How do you move forward from a violation of confidentiality?

Thank you. I'm trying real hard. And we are both learning about my family dynamics and the importance of boundaries. She didn't realize how important written consent is. And I didn't realize how much my privacy with L matters. As L and I would say: we'll take this brick and use it to build our castle. That's the hope and goal anyways.

I think this is exactly right. Sometimes stuff happens with a T, like they make a huge mistake and it cuts so deep that it’s not clear whether you will be able to get over it. And then you have the choice of continue with them or not. If you do continue, you kind of have to trust that either it will be okay or you’ll learn to be okay with the fact that it’s not okay.

I had a similar incident with my former T (what happened was very different but how deeply betrayed and upset I felt was similar) and though I don’t see her anymore (bc she retired, not over this issue) I still feel devastated by it some days.

I think it bodes well that L is so able to work on this with you. If it’s important for you to forgive her, it might help to think of her as a flawed human who makes dumb but hurtful mistakes sometimes. Like think about how we try to treat ourselves and each other with compassion for the bad decisions we’ve made and then think of her having a moment of fatigue or brain fog and crap judgement when she called your sister and then, when you’re ready, think of yourself being gentle with that not-the-greatest version of her.

I think challenges like this are best delivered by the therapist. We patients should stick together!

You're right, and I'm trying to remind myself of that: that she's human and will make mistakes. And the fact that she's human is a good thing. She's humble and very empathetic, owns her mistakes and tries to build from or correct them. And if the tables were flipped, I would hope that she gives me grace.

We've been exchanging emails today, and I'm feeling a lot better. Not that the pain or mistrust isn't gone, but that I really am feeling connected to her. We have both owned our part of the dance, and we both feel respected. I feel heard and seen by her. I even sent her a simple email saying that I love her. She replied that she loves me. I think the honesty and love are what's fueling the desires and trust to move forward.

I know she's not perfect. And I accept that. I know this was a mistake and not out of malice. She's not a bad person and is not a bad therapist. And I love and accept her for all her strengths, weaknesses, and quirks. She's accepted my worst, and I choose to accept her at hers.

The larger lesson is that even people we trust sometimes hurt us.

The ability to raise issues, and to forgive (or dump) will benefit all your relationships, and T is a good person to practice on.

Sorry to preach. But what I gained most from therapy was better relationships with other people.

This sounds like you have already done the rational thinking about moving forward, and it sounds like you realize it is worth moving forward. My suggestion is to trust the logic; emotions can be deceptive. You know that: your emotions usually have had you run away from things. You didn't do that this time. That is growth.

One of the most important skills my therapist taught me was that I have a choice in how I react to a situation. You have rationally already made the choice, and it appears to be grounded in good introspection and fairness. Let the emotions go.

Sometimes in life we just have to let certain things go. I'm not saying excuse what she did. You have already had those conversations with your therapist. She's aware of your objections. You both have taken some concrete steps to prevent something like this from happening again. That's mature, rational, problem-solving. Let the rest go so you can move on. That's what I would call forgiveness - and this is the truly comforting kind of forgiveness where the other party has taken responsibility and worked to make amends. Let the hard feelings go.

In relationships that matter and that are healthy, sometimes we have to take a deep breath and make the decision to move forward rather than hold resentment for a particular situation. Healthy relationships can "move forward" because the healthy people in those relationships can see the true effort and caring that is worth letting some things sort of just wash away. You do seem to have a good therapist and this therapy relationship is much healthier than some of the ones you've had in the past. Breathe deeply, realize you've already forgiven, and recognize that through your discussion and problem-solving together, the issue does seem to be worked out. You just have to make the choice.

I'm trying real hard to stay in wise-mind: trying to respect and listen to my emotions without letting them take over. I have made the choice to stay with her and build our relationship back up. Our foundation of honesty is not broken. Honesty is #1 for us. So the trust is still there.

I had a session with her today and a quick phone call, and both have helped a ton. I'm having some attachment anxiety, but we are working to soothe that.

I don't know if I've forgiven her yet. I'm not even sure what that looks like. I'm so used to being disowned or disowning a person. This is so new to me. I want to say I've forgiven her. Maybe I have? I've kind of flipped the switch and am now trying to protect her and soothe her. I have this intense desire to make sure she's okay, that she knows I love her and choose to be with her. Is that forgiveness? Or is that me trying to dismiss this all because it hurts? Is it still allowed to hurt if you forgive the person? I truly see that this mistake is not her core-self. She, herself, is not bad. And even though breaking my confidentiality is bad, I doubt it will ever happen again. Both her and I are working so it doesn't.

And I still feel hurt. I can't help it. I just feel it. But I'm not letting the hurt control my choices. So I think I'm doing good?

Yes, you have handled this well. To me, forgiveness is something I do for myself. It is a reaching of that place where I choose to not let the anger or hurt or resentment have a hold over my life. That doesn’t require excusing the behavior and it’s certainly not condoning it. I’ve forgiven some monsters in my life. I can choose to move beyond what they did, even if they refuse to take responsibility - even if they are dead - because forgiveness is about me choosing to not let that person or history or event keep me bound up in emotions that are so devastating to me that I get stuck. It takes their power away over my life and my sense of self, and it allows me to move forward. That doesn’t mean I forget either - who can do that anyway? But with time and distance from the situation, the emotions have room to breathe and slow down and become less intense. And at some point I realize I can think about that person or event just as a recall rather than an emotionally charged memory.

I'm curious as how too let feelings go, as someone says? I'm new to feelings, I was cut off for a long time, and I don't wish to derail this thread so maybe this is a post for elsewhere, but now I feel the feelings, how does one let them go? I wondered whether you just feel them, acknowledge them, accept them but go with the rational logical bit anyway? Curious to see how others 'choose' to do this?

I'm glad you and L are doing well (it really sounds like you do - I think it's bound to take time, and the best you can do is trust yourself that you'll make it to a safer ground, going as slowly and carefully as you need to).

My experience with forgiveness is that it's not an all-or-nothing thing and has a bit of an ebb-and-flow ... what I sometimes do is try to find the place where I felt the anger coming from (not always easy) and see if anything changed. But there's also a natural fluctuation with parts coming forward or withdrawing, so might be better to just wait and see and roll with whatever comes, than to actively probe the hurting part, at least while it's so fresh.

I see this expressed a lot, and it never fails to confuse me. To me, it feels the other way around - when I get to a point where an event stops having a hold on my life (by re-affirming or increasing my fears/shame/sense of helplessness) then I can decide whether I want to forgive. Whenever I tried to make myself (out of mis-guided belief that this is the 'right' thing to do), at best I failed, at worst I succeeded in fooling myself and then had it backfire. Also, I kind of don't want to believe that full forgiveness is necessary (as I understand it) - there are things I'm not sure I'd ever want to be able to think back to without getting at least somewhat angry. Just not so angry as to have it override my better judgement. Same with self-forgiveness vs regret. BTW

Yeah, this too. The sense I'm starting to get is that when people say things like this, that make it sound so simple, they're doing so from a place that some of us have yet to reach. Like, it might be a choice, but you might have to make a bloofy long list of smaller choices and (and make them again and again until you can mostly stick to them, maybe), until you get to a point when you're even ready to make that particular choice. But that's really just my best guess, based on my experience and the limited progress I've made. Might be just wishful thinking, because otherwise - what does it tell about me if people keep insisting that I can do something, but I don't know how to, and also don't know how to try any harder than I already do? I want to trust that it's because I'm missing something I need, insight, skill, support, whatever, that I'm not just being ... don't even know what, a living anomaly?

Hi Scarlet, I’ve read your threads for a while, and I think you have an awesome T (who made a mistake in this instance). I too get stuck at times with a T, and find it hard to move on when something like this happens. I think I always found it hard to move on because I felt that the T placed the blame and responsibility for the rupture on me, and didn’t always apologize. Your awesome T seems to have dealt with this rupture much better than my last T did, as she hasn’t blamed you, and she’s apologised and has given you extra contact. I think I can still identify with your feelings of still being a bit stuck, and feeling less secure over the relationship - if that is how you feel? Is it because simply having had an emotional reaction and a bit of conflict leads to feelings of insecurity? I don’t have any answers.

This makes total sense. I had a real blockage last year I think when a lot of what I was reading was about choosing not to let the past dictate our lives. I just couldn't get my head around it and felt I was being blamed for not making that choice, but to me it really isn't a choice. The past still has such a hold on me that it influences my life in so many ways and I can't just make that go away. Good on those people who can, who, like you say, have reached that place where they can choose. I'm not there yet. Thank you.

Just getting back to this. Yes, forgiveness or letting go or whatever you feel comfortable calling it is a process. It takes time. Sometimes I have to revisit it if something comes up that stirs up old stuff, particularly because that's sort of the nature of PTSD. It took me a long time, and I like what corbie said about the ebb and flow and doing it in small pieces.

My therapist talked - for a long time - about wanting me to reach a place where I could metaphorically put my history in box and place it on a top shelf of a closet, in the back, behind other things, and sort of forget it's there. But I would know it is there, and if I needed to, I could pull down that box and look through it and then put it back on that shelf again. That history and those memories would be fully under my control to look at , or not, by my choice. Honestly, that concept was nuts to me for a long time. But for a person with pretty severe PTSD, gaining some control and choice over my memories and history and how they triggered me was SO important to my mental stability.

And oddly enough, as a walked through the small bits and pieces of my history in therapy, they started losing their power, and somewhere in that process I realized I was choosing to let the intense feelings about each little bit go. Over time, I had a collection of a lot of little bits, and had let go of each one, and that's when I started realizing I was ready and able to let go of the bigger history that was made up of all those little bits. (For some odd reason I have an image of Lego bricks that make up a larger construction in my head right now - or maybe the individual pieces of a jigsaw puzzle that make up a larger image).

I actually got there. My metaphorical box is sitting up on a shelf, and every now and then I peak in, but it isn't really painful anymore, and I've even chosen to throw out some of the items in that box because when I look in it, I realize certain old things just don't matter to me anymore.

I've literally been taking boxes down from high closet shelves in the last few months since my husband died. I found items he had saved or I had saved ages ago that we thought were somehow important to hold onto. It has been an interesting project as I have chosen to throw out quite a few things that I realize I had no need to hold onto. Some I had held onto because for some reason I thought I "should" or "must". So much baggage and clutter that I realize now - now that my priorities have come so tragically in view - are just not important. Other things I rediscovered that I had forgotten, and I can appreciate them more now that I don't have so much clutter to go through to find what is truly most important.

And I know I digress, my apologies that your thread has taken a detour, but sometimes threads do that. Much of what I am talking about in this metaphor has to do with really painful, traumatic, OLD stuff with very dysfunctional people. In your case, the relationship with your therapist seems to be pretty darned functional, and the problem appears to have been concretely resolved. Yes, the emotions lag behind, I just hope you won't let them stall you too long. Time is a valuable commodity and is often too easily taken for granted. Don't waste valuable relationship time with this therapist revisiting what has already been resolved in concrete ways. Breathe. Accept your feelings for what they are. You don't have to ignore them or brush them away or pick at them to keep them agitated. They'll resolve on their own in their own due time because the relationship is solid and supportive and healthy.

I don't mind the detour! It still has to do with moving on from a rupture, and I'm finding it very helpful seeing perspectives on forgiveness.

I do agree that I don't want to waste time on a rupture. It sucks because there's other things I want to discuss, however, I know that processing ruptures helps build our relationship. It will make us stronger, more solid, and more secure. I hope it will actually build more trust. I do wish that this didn't happen, and now that it has, it's best to use it and learn from it.

Artley, esp about the literal and metaphorical boxes.

Update:
Logically, I have forgiven L. It was my fault I put her in that situation, she thought she was doing something good, there was no harm that became of it, and we're working so it never happens again. She is not a bad person, nor a bad therapist. She is still trustworthy in many ways, she's not defensive, I love her, and we both choose to stay on this journey together.

All that being said, I'm still hurt and feel distrust. And I don't know why. L and I are trying to sort through it all, but we both can't seem to figure out what my problem actually is. I can't come up with the words or even pinpoint why I'm still hurt.

I have contacted T and asked her for a consult session. I haven't heard back from her yet, but I'm hoping a third-party will be able to help.

I'd like to ask you all too if you have any hunches about why I'm still hurt and don't trust her. It's an emotional thing; not a logical thing. But I'm hoping it I can put words to it, L and I can work through whatever "it" is, and we can move forward.

Also, my dad suggested I do trust exercises with L to build trust. We're NOT going to fall back and have the other catch us. And I'm not doing truth or dare because it would hurt if either one of us chose dare (plus I don't like the dare part). So any suggestions for building trust is welcomed!

Hi Scarlet,

For what it's worth, I have had a number of conversations with R about logic and emotion. It can take some time for our emotions to catch up to what we know logically.

There may be specific things you can do, but it may just be a case of being patient with yourself, and leaning on previous experiences of being able to trust L.

Yay, I'm glad you mostly settled this with L. Not so glad about the lingering hurt, but glad again that you're being thorough about this, not ignoring it. Of course, trust is much easier to destroy than rebuild, so it might just take a lot more time than you'd like.

This probably says more about me than about you, but it still might be helpful: I do have this very tenacious (protective, I think) part, well beyond the reach of rational thinking, that insists on holding onto hurts and grudges against my better judgement, and it tends to happen more around sensitive spots that are actively threatened somehow. Also, therapy with xT and at the group therapy place we met at, stirred up / reinforced so much past trauma that I feel a lot more threatened overall, even with my current therapist who continues to prove herself trustworthy (not L-magnitude of awesome, but still pretty reliable and cooperative).

Actually, I did have a hunch previously that you might have felt was inaccurate/irrelevant. If so, feel free to ignore. But I'll elaborate on it just in case it was relevant and just not what you needed at the time. To me, what made this a huge deal was the part where L did not act like you trusted her to, and told your family she would. I get the sense that you need to defend against your family in some ways, and L, and your relationship was/is part of that defense system. If you work anything like me, this incident revealed an apparent vulnerability in that defense for everyone to see ... and that vulnerability likely remains even after 'officially' forgiving her (because it's not just between the two of you?), and the part of you that feels the need to defend yourself would then naturally still be upset.

Hmmm. My first reaction was that I can't relate. Every other rupture with L that has been worked through, I can't remember. There's two exceptions: 1. Her losing her keys (don't know why that one still sticks), and 2. Her mentioning her client to me during our past rupture (but we haven't addressed that yet). Otherwise, I just don't remember any details about other rupture, and I really do believe it's because we processed it all.

However, being protective does resonate immensely! I am very protective of my relationship with L. And I'm even protective of L herself. We discussed both these things last session. And thinking about it, I'm very protective of myself. It could be that I don't feel protected by her? And yes, that would make me, her, and our relationship vulnerable. And if I'm vulnerable, I don't feel safe. Maybe L and I have been looking at the details and not the big picture?

I'll have to think more on this. Ty!

In my experience that kind of thing just takes time. It sounds like both of you are doing everything you possibly can. Maybe let the issue rest for a bit and see how you feel in two or three months? Just give your brain a chance to assimilate everything that’s happened, everything you’ve felt and gone through, and trust that the intensity will lessen with time? You can still talk about it of course but I don’t think you should feel distressed that your hurt hasn’t just evaporated. Just accept that it’s there and be patient with it. You’re both doing a great job.

Yes, you can forgive and still feel hurt. And forgiveness sometimes isn't done once. I remember a rupture I had with my T which really hurt me. After talking about it, she took responsibility and said she had chosen her words really poorly. (It was a loaded phrase a harmful counsellor used on me, my family and others used.)

I forgave her. I chose to stay with her because I saw the whole of our therapeutic relationship, and she wasn't defensive.

A year later, the memory came up again and I had to talk about it again. Another layer of hurt, of "how could you, T?!" Sometimes it returns and hurts too. Not as much but I do hold onto how ruptures have definitely been repaired. Including when I've hurt her feelings.

Eta: I'm really protective of my relationship with my T too. If my unsafe family members knew I'm in therapy or even worse, who is she, I would be very vulnerable in a really bad way. And I know someone who sees my T too and I can't handle hearing that person talking or texting me about our T. I just can't, though it's not that person's fault. It's my stuff.

I was reading and sorting through trust building exercises online, and I discovered that L and I have used a few already: playing games and asking/answering questions. So I've decided that today's session will be centered on trust building. I'm also going to bring my dog because she helps me to feel comfort and connection to L. I'm hoping that focusing on positive activities will help us heal.

Scarlet, it sounds like you are doing good things for your relationship with your T and doing good things for yourself. Like focusing on positive activities to help you and your T heal from this rupture. I feel like it may just take some time. And more talking. And more time. I think you'll get there though. You have seemed really more I don't know the word, stable perhaps, about your relationship with your T than you did at the beginning of this post. I think you are doing great. Hang in there! HUGS Kit