Counsellor acting unprofessionally

Thanks. In this case I saw her at 1 PM and she had one hour lunch before our session. That is, she didn´t have only ten minutes from the session before and our session.

Also, it´s much about how the counselor handles such issues and if it´s an occuring thing. If she had acknowledged the fact that she kept me waiting in the stairwell, perhaps I could let that pass but she didn´t.

If you´re supposed to be accepting of everything, then there soon will be nothing to expect. Like, "why can´t she take a call during session, perhaps that was very important to her" or "why can´t she end your session earlier, perhaps she felt sick and needed a break". My point here is that there must be some level of care and awareness about their actions and how them might affect the client.

Two out of three times she had me waiting several minutes in the stairwell and I also had to ring the doorbell two or three times before she got to the door. One time is ok and excusable, but not when it happens again and she also didn´t recognise it by saying something "I´m sorry, I was on the phone in an important matter" or similar.

Of course, but only strictly within the hour you have booked, not before or after. So if she had left you waiting before session, I think that's okay, if she took time off your session, it is not.

So how do you think it should work with a waiting area at a facility? If there is one, as it is at this counseling center, should that be available only of the therapists thinks they have the possibility to open the door and let the clients in?

Should the clients be left standing in the stairwell instead of being able to use the waiting room? In my case it´s a facility located in a flat with several rooms and there´s no reception staff or any other staff that can open the door to the clients. That is, the therapists working there are the only ones who can let the clients in and by that they can´t think "oh, it´s five minutes left to our appointment, then I won´t take 30 seconds to open the door to my client". What signals would that send to the client?

What if the client needs to use the bathroom or wants to have a glass of water and to settle down a bit before the session? That´s the whole point with a waiting room, of course a therapist should "plan" for being available to open the door when the client rings the doorbell even if there of course can be rare exceptions when the therapist can´t open the door.

It's the same for me. My T works from an apartement with several other Ts, they do not have other people there. If I am too early, sometimes I wait a minute or two for someone to open the door. Once I waited longer (but then I was more than 10 min early). Usually I arrive 5-10 min before the session. T let's me wait in his office, though twice I have waited in the hallway, as they do not have a proper waiting area. There are 2 chairs in the hallway for that purpose.

I am sorry this counselor is upsetting to you. I understand your frustration.

When things like this haspen I try to extend grace to the other person involved and try to put myself in their shoes.

My therapist almost always starts a minute or two late for my appointments. I see her at the end of the day and she normally does 60 minute appointments. So she runs to the restroom. In the biginning it seemed odd. However, upon reflection I realized that she gave everbody the 60 minutes and if she had to use the restroom I would rather she take the 2 munutes rather than sitting and focusing on the need to go.

As far as not letting you in because of a phone call, who knows what it was Perhaps she was speaking to another client who was in crisis. If I am talking to my counselor while I am in crisis, the last thing I would want her to do was stop me to answer the door. If she had to end because it is time for an appointment that would be different.

Have you even spoken to the counselor about this stuff?

The issue is not whether you’re right. The issue is:: how well is your approach serving you?

You went to 3 appointments and by the sounds of it already had walls up. 3 sessions is not ebough for her to get to know you and to be able to help you work on this pattern. In order to work on thr pattern, one has to be able to recognize the pattern, know it something to work on AND be able to eork through it with a therapist. Stoppong after 3 sessions is not nearly ebough time to work through it.

Thanks. It´s one thing if it´s a single thing happening once but in my case there were several things that made me lose trust in her. Also, this counselor didn´t acknowledge the fact that she had me waiting in the stairwell and that I had to ring the doorbell twice before she opened.

Of course things can happen and in your case it´s different as you know your therapist seems to have no break between her sessions and of course it´s then nothing to question when she uses the bathroom before your session starts.

As it weren´t just those things happening before my sessions but I also thought she didn´t have the therapeutic orientation I asked for I decided to ask for another counselor.

The issue is much about what is a good conduct when meeting with clients and what are not and of course that differs from therapist to therapist and from client to client and how he/she feels about how the therapist meets with him/her.

As I´ve written through this post asked for a therapist who could work on relational issues and who understood the therapeutic relationship and who could work within and through such a relationship. I´m already aware I need to work through and to get understanding about how I feel and to work on such issues.

You have an accusatory tone to your question about how well my approach to this is serving me. Like if the approach can just be altered through someone condemning that approach and telling you such an approach isn´t serving you. Then nobody had had the need for therapy and I don´t believe in shaming or judging someone, even if it´s indirect, that doesn´t lead to change or for the person to feel any better.

No, but trust is formed through all things happening both before, under and after a session and all of that counts. That´s why most therapists offer some evaluation sessions to see if you can work together. Trust can´t be forced, nor found through some logical reasoning about how you should and shouldn´t feel and act.

I told this counselor some examples from earlier meetings with other counselors, for example that I feel let down and disappointed if a therapist is like ten minutes late or more.

I told her it´s not about just wanting an excuse or similar, but that I need to look behind my feelings and get help to do that. She more or less didn´t comment on that and although I brought that up as an important issue to me, she wanted us to look into what I could do in my everyday life to feel a bit better.

To me that´s not to listen to what I need to talk about and as she told me about her education within therapy I didn´t find it very probable that she would be able to work with me on those inner and deeper issues.

As I´ve mentioned earlier in this post here in Sweden people can work as therapists without being licensed and without having that much experience with clients. It´s a similar situation with less qualified counselors within our public healthcare and at counselling centers like this where you pay just a symbolic fee to see a counselor. It´s a huge difference between this and seeing a highly qualified therapist you pay an ordinary fee.

I think it's easy for other people to say that these things shouldn't bother you, that the counselor was well within her rights to do them, and that you should somehow have the insight to identify and change these patterns on your own. For what it's worth, I would be annoyed at the disorganization, whether or not I said anything. I once got angry with my therapist for getting married, which is way more inappropriate than what you're describing here, since it did not affect me even in the slightest!

I think you're right that you would benefit from an open-ended course of some kind of relational therapy. The tricky thing is finding somebody who really knows what they're doing and then sticking with them even when your old patterns are screaming at you to find fault with them and leave. It's particularly complicated because you can't really know for sure that somebody deserves this kind of trust until you're looking at it with hindsight. Ignoring your self-protective instincts is a delicate business. And obviously you face financial barriers and difficulty with accessing good care. I think your posts garner so much comment because many of us are rooting for you and we also feel some tiny fraction of the hopelessness that your exude when you describe your situation. I do hope you're able to get some relief soon.

Thanks for your support, that made me feel a bit better.

Yes, I agree if people could just simply change their bahavior or patterns just by intellectually knowing they weren´t helping, then nobody had had the need to consult therapists on those matters.

Had the disorganization I described affected your trust in such a therapist? What had you done if this happened to you in the very first sessions, had you kept seeing this counselor?

I can understand you got angry with your T for getting married even if that´s not considered to be the "proper" or "mature" way of reacting. Perhaps you felt some envy or you thought her getting married would make her spend less time focusing on her clients. Just a guess, but I understand such a reaction.

Yes, I have looked for help for several years now and here there are a lot of people in a similar situation who can´t pay for therapy. Often publically funded therapy is very short and solution focused and many patients seek care for the same problems over and over again as they don´t benefit from the treatments that are offered to them.

If I knew a counselor really understood my problems and showed me she had the knowledge and met me in my reasoning about feeling let down by people and by previous therapists, not all of them of course but some, I could stay with such a therapist even if we hit difficult passages.

I really appreciate those who stand on my side and who understand me here at PC. I haven´t thought of that before, that some recognise the hopelessness in my posts and by that they want to comment on what I write. I feel it´s nice of them to do so, to try to help when they see the situation I´m in.

The old saying "you get what you pay for" really does ring true sometimes. Sorry you don't like the set up in your country, but you have to live with it or make a choice to do something about it. If you don't think you can do something about it, then you have to live with it.

Sometimes you have to face the harsh realities of life.

Ps, that doesn't mean you can't be upset by it, or angry with it, or frustrated by it. Your feelings are totally valid, but for your own sanity surely there must come a point where you don't want to be stuck in this 'rut' of helplessness. You have the power to change how you view things. It isn't easy. It isn't comfortable. And honestly, sometimes we want to be stuck. But as a reader of your posts I sometimes feel a desire for you to take charge of yourself, the only one thing you can control in this life. I think that's where some of the seemingly unsupportive posts come from. It's not a lack of support, it's just a will for you to find your way in a world that often doesn't give us what we want.

Personally I think it’s ok to be upset and it’s ok to expect that a therapist should do this or that. It’s not wrong to be upset. We all get upset over things that cause us distress, even if it’s unreasonable. I get upset over stupid things all the time. I am a clean and neat freak and bend out of shape when things are out of place. I know it’s annoying for others. It’s just how I am.

But you getting upset over imperfections prevents you from functioning.

You not accepting that other people might do things differently and assuming that you’d do them differently and making generalizations seem to prevent you from functioning. Yes you all within your rights to be upset and cut ties with people and professionals who don’t satisfy your expectation of them, but what is the outcome? Does it help you in any way?

What if your new counselor has an annoying habit of sneezing loud (inconsiderate) or what if she dresses weirdly (neglectful of how it might effect clients) or what if she dresses too nice (has too much money) or what if her voice is too loud etc etc It’s ok to be annoyed but should you drop everyone if they aren’t perfect?

I wonder if that is why you haven’t worked for years. Do jobs or employers or tasks or pay or commute are not meeting your expectations because none of them are perfect?

No country is perfect in how they do things. But to all honesty Sweden has one of the best healthcares in the world, one of the longest life expectancies and one of the lowest infant mortalities. In addition overall quality of life and social welfare is one of the best in the world.

In many or in fact most countries you’d be sleeping on the streets and eat from the dumpsters if you were off work for any prolonged period of time. I just watched this documentary about homelessness on the US. And this one housing specialist said “we are all one paycheck away from becoming homeless”. And it’s very true. Of course if you saved some or have higher income you’d survive longer after job loss. But not much longer after unemployment ends and it doesn’t ho for long. In addition here if we lose jobs, we lose health care.

None of this stuff is happening in Sweden. People have universal and a good quality health care and even if you don’t work you don’t sleep on the street for how many years! So when I hear how Sweden doesn’t provide this or that…Sweden provides more than majority of the governments in the world! How much more does it have to give people for free? Why not be positive and appreciative of what it does provide?

And yes everywhere you have to pay for extras! It’s just how it is!

I agree, we are not their ''feed''....

I also believe counsellors/therapists need to be compassionate and considerate towards the client (or refer them elsewhere to someone who is a ''better fit'')

Of course, when ''funding'' is a major issue...or possibly some negative countertransference or transference which is not addressed... compromise or dump them?

Afaik it didn't work for him either. I like his irony and even sarcasm about it.

Because it really is a stupid principle that just doesn't work in actual reality. We got to be OK with seeing the limitations of therapy and therapists, and not expect the impossible. That actually applies to both sides, and it helps keep things professional too.

I've been thinking about it, and I'm not sure what I would do in this situation. I had one therapist I saw briefly whose door buzzer was weird and she always seemed annoyed when she had to buzz me in twice. She really stressed me out in general and I didn't see her long because of that, but I got the impression that she didn't think we were a good match either.

My current T would know if I were irritated by something like her tardiness, even if I were trying to hide it, and she would make space to talk about it non-defensively. She might not apologize or feel bad about it, but she would let me talk about whatever I felt. (Not sure if she would have known immediately that I was irritated when we were first getting to know each other because it was so long ago that I don't remember, but I suspect so. She is always looking for deeper meanings with everything, even when they aren't there.)

So I think the reaction of the therapist to the situation and to whatever I expressed about it might matter more than the situation itself. Sometimes people (including me!) are skeptical or critical of therapy that is about the therapy/therapist, but that's been the most powerful way for me to learn about myself and change myself. I think for this kind of work, the therapist's reaction would tell me if they could do what I needed to do.

If I remember right, I was worried that my T's new husband would cause her to move away (their relationship was somewhat long distance and actually still is, four years later) or that he would somehow take away her time and attention that I wanted for myself. She also took a week or two off from work for the wedding/honeymoon, which was particularly difficult for me at the time. I think the fact that I could explore my reactions and feelings without judgment and without feeling like I had to be a certain way was key. It's all grist for the mill, in my opinion, but not every therapist/counselor feels that way.

Taking them at their word about the rules and stupid self aggrandizing claims they set up (no matter how stupid those were) worked just fine for me. Therapy didn't help at all in any way -but I had no trouble setting boundaries with any of those people including calling them out when they tried to skirt what they said. In fact, it often made my whole day. I had evidence of what they had said. And I am not a him.

Nah, I meant that it doesn't work if you expect there being no need for the client to be understanding at all. You said before that it didn't work out for you either & you're saying it again here how stupid those ideas are. And yeah I'm not a him either.

I will make it easy for us

That's alright to feel feelings. Judging others based on them is a different thing altogether, though. Also I don't think anyone said that OP has to change all the patterns completely on her own.

You can't really do that kind of unconditional trust with anyone, not with a therapist either. You have to trust yourself and your gut first, and then you don't have to find a therapist that "really knows what they're doing". No therapist will really know like that, they can guide you some but....you have to do a lot of the work YOURSELF. That may be a tough truth but it's what it is.

That's exactly what I'm always on about here. The extreme dependence on therapists. Yes there may be work with the inner child and childhood stuff and whatnot, but the client is actually still expected to be able to go back to adult mode and stay there outside some moments when doing that work. As long as it's not something like inpatient treatment.

I totally agree though that open-mindedly exploring your feelings and taking responsibility for feeling them is key. Just don't let them create distorted thoughts and judgments of things, of yourself and of other people, and taking responsibility for feeling the way you do feel is actually very important for that.

No one would be able to mind read you that you don't feel good if they can't find a comfortable chair for themselves in the first place. It's also an attempt to mind read that she wasn't trying to understand you. Mind reading however is not possible. With CBT, it's a basic thing too to stop mind reading.

1. You need to give the therapist some time before she can go deep with discussions like that. For now she would have had to put it aside and do more observation before she can say more. That's completely normal.

2. If you want the therapist to get you, you can't just go like "I feel ignored", "I feel unimportant" because that's not actually talking about your actual feelings. These are not feelings, so they cannot be analysed like feelings. A feeling would be, "I feel sad" or "I feel angry".

3. You really need to let go of the distorted judgments about every small thing these therapists do. It's like, you somehow end up at thinking "I feel ignored" - this is a thought, not a feeling, as it just says "I think I'm being ignored by the person" - just because she didn't open the door in time or didn't find a comfortable chair. That's a big jump in reasoning.... where you instead need to verbalise, express in words what it is that you actually feel. Therapy can only work with the actual feelings.

***

IMO, CBT would actually help you with fixing distortions and focusing on positive facts and interpretations instead of taking it all deeply personally and sinking in negative feelings. DBT may also help with tolerating difficult feelings, instead of running from them by making all these judgments of all the small things.

You are right though that you do need to examine how these small things "make" you feel like you are unimportant or that the "focus" is not on you. Those are completely distorted emotional thoughts (CBT) and are not the reality. And therapists don't actually "make you feel" x or y feeling, because that means you let go of your own agency for feeling x or y feeling.

You do need to be open to having to let go of those emotions and thoughts and not cling on to them like that (DBT). Your insecurities really really get in the way of your life if the therapist not being able to find a comfortable chair for HERSELF makes you think you're unimportant and the like.

That's like an extremely distorted thought that comes from your negative emotions that take over instead of you taking over by taking responsibility for feeling them in the first place. And only YOU can do that, taking responsibility for, "I feel ...." e.g. "I feel angry", and not, "She made me feel angry". Or "I feel sad", not, "She made me feel sad". That is what having agency for your feeling means.

So then you can stop being a victim to how you feel. You can stop sinking in your feelings and trying to find validation and understanding to every little feeling of yours from others. You will never get that from anyone, therapist or not. You have to take responsibility for feeling them and to understand them yourself. That's the key.

Things like this are taught in therapy as skills. You will not get endless, infinite empathy and magical understanding, therapy isn't for that. It's for you to explore yourself with some help, process your feelings, perhaps trauma, and learn skills and the like.