Re-traumatised?

I’m not sure how to write about this, it’s something that I’m thinking about but don’t really want to talk about with anyone IRL. English is not my first language.

If you have a history of emotional neglect and abandonement done by parentes, can the therapeutic relationship be harmful, even if the therapist has good boundaries etc?

I have a T that I think about a lot. I’ve had to stop seeing her because she’s not qualified to work with me now that I’ve been diagnosed with bpd. So I’ve started with a new T recently but I still think a lot about my old one. My old T and I scheduled an app for next week five weeks ago, just to catch up because I had a really hard time trying to cope with the new situation. She emailed me a couple of days ago to change the app time and when I saw her name I got hit with the sadness and grief again.

I miss her so so so much. But it’s like she’s triggering something deep inside of me. She’s done that the whole time I’ve seen her. So the night before our sessions, i was always on edge, having trouble sleeping. Well, I have a lot of trouble sleeping anyway but it was harder when I knew I was going to see her. It’s like when you’re in love with someone new and you’re excited and scared at the same time. Often when the session was over I felt like she abandoned me. Sometimes I got angry and sometimes sad and sometimes I said nothing, but felt the grief inside me.

It’s like she helps me to get in touch with my feelings from when I was a child and was left alone. But she’s leaving me also, everytime I see her she leaves me. It’s like she’s constantly picking in my wound. Not because she wants to hurt me, but because I so desperately want a mom. And she can’t give that to me.

I’ve had a hard time opening up to my new T. But I’m at least sleeping a little bit better..

I really want to see old T next week, I want to be in her presence, but at the same time I’m scared of my reaction. Can therapy re-traumatise you, even if the T is doing everything ”right”?

I have felt the feelings you describe about your old T. I’m not sure it’s re traumatising (unless they have crossed some boundaries or acted badly) but I know things do get worse before they get better. So in a way I guess it’s re traumatising, but for a good reason. Like opening up an old wound that hasn’t healed properly, cleaning it out, and waiting for it to heal again. Some wounds have to be opened many times to heal, and that will definitely hurt.

The fact that you had to stop seeing her is probably the worst part, as you weren’t finished with the process. I’m glad you get to see them again, even if it hurts…hopefully you can work through some of those feelings with her. Maybe it will take time, but you can start the process again with your new T (I know starting over sucks, but it will be worth it in the end) and work through the feelings of abandonment with them.

I do think it can retraumatize you. Definitely. I’ve experienced a similar attachment-abandonment relationship with therapists and it’s quite an emotionally miserable thing to go through. I’m not convinced that it’s ultimately necessary or helpful but I will say that I don’t feel that way anymore. I don’t know if that’s healing or just distance from that relationship.

I hope that your BPD therapist is better equipped to help you with the intensity of your attachment needs. Managing the attachment-abandonment quagmire and the client’s associated distress is an area that I think psychotherapy as a field has gotten devastatingly wrong, to the point of being unethical. I hope that one day they’ll have a better model for educating therapists and supporting clients.

Yes. A lot of harm (i.e. abandonment, re-traumatization / reenactment of trauma) can be done despite supposedly 'good' intentions.

I just don’t know what to do. I really want to see her but a part of me is afraid that it will make everything worse. Already, just by thinking about this, I miss her more. She’s in my mind so many times each day. It really is like a crush but without the sexual part. I want her care and attention constantly. I’ve stopped myself from emailing her these last couple of weeks but when she emailed me, I felt the instant need of contact again. But I just wrote that the app change was fine. Nothing more. I really wonder sometimes.:. Are therapists aware of the intense feelings that some clients have? They say that they understand but I’m not sure they do. Perhaps I have even more intense feelings due to being bpd, I don’t know. It takes over everything.

I do think the right kind of therapist can understand what you're talking about, either from having many clients with those feelings and exploring them thoroughly or maybe from having similar feelings themselves. And if they don't understand, they're not somebody who you want to work with because the potential for being retraumatized is very high. I hope you can find the healing that you're looking for because I know from experience that that longing for a mother figure can just be a horrible, gnawing pain.

I don't want to sound like an apologist for therapists and I agree with what other posters have written. I think therapists can act in unethical and harmful ways. However, I find it useful to consider the difference between what is hurtful/difficult/frightened and what constitutes re-traumatising. For example, when your sessions end, does your therapist leave you in a grand scale sense or does she end the session to return again? Even in the instance of her ending your work with her because she is outside of her competence, she is behaving with your best interests at heart and is responding in a safe, adult way.

None of this is to say that the relationship isn't painful and hard. It is. But it can also be showing you different ways to respond to painful situations - like getting angry with her but also being able to speak to her about it.

I flip in and out of believing what I have written above, depending on how I feel about my therapist, whether I am trusting her, accepting her care, and so on. It's not easy.

I understand the difference, I just didn’t know the right word for it. I think what I meant was… like, can therapy be harmful even though the therapist does everything the right way. If the therapist is kind, accepting, validating etc. Still I feel like therapy almost made me feel worse. Probably because I’ve never talked about my childhood and it’s been hard to accept how difficult it was. But the relationship itself was very triggering.

Perhaps that’s something I just have to go through in order to heal, I really don’t know. But it hurts like hell. And that’s why I’m having a hard time opening up to my new T. I’m not sure if I can do it again…

I often feel that the very experience of being in a relationship is itself one of shame. It is shameful that I need an other, seek connection, shameful to be known and to be vulnerable. So maybe being in a relationship is intrinsically painful for you. I guess the hope is that a therapeutic relationship is a safer place for you to look at your pain (in part by experiencing it), but it's still painful and $hitty.

Here's what I'm thinking about this kind of stuff as I did think a lot about this recently. Apparently some claim that you (general you) are supposed to be fully vulnerable in therapy, while the therapist is NOT vulnerable, sometimes not even transparent, congruent, let alone authentic. And the empathy of the therapist is finite, too. And it's a relationship where power inequalities can easily creep into it because of all that.

So I think that will make therapy harmful if you make yourself too vulnerable like that, no matter if the therapist has good intentions consciously. Good intentions or following some protocols on "boundaries" will not be enough on its own in such an inequal relationship.

A therapist of mine when she had negative countertransference to whatever, would have "insights" that she claimed had no idea where they came from but they invariably would be aimed at invalidating my emotions and tearing me down, coming from a "fix-it" approach, rather than building me up from a genuine, real, empathetic interest.

What would help with this fundamental problem in therapy is if there was mandatory supervision, and objective evaluation of progress and feedback provided to the therapist and then adjustments made based on that. Plus some better selection process to find a good match faster. Until then, such "deep" therapy is going to remain a mess. Risky and not worth it. IMO.

It could be also helpful for you to analyse what this deep thing inside of you it is that was triggered in that therapy. Maybe it was just the power imbalance in the relationship, maybe it was something else, maybe would help you with healing to identify and verbalise it (or at least have some images or or felt sense or some other content for it before verbalising the insight).

If therapy made you feel worse, then there you have your objective evaluation and feedback on how well it was working. It wasn't working. Of course, it's possible to be like, have two steps forward, one step back, but I don't think that's what you're talking about? And I don't think you should blame yourself about not making yourself even more vulnerable by talking about your childhood and so on.

If you sleep better now with the new therapist, that's another indication that the previous therapy wasn't helping you. Of course only you can decide if it was helping you, if you feel better, but that's just what it sounds like to me from what you've written.

I think a lot of therapists are NOT aware of what these feelings can be like. I don't think it's a real explanation or helpful to just chalk it all up to BPD, either.


My issue is that the idea makes neat sense in theory, but how do I know it's actually that way in reality? What is the guarantee that the process really works like this? These are real questions, I mean, if you or anyone feels like adding something I'd be really interested. I doubt there are any guarantees or clear guidelines for this, but I'm interested anyhow

I'm also saying all this because I did read an analogy recently about how picking on the wound is no good, and to properly heal it that needs to be avoided. Unfortunately I forget the rest of the analogy about what works for healing it instead of picking on it and reopening it all the time.

The thing about it being no good with picking on the wound also reminds me of the EFT (emotionally focused therapy) principle about not doing unproductive emotional processing, only go into the emotion if productive processing can be ensured.

You're calling this a process. Does the process have a start, a middle and an end? Do you have a way to know where you are in the process at a given moment here and now? I'm interested if you or anyone else can say more on it. Again I doubt there is really an answer but I'm just throwing it out here if anyone wants to engage this topic (if not too off topic for OP!).

There is a difference between an understanding of a situation and the lived experience of the same situation. Besides, we (human beings) all differ in how we react to any given situation. So how could anyone truly get what another is going through.

And frankly, even if Ts were aware what could they do about it? There are boundaries, they are restricted (at least ethical ones are) as to how much they can do or give. They could never give you what you want to fill this need. Nor should they.

This reminds me of another thing. David Burns wrote Feeling good, a famous book about healing depression, and he states repeatedly in that book without being too worried about it, how he would let severely depressed clients do things like call him anytime and he would REALLY go out of his way to take care of them, when they were so fallen apart. And he wouldn't give up on anyone, and healed many from their severe depression.

While reading all that, I thought of how the last therapist (the most harmful one to me) insisted so much on protocol and ethical boundaries with not really talking outside therapy. That was fine by me, but then it also caused friction when it turned out she did seek out and contact others alright if she "deemed" them to be in need of it (their state and problem being "serious" enough, yet mine somehow wasn't "serious" enough), and reading that book then really made me consider this more closely.

So like, was it ethical or not? Keeping boundaries or enmeshed? Whatnot? Did it work? Yes, according to his claim, the symptoms of these patients did improve a lot. Whatever he did, I don't know exactly, but what he did mention in the book, it is not supposed to be proper therapist boundaries....

While reading about that stuff in his book, I did wonder how he avoided burn out. But apparently he did avoid it....

Frankly, if I was to be so vulnerable as I am supposed to be in "deep" therapy, I would not see it working in any other way, but probably not even this way, as I would have a hard time trusting that they would really give their all like Burns apparently did it with his clients. Or trusting that that would even work or being convinced that I would need anything like that. No, I'm not convinced even after reading his book.

I've instead told myself, I don't need any of that. That I just need to go back to living life as it is and accept that I have to fend for myself, that's that. Still more safe for me than making myself too vulnerable in an artificial relationship with someone who's not transparent or authentic, let alone reciprocate openness or vulnerability, with all these power inequalities being harmful as a natural result.

What I wanted to say originally....was just that I don't believe in protocol like that. I don't believe these have been proven enough for now. What I can see as proven is, keeping the therapy focused on issues and problems to solve them with a professional approach - with the approach matching the issue - with enough distance kept between therapist and client, certainly no emotional dependence, or any of that "deep" therapy approach. Burns's approach fits neither approach, of course. I don't know where that one fits.

I’m not sure if she’s actually doing the picking in the wound. I think that maybe I’m doing that. Not intentionally… and none of us knew about my trauman when we first met. Or, I knew, but I didn’t understand them and the impact they had on me.

My new T is part of a treatment team with supervision and sometimes she record her sessions to discuss them with her supervisor. In that aspect, the treatment (DBT) seems very safe. But I feel nothing. It’s like I’m completely detached from my emotions. But I guess that’s normal considering my past, I’m so scared of my new T getting to close. Sometimes I dissociate in sessions, to the point where I can’t speak and hardly move, because everything is overwhelming. So my new T is very aware of not triggering me. My old T didn’t know that much about dissociation.

I’ve done some more thinking about this. I thought that if I trust my T and allow myself to feel the stuff that I’ve been hiding, I’d eventually heal. Perhaps I’d have scars and the wound would open from time to time, but I would feel a little less empty. I really thought that. Now I don’t know. What if I can’t heal at all? What if all I can do is try to live with the wound. Not speak about it, not try to heal. Just distance myself. Not from the people that I love, like my family, but from all the stuff in therapy. Stop picking the wound. Stop trying to heal. Just accept the reality and that I have this wound and that it probably never will heal. Stop trying to heal my attachment issues. Just… stop. Everything.

The problem is that I can’t really live like that. I’ve tried and it makes me feel dead inside, like I don’t exist. So… What to do? I really don’t know.

I'm not the best person to advise on this because I'm VERY attached to my T, but the attachment isn't as desperate as it was. What has helped me is this:

Talking to my T about the feelings, no matter how embarrassed or ashamed I feel. I always keep them in the open so they aren't festering in some secret part of my brain and becoming a private conversation with myself. Talking really does help as long as the T knows how to handle the feelings and doesn't shame them or try to avoid them.

Keeping in mind that T will never be my mother. I know that's desperately painful. I know it's agonising. But accepting that reality has been key for me. For as long as I keep hoping - even subconsciously - that she will one day let me move into her home and treat me like her daughters I won't be able to move forward. I need to remember that although my T is lovely and cares about me very deeply, there's a certain amount of acceptance that I need to reach as part of my work with her.

Being compassionate with myself always. This means that if I can't accept that T won't be my mother for now, that's okay. My T modelled this when I texted her once and told her most emphatically that I was NOT ever going to stop hoping I could live with her, she replied 'Okay, so don't stop hoping.' This approach might not work for everyone but it helped me because I felt she was accepting how I felt no matter what. That's been key for me. It has helped me realise that even though she can't be my mother, she's here for me and accepts me unconditionally in a way my mother never did, and while I can't see her ALL the time, I can get some of my needs met by her.

Eventually, over time, you CAN learn to start taking in what your T gives you without being traumatised by the whole experience. It's not easy and doesn't work for everyone. Therapy is an art not a science. I can only speak from my experience from what has helped me. I can't pretend to know what your process looks like. I just wanted to give you some hope that healing is possible. I haven't fully healed but I am much stronger. It boils down to a great T and my own desire to move forward.

I think it must depend on the type of wound, or how someone is affected by it. I know it works because it worked (partly) for me, but that’s not to say it will work for everyone and with all kinds of trauma.

Same as the process.. a start middle end? no I don’t think so, not for everyone. I experience it more like a spiral. I’m still in the spiral, but definitely not where I was when I first started. With all the therapists I saw before this one, ‘the process’ took me no where and did more harm that good.

I see. That does sound like the new therapy could be more helpful and useful for you. And it's totally okay to feel nothing, it's great your current T accepts that and works with that. I don't think that there is another way to work with numbing and dissociation. Only by accepting it first. Btw I'm often also very detached from emotions more than what's normal for me (I was never an emotional person), and my experience is that it really cannot be rushed, getting to the emotions. It's fine if it's going to take a long time, and I found that any forcing of that process would make things worse and like picking on the wounds.

I feel like if your detachment is anything like mine (but I can really only speak of my own experience, I don't know you personally or your psyche), this is ok to set as an eventual goal or dream to get there someday. But not force it in the meantime. And it could be that you will end up trusting yourself more than any therapist instead, or anything, the point is more that you get to feel stuff in a way that's natural and not forced or overwhelming for you.

Maybe just slow down....? Again no rushing anything. I've had these thoughts soooo many times myself. And yes it's true that traumas don't completely disappear and some memories will always be there but they don't have to interfere with your life anymore. That to me is enough healing