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

[oyceter]

Bad: I think a lot of my not-great therapy experiences have been when it feels like the therapist is saying something that is more based on what they think than what I think. Or a kind of "hammer, therefore everything is nails" situation? Psych therapist did stints at a university, so she had a lot of stuff from the business school and was more into management and etc. than I was. CBT therapist had a very different view of the internet and internet interactions. Current couples therapist sometimes goes off on tangents re: breastfeeding or somatic therapy and etc. I don't think any of it is actually harmful, but it sometimes takes me a while to sort out the difference between "resisting the idea because it is scary" versus "resisting the idea because it doesn't work for me."

Also CBT therapist would often illustrate her points with stories from her own life, which kind of annoyed me because she was a generation older, more well off, and in types of social situations I might not be in.

I also always feel weird when my therapists praise me? I feel some of it is positive reflection, but I find it way more useful to me when it's something I come up with by myself. ("You're a very ethical caring person" vs. "That sounds very ethical and caring to me, what do you think?")

A really big therapy miss, though, was when social worker therapist diagnosed me with adjustment disorder due to breakup instead of listening to me say I'd been depressed for about two years by then. Psych therapist also took me at my word re: I didn't know if I had a genetic history of depression or anxiety. But then, she believed me re: depression and also poked around stuff with my mom a lot more, until we ended up armchair diagnosing my mom (I count this as a plus).

Good: CBT therapist was very good at pushing me. Sometimes it was at things I didn't necessarily want to do (i.e. the internet stuff), but some things, like setting more definitive boundaries with my parents and modeling what that would look like, or making me come up with statements about class to get over my own class anxiety, were INCREDIBLY HELPFUL. For class, I think therapist is the same class as my parents? I'm currently not sure where I am in terms of class shifting. I know it's CBT stuff, but having a script for certain things was really useful.

CBT therapist was good at pushing but was also good at hearing me talk about my therapy experiences, because a lot of times I would be feeling a lot of resistance. And she always made it clear that I had the option of seeing someone else if I felt this wasn't working out. This was esp. nice compared to grad school therapist, who I tried to break up with because I said I wanted more CBT, and she said, "I do CBT too! You don't feel like exercising? Tough, go exercise!" Me: "Thanks, but no thanks."

Not necessarily good or bad? It was weird seeing personal philosophy differences between me and CBT therapist and psych therapist, both of whom I think were more used to counseling people with more resources? I have a lot due to parents, but because it's due to parents, it's complicated, and sometimes I felt like they understood but didn't quite get the whole thing with "I am unemployed and have no insurance." That could be me projecting thought.