How Long Do Ruptues Take To Work Through?

Just wondering

My therapist really upset me today and offended me.

I am severely physically disabled with 24/7 care. Sometimes, in fact quite a lot of the time, my therapist just really doesn't get it, she's naive, but I really want to work things through with her.

How long has it taken you guys to work through ruptures and recover from them?

How many ruptures have you and your therapist had?

Ruptures are hard. I went through a period of a couple of years where it seemed like we had some sort of rupture every few weeks. We always worked through them, bc my T is awesome. Longest rupture was maybe 2-3 months? But once we addressed it it was resolved within a session.
I think length depends on the relationship. I have a solid alliance with my T and it’s increasingly easier to address her missteps.
If you like your T and feel you have a good therapeutic future, then talk about it. And continue to do so until you feel resolved.
Good luck!

Not the best answer but as long as it takes. If it can’t be resolved it’s time to move on.

I've had many ruptures with L in the 3+ years we've been together. Some are her crossing my boundaries, some are her accidentally triggering me or making a mistake, but most are misunderstandings. Both of us are responsible for our part of the rupture. No one is to blame. We always talk it out and work it out. Many times, we just need to tweak something we do.

Ruptures last for however long it takes to process it. It's not like you forget what happened, but you learn from it and move forward. Some of my ruptures lasted a month or so.

Going through ruptures are worth it if you think the relationship can survive it...if you want to survive it. But it takes both parties to be willing to work on it. L and I have a saying that we take the bricks thrown at us, and build our foundation instead of allowing it to break us. And it has worked. We are stronger now because of the difficulties we've been through.

Awesome T and I had a few small ruptures that we worked through usually the next session. Art T and I had some huge ruptures. I thought we worked through them... I went back to see her after almost a year of not seeing her. We were able to talk and I thought things were OK... Then tree weeks ago I started working with a new primary T. We have SO much rapport already and I can be vulnerable with him and I feel safe with him in ways that I don't with art T. I don't trust art T... we even brought awesome T/her supervisor in to help. We haven't worked it out. Right now my priority is my work with the new T. Once finances allow I will try again to work things through with art T just to learn how to do it. I don't think I will ever work with her. BUT... I need to figure out how to work through this stuff. Can they be fully worked through? I think so, awesome T and I did but they were smaller ruptures and awesome T did most of the work.

So, like others have said, it takes as long as it takes.

I have also had enough bad T's to know that some times it isn't worth the work of working through... Only you can know if it is worth working through.

Thanks All! Basically my T takes 10 weeks of holiday off a year.

This is no problem!!

However, it does mean that when she's working I do not like to miss appointments as basically she only ever works 6 or 7 weeks before she's off again.

I am severely disabled requiring 24 hour care. I will basically have the physical care needs of a baby all my life.

Sometimes due to my disability, or due to my carers commitments, I may have to swap appointments. My T facilitates this but begrudgingly, she huffs and puffs and makes me feel naughty.

In my view, if I ever felt able to miss my appointments for my own reasons, in addition to the 20 I miss because of her (I see her twice a week) then that would mean I would miss her 20 + my own like 10 which would amount to 30, then I would be in a position to stop altogether, because in my opinion, if you can go 30 weeks without something happily, then you don't really need to be spending your money on it on a regular basis do you?

She makes a big thing of me never wanting to cancel, always reschedule but why would I want to cancel when she already takes 10 weeks off anyway? If I was in a position to be cancelling my appointments in addition to the 20 sessions/10weeks she already takes off, then I would not need counselling and would not be paying her in the first place. I'd be spending my money on other things.

I just feel low and as if she's a bit naive, a bit dense, not understanding my disability and not really making reasonable adjustments with grace.

It also takes her about 3 minutes to roll up the carpet and move the chair before I can enter the room every time..

I just feel low about it, she says it's black and white thinking, to me it's logical. I wouldn't be paying her if I didn't need counselling and why should I not try and rearrange rather than cancel when I know we miss 20 sessions due to her anyway.

Doesn't help we are working on trauma at the moment! How long do your therapists take off per year?

I think mine takes off round about the same amount. I'm enjoying right now. He hasen't been off since September and this is the longest we've gone continuously. I have never cancelled either, and I, too, would rather reschedule than cancel. I understand it is work to her, but I don't think it's unreasonable at all for you to want to reschedule instead of cancel.

Your T sounds pretty unreasonable treloarbabe. And she's wrong, it is not black and white thinking - she is making no adjustments and showing a clear lack of understanding (e.g. resistance in rescheduling, no preparing the space ahead of time or giving you that extra time as an ad-on) - what is black and white about that??

And 10 weeks off is a lot (in my books).

Do you like and/or want to continue working with her?

I know this is an older thread but I am always shocked when I read about Ts taking that much time off. (Which seems to be the norm in the UK??) People in therapy need consistency…especially if they are doing trauma work. How is safety established if T is leaving every 5-6 weeks?? And when they take 3-4 weeks off at a time? I know they need time away but normal vacation time is 2-3 weeks a year and usually not in a row!

My last T was always taking time off. She was very inconsistent and it was impossible for me to even get comfortable with her. It caused a lot of ruptures. We talked about them but they never fully resolved because she didn’t change. She didn’t care that her behavior was distressing to her clients. I finally fired her but it wasn’t as soon as I should have.

(My current T barely takes a week off every year. (She’s on vacation now, it’s only for a week and it’s her first one in a year and a half!) She’s never gone during the holidays because she knows that time of year is hard for so many. She even works on Christmas day.)

I think ruptures need to become conscious. Until than the rupture remains.

Ruptures take as long as they need to for you to feel better. For me it is a matter of us talking it out until I feel heard and understood. It doesn't mean I always get what I want but it might mean we find a compromise. I have had times where we work it out the next session. There was one time it took us three weeks of 2× a week sessions revisiting it for me to feel totally heard and understood. It really made our relationship stronger.

As far as wanting to reschedule sessions that need to be missed whether it is because of a conflict I have with our normal time or even one she has, I am bit upset she doesn't understand your need for this. It seems like this should be a basic concept for a therapist to understand. It is all about consistency for many of us with trauma issues.

My therapist understands how hard it is for me so always offers to see if she can fit me in at another time. It cannot always happen because of both our schedules but she really tries.

My answer is very similar to that of Nottrustin. That they take as long as needed. I think it's important to have a T who understands that, who isn't frustrated, like "Shouldn't you be over this by now?"

For me, it can take a bit of discussion at the time, then maybe I think I'm fine. But then something will come up, whether weeks or even months later, and I realize I need to discuss it more. In fact, that's going on now with my T--a rupture we had in November/December is being discussed again now. And it's not like we were discussing it all that time. I've found it can help ti discuss later, when you're not in the heat of the moment so much. When emotions have calmed down and you've each had time to step back and potentially reflect on what happened.

I also think it's important that T's understand how it can be difficult for a client to miss a session, whether due to their vacation or another reason. Even if rescheduling isn't possible, for the T to at least say, "I realize how difficult this is, and I'm sorry," that can go a long way. I do think it's too much for a T to be off for a week every 6 weeks or so. The summer I had the most conflicts with my T was when he was off for a week, then back for 3, then off for a week, back for 3, then off for another week. I was seeing him twice a week at the time. I would just get back into feeling secure when he'd be going away again. I think that contributed to the conflicts. We also had very few conflicts during the first 2 years of the pandemic, when he was rarely off (even for a day or two).

He tends to take 3 or 4 one-week vacations a year, plus some long weekends and random days off here and there (he generally tries to schedule me for another day if he's off on one of my regular session days, which I appreciate). He also has a back-up therapist, who I like, who I can see when he's away (assuming she's in town, of course!). So that helps, too. And he allows emails when he's away and will send brief responses in the mornings (I mean, I couldn't email him every day!)

This is the only part I have pause with. Ts should never apologize for going on vacation. They really deserve that time off. (I don’t think they should answer emails while away either.) If a client can’t handle their T going away for a couple of weeks a year, they might need to look into a higher level of care until they can handle it. (A T going away for much longer and more often is a different story altogether which is what prompted my revival of this older thread….because that’s just not good for helping a client to feel safe and secure in the relationship.)

To clarify, I didn't mean that they should apologize for going on vacation. More to say "I'm sorry this is hard for you." I realize this was unclear the way I wrote it!

I agree that they deserve time off and actually need it to be a good therapist--part of the self-care. Whenever I talk about my T going on vacation (like if it's one coming up), I often end up crying, and I tell him that I feel bad for the crying because I know he deserves the vacation. And he said he knows that, how I always make it very clear.

And I do try to avoid emailing him--generally it's just something near the end of the vacation like "You still exist, right?" that would not require much of a reply. (I try to avoid those now, too, and feel less of a need for them.)