave. From personal experience, it’s all too easy to justify losing years in the therapy vortex and time suffering is time you can never get back.

Also, when things feel life or death, it becomes a potentially dangerous and damaging situation quickly.

To me, this would be a giant blazing red flag.
I believe clients get to do what they want with their lives and a therapist does not, in any shape or form, get to dictate what I do or do not do in my own life. If a therapist got upset because of what I was trying out in order to help myself, that would be their problem to deal with - not mine. And they can get upset on their own time, not that which I pay for.

I agree with this.

This is relevant:
"The 'efficacy' of any therapy is contingent on whether the 'client' tows the line of that paradigm. And of course deliberate denial of what the authority says doesn't bode well for how I am made to view my own psychology. And the other option is likewise bleak: condescending to 'the clinician's view of psychology's view of me', so to speak, would seem an imperative if any psychological development of note is to occur in their therapy. This is a marvelous system of coercion; one that I, by virtue of my desire for psychological change, must buy into, if I am to 'know myself' or be able to change. "

Also:
"It takes away my ability to conceptualize myself in my own terms. It robs one of the independent agency to approach and treat one's own psychological ailment. As Foucault provocatively stated 'prisons are factories for creating criminals' (1991), so we might contend that arenas of psychotherapy are generators of pathology."

What are those quotes from, Budfox?

This is on point! They love to say we don't give advice but clear and direct advice would be better. At least then you can decide whether to take it or leave it. What they do is far more insidious! There's no doubt the the whole enterprise is authoritarian and you are required to leave your critical thinking at the threshold.

Agreed. At the very least, therapists should work harder to create some kind of structure within the sessions. I mean, what the heck else are we paying them for? In my experience they don't care enough to do this. It's all about "meeting the client where they are" so it's the client's job to do all the time management and bring up topics. How convenient!

I think sessions should be treated like professional meetings. There should be an agenda. There should be clear goals. If sessions were more structured and goal oriented, clients wouldn't stay for long. Presumably they'd take certain actions and things would improve in their lives and they'd move on quicker. Clients stay because of the intermittent reward thing that keeps you feeling hungry and you keep coming back for more, thinking next time you'll feel full, oh maybe next time...before you know it it's been years and you're still hungry as the first day you started!

The free flow naval gazing session could be accomplished solo by writing in a journal and saving the money you pay the therapist to go on a nice long vacation. Seriously!

I am sorry that has been your experience. It has not been mine. In fact, those therapists that I saw that were more agenda based, didn't help address my belief system about myself. They only helped me in labeling what I was doing in terms of base defenses and helped me mitigate the influence of those defenses. Sure I only saw them for 10 or so sessions and I felt better after. And yes, they did make a difference in my life. I still felt so many negative things about myself and mostly lived my life counting down the days until my death, wishing it would come sooner rather than later. In the meantime, setting some goal and moving towards that goal with little meaning other than that is what I was supposed to do.

At least now, I rarely have SI or passive death wishes. When those thoughts come up, they are not the same, they do not have the same power or effect. I do not believe I would have had the same results if I was not allowed to explore my psyche as it unfolds and if I did not have the relationship I have with my therapist. This relationship has not been smooth. It has had highs and lows.

Not everyone needs coaching, direct skill building, regimented processes; others do. The same can be said in terms of how we each respond to people that present things in these different ways. Implicit and explicit learning plays into the mix.

We each have our own journeys here; our own goals, needs, wants out of therapy. We are hiring people to help us meet goals in the process of this journey, so it is up to us to figure out if a specific therapist or therapy style is best for us; or if a therapist is even the right person to help us with whatever we are looking to address. It's possible that a coach, mentor, pastor/spiritual, personal trainer, martial arts, nutritionist, peer groups, creative arts group or... one of many other avenues of addressing one's goals might be a better fit than a therapist.

For me, what I have found has been what I need at this time in my life. It's not 100 percent everything I want. It is enough. It is a journey, so I may find myself at a place where it's no longer what I need and my T might not be able to provide what it is I need at that time.

Confession 1

Look, to be completely honest, I've never been a fan of your therapist and when you've talked about him in the past, it has made me uneasy for you. My apologies if I am confusing you with someone else. If memory serves, he is your first therapist and he specializes in PTSD - but combat PTSD, not trauma related to CSA. I personally think he has a huge ego and is also rather insecure. Maybe he knows he's incompetent. I don't know. But it is definitely my opinion that it was irresponsible and ignorant of him to assume that his experience treating soldiers would be sufficient to help you.

Time and time again he has shown an utter lack of awareness of how CSA affects adults who experienced it. CSA violates a child's boundaries both physically and psychologically. Personal autonomy and rights are subverted to the will of the perpetrators. The child almost always sees the perpetrators in positions of authority (I really can't even think of exceptions, but there may be some). Yet he is apparently oblivious that his behavior casts him as a perpetrator. It's disturbing that he doesn't pick up on your "fawning" reaction. Not only that, but he apparently praises you and encourages you to subvert your will to his. If he were knowledgeable in this area and a good therapist, he would want the relationship to be more balanced than it is. He would not disempower you.

You have said before that he is brilliant. I just don't see it. He's either blinded by his ego and incompetent, or he is aware of what he is doing and is a bad person.

Hi I am late to jump in on this thread but...
My T is very strict on the boundaries of the session too, and I cannot bear to be cut off (rejected and spat out) at the end of a session. I cannot bear for any therapist to tell me Time is Up and I have to Leave. It shatters me in so many ways. So I take control of it myself.
I set an alarm (gentle) to go off ten minutes before the end of every session. That gives me enough time to blurt out something I haven't yet found the courage to say, or enough time to pull myself back and work on getting truly grounded before Go Time. And then I take total control over when I leave. My T never tells me to go. I always go a few minutes before or exactly on time. But -I- do it. I can't bear to give her that kind of power over me.
This might not work for you. But you never know it might help.

I also have trouble with being told I have to stop (part fear of rejection/abandonment issues, part wanting to follow the rules and not annoy/bother someone, particularly an authority figure), so I do something similar to you. I don't set an alarm, but T has a clock near where he sits, so it's easy for me to keep an eye on it. Whenever we're approaching the end, I'll start saying things like, "I know we need to stop soon, but..." So that way I let him know I'm aware of the time (he actually seems surprised sometimes that it's close to the end).

This recently came up, and he said it's like I control the ending of the session. He said it can be a bit different for him because he usually tries to end sessions organically with clients. But that he's gotten used to it with me and understands why I do it, so just lets me control it that way. There have only been a handful of times when I've still been talking and we're right at the limits of session time where he's either said something about having to stop or done something like subtly picking up his phone, which is a signal to schedule (he uses the calendar on his phone). Also in that conversation, he said he usually wraps clients up at the 50-minute mark but that he often tends to let me go till more like 55 minutes, and that's OK.

In the course of that conversation, I actually mentioned how your T ends sessions, SE, and it really bothered him.

Thank you for the link.

I agree with this assessment of what is going on, including that he unwittingly casts himself in the role of perpetrator, and that you may be unknowingly re-enacting the trauma loop (this is not on you, it is on him). He "hurts" you by ignoring your needs, putting his own need for order/boundaries/fidelity to his theoretical orientation first, you feel justifiably angry, but you have been trained to think of your anger as unjustified, when you tentatively try to express this anger, he once again exerts his will (power) over you, is rigid and inflexible in putting his needs first, and so you flip to being conciliatory in order to preserve the relationship, because what other choice do you have? And, then he praises you for being a good little girl and knowing your place.

That's what it looks like from the outside looking in, and having experienced just such a thing with my therapist. (So I could be projecting my experience onto you--please feel free to tell me that's what I'm doing, and that this is nothing like what is going on for you.)

None of this is to say he's a bad therapist in general, or that he has any idea this is going on (which is a problem--he ought to be able to see this cycle and be willing to take steps to break it, to INSIST on breaking it, as a matter of fact). He needs to be working hard to balance the power in the room/relationship as much as possible--that is what victims of CSA need.