My therapist was deaf to my pleas that my therapy with her wasn’t working for me

I wonder if anyone can identify with this? I tried so hard to tell her, but she didn’t agree with me. I think she thought it was great, safe therapy, but the reality for me was that over a number of sessions feelings of trauma were triggered and I became unable to sleep and was only just managing to get through my working week. This happened several times during the therapy, but I recovered each time, and put what had happened behind me, because I believed her story that it was good therapy, until the end when I couldn’t. She is very experienced and well respected therapist and supervisor. I really liked her.

Dear Brown Owl 2,

I'm sorry it didn't work out. I have had that experience before. I was a bit conflicted at first, but gradually things became clear to me. Best to you!

Sincerely yours, Yao Wen

Thanks Yao Wen, that describes how I felt - a bit conflicted, but I now seem to be coming to terms with it.

I think it's okay to have differing perceptions. What would matter more is T's reaction to such a statement. That, to me, indicates the worth of a T... and whether to stick with them or not.

Sorry you had such a bad experience. I think with some Ts, they have their particular way of working and even if they may be great at what they do, it doesn't always fit for every client. Maybe a different T with a different method or approach would be better for you.

A therapist can be great at what they do and be well respected and be the wrong person for you. Everybody and their needs are different. I saw a T for one session and it was horrible. This person is very well respected in our area. My long term T was surprisedat what I told her about thr session. We concluded that what I struggled with about the session was her horrible amount of disclosure is thr type of things certain clients like. I am just not that.

My therapist helped me a lot when I visited her two years ago.

Last year I was diagnosed with an eating disorder,and I am diabetic and I was struggling with a sugar addiction.

Do you know what she told me in therap?She said to eat to feel better,she said to a sugar addict,'a little won't hurt',and'live a little' and 'have whatever it takes to make you feel better'.

This angered me a professional therapist shouldn't tell someone with an eating disorder to eat to feel better I am an overeater

. Also any other life issues I brought up she minimised their impact on me,didn't want to help me work through them and dismissed them as inconseqential.

Also lockdown meant we met online and not face to face and a lot of our sessions were taken up with her talking about how lockdown affected her doing her job and how she felt, it was like she was using me for her own therapy.

I told her I had lost confidence in her and all the above I complained about and I said I couldn't continue with her.

All she did was send me an email discharging me and telling me she was sorry we couldn't discuss this in therapy.I am really let down and furious cos I had 9 sessions with her last year and they didn't help me at all.

It sucks when a therapist makes things worse not better.

I agree, Marylin, it sucks. Especially when you pay a lot of money for it. That’s terrible what she said to you about food, that she minimised what happened to you, and used your therapy time to talk about herself.

I know Brown Owl it is terrible and I am thinking of complaining to my doctor about it I think I will because it's totally left me without support and she
has discharged me making it look like it was my decision to leave and that she did no wrong.

Hi Brown Owl 2,

I am sorry that you have had this experience. Your story fell short towards the end - and I was curious, how did your therapeutic alliance with this therapist resolve in the end? Did you have to shut the door? Did you walk away and call her out on what she did to hurt you?


In short, yes I relate, and so will many others. You deserved better - and you know it - so count yourself lucky to have identified an issue with your therapist before it go too out of control. Unfortunately, some client's find themselves in situations like yourself, only to be groomed into a trauma bond with a Covert abuser.


It can be very damaging to first connect with a therapist, and only after things go south - to have them suddenly become distant and unwilling to acknowledge a rupture, or a breakdown in the therapeutic alliance. It effectively acts as gaslighting - a form of insidious emotional abuse often utilized for malicious purposes. As painful as it is to experience, you know your story well and you know you are not crazy. Rest in knowing this.


Good therapy looks different for everyone - and in some cases - the only way to get better - is first - to get worse... This often means that through exposure therapy and painful therapeutic interventions, and thus, change, (which naturally causes turmoil in clients), resulting emotional turmoil can appear to have the opposite impact that someone who enters therapy wants in the first place. But this can also be a natural by product of change. On the flip-side - it can also be a sign that someone is being abused covertly, and is in need of help...

What a perfect environment for abuse!



Thanks,
HD7970ghz

I'm sorry this didn't work out It is very disappointing if they are unable to listen

Yes, I agree, I didn’t tell the whole story, it felt hard to. I walked away with, I hope, grace and dignity. Over a number of sessions I opened discussions with my T about the way the therapy relationship was affecting me, but I think she ‘reacted’ to me, rather than taking a third person stance to try to understand. I feel that I was the one taking a third party stance. At the end I lost faith in her skills. I didn’t call her out. I was very affected by it all and could hardly sleep, I felt I couldn’t manage any further discussion with her.

I identify with your phrase: ‘unwilling to acknowledge a rupture or breakdown in the therapeutic alliance.’ And I so agree with your last paragraph too.

I will never know what reflections she made on my therapy with her. I’m sure she did make some, she was a sincere person. I think that part of the problem was her memory, and she simply didn’t remember things we’d talked about in previous sessions, and I had assumed we were building on the previous understandings.

Thanks Fuzzy Bear. Yes she really didn’t listen. I think your T didn’t go you either. I remember your previous postings.

Its really disappointing when a therapist fails you.I am really upset about mine and what she did.
I can't understand how these people get degrees and are qualified psychologist when they so incompetent.I'll remind you what mine did.I have eating disorder diagnosed as overeater and I was a sugar addict.She encouraged me to eat to feel better'.Do and have whatever it takes to make you feel better', she said, and to an addict,she said,'have it,a little bit won't hurt', and she patronisingly said to me,'live a liitle',when we discussed if I should eat sugary cakes and chocolate.That is to an eating disordered overeater, a sugar addict and a diabetic.Is that the way a professional therapist should behave and cousel their clients?I think not.Now I couldn't trust her any more and I had to discharge myself and I still need support.I have none.

I am going to put my complaints in writing and tell my doctor and I am also going to write to this therapists boss cos it isn't fair that I am left without support.I am not just an overeater and sugar addicted diabetic I am also a person who has a serious depressive disorder and suffer anxiety and depression every day and lockdown is making it all much worse.

I had somewhat similar experience. It was very painful. Made increasingly more painful by her continued unwillingness to recognise just how painful.

Confusingly, she did kind of acknowledge that the situation is out of hand - she both admitted that something about my problem, or the way I present it is hard for her to bear (and it caused her to act in a non-therapeutic way), and later confirmed that she didn't quite have the skillset to deal with the situation. In both cases, she declared her intention to try to improve, which I took to mean that she had an idea how to do that and / or was open to my input (and to giving me input on how to NOT poke whatever sore spots I was poking). However, it started to seem more and more like she was just planning to keep things as they were and hope that as she starts understand better bit by bit, she'll gradually get it less wrong? Or something like that.

I honestly don't understand what she was thinking. How was she expecting to understand anything when at best she didn't show any interest in why I found her behaviour hurtful and what I'd find helpful, at worst she shot down my attempts to express my feelings (by reminding me that it's all transference, or by focusing on how it was not her fault, or 'but you ...'-ing me)? Moreover, it was nearly impossible to talk about our relationship altogether. Because transference and connecting present problems to past stuff. But if you refuse to explore the present problems in any significant detail then what is there to connect??? And how was she expecting me to just sit around and tolerate this and keep trusting her enough to open up more about either the present or the past?

There's more to it but ... not now, not here. Maybe I'll finally make a thread to sort this mess in my head. Should be easier now that I did some work on it with my new T. Bottom line is, it sucks not to be heard.

If your case is triggering her and she admits she hasn't got the skillset to help you then the issue is with her and it's not your fault.She is seriously lacking as a therapist and you should inform her superiors and get her replaced.If you are paying her stop and find someone better.

Hi Corbin, I can identify in with this that you wrote: [How was she expecting to understand anything when at best she didn't show any interest in why I found her behaviour hurtful and what I'd find helpful, at worst she shot down my attempts to express my feelings (by reminding me that it's all transference, or by focusing on how it was not her fault, or 'but you ...'-ing me)? ]

My T did the ‘but you.....‘ing me’ thing as well.

No, I have a different therapist now. Thing is, I might have been fine with her still learning and possibly experimenting and getting stuff wrong, but she'd have to have been open about that and be more proactive about understanding the situation, and agree to some safety measures. Not awkwardly confirm that this is the case after I deduced it and brought it up, and then continue to avoid discussion about what went down between us.

I don't know about complaining, though. I mean, what you wrote about your T is kind of mind-boggling, I mean did she even spend 5 seconds thinking about what she was saying? But with mine ... there's a lot of context that I'm omitting, it was a gradual deterioration and a negative feedback loop, and she somehow got to the point where she was failing to utilise skills and knowledge that I know she does have because I witnessed her using them before, so that's also kind of mind-boggling, but then I'm very familiar with those kind of low points so I also kind of understand and feel bad for her.

I think part of my exT-s issue might have been that she was sooo fixated on wanting to be a good therapist and wanting to help, and my case gave her so much trouble for whatever reason, that her insecurity won out and she crossed the line from wanting to help to not wanting to hear that she's not helping. I wonder if it could also be similar in your T's case, since you say that she's generally successful and well-respected, so maybe when she comes across the rare case where her methods are not helping, she can't really cope?

To be honest Brown Owl nearly every therapist I have had has been flawed in some way and fell short of the standards you'd expect of a professional.It made me angry that they were deemed qualified and were able to get paid for basically ****ing me up more than I was when I started seeing them.I honestly think I can do a better job being my own therapist than they do!