Posted by ClearSkies on September 17, 2006, at 14:01:24
In reply to Re: I've been bad » muffled, posted by alexandra_k on September 17, 2006, at 10:29:17
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> I'm mostly afraid for me. That it will come up and won't be able to be put away again. For her too... But mostly... Selfish. Because of me. And some things... I can't communicate to her. I've taken risks. Really. Tried to tell her things that were really very important to me. And... She tries to reframe... She tries to interpret what is going on. I think she misses the mark mostly... But she is trying... And I try and help her... But... It just isn't going so well... When the risks don't pay off... I just leave feeling misunderstood and disconnected. But hardest is knowing that she really is trying...
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> I think we need to have a chat about what we are doing and where we are going. Because she seems to think of it as brief supportive but you know... I can talk to friends for brief supportive. What I really need is a t.
>I had a t who had a completely different agenda from me, and we could never get to being on the same page. At first I thought I was too sick or too stupid to be able to communicate well with her; then I thought she was REALLY stupid for misreading/mishearing me so badly; then I thought that she was just a bad therapist. Then I discovered that her primary experience was in providing crisis support, and that long term therapy was really not her, uh, millieu.
I looked for another t while I was still seeing this one. When I found a t I wanted to switch to, I just stopped making appointments and she never called me to ask why. I'm glad I left (after about 4 months) when I realized that her interests were not the same as mine. I actually think that any failure was on her part, as she was the professionally trained expert, and should have been addressing my concerns instead of trampling over them with her own. Listening and hearing - some people just aren't skilled at those things, you know?
I think I've had more bad therapy experiences than good ones. I also think that if I'd stopped and talked about where we were in the therapy process, that most of those bad experiences could have been curtailed.
There's no shame in deciding that your therapist is not a good fit. Having a talk to find out if you are both working at cross purposes would probably lessen the frustration all around.
poster:ClearSkies
thread:686478
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20060911/msgs/686830.html