Seeking Therapy Stories

[rachelmanija]

For my own benefit, I am looking for stories of two types of therapy moments:

1. Things a therapist did right.

2. Things a therapist did wrong.

In both cases, I'm looking for things that weren't obvious.

For "wrong things," I'm not thinking of clearly, extremely terrible things that I would never do in a million years, like having sex with a client, telling a client their abuse was their own fault, telling a client not to be gay, etc. I'm looking for mistakes that were more subtle than that - things a well-meaning but inexperienced therapist might do. For example, it was not beneficial to me (as a client) to let me sit there and recount lengthy abuse stories, and then have the therapist immediately start delving deeper into the abuse. But that's not an obvious mistake on the level of "It was all your fault it happened."

For right things, also, I'm looking for moments that went beyond the obvious "She was very empathetic," "He told me it wasn't my fault," or "She helped me see the connections between my childhood and my adult relationships." I am particularly interested in any times in which a therapist managed to do a good job with identity issues (gender, culture, etc), whether or not the therapist had the same identity as the client.

I realize that everyone is different, and what's right for one person may be wrong for another. I'm not looking for a rule book, but rather for inspiration and food for thought.

Anonymous comments are enabled but screened. If you comment anonymously, please let me know whether or not you'd like me to unscreen.

Comments

[the_rck]

For a negative experience-- I had therapists insisting to me that I was depressed while I was insisting that I wasn't depressed but was anxious instead. As it happens, I can get depressed when my anxiety is particularly bad, but the anxiety has always been primary. I wanted to address the anxiety. The psychotherapist persisted in calling it depression and then told me that it didn't matter because the treatment was identical.

The same therapist I'm thinking of refused to refer me to someone else in the clinic when I asked her to.

I had some seriously bad experiences with CBT, too, but I think that was me rather than the therapist. When I'm anxious, I very deliberately stop thinking beyond the minimum necessary for getting through the situation. Thinking makes the anxiety worse, so I don't do it. CBT, as presented to me, required that I analyze my thoughts while in the middle of anxious situations. That meant that I had to let myself have thoughts which led to not being able to function. It ran entirely counter to every coping mechanism I have, starting to dismantle them right when I needed them most. I couldn't do it, and I got a lot of negative feedback over my inability.

I suppose the negative feedback was a therapist problem. There wasn't any sense of trying to adapt to make the therapy fit my situation better or even a maybe this isn't for you response. I got a particular kind of CBT pushed on me because it *must* work for everyone.