Feeling rejected and hurt by my own therapist

[Arin_S]

Hello, first time posting my own thread so hope this goes ok.

I have been in therapy for a couple years now. There are many things I find extremely difficult to be open about, due to fears of judgement, shame, guilt etc. Additionally, the outward stigma towards the specific symptoms I experience, which cause me much distress, made me hesitant to even acknowledge them. I figured, however, I need to make myself vulnerable in order to start addressing these issues. So, I spend the month reflecting and narrowing my experiences down into a concise list, as I find myself having difficulty expressing myself. So I hoped writing it down for my therapist would help make my struggles more clear, as to get the help I need to improve...

But, upon sharing my experiences with my therapist, they made many comments towards me that made me feel extremely judged and demeaned. I wont be specific for privacy reasons, but essentially they told me that I write "too articulated" and my symptoms sounded "textbook" for some sort of disorder I don't remember. This shocked me, I thought I only ever had anxiety. But, they continued to make comments that gave me the impression they thought I was diagnosing myself and literally scoffed at my struggle with these issues, which I am extremely hurt by. They also said that these things make me an "exhausting person to be around", and that I am broken.

I feel like she patronised my feelings, accused me of faking things and now I find myself questioning everything. "Am I a bad person? Are things not as bad as I thought, and I'm just too sensitive? Am I faking everything?". After this, I am finding it hard to open up about anything, terrified of being accused of faking my emotions, and that everyone looks down on me as an attention seeker. I am looking to go to a new therapist, as I find myself coming back from this therapist more unstable than before. However, my trust with the mental health care system is damaged, and I anticipate myself having immense difficulty opening up to a new therapist.

Sorry for long explanation, but essentially my question is: how can I get over my feelings of hurt after being accused of faking my experiences? And how can I begin to move forward, and continue my mental health journey towards a better self, without my emotions and fear of rejection preventing me from opening up?

I'd really like to hear what others think, and if anyone else has experienced this.

Thank you very much for reading.

-Arin

[ecomama]

Dear Arin.S

I am so glad you came to the BB forums! A very warm welcome and I really hope you find this a safe and supportive space as I have felt.

I'm SO sorry you've had this experience! I'm shocked and saddened that this stuff has been said to you.... what IS that??

I don't like it. No way should a therapist be saying those things to you. That's not right OR helpful AT ALL.

Yes you should be able to open up to your therapist and no, you should not have had those things said to you.

I am SO glad your instincts reacted that way.

As you read through the forums, you will find you are not alone in having horrible things said to you by a supposed "mental health professional".

It's okay. It's NOT you. It's them.

My advice is leave asap.
You do not need to brought down any more by comments such as these.

I want to encourage you to reach out to 1800RESPECT and talk to the beautiful Counsellors there... once you share your experience, you will see it's not you.
If you've experienced trauma and need to talk about that... the Counsellor can put you through to a Trauma Psychologist on the phone.
You can do this anonymously.
Seriously, it may take alot of POSITIVE interactions with people who care for you to feel you can seek and find the right Counsellor for you. Sometimes you gotta "kiss a lot of frogs" if you know what I mean.

I had a Psych this year who was really beneficial to me for about 5 sessions... then it went downhill and she said things to me that she should NOT have said. She tried to demean me lol... I wasn't going to have it. Tbh it just showed HER ignorance, not mine.

I stayed for another 2 sessions and the tone didn't change, I realised she was only taking data on me for her own research (I had progressed rapidly) but I was outta there.

I kept my angelic Counsellor all through. I still have regular sessions with her.

But I realise that we may need many different things to help us heal, recover or simply get on to a path of better MH. I call it a "jigsaw puzzle" of different things that help us and those pieces can be different for each individual (some may be the same like self-care).

You've come to the right place at BB to feel validated, to be able to express yourself in however will help YOU and to feel at home with people who "get it" because we probably do.

Onwards and upwards Arin.S!

Hugs.
EM
NB: It's not YOU.

[geoff]

Hello Arin, if I can say that the last psychologist I saw told me that I don't need to take any medication for depression, OCD, nor for anxiety any headaches, simply because he hadn't for years, so I asked him if he's had to go through an operation, his answer was no, so that was his decision and I thoroughly disagreed with.

With his state of mind, I would have been struggling all the way and hopped up and left just as you have, do not take any blame what's so ever because you're there to get help, not for him to make a judgement that pushes you into a corner, that's not how counselling works.

We tell our story as we see it and a trained psychologist gathers all of this information to help us overcome our depression of any kind, and when we lose any connection with them, it's time to find another person.

We are here to support you.

Geoff.

[romantic_thi3f]

Hi Arin.S

Ouch! I'm sorry that you had to go through that - going to therapy can be so vulnerable as is let alone having this sort of therapy experience. Even if you had literally grabbed a textbook and copied it out to hand to your therapist - there is no justifying that what she said was okay.

To answer your question, I think (for me at least) it's about constant reminders that this was her and not you. Ecomama was spot on with this one, since I know one of the things that ran through my mind when I saw a terrible therapist was 'well, she's the therapist so she knows best' - nope.

If you do decide to see another therapist, one thing that could help is seeing the first appointment as more of an interview. Is this someone that you'd like to work with? Is this someone you feel like you can trust?

With my current therapist, the first appointment I had was me talking about how I feel really hurt and struggling to trust someone new. So she knew where I was coming from right off the bat, and there was no pressure or expectation for me to open up when I wasn't sure if it was safe.

I hope that this helps a little or gives you some comfort. You are a good person, your feelings are real and they deserve to be heard.

rt

[sunnyl20]

Hi Arin.S,

I am so sorry you had to go through that experience. That is really awful, unprofessional & unhelpful behaviour on the clinician's part & not therapeutic at all. I can definitely understand why you are hesitant to re-engage with the mental health system & why your trust has been damaged. I would strongly encourage you to continue to write down everything if this has been helpful for you in the past. romantic_thi3f makes a great point about approaching the first session with a new therapist - it could be very useful to be honest with them about your previous experience & that you have difficulty being vulnerable & trusting as a result. I really hope that you are able to find someone who you connect with & who listens to you. You deserve help, you deserve to be heard & you deserve to be treated with respect.

Take care Arin.S & feel free to share with us how you go.

[Arin_S]

Thank you so SO much for your extremely kind response! I feel so much better knowing I'm not alone, and its not me. My inner thoughts kept saying "but they're mental health professional, so they must be right about me..." but thank you for helping me understand that not every therapist is going to work in the long term.

I hope you are going well on your journey!

-Arin

[Arin_S]

Thank you everyone that has responded and given me so much helpful advise! I wont be able to respond to everyone, but thank you for helping me pick myself up and continue my journey 🙂

Much love to you all, I am so glad to have found a supportive community here.

-Arin

[ecomama]

Arin.S said:

Thank you so SO much for your extremely kind response! I feel so much better knowing I'm not alone, and its not me. My inner thoughts kept saying "but they're mental health professional, so they must be right about me..." but thank you for helping me understand that not every therapist is going to work in the long term.

I hope you are going well on your journey!

-Arin

Dear Arin

Absolutely my privilege if I / we helped you, if we did then that's AWESOME!
And so are you.

About the only thing wrong with your thoughts was what I put in italics lol!
Switch that around.

MH professionals are not above us. They've just had more training in their specific field.
Overall they're just humans like us and have flaws of their own.
NO ONE'S perfect.

I followed rt's advice of "interviewing" my psych and she went okay.... then she didn't lol.

Oh well, no real biggie.

I think some MH Professionals can help us "x far" and then they run out of strategies in their kit for us. I've found 2 types that split at this fork in the road...
Type 1: will admit they've helped us as much as they can and refer us on... and / or say as much in words like "You're really challenging me but that's good for my own professional development so I'll seek support from colleagues and get back to you on that one" (that's MY awesome Counsellor and I absolutely LOVE her lol)..
Type 2: Won't admit nuttin', they turn it on you and make comments that demean you.... sometimes to the goal of having you think you need THEM. Which you don't. You and everyone needs this like a black hole lol.

Onwards and upwards Arin!

Hope to see you round the forums.

Love EM