Retraumatised by Therapy??

I’m really struggling with the emotions and feelings that are being caused by being in therapy and I’m beginning to wonder whether just the process of being is therapy is actually retraumatising me.
I have a very disorganised attachment style all stemming from childhood abuse and neglect.
I have struggled all of my life to build healthy attachment and relationships with people. I can be avoidant, anxious or a complete mix of the two. I often exhibit a push-pull dynamic which obviously always ends up in disaster.
However therapy has allowed me to start building a deep but insecure attachment to my therapist and this relationship in itself has become extremely painful. The deeper the attachment the more painful it feels. Even without ruptures, just the act of just having an attachment to my T is distressing and painful. The stronger and deeper that attachment with my T, the more my child parts desperately feel overwhelming parental transference and scream for him to meet my unmet needs. And when he doesn’t do that it feels like a repeat of my childhood and I am being retraumatised all over again. Realistically I know he can’t meet those needs but my child parts don’t understand that and the whole therapeutic relationship becomes unbelievably painful.
The thought that I have to learn to meet those needs myself is not something I can accept, it is not enough for me. I need someone else to tend to those needs. I am also so ashamed of all of this that talking about it is not something that is possible. Therefore is therapy just a retraumatisation exercise for me and something that I am never going to benefit from? If so, then what the hell to I do as nothing else works either.

This sounds very similar to my prevous experience with therapy. I had this stupid attachment to xT that for a long time I was too ashamed to admit even to myself. I never managed to get to the point where I could talk about it with her, and my attempts to steer the relationship in a direction where I maybe feel safe enough to do so ended in complete disaster. I somehow managed not to develop this sort of attachment with my new T. Meanwhile, she somehow manages to meet a lot of my needs way better than xT ever did. I have yet to make sense of al this, but I think part of what triggered that very painful transference with xT was that
1. while I was trying to focus on how this relationship was not like the one with my mother, she (and or the staff at the day hospital place we met) was pushing me to focus on the similarities. so instead of being allowed to shape the relationship at my own pace in a way that feels relatively safe-ish to me, I felt impotent and unheard, like in relationships with significant adults from my childhood. With current T it works more like a partnership than a parent-child thing, and yet I get the validation, acceptance and consideration of my actual needs that I was hoping to get from xT (still stings that I didn't get it back then, though).
2. she became unavailale - both in a practical sense, because one-on-on sessions stopped (because it was a group therapy place and I already had more individual sessions than it was the norm, but it still felt like rejection/punishment), and as a result of her (self-professed) avoidant tendencies, which to me came across as her not taking my fears and hurts seriously. Then that therapy ended and it was several momths before we started therapy again (individual therapy this time). Even then the avoidance thing remained a prolem. With current T, it's just her going on holidays every now and then. I guess I have a considerably easier time coping with those than you do, so it's quite possible that even the reality of a well-functioning therapeutic relationship is triggering for you?

What I'm trying to say with all this, that my sense is that some of the elements that trigger this painful transference might be the same elements that don't work well in the relationship? Precisely because our dysfunctional attachment figures from the past? Like, T feels a lot less motherly than xT did and yet fulfills the role of a mother far better. Some things that I long for are still missing, like the sense of closeness (that xT kind of 'promised' but it was fulfilled in painful ways more often than nurturing ones), but I'm starting to hope that might also be possible after a while.

I think, for some of us, therapy is way off base in expecting that. We are social creatures. Learning how to be a person with other people is more than just attachment theory IMO. After attachment comes being a member of a social group -- and the retraining and therapy for that needs to be IN a group -- not just a one-on-one with a therapist. At lesat that's the way it seems to me.

I've written about my story numerous times on this forum, but here are some things from my experience that may be relevant to yours, too.

The retraumatization I experienced in therapy -- abandonment and rejection by the therapist who terminated me saying she didn't "have the emotional resources" to continue -- triggered pain and terror that I had numbed out. Years and years of therapy and my own "work" had not uncovered that. It was, and largely still is, unbearable. The unbearablity of the rejection and abandoment experience certainly explains why it was numbed out. But nothing I have read about therapy, or experienced in the last or previous therapies, lead me to believe that current approaches have anything to offer to help me get beyond that.

A support group I had lucked into before the termination as helped me get through it somewhat. And I try to make sense of what I think, based on my research and what makes sense to me, "should" help allow or promote a more healthy sense of self to develop. But I'm 73 -- so what can be done in an old nervous system is probably limited. Nevertheless, what else to do?

What do your needs look like for you? Do you need touch, comfort or to be seen?

I haven't tried it personally but there have been other posters who talked about neurofeedback therapy which helped them when traditional talk therapy didn't. They had to learn how to calm their brain down first. Perhaps EDMR or somatic experience therapy where you focus on your physical responses could help? There's also art and music therapy for when you don't have words.

I also have a disorganized attachment. I have grown to be able to trust my best friends but that only came over time.. It involved them repeatedly showing up again and again but even now I know that I can still at times detach easily. It's a work in progress but doesn't just have to come from a T.

I am sorry you have gone through all of that. Transference and unmet childhood needs can be so painful. Something that helped me was reading books about transference to better understand it, are you interested in reading?

I was very retraumatized by therapy. I had a therapist that I loved very much and had intense maternal transference with. I had/have so many unmet childhood needs. All of this was talked about in my therapy with her. She decided to create a dual role where she inserted herself in my life as a "mom". She said we were family and did lots of things someone in that role would do. Long story short, she went on leave and disappeared in the personal role as well and now I feel some of my childhood trauma (that I had before all this) has been reopened and my PTSD is worse than ever. The grief over loosing this "therapist" has been horrific and there are still nights I cry to the point of almost making myself sick because I miss what I had so badly. I now need therapy to deal with therapy. But I am slowly healing with a better therapist who has healthy boundaries.

I believe that therapy is retraumatising me alot. I will admit though that am completely attached to my therapist and find it very hard to leave. I do also think it is benefitting me in many ways but often wonder if the pain it causes outweighs the benefits I feel I am getting. Much of the patterns in therapy are the same patterns that caused me all the pain that led to me numbing out and causued most of my problems. For example, my therapist is there for me in session but then she is gone. Much like my bipolar mother. I experience something great in my life and want to tell my therapist and have her share in the joy but can't because it is not my therapy time. Again much like having to wait for my mother to be available. Feeling incredibly hurt over something but not being able to share it with the person I was closest to. I have brought this up to my therapist many times but nothing has really changed. I think they see it as part of the process and I need to work through this traumatising feelings but I am not sure I would agree. I am hoping to quit soon and try something else.

I think it’s possible that you expect entirely too much from your therapist. I’m not saying you’re wrong for being attached or having that kind of a relationship, but it is a professional one and the therapist is really only there for you for those 50 minutes. Does your therapist think you’re too attached?

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This is one of the reasons why I think traditional talk therapy and the once a week 50 minute formate is completely flawed for many people. By the very nature of the therapy relationship and for many with childhood trauma it brings up feelings of all these unmet needs. Feelings we had supressed or blocked out with various behaviours and coping strategies because they were too difficult to deal with the first time around. It opens pandoras box to reexperience them all and hopes that they can be transmuted just by 'talking' about them once a week and then leaves you there saying 'Well I'm just your therapist I can't fulfil those needs you need to learn to do that on your own'. We couldn't do that the first time hence why we developed all these maladaptive coping strategies.

This is another thing I also struggle with. It's almost like that part of the 'need' is that it has to come from ... whatever xT is for me. I think it might be part of the parental transference? Like, when there's this very special person to whom I gave all the trust I could muster ... and it might've been only normal, or even too little for her but it took a LOT out of me ... sure, some things I needed from her I went and found elswehere, but still ... she didn't ... and it shatters something way beyond where rational thoughs can reach, like my need was beneath her notice, or else I didn't deserve to have it fulfilled. OK, some of that was her actually ****ing up, but most of it was stuff that my 'reasonable' self says isn't too bad, she didn't mean it that way, stop obsessing over it. And I still (after over a year) didn't quite manage to get over her.

Which is why my T doesn't subscribe to the ones a week 50 min format. She does do the hour format, and meets with people as many times a week as she feels is appropriate and agreed upon. As well as allowing for outside contact for those she feels would be helpful. My T says yes as much as she feels is appropriate with me. She doesn't say yes all the time and she rarely offers things - I have to ask for pretty much anything/everything. Currently we have daily contact - email or session. She recently took a week off and didn't mention anything about our emails - I had to ask her about them.

I have found that talking about things - events, feelings... whatevers does seem to change them. Often it's not a one and done thing, I seem to need to talk about them from several different places/parts depending on the event/impact and so on. And sometimes, for me, it's been about sitting with the grieving part, without talking about it.

Has it been retraumatizing?? at times I think it has felt that way when in the middle of the mess. I think seeing her multiple times a week has helped move through things in a way that kept it from becoming retraumatizing. (my opinion on how things have felt for me)

This has been my experience too. We have an hour's session a week and often two if the need arises and I can afford it. T also offers contact in between sessions although it isn't unlimited and she only gives short, to the point replies. But all of this helps me retain a sense of her being around which settles the younger parts of me that struggle.

I've also found that talking about the feelings and needs and associated events/experiences where relevant is the key to lessening their intensity and working through them. I'm much more aware of a consistent adult in sessions with her and not such intense need which is very different to how it was when I started with her. When the needs do arise from a younger place, it is very noticeable and we work with them.

In the past I've only ever had 50 minutes with therapists and very little or no contact in between sessions and while the sessions were helpful, I only ever got so far.

Everyone is different and for some extra sessions and in between contact might make everything worse/ more traumatising. I can only add my experience that rigid 50 minute weekly sessions seemed to hinder me. Of course, the nature of the relationship with the therapist will make a huge difference too.

Therapy certainly can be re-traumatising if the needs and feelings aren't being worked through in a caring, compassionate and understanding way, at a pace that feels manageable.

If a client has been retraumatized, is that unethical on the part of the therapist? And, if it is not, is it unethical for the profession as a whole to have nothing to offer a client to get through that but taking a chance on yet ANOTHER, possibly retraumatizing, therapist?

I think this is one of those beliefs about therapy that many therapists also hold, but is becoming increasingly outdated. No, maintaining consistent, healthy boundarise does not necessarily mean a rigid 50 min session (or two) per week and nothing in between. Some clients have legitimate need for additional contact/support in order to benefit from therapy, and some therapists are willing and able to give that.

Not just 'some therapists' either. There are modalities developed to cover clients who aren't well served by the 'neutral'(=impersonal, distant) approach and/or rigid boundaries, such as DBT and Schema therapy for BPD (admittedly, I don't have first-hand experience, just read about them when researching my BPD diagnosis). Even the psychodinamic school is adapting and as far as I know even psychoanalysis has come a long way since Freud. So the intent to extend the limits of 'therapy' is there, even if the implementation is lagging behind.

As far as I know, treating clients outside the therapists competence is unethical, as is continuing treatment when it stops being beneficial to the client. It just seems that many therapists don't notice when those things happen.

That said, I think some degree of retraumatization is practically impossible to avoid, so I'd hesitate to call it unethical per se. I think where ethics (should, IMO, but do they?) come in is the precaustions taken to prevent it (or lack thereof), and the handling of it once it happened or possibly once the therapist becomes aware of it (or can be reasonably expected to).

Like, my xT was generally very conscientious, and I believe she did try very hard to stay professional and ethical when things started to go wrong, but she kept tripping in her counter-transference and insecurities, and ended up at least brushing against the limits of ethical behaviour, possiby straying outside, not sure. Fact is, the service she provided towards the end was far inferior to both what I needed and what she's capable of providing at her best. Which, OK, if she can't then she can't. BUT not recognising that? Leaving it to me to deduce that she doesn't have the skills to handle the situation and terminate the treatment? Fact 2, later she occasionally dropped admissions that 'it wasn't therapeutic' and 'retraumatised', then proceeded to gloss over the hurt this caused me and gave no sign of taking responsibility. As a fellow human being, I understand the defensiveness and cognitive dissonance, but as my therapist, this is outright betrayal. I do think therapists should be required to work on that, having the self-awareness to notice when they're doing harm and skills to mitigate the damage, or even turn things around before the relationship goes to hell.

Like your 'don't have the emotional resources' therapist - that's usually not something that comes as a sudden realisation, that tends to be a conclusion of a struggle - so why not do something before she reached her limit? Same goes for my T. Surely they had options beside trying to endure and then snapping when they couldn't anymore? That's the same stupid **** I do and my mother does. Surely there are healthy ways to communicate distress, and ways to de-escalate conflicts that clients are supposed to learn over the course of therapy? So why don't therapists learn them? Especially when they decide to work with traumatised / borderline clients, where anger and difficult countertransference issues are kind of common?

KLL I can really relate to all this. Really and truly. I think it’s probably a good idea to explore with your T how to proceed so that you’re not further traumatized.

In my experience/opinion anyone who thinks that the attachment itself will ultimately be healing AND has nothing more to say about what you’re going through should be regarded with great skepticism (not saying your T is doing this, but that many do). A therapist who centers themself and the therapeutic relationship as the primary method of healing painful attachment/transference, as though they will give you what you need (ersatz belated parenting) and that will one day be enough... is dangerous.

I think you want someone who puts the brakes on trauma work and spends the next while helping you beef up your distress tolerance/self-soothing and your support system. That could include DBT, meditation, neurofeedback, yoga, time with friends, meds, anything healthy that reliably helps you feel more competent to take care of the freaked out child parts. In my opinion it also helps to have other people to call upon, to learn how to build your support network if you don’t have a strong one, so that your T is one part of it, not the main or only part.

That work will be boring AF and you won’t want to do it. It’ll be nothing like the intense connection of talking about your feelings and difficult experiences. You might feel rejected, as though your normally empathic, engaged T isn’t interested in hearing your story. But work that’s a slog is sometimes harder than work that’s really challenging and engaging.

The attachment to the T can be healing of course, but it won’t exactly replace what we missed out on in childhood. Of course there’s a part that hates that so much and that clings to T with hope and desperation, yearning for them to give whatever we need. They give a crumb and that moment of being seen and accepted is overwhelmingly powerful. We sense there’s more where that came from and cling all the more tightly. The pursuit of something like love becomes a nightmare of shame and debasement.

T’s job is to help you acknowledge and soothe the freaked out child parts yourself. Their job isn’t to become the parent to those parts. The parts never go away, ideally you just get better and better at taking care of them. But you can’t figure that out if T is busy doing it for you.

Several very good points, Favorite Jeans. I'd like to comment in kind of reverse order.

No therapist EVER explained that to me. I did my first therapy in a hospital when I was a teenager in 1962. After that I was in and out of therapy for over 50 years.

OK - psychotherapy has changed in that time. In the early days they I think they DID expect that just talking -- and the therapist's interpretations in psychoanalytic or psychodynamic work -- would create positive change.

If things are different now, then I believe it would be professional for therapists to explain that up front. Expecting clients to understand that by themselves is unrealistic, I think.

I tried to do that on my own. Support groups have helped me a lot. But there are aspects of normal social interaction that I was blind to, probably still am, because of the trauma, I expect. The trauma and dissociation specialist did nothing to help me with that. I just ended up embarassing myself, and/or hurting other people and relationships, causing myself more distress. And not therapy and not support groups could help me with that. Not DBT either, because I didn't have borderline. And that's all therapists have to offer for anything resembling a PD these days. There need to be other ways to approach social skills development for people with different personality hangups. I think we clients could help with that -- if anybody would ask. Or, if somebody or enough of us "get well" on our own, like Marsha Linehan apparently did. But that may take awhile, it's not here yet.

I agree. That has certainly been my experience -- too late for the most part, unfortunately.