I knew all along I was bad at therapy

October 22, 2020 6:40 AM

I had a not so great interaction with my therapist today.

Okay, y'all. I had a not so great experience with my therapist and I feel like I need help unpacking it.

I've seen two therapists in my life. One for about eight months last year, who I liked okay but decided to take a break from when the lockdowns started in March. And then my current therapist, who I started seeing in June after my partner came out to me as transgender.

She was great at first, she has experience working with partners of trans folks and was able to work through a lot of the off kilter complicated feelings I had as my partner started to transition.

But as my feelings about that calmed down, we've been digging into more stuff about life satisfaction in general, and relationship satisfaction in general. And honestly... it just feels really overwhelming to do that right now with all the world upheaval, and the changes in my relationship, and my miserable toxic job and ongoing job search. I'm managing okay, but it feels like a lot to get into really heavy stuff in therapy if it's not an immediate need. I've started to dread the sessions.

We had a lull in the session today, she asked me what I was thinking, and I admitted that I was feeling overwhelmed by the topics we were covering and that I didn't look forward to coming to therapy. I said that I felt like my day to day coping skills were okay, which mostly left bigger issues, but that trying to address those right now was overwhelming so I was trying to figure out where therapy fit in.

I said that sometimes I felt like her probing during therapy was more than I could handle right now-- that at times it almost felt intrusive. I really stressed that I didn't want her to take that personally, that obviously I understood that this was part of her job.

I felt good that I'd finally been a little more honest with her, but I was taken aback by her reaction. She said that most of her clients really like coming to therapy, and that a lot of the time she focuses on coping skills and that I don't necessarily need to be so vulnerable all the time, but that I have an idea in my head of what therapy is supposed to be. She said maybe I should really reflect on what I'm bringing to therapy and want out of therapy and try out different therapists.

It felt... really unfair and hurtful. I haven't been pushy about what sessions are supposed to look like, I've followed her lead-- maybe my idea of therapy is off but I didn't realize you had to be an expert on it to get something out of it. And if I'm 'bringing something' to therapy that's standing in the way, isn't it the therapist's job to help guide me through identifying that? I felt like she was telling me I was bad at therapy when I've honestly been doing my best to be open and reflective.

The other thing I said was that I felt like she personally thought that I should end my relationship-- and that I felt like she was subtley pulling me toward that conclusion. She responded by basically saying 'I feel like I've always been very nuetral, what is it that I've said that's made you feel that way?'

So...of course she has to try to be nuetral, but that doesn't mean she actually is. I can't pinpoint anything she's said, it's just a feeling. Honestly, it felt like she was gaslighting me by asking me to produce evidence for my reading of her. If it's not true, then fine, but it's clearly an issue either way that I feel that way because I'm not as open as I might be. I understand if she can't confirm or deny her private opinions, but her reaction made me question my ability to read people/situations.

We ended it with her asking me to write her an email after I'd reflected, telling her how I wanted to proceed.

Idk, I just need a gut check here from someone else, and I feel like metafilter has a lot of therapy experience. Was it okay how she handled this? Did I handle this badly? Should I try to salvage this or just find a new therapist/pause therapy? Agh. Advice please.

posted by anonymous to Human Relations (17 answers total)

It’s hard to know without having been there, but on first reading it seems like your therapist was a bit defensive, and to me it’s important that a therapist can hear my criticisms of them without being defensive. The other day I told my therapist that something they were doing wasn’t working for me, and while it was a clearer situation than yours in terms of the therapist having made a mistake, they were really neutral and mature about hearing what I said and talked about figuring out the best way to proceed (multiple solutions including either changing some things about our sessions or them helping me find a different therapist.)
posted by needs more cowbell at 6:57 AM on October 22, 2020

I don't have any useful thoughts on how she handled it, or how you handled it.

But, reading your post overall, if your day-to-day coping skills feel good to you, and you don't want to get into the bigger issues right now because *everything* (very reasonable positions), then it isn't super clear what you do want to get out of therapy right this minute. If you do know in your own mind what you're looking for, then you can probably attempt to refocus the sessions (or find a new therapist to work with you on them if you prefer). If you're not clear about what you want help with, or what you're trying to achieve, and you can cope day-to-day, then perhaps it is a good idea to take a break.
posted by plonkee at 7:14 AM on October 22, 2020 [14 favorites]

Therapy is a place where I feel I have to be my own advocate with any therapist, whatever the relationship. I think that asking you what you want out of therapy and what you want to bring to therapy is something that I'd suggest, as a patient, because therapists, while professionals who have seen and heard a lot, have to get cues from you.

I think a lot of what we believe about therapy is based on a model that isn't workable...that a therapist can understand what we need without us telling them what we need, and that they'll lead us to health in some clever way that requires less of us than of them. I've found therapy to be really difficult at times, but it's usually when I don't say what I want to get out of it that it's been the hardest.

If you don't click with your therapist, then ending therapy or finding someone who works better with your needs is absolutely worth it, to me. But I think any therapist is going to ask you to tell them what you want, to bring your full self, and to give corrective conversation when things aren't going well.
posted by xingcat at 7:28 AM on October 22, 2020 [8 favorites]

I think it's not about one of you handling it badly. It might not have been the absolute best response but it sounds securely within the range of decent to me. If you don't want to get into stressful things and you have the coping skills you need, it's unclear to me why you would be in therapy unless what you want is an unconditional high regard session (humanist therapy - that's not a slam, it's a thing) which might well be something to let your therapist know.

What I think is happening though, and it means I kind of agree with her, is that you personally are falling into The Myth Of Therapy. This comes a lot out of abuse narratives and a little bit out of kind of Freudian hype, which is that you go to therapy, the therapist hands you the key to your life, and then things are great. Like, this is all over our culture.

I sort of did have that life-improving deep therapy experience but it was like a promotion into a dream job...I enjoyed the experience and the results but oh my god it was messier, harder, and more stressful than I had thought, and I had to do the work. This is different from a bad match, which made me feel like crap about myself, as opposed to just awkward/naked/sad/frustrated/challenged. At the time that I ended therapy, there was a point where I felt a bit lost, like my therapist wasn't getting it...but I realized that actually, I had completed that phase of my work. Maybe you are at the same point.
posted by warriorqueen at 7:49 AM on October 22, 2020 [6 favorites]

I don't think your therapist did anything unreasonable other than being a little defensive. You were right to talk to her about your discomfort with how she was conducting your therapy, and now you need to decide how you're going to move forward.

We ended it with her asking me to write her an email after I'd reflected, telling her how I wanted to proceed.

This was a constructive suggestion. Whether you want to continue with this therapist or any therapist, I think you need to figure out what you want to work on in therapy. You say you've been able to work through a lot of the feelings regarding your partner transitioning, and you find it overwhelming to be talking about life satisfaction and relationship satisfaction with everything else that's going on... so what do you want to work on? What issues do you feel should take priority right now, and what do you think is the best approach for working on those issues?

Honestly, it felt like she was gaslighting me by asking me to produce evidence for my reading of her.

Gaslighting is about making people question their own judgment/perception/sanity, and I don't think she was doing that. I think this was a reasonable question on her part -- I think your therapist wanted to know what specifically you think she did that was out of line so she can address it. That doesn't mean that if you can't point to something concrete that your feelings aren't valid. If you believe that she wants you to leave your partner and it's subtly colouring her treatment of you, then you did right to bring it up. She may put a check on herself now that she's aware you see it as an issue, and if not it's probably time for a new therapist.
posted by orange swan at 7:55 AM on October 22, 2020 [1 favorite]

You're not going to be able to un-think the thought that your therapist wants you to split up with your partner. So you can either dive in & go through all of that in your next sessions, taking it to wherever it takes you - or you can pull right back & sack your therapist.

Whether to get a new therapist in that case is a different decision. Would you repeat the pattern?
posted by rd45 at 8:11 AM on October 22, 2020 [1 favorite]

She said maybe I should really reflect on what I'm bringing to therapy and want out of therapy and try out different therapists.

I get why you were hurt, but I also think it's legitimate to reflect on what you want from therapy and whether your inputs match your desired outputs.

There's not necessarily a value judgement there. If what you want is better coping skills, and yet your inputs are about long ago actions/reactions, then that's a mismatch -- either the goal or the inputs need to change. That's not about one goal or input being "better" than the other.

In terms of goals: you don't want to look into long-term, personal relationship dynamics and you don't want to change your current coping skills, so what are your goals? How will you know when you've met them?

In terms of what you're bringing to therapy: if you keep bringing up stuff that doesn't seem to have anything to do with your actual goals, then maybe either your goals are different than what you thought at the beginning, or maybe you're just bringing stuff up because you think you're "supposed" to. I think the latter is what your therapist was talking about when she said that you're falling into the "myth of therapy." You actually can go to therapy and talk about CBT techniques and then go home and put them into use and never confide much about your past at all (for example), and that can be legitimate. If that's what you're more interested in then you have to tell her.

For what it's worth, also, when I did the "let's talk about my past and relationships" conventional talk therapy thing, I felt MUCH worse before I felt better. It was pretty searing, because I couldn't work on my relationships without changing my perceptions of other people and of myself. So it feeling really bad and overwhelming right now might not mean you're off track or "bad" at therapy.
posted by rue72 at 8:18 AM on October 22, 2020 [1 favorite]

Just on needs more cowbell's point about defensiveness, I once saw a therapist who felt like an okay fit at the time but in retrospect was not a good fit for me, and the single biggest contributor to me feeling that way in retrospect was the therapist responding defensively to something that was not at all unreasonable for me to bring up during therapy.

Regardless of the specifics of this interaction, if you don't want to carry on working with this person you don't have to, and you absolutely don't owe them a deeply-pondered email about how you want to proceed (i.e. if you don't want to proceed with them, you can email them and tell them that, but it needn't be more than a perfunctory email). I can't tell from your question what kind of email your therapist is expecting you to write, and whether they mean a simple communication about what you want to do next vs something going into more depth about how you're feeling, but if you get the sense that they mean the latter, that would also feel like an overstep of expectations on their part to me personally.

While therapy touches on our deepest and most tender stuff, it's also a business interaction, and as the client you always reserve the right to terminate the interaction if it isn't working for you with as little ceremony or explanation as you like.
posted by terretu at 8:28 AM on October 22, 2020 [3 favorites]

So...of course she has to try to be nuetral, but that doesn't mean she actually is. I can't pinpoint anything she's said, it's just a feeling. Honestly, it felt like she was gaslighting me by asking me to produce evidence for my reading of her. If it's not true, then fine, but it's clearly an issue either way that I feel that way because I'm not as open as I might be. I understand if she can't confirm or deny her private opinions, but her reaction made me question my ability to read people/situations.

Having a feeling about it might be coming from you rather than her?

If you, deep down, know that you want to stay with your partner however hard it is, any point at which she pushes you to interrogate this could feel like a push to leave them. But, depending on the therapeutic approach she takes, asking you to interrogate your feelings and decisions is exactly her job.

Let me give another example. I might go to therapy because I am generally unhappy, and one of the biggest causes is my job, which I find difficult. But I don't want to leave it, because I'm worried about finding another one. I would hope that a good therapist would push me on that, even though I might feel uncomfortable with the idea of leaving it - I might get defensive, and insist that the real things making me unhappy are other factors. But in reality, I am afraid - of change, and uncertainty, and I want a simpler solution to my unhappiness than jumping into the unknown.

I'm not saying you should leave your partner, although I guess you could read that from the above paragraph! I am saying that, within reason, pushing you to question things that you feel or want, is generally a good thing (as long as you're comfortable with it). It doesn't mean she doesn't agree with them. It just means she wants to understand why you feel that way.
posted by greenish at 8:40 AM on October 22, 2020 [7 favorites]

I'm a therapist but obviously not yours.

I've had clients bring up things like this before. I usually tell them I'm glad they feel like they can share about what is and isn't working for them. I agree it sounds like she may have gotten defensive which complicates this for you. She also read it as you possibly terminating the relationship, but maybe wanting her approval to do so. And there's nothing wrong with that. It takes a lot of courage to directly address your desire to change a therapeutic relationship in some way. Most people just stop going, or make excuses that don't hit the real reason, unless it is a long term relationship which has a different dynamic.

In a situation like this, I also would have read it as maybe therapy isn't what you want right now. You solved the problem you came to solve, and now you're realizing that you have been trying to do more than you want to do, and it's ok if you want to take a break. If that reading is wrong, then I'd want to be corrected in my misunderstanding of the situation. But I don't know that I would provide a client any direction if they voiced similar things. I'd speculate different ideas, sure, but the direction is the client's to choose. With all my knowledge and expertise, my clients are still the experts on themselves, what they feel that they want and need, and whether they want to do the "work" of therapy or use therapy as a soft space to feel heard in their mundane frustrations of daily life, or as a space to just bask in the glow of intense attention, or something else.

So I'd basically see this type of interaction as a polite way for the client to bring up termination if they had concern about hurting my feelings, so they maybe approached their true desires gently, and would similarly encourage the client to think more about whether they want to continue therapy in some capacity - and if they do, what are their goals, and do they want to continue working on those goals with me or would they like to try other therapy styles and approaches and see if someone else is a better fit.

It isn't my job to provide the goals for the client. It's my job to help them move toward what they want to accomplish.

I don't know that anyone is "bad at therapy." But if you did what you came for, then what exactly are you still doing in attending the appointments? What is your motivation and what are you getting out of it? If you didn't want to stop going then what were you wanting to change? Just have her stop asking about heavy issues? Use it as a space for stress relief, want her to practice mindfulness with you so you get a little meditation break in your week? If she misread what you want and you do want to continue then it's perfectly valid to explain that. Do you feel some obligation? Do you feel like you should "work on yourself" because "that's what insightful people growing in self awareness do"?

Alternatively, take a step back and think about your existing patterns with authority figures. Does this feel familiar, this sense of being chastised? Of doing it wrong? What's your baggage around rejection? Could any of that be showing up in this encounter? Just some food for thought.
posted by crunchy potato at 8:49 AM on October 22, 2020 [11 favorites]

Also, this:
I think a lot of what we believe about therapy is based on a model that isn't workable...that a therapist can understand what we need without us telling them what we need, and that they'll lead us to health in some clever way that requires less of us than of them. I've found therapy to be really difficult at times, but it's usually when I don't say what I want to get out of it that it's been the hardest.

Is good food for thought. I am not able to help a client effectively who expects me to work harder than they do (I'm not suggesting that you have been doing that, OP). I'm not a mind reader. Some therapists are directive but usually you as the client have to specifically ask for that. A good therapist will call you out (if that's what you want), and will be gentle/validating/encouraging instead of that is what you've said you want. Without client feedback, we tend to go the direction that a majority of clients have wanted/appreciated. Good therapy can be difficult and painful, and bad therapy can be boring and easy and feel stuck - and often that can change if the client says hey, I feel like I'm not getting what I need here. Therapists aren't perfect. Good ones aren't too defensive. The same therapist won't seem good to everyone.
posted by crunchy potato at 9:09 AM on October 22, 2020 [1 favorite]

Not currently a therapist, trained as one, hoping to be one again soon, here is my input:

I usually watch these questions go by and people say "DUMP YOUR THERAPIST IMMEDIATELY YOU DESERVE BETTER" and feel like people are just getting out their anger about stuff.

I kind of think you should consider dumping this therapist. There are not a lot of absolutes in therapy but to me, "what is it I've said that makes you feel that way?" is fine therapy and "I've tried to be neutral" is Bad Therapy. The interaction is not about her and it is not your responsibility to make her feel she's been one thing or another and it should not be your thing to worry about. You did right to bring it into the room--that's a great thing to happen in therapy. Her response was defensive and bad. Could you come back from that? Probably, if you were feeling a good connection with her yeah, and it'd even be productive to work on that skill of repairing difficult relationships. But this sounds like mostly a mistake on her part in response to you doing something that should be a good and productive use of your time in therapy.

I do give her some limited credit for suggesting you look for other therapists if she truly said it in an encouraging way, but the "MOST of my clients LOVE therapy" thing really makes it sound like this was not the case. Her other clients are, again, not your business/problem/thing to worry about. As described, it sounds like she was blaming you for not getting out of therapy with her what others do. But if she was just saying "maybe this is a bad match," she could be right.

So basically if you feel more of a bond with her than is evident in this question, stick around and make repairing a relationship that has suffered from a damaging interaction part of the work you do. If you don't, and she has just made this emotional imposition on you to make her feel like the therapy is going well, the bail, bail like the wind. You can have another session with her if you want to, and it might be satisfying, but you're not obligated to.
posted by less of course at 9:15 AM on October 22, 2020 [5 favorites]

With the caveat that I've had mostly bad experiences with therapy and am therefore not a great source on what good therapy would look like: I think it makes sense to look at a therapeutic relationship the way you would any other interpersonal relationship, in that often a friend/SO/mentor/therapist/whatever can meet some of your needs, but not all of them, and it's important to be able to accept that and get those needs met elsewhere. So you know this therapist was great at meeting your needs early on in the process, but for whatever reason (not necessarily a "fault" type of reason) she's not meeting your needs now, and it seems like maybe she's just not the right person to do that.

So the suggestion to really think about what you need from therapy right now is a good one. And then think about whether this therapist in particular is the right person to try to meet those needs, or whether you might have a more productive experience working with someone else.

FWIW, I definitely don't think you handled it badly (and I kind of feel like it's a therapist's job in the first place to be able to handle however their clients handle things).
posted by trig at 9:59 AM on October 22, 2020

Seems to this non-therapist like you both were in bounds, with the caveat that I don't see enough detail to speak to the gaslighting question.

You told her how you felt, when she'd asked you directly. Nice work. Sounds like you handled it thoughtfully and honestly. Her reaction seems reasonable too; maybe if I'd been there, I'd be taken aback too, but I wonder if you, if you were able to dissociate from it -- maybe imagine her telling you all that before you'd started your very first session -- would read it the same way.

She might have been guiding you toward ending the relationship that caused you to start seeing her. Or she might have been asking thought-provoking questions, the answers to which seemed clear to you but that you maybe weren't ready to concede. Nothing would be wrong with either case, to my eyes; I don't think therapists should tell clients what to do all the time, but there are cases where there's an almost objectively right answer but the client is unsure, and could use a reality check for calibration.

I agree that if you're not sure you benefit from therapy right now, you're well within your rights to stop. Maybe she counsels clients who aren't in dire need, but if you don't feel you're one of them, don't be. The fact that you're down on her seems like more reason to terminate the relationship.
posted by troywestfield at 12:27 PM on October 22, 2020

just a random stranger's opinion for whatever it might or might not be worth, I agree with you that she seemed defensive and that that is stressful and not how it ought to be, and it probably has a lot more to do with her and her own life and work experiences than it has to do with you personally. I think it is often how it is, because we're all just humans. Maybe you can stick it out and come to a new place with her.. who's to say? If you feel like writing that thing will be an episode of "i'm just doing this because i was told to and i kind of resent it but i'm doing it because i think i have to" then.. I don't know if it's gonna be so terrific? especially if you're someone - and i confess i have not perused your previous asks to get a sense of you or anything - but if you're someone who often feels like you end up doing things others ask even when it doesn't feel like it serves you.. if that's you.. then writing a thing like this seems extra not good. Would there be some sort of middle path/third way that can be looked for here? a way to speak with her about the writing idea next time you meet, and what it brought up for you? or.. something..anything..outside the box?
posted by elgee at 2:29 PM on October 22, 2020

Of everything you've said here, this to me seems like the biggest issue to address going forward if you want to keep working with her:

The other thing I said was that I felt like she personally thought that I should end my relationship-- and that I felt like she was subtley pulling me toward that conclusion.
I can't say if she was or wasn't. She doesn't think she was; she says she tried to remain neutral. So I'm wondering if exploring this issue a bit could help you figure out something about yourself. It's entirely possible she was pushing you, but also possible you have a filter that's worth exploring.

The reason why I say that is partly related to this:
I really stressed that I didn't want her to take that personally, that obviously I understood that this was part of her job.
I felt like she was telling me I was bad at therapy when I've honestly been doing my best to be open and reflective.
I'm concerned here that you are worrying too much about your therapist's feelings and her opinion of you. Do you often feel judged by others? This can be a kind of mind reading, which is a cognitive distortion, when you think you know others' opinions but they haven't shared them with you.

So maybe that's something worth exploring?
posted by bluedaisy at 2:52 PM on October 22, 2020 [1 favorite]

She said that most of her clients really like coming to therapy

This is one of the most absurd statements I’ve ever heard in my life. You’re looking for treatment for an illness. People go to doctors because they want to feel better, but they don’t “like going.” Therapy is supposed to treat mental illness.
posted by Violet Hour at 9:11 PM on October 22, 2020 [4 favorites]