t told me

not 2 cuss in her office no more. what i said was hell & dam she told me not 2 come back if i can't talk better than that

That seems a little restrictive. My T doesn't limit my expression. Maybe you need to re-evaluate if you need a change.

I've used profanity in therapy. Actually early on my T kind of encouraged it because I wasn't emoting well. I guess it depends on the T. And maybe your age or how much you use it. For me I save the profanity to convey extreme reactions. If you use it too much it make you sound uneducated and disrespectful.

are you seeing a private therapist, or seeing someone at an agency? I'm asking to determine how easy it would be to change therapists. this one seems quite odd. she won't tell you what type of license she has and tells you to take a hike if you say damn?? that's rather unusual for a professional therapist.

S

eep! i'd be finding a new therapist.

i never used to swear with my pdoc, but these days i am a bit more relaxed about it and will let it slip out every now and again. he swears too (lololol!!) and we use terms which are a lot more disrespectful that damn.

but it's all a part of us relating and expressing how bad the situation can get, at times.

i would have a MAJOR problem if someone told me not to come back if i couldn't control my language. there is a huge difference between saying something like "i'd prefer it if you didn't swear so often" and "don't come back unless you clean up your act".

your T confuses me (for the same reasons slippers mentioned). would you be able to find someone new?

I don't think I ever get through a session and not swear anymore. My T swears too, although I was alittle shocked the first time he did. I couldn't stay with a T that wouldn't let me swear, I would feel sort of inhibited and on edge then.

I didn't realize this is the same T that wouldn't tell you about her degree's/training.

I would run for the hills. Change as fast as you can. If a T won't tell you about their training and tells you not to swear than that spells trouble.

Let us know how things are.

If a T wont tell you about their qualifications thats a warning sign to me - if you can I would change T's unless you feel you are getting somewhere with this T and dont want to leave

No cursing? Wow, I would have had to quit five minutes into my first session. I curse, my T curses. Sounds like you should find a situation where there are no restrictions on how you express yourself. If you can't feel comfortable using certain words, how are you going to be comfortable expressing difficult emotions and subject matter?

I don't like to swear or to hear myself swear. I can remember a teacher telling us that people who swear aren't smart enough to use other words. Kind of true but there is more to it than that. So I don't like to but I do.
I think it's really important actually, because it can say I'm angry and this is the only way I can express or acknowledge that anger, or frustrtation or dissapointment, etc.

But when I do, invariably T chooses to repeat those words back to me. When she does I cringe and laugh at the same time because it sounds so out of place to hear her swear! The first time she did that it made me feel at ease that she wasn't upset that I said what I'd said.

Did she say more? Did you and T talk about swearing, about your swearing, about her aversion to it?

Some people are very very angry when they swear. Some T's cannot deal with very angry clients. A psychologist I saw for a while a few years ago told me she had a client she had referred to someone else because the client was someone who was very very angry and she didn't feel she was the therapist who could help him. So not all clients and T's are a good fit, for many reasons.

Do you feel like this T is a good fit for you?

exactly. besides.... sometimes only brown words will do...