Legitimate cause for complaint number 1.

The therapist contaminates your session with their prejudice.

Unfortunately I didn't record any of our sessions until the great rupture - the infamous Brian Thorne session - so there are no records from the beginning of therapy. The recorded dialogues are mostly but not all, about therapy. 

This post is specifically about my first weeks of sessions, when I'd come to therapy weeks after my husband suddenly left; and I had come to therapy with the hope of being less panicky and more clear headed about my way forward. But what I encountered in those first sessions, was more like a battle.

The therapist took a position on what had happened to me - and demonstrated in how he spoke, and in what he said that I should view my husband as no good. Underneath this, the therapist diagnosed me as holding on to a fantasy out of fear of letting go.

In truth I was holding on despite my very reasonable fears, I was perfectly aware of what my husband was like, and my holding on was in fact my courage. It was important for everyone in my family that we were capable of negotiating something better - for the sake of everyone in the family!

This bit of dialogue is from our later sessions...

 He - But I think it is important to understand from the client, where that comes from - I mean we did some of this work

Me - “And I thought…you do not understand where I am coming from. You were assuming that I can’t let go of my fantasy. But it wasn’t a fantasy, I was fighting for a real person - the person I am married to. I saw my husband’s actions as like a massive tantrum, understandable in the light of what we had been through, and people do things they will regret later. Also it is better to negotiate, so I was holding the door open for that. After twenty-five years of marriage, it isn’t black and white. I was saying that our relationship is at it's worst, is at least 60 - 70% good, we are friends, we get along and so I believed there was something we could reclaim. At the time I thought you (Kit) don’t get where I’m coming from. I give people chances, until I know from them what’s happening, and when I know, then I make a decision. [LINK]

When I sided with the therapist against my husband, I sided with the worst parts of myself. And I deeply regret it. At the start of therapy I had clearly stated that I needed help in salvaging something good from my marriage, but the therapist was clear that this was simply my inability to 'let it go'.  And I remember talking to a friend about this at the start of therapy, telling them about something the therapist had said to me about this, and she had been shocked. She said that he had no right to make judgments about others. And at the time, when he'd said it, I too had been shocked - but instead of trusting myself, I'd thought 'he's a psychotherapist, he knows more than I do'. It felt that he was on my side - paradoxically! And so in this way I sided with the coward, with the kind of person who I would later come to see, interprets heartfelt truth, expressed emotional pain, as harassment. 

Back at the beginning of therapy in June 2020 I needed support, I needed to be stronger. I needed to be the best version of me, I thought that the therapist and I had a person centred agreement, I was wrong. Even at the time I knew that he felt entitled to talk about the 'truth' as he saw it. And, because it was far easier to 'be ill' rather than to 'transmute poison' I sided with the therapist's habitual fear and paranoia.

Going back to the transcript - after my criticism of his technique, the therapist ignored what I'd said and explained..

He - In my mind it goes back to that image of you as a girl, pouring your dad’s drinks down the sink. The original relationships in our lives, the family, the setting, the blueprint for how life is - because it is important. So when you are not giving up on your dad, you are making sure that you are not going to let him pour himself into oblivion. So you are pouring his drink down the sink instead. That’s setting up a pattern.

Me - “Yes, I’m not powerless. I will do what I can, until I know that this is their choice" .

He - Because it raises some very important questions for your future self, because there are going to be times when you can’t help a client. There are times when the paradox is they have come to you for help that they don’t want - and it usually comes out in the first session - they have been sent, or they sent themselves in order to convince somebody else. And the convincing is appearing in front of you. Or, in the choice between the known ways of dealing with emotions such as alcohol, cocaine or promiscuity, or actually having a look at themselves, finding out what’s there. Don’t want to know - cocaine it is then. There will be clients like that and you won't be able to save them <expectant pause>

His fears, not  mine.

I often see clients who have been sent to therapy, and though obviously this isn't what Carl Rogers wanted, or what therapy is for, we live in a shared world. When a client has been sent, the question to ask is: 'What does the person who sent you, hope will change?' and the dialogue is constructed around that. This leads to improving the relationship between the client and the other. It might not cause the changes the other wants, it might get the appearance though! And that can create a bit of a breathing space for both people to start repairing the foundations of the relationship.

Back in June 2020 I was absolutely shattered and exhausted, I can forgive myself for absorbing the therapist's simplistic, black and white version of reality and consequently turning away from trying to be the best version of myself. 

Am I saying that how the rest of 2020 panned out would have been different if I hadn't let myself subtly agree with the therapist? 

It is impossible to know.

For sure, the sessions were contaminated by his stuff; by his beliefs about relationship, by his moral judgments. And what amazes me is, he thought that this was OK! Benefit of his MA I guess. Not the first time I've encountered someone thinking that they must be right simply because of the letters after their names.

As I say, 'operation was a success, but the patient died', tells you all that you need to know.