Posted by crushedout on March 7, 2004, at 14:30:40
In reply to Re: Another question re anger toward therapists, posted by Rigby on March 7, 2004, at 10:28:18
yes, gaslighting. i think that's exactly what i'm talking about. i just reread the gaslighting chapter in "in session". that was really helpful. thank you.
> Oh. I totally get this. And it is crazy making. It's called gaslighting I think? The therapist does something to legitimately tick you off and they chalk it up to your issues (in your case anger.)
>
> This absolutely happened with me and my therapist's boundary crossings and, frankly, I just needed to let it go because she wasn't gonna back down. And, when I thought back on it, she *did* apologize--a few times. But I couldn't move on. I just kept feeling that she wasn't owning her stuff. In retrospect--and this is a year-long retrospect--I gained a *huuuuuge* insight from this that has springboarded me to another level. But it was very, very, very painful and frustrating and literally took a year to get to. I actually even, after this major shift for me, was angry at how *long* and painful it was to get here. Yeah, it was about her not owning her stuff but that was only the surface of the insight--it was echoing back really far and the dynamic was permeating lots of areas of my life.
>
> So my guess is, if you can stick this out with her--her not owning her stuff, crossing boundaries, working through your confusion and anger around these things and with her, you could be rewarded with some really excellent gains.
>
> I *only* say this now--I would *not* have said it in the middle of things where I was mad at my therapist possibly in a similar vein as you are with yours. And yes, I was mad at her for what she did *and* mad at her for not doing more of it. I had friends telling me to quit. But ultimately my gut told me to see it through. I tried to quit actually but it was way too conflicting and went against my instincts way too much.
>
> I do think she's crossed boundaries. And you seemed upset about it. So I and I think others said she's being bizarro and unprofessional. *But* sometimes therapists screw up and go overboard to try and help and they're only human and sometimes that's what you need.
>
> Where there's smoke there's fire. If you're feeling *alot* in therapy (anger, frustration, eroticism) there's a lot to be gained and it sounds to me like you're in the eye of the storm. A hard place to be but a place where, if you can work through it (brace yourself though, it could be a while) you will really reap benefits. I don't think there's any magic pill to get through it easier or faster.
>
> > Okay, so I was thinking a lot about this lying in bed last night, and here's one of the problems I have about expressing anger toward my therapist. It seems to me she has a conflict of interest. Usually, when I tell her about something someone did (for example, my father) that I either feel angry about or *should* feel angry about, she says something about how outrageous what he did was, or how it makes her angry, or something to that effect to validate me. You know what I mean? Sometimes she's even needed to be angry *for* me because I don't feel it (I know this contradicts what I said earlier in the thread about being in touch with my anger -- perhaps I was wrong about that at least partly).
> >
> > Anyway, so if I tell her -- if we tell our therapists we're angry at them for something they actually did that was f'ed up -- not just anger because they can't meet all our needs or some other type of irrational anger which seems easier for them to validate -- how can they validate us without admitting to themselves that they've been jerks? What I mean is, unlike when you're discussing anger at another person for something they did *to* you, when you're discussing your anger at your T for something your T did that was "wrong," the T has a conflict between validating your anger toward her (by saying "what a bad T!!!") and protecting her own ego.
> >
> > Am I making any sense?
>
>
poster:crushedout
thread:321200
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20040303/msgs/321662.html