Mary S

Me, too. I sometimes describe it as "intrusive thoughts of people behaving intrusively". It all started when someone I worked with behaved weirdly intrusively one day (I don't care to go into details). I started having intrusive thoughts of the incident. I knew a couple of people who had found therapy helpful for some problem they had (not my problem), so I tried therapy in the hope that it could help with those intrusive thoughts. But the therapists' behaviors often seemed really intrusive, which fed the intrusive thoughts. (I later learned that the co-worker who started it all had been having marital therapy, so I think he may have been treating me like his therapist treated him.)

This really says it!

That was really weird of her to say!

The first couple of therapists I tried were psychologists. Neither one seemed very good (understatement), so I tried a psychiatrist, thinking that psychiatrists would have had to have a stronger scientific background than a psychologist. Was i disappointed! She seemed as arbitrary and capricious as the psychologists had been. Some years later, I read a book on psychiatrists (I forget the title) , saying that many of the med students who go into psychiatry are at the bottom of their class, and only chose psychiatry because they weren't accepted into other specializations.

One of my worst therapists once said that I needed to dress more "nicely". That certainly conflicted with the idea that I should be myself, and not conform just for the sake of conforming.

I'd alter this a bit to say, "Therapists aren't creative enough to make a living as novelists, screenwriters, or artists, so instead they try to satisfy their yen to be creative by treating clients as object to "mold". (Quote from my worst therapist: : "What you need is something like a mold that a brick is made in, and when the mold is removed, the brick retains the shape of the mold". (I've probably said this before, but that sounds really pathological to me.)

So much in therapy seemed disconnected from the reality I lived in. It often seemed as if therapists were using me as a point of departure (or an object?) to make up fairy tales about.

This more or less fits my experience with therapy. Someone I worked with had one day come into my office and started talking in a rather aggressive manner that seemed to be sexist (in the sense of denigrating women; not anything sexual) . i was feeling pretty uncomfortable, intimidated, whatever, but trying not to show my emotions because he clearly wasn't a good person to talk about my feelings with. But then he said, "You seem reluctant to show your feelings," which seemed totally inappropriate for the work place to me. I started having nightmares and daymares about the incident. After a few months, I decided to try therapy. But the therapists seemed act very much like the coworker. (I later found out from a woman I worked with that he and his wife had been having marital therapy at the time of the incident. So I guess he was in some sense acting like a therapist.)

Yes, this is a real problem. Good intentions do not guarantee that there is no harm. Therapists need much more training in how actin on their good intentions can lead to harming the client. This is just speculative, but I think that part of the problem may be that many therapists think, "This is how I would like someone to treat me, so I will treat my clients this way." But this type of thinking fails to take individual differences into account. We can't rationally assume that another person is just like us -- we are all different. I have found, in reading, that some therapists do take this into consideration -- they might phrase it as following "The Platinum Rule" ("Do unto others as they would have you do unto them") rather than "The Golden Rule" ("Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.")

I hope you can post the articles - -they would be interesting to read.

That one really bugs me. I went to therapy in large part because I was a woman who valued thinking, which went against social norms (or stereotypes?). To me, the emphasis on feelings that many therapists had was just another incidence of saying that women shouldn't (or couldn't) think. (BTY, it was mostly women therapists, especially ones who considered themselves feminists, who had this view.)

Sorry for botching the last comment -- I inadvertently hit "submit reply" while I was still trying to edit it.

i have some concerns with your Component #1 (Explanation). I also have some concerns with your comment, "A therapist is in a rather unique position. While they can't, in good faith, make any claim to their services being of a "technical" nature, they do talk to so many people that they often begin to notice patterns in the types of things that usually cause a person distress. " The trouble here is that all too often, when people notice "patterns", these patterns are based on their own experiences and their own interests, which are often limited. This often seemed to be my experience with therapy: Therapists would (probably not deliberately) fit what I said into the patterns/categories in their own head. They never gave explanations of why my situation fit into the pattern. Another quote that is problematical for me: "For a fee, you can have the attention of an individual who will remember seemingly trivial things about your life, "interpret" what you say, and (at least to you) appear to take an active interest in your life." My experience with therapy was that the therapists often claimed I had said things I hadn't said (I don't think this was deliberate, but just that in their mind there were connections with what I said that obscured what I had said.) Also, therapist's "interpretations" typically seemed off the wall. This was really frustrating -- I remember one night not being able to sleep, and standing facing a wall, saying to myself, "I don't exist; I'm a figment of everyone's imagination." I realize that that was an exaggeration, but it was an expression of the frustration of saying something, but having the therapist insist I said or meant something else than I said or meant. Another problematical quote: Being treated as an object of interest was, for me, part of the problem. So therapists seemed to be more part of the problem than part of the solution.

Unfortunately, "David Small" is a common name, so it would be helpful if you could give a reference to the David Small you are talking about. I am guessing that it is the one whose obituary is here .

I just came across the website What I Wish Someone Had Told Me About How Therapy Actually Works . Some quotes and my responses: "I’ve had moments in therapy where I came to a huge realization and experienced a catharsis, but I didn’t immediately change my behavior and beliefs to the point where it wasn’t an issue anymore. I had to work on it outside of therapy and revisit the issue in my next session, something Will doesn’t do." [Referring to the film Good Will Hunting] Well, I've never come to a huge realization nor experienced a catharsis in therapy. Therapy mostly seemed to ignore the issues I went to therapy for -- it just seemed to be the therapist trying to follow their own agenda for me; it seemed to interfere with my progress toward my goals rather then help me toward them. “Therapy helps clients uncover strengths and learn new skills that will allow them to deal with the challenges that arise in life,”: My therapy was dismissive of my strengths, and didn't provide anything in the way of learning new skills. In fact, when I tried to practice skills that I was trying to learn, therapists typically criticized me for doing that. "Therapy sessions can be viewed as problem-solving workshops. At each session, a discussion with your therapist will analyze where you stand and the status of the issue that brought you in. " My therapy sessions didn't seem anything like problem-solving workshops. Therapist didn't seem to care about the issues that brought me to therapy -- they just seemed to be following their own agenda that I had not consented to (nor had they asked if I consented). "Overall, during therapy you will be able to unpack and disclose whatever is bothering you and receive constructive feedback to help you improve your mental health." Typically, therapists would follow some agenda of their own, that I hadn't consented to, and that they hadn't even told me about. I don't think I ever received any constructive feedback.

I think there's something to this, but I think they also would deny what you have written.

There are some complaints that are so egregious that they would be decided in favor of the client, despite having a procedure that is directed by a biased professional body. For example, if the therapist came to sessions drunk, or became sexually involved with a client, they would almost certainly be sanctioned by the professional body. And then the professional body can use the fact that such cases are sanctioned to say, "See, we sanction therapists who do unethical things like this", while not acknowledging that there are other (less obvious to the public) unethical things that therapists do, but do not get sanctioned for.

Yes, therapists often react to client criticism defensively. But one reacted in a way that really put her foot in her mouth: I had said to her, exasperatedly, "Everything you say seems so oversimplified!", and she responded, "I'm genuine!". That really sounded ditzy to me.

Thank you very much for mentioning The Samaritans. I had never heard of this group, so looked it up on the web and found this. I noted particularly that one of their goals is "providing solace to those who have lost a loved one to suicide". One of my original hopes for therapy was to get some help in coping with the death by suicide of a friend. But therapy took on a life of its own, that seemed to have nothing to do with what I was there for. The Samaritans' nonjudgmental approach was what I needed, not the therapists' judgmental statements like, "You gave up your power," or "You'll never get better if you keep seeking the perfect therapist. I needed someone I could talk to about very sensitive issues.

Today I came across a couple of articles on "therapist drift", discussing the phenomenon of therapists departing from what their role is supposed to be in "empirically supported" therapies. One of them is available free at https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26752326/ . As expected, I have a mixed opinion. The concept of "therapist drift" makes sense -- it means the ways that therapists depart from the protocols/procedures that are considered necessary to implement an "empirically supported" therapy. The article is quite interesting to read, but it still leaves open the question of the effectiveness of therapies that are called "empirically supported", even when they are done "by the book", and also the questions of ethics surrounding them (e.g., are there unethical practices involved in claiming empirical support for them? and are possible harmful side effects adequately studied and reported?)

Yes, "disturbing" and "violating" also fit my experiences with (and also reading about) therapy. I doubt that I'm the only one who has ever thought of the similarity between "therapist" and "the rapist".

I have been thinking about "disgust" vs "shocking" lately. I think that "pathological" may be better than either -- in particular, when I think of the time my worst therapist said that what I needed was something like a mold that a brick is made in, and when the mold is removed the brick retains the shape of the mold. I can still see this as both shocking and disgusting -- but I seem to be coming to the conclusion that the best word to describe it is "pathological". (I'm finding it interesting as I write this that "shocking" and "disgusting" both refer to my emotional reactions, whereas "pathological", to me at least, refer to the therapist's behavior more than my reaction to it.)

A couple of examples of "disgusting" therapist behavior that came to mind today: 1. Being treated as an object of/character in the therapist's fantasy of what therapy should be. 2. Being criticized or shamed for not going along with the therapist's fantasy.

Recently I started looking at my therapy experiences from a slightly different perspective. For the most part, I've looked at my negative therapy experiences as shocking. But for some reason, recently I started thinking of them (at least sometimes; not deliberately, but instinctively as gut feelings) as disgusting. Then, a couple of days ago, I tried looking up a phrase that I've encountered now and then, namely "processing feelings". Although I don't buy into everything I've read about "processing feelings", it started me thinking about "shocking" vs "disgusting". I began to see what may be an important difference, namely, that "shocking" has connotations of being debilitating, whereas "disgusting" has connotations of expressing that the behaviors in question are wrong and/or harmful. So I'm now making a conscious effort to try to look at harmful therapy behaviors as "disgusting" rather than "shocking," and I think it may be helping me to cope better with my negative therapy experiences. I offer this in case it might be helpful to someone else.

Welcome!