My brain is overwhelmed with this

[sanmagic7]

you're more than welcome, meursault.  you sound much stronger now, and i know everything will be fine.  and, i'm so happy for you that you'll have your 'awesome' t back.  yay!  keep taking care of you.  you're worth it.

[meursault]

I think I should shut up on this subject after this... sorry for the length of this, but I suppose I'll share the "exciting conclusion" of my therapy...

So.  During the last session, my therapist mentioned several times about how I presented differently in my email than in person.  I wasn't sure what she meant.  I kind of wanted to understand that "presented" stuff before seeing her a final time.  She has mentioned since the email thing arose that she intended it for short messages, rescheduling etc.  so I assumed a quick question asking for clarification was reasonable, so I sent this:
"It's been bugging me since I left, since I didn't really understand.  You said I present quite differently in my emails compared to in person.  I don't need the whole thing explained, but I was wondering if you could quickly let me know how it's different?  I'm not really sure, since I think I feel like I'm the same."

She sent a long (a page-ish) response describing what she meant, which also had conjectures about my motivation with regard to this stuff that was way off.  She went into a lot of detail about my personal stuff vis-a-vis women, my Mom etc.  She then "PS"ed it letting me know that this was exactly the kind of unacceptable emailing she was talking about, and we would discuss it further on Friday.  Completely discounting my request, while mentioning how she wants to validate my feelings in her message.  She also mentions respecting her boundaries.  She's the one that changed the boundaries again, AFAIC.

I sent:
"Ok.  I don't understand anything.  I thought it was just a quick question to clarify something.  This is just too unpredictable and causing me too much hurt and panic.  I have no idea where boundaries are with you or what the rules are.   I think I'm just going to stop seeing you.  Could I come in Wednesday around noon and pick up my photos and pay you for that half hour?"

(I had brought in some pictures of me as a boy (and a couple of me and my one good ex-girlfriend), which I mentioned I wouldn't have been back last time if she hadn't had them, and she joked that she's holding them hostage.  She also accidentally underbilled me.)  I was feeling kind of relieved by ending it.

She sent:
"I can see you at noon on Wednesday but I would like us to have some time to talk as I feel that the work we have done and can continue to do together is worth a conversation and I wouldn't want to throw away the opportunity.  I think we can make it through this difficult time and I think you deserve it.  Having said that, I want to honour your wishes as well.  I would like you to think about what each part of you wishes (maybe looking at the drawing you created that identified the versions of [Meursault] who have been hurt along the way) and perhaps we can talk about it on Wednesday. I just have a hard time understanding that this is truly what you want."

Again, completely discounting me.  She is incredulous that I mean it when I say I don't want to come back, and muddles and confuses me by questioning my wishes by suggesting parts of me want to come back.  Sort of: "yeahyeahyeah, you don't REALLY mean it."  *She's not hearing me, still!

At this point I'm flustered and agree to just come back on Friday.  I become more agitated and panicky, and I'm worrying and catastrophizing about other things.

She then sends:
"Okay that sounds good.  I will see you Friday at 12.  Please consider looking at the feelings and wishes of those parts in the drawing though.  I think its important that they feel heard and validated.  See you in a few days"

By this point, I am officially in a "tizzy".  Everything is incoherent and nothing makes sense.  I don't understand anything.  Isn't SHE the one doing therapy via email here?  The drawing she refers to was a comic style picture I drew with a bunch of Me's of different ages introducing themselves and telling her how they feel scared and want to be able to trust her etc. but don't know yet.  I am currently not being heard or validated, and she says "I think its important that they feel heard and validated"  This is crazy-making.  Gaslighting?  Double-think?

I send:
"I can't come back.  You are communicating so many conflicting things just in this email exchange alone, I can't handle this.  Goodbye."

Quite a while later, she tries calling and leaves a message to call her.  Then when I didn't respond, she emails me saying if she doesn't hear from me she will contact my emergency person (unfortunately I put my Mom, the monster herself), and the cops unless I get a hold of her and assure her I'm not suicidal.  She says she doesn't want me to feel trapped.  I respond I am trapped.  I tell her if I am suicidal, I can call the crisis line.  She says "It sounds like you are fine and have have a plan if it changes. Thanks for letting me know."  More crazy-making.  She thanks me after threatening to call the cops and my Mom if I don't!  Like this was some normal conversation where I had a choice!

I guess I was stupid for asking for clarification.  I thought it was a simple thing, and could only help me understand if there was some way out of this to fix things, or help me end things better.  I was expecting something like: "You appear more confident in your emails" or "You seem more vulnerable and open in them".  Turns out she thinks I come across as more self-deprecating, insecure, and younger.  She also said she saw a lot of anger in the email which I posted to start this thread.  There was some, for sure, but I wasn't particularly angry.  More earnest.

Either that, or she would let me know where the boundary was.  Not cross it herself, and then chastise me for it.  I kind of got blamed for her actions!

Anyhow, it's probably all my own fault.  I should have predicted that would happen.  Did I self-sabotage there?  Was that something I should have seen coming, but just blindly ignored?  I know there are problems with emailing, but last session she said she had been thinking "something short, like if you have to reschedule."  Should I have taken that to mean ONLY if I have to reschedule?  I guess so.  Then I think how she has texted me names of books etc to read a few times seeing her.  Her boundaries are baffling, changeable, sporadically enforced, different for her than me, and I don't understand at all.  My mind is a maelstrom, and shattered into pieces right now.

Meursault

[Dutch Uncle]

This is crazy making, meursault.
IMHO you are not self-sabotaging at all, and you did get the clarification you were asking for. Unfortunately the clarity is a different one you hoped for.

(I had brought in some pictures of me as a boy (and a couple of me and my one good ex-girlfriend), which I mentioned I wouldn't have been back last time if she hadn't had them, and she joked that she's holding them hostage.  She also accidentally underbilled me.)  I was feeling kind of relieved by ending it.

Both are red flags.
The hostage joke is outright rude. These are personal items of you, one doesn't 'joke around' with those. She's messing with your mind, instead of easing your mind.

The rest of what you've written sounds equally bad.
You are doing the right thing by ending this.

[meursault]

Well, I think I can say that she did more damage than anything by seeing her.  I'm worse now than when I started.  I wish I could understand this better, but I think I'm just going to have to keep seeing it as something is so wrong with me, I invite this treatment.  Looking back, I was actually communicating my needs with all this stuff throughout, but wasn't being heard.  Then the dismissiveness.  And the unpredictability and having to worry about her perspective, when I shouldn't have had that concern at all.  Then all the conflicting messages.  The things that were hurtfully done, while the words were saying the opposite.  I still don't understand this.  Then: "do what I say or I'll call the cops" sort of thing.  A few years ago, I stood up for myself with a woman and told her to get out of my life.  She tried to force her way into my apartment to talk about it, but I shouldered the door shut.  She called the cops and told them I had guns in my place and was suicidal.  They sent a whole tactical unit and arrested me (later released).  They didn't find any guns, but I got evicted over it.

I spent the whole time seeing the t deciding I might be wrong and I wasn't just garbage, so I kept trusting and talking to her, figuring my fears and distrust were just my trauma talking.  Now I don't think I can trust a therapist again.  What a waste of my time/money and all that emotional work, just to have her reinforce how worthless I am.  I clearly don't have the ability to read whether someone is safe.  I showed her who I am and she thought it was all right to treat that person like crap.

In short:  dismissed, invalidated, unheard, arbitrary boundaries, conflicting messages, vulnerable, misunderstood, hurt, constantly having to defend and assert my need to be heard.  Some echoes of childhood in all this.  Just more devaluation from a woman.  I'm really going to need a therapist to deal with this, I hope that good one takes me back!  I feel like I'm going to have to start all over with her to see if I can trust her again as well!

Life:
Meursault

[radical]

It's not you.

There are a whole lot of wounded people who have no insight and offload their issues onto others, (along with downright dangerous people) out there.  We can learn to recognise them and to protect ourselves from them.

I'm so sorry you've been so harmed by in your FOO where you should have been safe, and that part of that harm was not learning to know automatically, without even thinking, that you are important, and you and your feelings matter and to automatically enforce bondaries when you aren't treated with the respect you deserve.  That's on them, not you.

It's a big part of cPTSD for so many of us.  It often means we get badly hurt many times, but it doesn't make other people's bad behaviour our fault, it just means we need to help each other to learn what we should have learned in loving, healthy families.

You have done so well with this.  It's been really tough, I know, but I've been in awe of how well you've done.  I've been harmed in the past by toxic therapy and I know how hard it is.
Hang in there.

[sanmagic7]

hey, meursault,

i was sucked in by an extremely bad therapist myself, was not only re-traumatized, but ended up far worse mentally and emotionally for the experience.  it took me 8 yrs. to be able to report her to the state board.  i ended up on meds for depression and anxiety, and my entire family was traumatized.  in one sense, i'm grateful to her because she taught me how NOT to be a therapist.

this wasn't you, it's not self-sabotage, it's non-therapy from a bad therapist.  you have been able to recognize what's been going on, you showed your strength and determination in this matter through your posts, and you are taking care of yourself by getting out from under her clutches.  she deserves to be reported.  she induces trauma rather than helping to alleviate it (as is her job), she denies and undermines your attempts to set boundaries or speak to your reality, and she is purposefully confusing you so as to get you to return, as if there is a way to 'fix' the situation by re-looking at yourself through her eyes.

remember i talked about an imbalance of power in the therapeutic relationship?  while this was happening to me with my awful t, i was taking a therapeutic ethics course in grad school and asked the prof about fault and blame, especially regarding the client. he emphatically told the class that the client is NEVER to blame for what goes wrong in therapy.  the t is the one who runs the entire show, and is culpable for anything that goes amiss.  that helped me a lot to hear that.  i hope it helps you, too.

how important are those pictures to you?  are they worth being in her presence again while she spews her vile venom?  saying she was 'holding them hostage', to my mind, is a threat.  you can add that to the list of her wrongdoing.   if it were me, i'd send her an email telling her to send those pictures to you or you're going to report her to whatever governing/licensing body for therapists there is in your area.   and, if you're up to it, now or in the future, you can report her anyway, even if she sends the photos back to you.  she doesn't deserve to be in a 'helping' profession.  she's violated the number one rule:  first do no harm.

pardon my anger, but this stuff really gets my goat.  people like her give my profession a bad name, which makes it more difficult for those who need help to trust that someone truly does have their best interests at heart.  i'm am so awfully sorry this has happened to you.  and i hate it that she did this to you.  you didn't deserve it, didn't ask for it, and in no way did you provoke it.  it's all on her.  i'm so glad you're getting out.  please do so as painlessly as possible.  i'm just fearful that if you have to see her again, she will heap more muck onto you.  you owe her nothing to get those pictures back. 

[meursault]

Hmm.  a couple of months ago, I remember her saying something like:  "I used to feel bad when clients would stop, wondering what I could have done differently.  I now know some people just aren't ready for therapy."  I remember thinking at the time: "Then you have made yourself immune from wrongdoing or criticism, and can't improve your own response."

I don't know how she'll view all this.  I think I was pretty clear throughout.  Sometimes I took a while to feel brave enough to mention something, but still...  I'm completely scrambled and fractured mentally by all the mixed messages and confusion and reality-denying of this.  I let her see so much of me, and she thinks it's all right to treat me like I'm nothing.

I don't think she's a bad person at all, and doesn't have any malice.  But the quote from Gurdjieff in my sig sums things up, I think.

I emailed this morning (10:30) saying I'll come in tomorrow at 1130 to get my pictures and pay for the underbilling.  At 230, she emailed back saying she now has that slot filled (which wasn't filled as of last night since she offered it), and I can come at my regular time, Friday.  I said I am coming at 1230 between her sessions tomorrow then.  Even what she's doing here feels like an abuse of power to let me know I have no say or control with this stuff, she does.  But, since she offered 1130-1230 last night, and now has that filled, and since she mentioned she has a client at 100 tomorrow, she should have no reason for me to not be able to come and take the five minutes dealing with this.  She hasn't emailed back, but I'm half expecting her to try to stomp on me and tell me that won't work.

This whole thing just feels so ugly.  She has just gotten worse and worse once I challenged her.  It's like she's being vindictive for me pointing out how she messed up.  Maybe it was always this way, and I'm just noticing it now that I've worked up the strength to challenge her.

All this is at the worst time.  I don't want to get into it, but I have to go through * on earth this winter.  It's been hanging over my head for six years, and I've always planned on dying before it happened.  Now I'm three months away from something I've had dozens of people, some really tough ones, say they would just kill themselves if they had to face.  Something I tell people and they just get a stunned shocked look on their faces.

Anyhow, about tomorrow.  I have to go back!  She has my boys, and I need to rescue them!!!

Meursault

[radical]

Is there a receptionist you could pay and receive the photos from?

This woman is in full-out self-defense mode, which could make her escalate her abusive behaviour.  It would be better to not to have any direct contact with her, imo.  This is still a situation where she has more power, and you are in a very vulnerable place. Is there someone else who could act as your agent in approaching her, if she is unwilling to post the photos to you?

I recommend giving her any ammunition, and keeping yourself safe while you are feeling in flashback mode.  For the meantime, it seems to me there are only two things that matter right now - getting away from an escalating abusive situation, retrieving your property and paying the bill.  From this perspective what could help?

[meursault]

It's just a private room rented in an old building with a chair in the hall.  I think I should be all right.  I only plan to be there for five minutes.  It will be hard, but I think avoidance causes me more anxiety in the long run, so I'm better off taking the hit, even if she is hurtful.  I may record it on my phone to check later for more detail, since I might be somewhat dissociative.

Thanks everyone for listening and commenting.  This stuff is really hard, as many of us know, especially when we are so desperate and hoping it helps, and have been so vulnerable and undefended with the therapist.  They have a lot of ammunition to hurt us with!  Damned.  I spent MONTHS really hoping with her.  It's really a lot like a break up...

Meursault

[sanmagic7]

it's very much like a breakup.  you've invested time, energy, and money into this relationship.  i admire your strength, meursault, and sense of purpose.  go get 'em!

[meursault]

Sorry everyone for all the postings...

I'm bawling like crazy right now.  Life is SO hard.  So t emails back saying she will be too rushed and will leave my pictures under a stack of magazines and void the underbilling.

I went into that SO HOPEFUL.  She seemed like such a caring and nice person.  I really tried hard the whole time.  Now I'm more broken than ever!

In one of my last emails I said: "I look at the positive quotes [from clients] on your website and am left wondering: why didn't I deserve to be treated like that?"

I just don't understand why it's always fine for people to treat me like I don't matter, and then I'm just defective and damaged when I have a problem with it!

In her goodbye email, she gave a list of clinical forensic psychologists, knowing I really have only had success with therapists (MMFT).  She knows that I get nowhere with a model that looks at me like this is pathological, rather than what it is, adaptive and natural.  It just sends the implicit message that I'm too effed up and need some industrial strength psychologist, none of whom deal with attachment issues well, and are almost entirely skills based in their approach.  What helps me is someone I can connect to and feel cares.  I don't even know if she intended it, but I feel like she just told me: YOu are too broken for a normal person to help.

And the forensic psychologist angle....  I wasn't going to mention it here, but I killed my Dad in a car accident a few years ago.  I was pinned under his corpse for about an hour underwater, straining to take breaths before they got me out.  I have a criminal charge over it, and I have the trial this winter.  I'm so nonviolent and full of anxiety and have social phobia and have such a horrible self-image to begin with, I'm just going to be victimized if I go to jail.  And I'm going to have to relive all that night in court.  And all the developmental trauma, and all the trauma from that, and so many other things in my life, and being so alone and unlovable to women etc.  And growing up, even my Dad took it out on me, and told me my Mom took it out on him, so he took it out on me, and that'swhat I was there for.  But stil, he was he only one relaly n my side growing up.  At least there was someone in thenuthouse I grew up in who tought my Mom and sisters were dmented  so I wasn't completely alone and there was someone who could make me feel tha IT'S NOT ALL MEthat makes all this stuff happen.  And now he's gone because of me, when I was just trying to get him home safe that night.

Everything is just so overwhelming.  I really waanted T to help and to care and MATTER t someone.  I'm totally going to miss her, even though this stuff happened.  I was so hopeful and optimistic that maybe SOMEONE would care about me finally.  *, it just felt good to be able to go in and have a nice, attractive woman listen to me and not attack me.  But then I suppose it became an attack in a way anways...

Anyhow, I'm bawling like a madman.  I've jst been trying so hard for so long and Im so alone!

Meursault

[Dutch Uncle]

 

You DO matter, dear meursault.

Pick up the pictures and then it's over with her. Don't mail her anymore. Don't read any of her mails anymore.
Your idea of recording your visit on your phone is great.
I really hope that visit will be your last dealings with her, and do I understand she might not even be there? So much the better.

I can relate to the lost hope you now feel. That IS hard. Indeed it's quite like a breakup...
If you can, try to not beat yourself up over this. It's not you, at all.

[radical]

God, I'm so sorry about your Dad and everything you've been through.  I can only imagine how frightened you must feel about the upcoming trial.  It is appalling that any therapist would treat a client in your position the way you've been treated.  I wish there was something I could do to help.

You've come through all of this with all of your humanity and sensitivity intact.  Please try and imagine what an achievement that is.  Your therapist is just another dumb schmuck with no excuse, and probably without the integrity  to ever understand anything beyond the end of her nose.  You accidentally became a threat to her overblown opinion of herself, ironically because you are learning and growing.  A healthy therapist would do cartwheels with joy that you were able to recognise disrespect and respond appropriately.  Instead, she lashed-out.  You outgrew her.

You are not too broken, she was too inept, immature and egotistical.  There will be someone else who has the wisdom and integrity to really be with you, and guide you while you heal.

You are not crazy and you are not crying alone

[Three Roses]

I wish I could physically look you in the eyes and tell you, "You matter to me." And you could see in my eyes, on my face, that I meant it. It's horrible, the things you've been through, and yes you're in pain now - but I firmly believe it's not permanent.

You are meant to be here, not just on the forum but in the world. You are worthy of love and respect and esteem.  We are not our mistakes. We are just humans - imperfect, fallible, and trying to find our way.

[meursault]

U'm still all crying.  I called a crisis line and talked.  Thanks for what evryone is saying here.  God, I wish my life could just get better.  How awesome it would be if I had a wifew and kids and all that. 

It's weird.  When someone says something negative about T I want to defend her and I feel bad for her.  I want to say:  She's actually really nice and caring and just messed up with me!  It's like it's my fault that someone would think negatively about her and that makes me bad, because I'm just a piece of s*t male and she's great.  How dumb.  I don't understand how this is working in my brain.  Everything confuses me right now.  I actually feel like I've gone kind of crazy.  I know she didn't treat me very respectfully, but it's my fault basically I guess, so she can't be blamed.  She was actually trying to help someone as hideous and broken as me.  She was so good for putting up with me as long as she did...IT'S ALL MY FAULT!  Then I also think: she screwed up and didn't have the professionalism to handle it.  She should have treated me better.  I'm just confused and the complexity of what's happening to me right now is really causing a lot of panic and incoherence in my brain.  I feel tons of guilt when someone says she sucks though.  I don't get it.

I really think I need to be in a hospital now, but they don't really help.  You mostly just get warehoused.  The only thing they really offer is meds, and that's not what I need.  I'm definitely having a bad night.  Also a bad half century, but who's counting!

That'sit!  I putting my foot down.  Some ofg the little boys in me really need their sleep!

Meursault