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Re: Another question re anger toward therapists

Posted by Rigby on March 7, 2004, at 10:28:18

In reply to Another question re anger toward therapists, posted by crushedout on March 7, 2004, at 10:11:40

Oh. I totally get this. And it is crazy making. It's called gaslighting I think? The therapist does something to legitimately tick you off and they chalk it up to your issues (in your case anger.)

This absolutely happened with me and my therapist's boundary crossings and, frankly, I just needed to let it go because she wasn't gonna back down. And, when I thought back on it, she *did* apologize--a few times. But I couldn't move on. I just kept feeling that she wasn't owning her stuff. In retrospect--and this is a year-long retrospect--I gained a *huuuuuge* insight from this that has springboarded me to another level. But it was very, very, very painful and frustrating and literally took a year to get to. I actually even, after this major shift for me, was angry at how *long* and painful it was to get here. Yeah, it was about her not owning her stuff but that was only the surface of the insight--it was echoing back really far and the dynamic was permeating lots of areas of my life.

So my guess is, if you can stick this out with her--her not owning her stuff, crossing boundaries, working through your confusion and anger around these things and with her, you could be rewarded with some really excellent gains.

I *only* say this now--I would *not* have said it in the middle of things where I was mad at my therapist possibly in a similar vein as you are with yours. And yes, I was mad at her for what she did *and* mad at her for not doing more of it. I had friends telling me to quit. But ultimately my gut told me to see it through. I tried to quit actually but it was way too conflicting and went against my instincts way too much.

I do think she's crossed boundaries. And you seemed upset about it. So I and I think others said she's being bizarro and unprofessional. *But* sometimes therapists screw up and go overboard to try and help and they're only human and sometimes that's what you need.

Where there's smoke there's fire. If you're feeling *alot* in therapy (anger, frustration, eroticism) there's a lot to be gained and it sounds to me like you're in the eye of the storm. A hard place to be but a place where, if you can work through it (brace yourself though, it could be a while) you will really reap benefits. I don't think there's any magic pill to get through it easier or faster.

> Okay, so I was thinking a lot about this lying in bed last night, and here's one of the problems I have about expressing anger toward my therapist. It seems to me she has a conflict of interest. Usually, when I tell her about something someone did (for example, my father) that I either feel angry about or *should* feel angry about, she says something about how outrageous what he did was, or how it makes her angry, or something to that effect to validate me. You know what I mean? Sometimes she's even needed to be angry *for* me because I don't feel it (I know this contradicts what I said earlier in the thread about being in touch with my anger -- perhaps I was wrong about that at least partly).
>
> Anyway, so if I tell her -- if we tell our therapists we're angry at them for something they actually did that was f'ed up -- not just anger because they can't meet all our needs or some other type of irrational anger which seems easier for them to validate -- how can they validate us without admitting to themselves that they've been jerks? What I mean is, unlike when you're discussing anger at another person for something they did *to* you, when you're discussing your anger at your T for something your T did that was "wrong," the T has a conflict between validating your anger toward her (by saying "what a bad T!!!") and protecting her own ego.
>
> Am I making any sense?


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Psycho-Babble Psychology | Framed

poster:Rigby thread:321200
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20040303/msgs/321560.html