To think my bereavement counsellor was out of order saying this?

[TryingToGrieve]

‘It sounds like you idolize (your dead baby) and prefer him to (your living toddler). All the time you spent visiting him in the mortuary makes it sound like you were trying to escape being with your older one at home.’

She did preface this with, ‘I hope you don’t mind me saying this but…’. Yet AIBU to think WTAF?

Inappropriate for a third session, definitely.

It's the kind of thing that might be OK in certain contexts when a client is much further along and the therapist knows them much better, and can be carefully judged.

But at the third session, this is really tactless and it has obviously upset you.

I think I'd be looking at finding a different counsellor if I were you, OP, and maybe even put a complaint in. How did you find this counsellor? Are they registered with a body like BACP? If so I'd consider writing to them.

I think by any standards that is a very inse nsitive and hurtful comment and not what I would hope for from a counsellor.. I can't imagine where she thought she was going with that comment and if I were you I would have to ask her. I'm really sorry for your loss x

Good lord, with therapists like this, who needs enemies!? I think she is bang out of order when you have so recently lost your child and it's considered healthy to spend as much time as possible with them to absorb the shock and loss.

I am so sorry op. You must have felt so judged.

I hope this is a reminder to some that you can have as many degrees as you want but it doesn’t make you smart. I think what she said was pretty shitty

@TryingToGrieve I'm really sorry to read your experience. Whilst idolising the dead is a fairly common theme to arise in grief work, session 3 working with a recent bereavement and a sudden/unexpected loss of a child is simply not the right context. Its insensitive and inappropriate.

I would strongly suggest you check your counsellors credentials. Is she BACP (or similar) registered, has she completed bereavement training with a relevant organisation or charity like CRUSE? Is she accessing supervision? If you'd like this relationship to continue it feels very important you share your response and feelings with her. If she is in any way defensive then walk away as she may do you more harm than good, in this instance I would suggest you raise a complaint with her professional body and ask her to reflect on what she has said and your response to it in supervision.

Counsellors are human beings and sometimes we read / interpret situations incorrectly. A good counsellor will do their absolute best to make amends and learn from the situation. A bad one will ignore it or become defensive. You are the client here and grief is profoundly unique. Your feelings are valid.

She's sounds unbelivably dense - and there are some posters here who are being incredibly generous with their faith in counsellors. Let's remember we're not talking about a qualified clinical psychologist here, we're talking about an unregulated and presumably self employed counsellor.

Even if she was trying to get you to examine a valid point she has gone about it very poorly. "I hope you don't mind me saying.." is something my insensitive neighbour Pauline would come out with, not a trained counsellor.

14 weeks is nothing when your grieving. You have no control over the process and there’s a few people on this thread who are going to get a shock when it’s their turn.

I didn’t have counselling when dh died. I can cry at home for free and the time I spent trying to cope and getting on came back to bite me on the bum when I eventually crashed and went through it all over again.

Im so sorry, it hurts so much you can never put it into words and everyone thinks it will be different for them but it won’t.

Not 'councilors' but honestly some of the most offensive shit during my infertility journey and MMC was shit the doctors who specifically work in that field said.

Like how they can be so fucking oblivious when its they job is mind blowing. Like the IVF sonographer who ranted at me that I was selfish to do IVF... then get a different fucking job love if you don't agree with it.

We really should call it out more so they don't get away with it, and 'being only human' isn't an excuse to say offensive shit. Unfortunately they only do it when your vulnerable so you can't fight back.

This is a dreadful thing for her to say. I'd find a different therapist.

I think this is tactless and downright offensive. Surely she could have just gently suggested that when people continue to dwell on their grief, it can end up being avoidance of ongoing daily duties, or something.

Suggesting you "prefer" your deceased child to your living child is just horrific.

Also go for a psychologist - counsellors have barely any qualifications and there are some shocking ones (my friend contracted an incurable STI from a guy who lied to her about having it, and a counsellor said it was her fault for not being married at 30 🙄🙄🙄)

Psychologists tend to be better regulated/better trained IME

You've not long lost your baby so the grieving process has only just begun really and it's all still very raw.

I'd personally find another counsellor and yes it's okay to discuss how you can love and support your toddler and mourn your baby at the same time.

Unfortunately there is those people out there who ignore their living children after a loss and only put themselves first;this happened to my lovely MIL;her older sister was Ill for a long time and my MIL became a glass child;her sister died and was forever idolised and my poor MIL was always unfairly compared to her dead sister who she was also grieving for.

Rather than support the child they still had MIL's parents adopted a baby and poured all their love onto the baby instead;the whole situation was very sad.

I'm very sorry for your loss and wish you and your family the very best for the future.

How absolutely grotesque. OP, even if that was a fair challenge, if you are only on your third session there is no way she knows you well enough or has enough therapeutic rapport to carry if off. And a poorly executed challenge can be very damaging. But tbh sounds like she is rummaging in her big bag of grief cliches as if it’s one-size-fits-all. The quote about a dead baby being easier than a living child makes me feel
physically sick and makes me suspect she is either thick or empathy deficient. In your shoes I’d be looking for a different counsellor.

Agree with this. The counsellor has jumped to the interpretation part of therapy far too fast. It takes a lot of skill to know when to articulate interpretations (if at all). Having said that I think there can be very mixed confusing emotions around bereavement but I would expect a specialised service to be on top of that. Sorry for your loss.

I've sadly lost 2 sons (2018 and 2021). It's an awful thing to experience and I am so so sorry this has happened to you. I've seen several counsellors. The first was unbelievably inappropriate, telling me how she drank all the way through her pregnancy and all was fine. I didn't go back, I was filled with rage. The others have been better. My latest was affiliated with a local child loss charity and she's very good.

With my first child, I went to see him every day in his cold cot, so I can definitely understand you visiting the mortuary frequently. It was the only way I could make memories and I knew I had a limited time. With my second, unfortunately I couldn't visit him (complicated circumstances) and I really struggled with not being able to hold him more.

I would be extremely upset if my counsellor said anything like yours did to you. Mine has spoken to me about how my 2 late sons will remain forever perfect in my mind and that might be difficult when my daughter (born a few months ago) is misbehaving. But she does this gently. We discuss my past experiences but only to help me better understand my reactions and decisions at the time, so I can try to feel more at peace. She never suggests I did anything wrong,she just helps me understand better.

I am so sorry for your loss.

I had a wonderful therapist, the last one I saw. She really helped and was always supportive of me but at the same challenging. She held the space for me to cry and grow. I learned a lot from her.

I had therapy with a lot of other people before I found her, including one straight out of training, who was pretty awful and was removed from the MIND pool of therapists for some kind of safeguarding issue with a client.

In essence, trust your gut. I didn’t trust mine with this woman and she didn’t try to understand me at all. For me, what you’ve explained sounds terribly difficult for you to bear. She doesn’t know you well enough to start challenging you. And she should know the correct time and way to challenge you. That’s literally her job.

If you’ve only seen her 3 times, are you sure she’s as helpful for you as you say?

Fucking hell. Oh my god. As a therapist (not a counselling, a CBT psychotherapist) my mouth is agape. I can't believe a person trained and employed to help someone would say what she's said.

If she had those thoughts about your situation she could have chosen to express and explore them in many other ways. You don't tell a parent visiting their dead baby is 'easier'.

Your yearning to be with your lost baby is absolutely understandable and is no reflection of how you feel about being with your toddler, my god.

She might be great sometimes but... a therapist who said this isn't one I could ever return to, personally.

If you have another session coming, and feel strong enough, bring this up. Tell her your thoughts on what she said, how it made you feel. If she's worth her salt she will listen and try to understand where you are coming from and apologise. If she gets defensive or postures or expresses that she knows best or tries to pin your response on you... you'll know the relationship isn't salvageable.

Totally disagree with psychologists being intrinsically better than counsellors. But…"counsellor" is not yet a protected title in the UK, which can have ramifications.

She’s a counsellor- counselling is supposed to get you to examine your behaviour and the motivation behind it, even if it is painful and difficult.

And there's a principle to this: if you reflect on your response to this suggestion, you may eventually want to reflect on why your response is so angry and outraged.

It can be, that when we react in a really really strong way to a suggestion such as that of your counsellor, it's a signpost to thinking about why your response is so strong. It sounds like your response to this statement is stronger than to other kinds of statements, maybe?

Obviously, there's the unspeakable grief over a lost child. But that's not all there is to it ...

Your response suggests it's not just grief, and that that grief is very complex. Your response might help you to unpick your really complex feelings, about your life as a whole.

Maybe she was trying to lead you towards seeing all parts of your life as a complete whole - your tiny baby now passed away from this world, and your living child, and your choices about how you spend your time, and your relationships with the living.

Grief never ever goes away. But you and your son are alive, and that's also important. Maybe that's the blind spot she was trying to get you to reflect on?

What a dreadful thing for her to say.

Neither counsellor not psychologist is a protected title. Which means anyone can call themselves that.

Counsellors who are registered or accredited with BACP or another reputable professional body have to have a minimum of a counselling diploma, have insurance, have ongoing clinical supervision, ongoing professional development, and have to agree to practice within the organisation's ethical framework. Clinical psychologists are also regulated, have to prove their qualifications etc. It's not the case that (registered) counsellors have barely any qualifications, the training is and should be quite rigorous. But anyone can call themself a counsellor. So check they are qualified and member of a proper professional body.

Yet she kept on about how ‘a dead baby who just lies still in your arms is so much easier than a live toddler who is all over the place.’

What exactly made her insist so much on this? There were only 10 days of possible visits to the mortuary, so it's irrelevant to how you process your grief now. Since the burial, do you spend a lot of time at the cemetery? Do you isolate yourself in other ways, so as to grieve alone, so much so that the therapist thinks it's detrimental to your toddler? Does the therapist fear that you could be showing some signs of pathological grief? Because these are the only valid reasons for her to express such warnings.

Otherwise, what she said it's not scandalous or absurd, it's something perfectly normal for any parent, child, spouse, sibling who lose a loved one. Grief consumes an awful lot of mental and physical resources, it's one of the most exhausting things in life, so a bereaved person has an instinctive tendency to seek some peace and rest, to be alone, to avoid the normal responsibilities of life and the company of other people (especially the most demanding ones or who depend on the bereaved one). A bereaved person who does this is not selfish, but extremely exhausted. And most of the time they doesn't even realise this tendency. If they realise it, they become ashamed and begin to blame themselves, which makes grieving even more difficult and prolonged. It's the role of a therapist to clarify that this tendency is natural and should not be judged as laziness, selfisness, lack of love for the family, social irresponsibility or a sign that the bereavement process has taken a wrong turn.

Oof. That stings. I think you'd far rather have a crying baby and a lively toddler, that goes without saying!
You were being led by your raw grief and doing what you instinctively needed to do. Noone should be questioning that or suggesting you were neglecting your toddler. I'm glad you were able to have that time with your baby, being from a time when babies born sleeping didn't get the respectful treatment they do now.
I would be checking out whether the counsellor is one recommended by baby bereavement charities or the hospital, as you need the right sort of one, if you've not done so already. It does sound as though you might need to look for a different one.

I also lost a baby son. I had no chance to hold him or to be with him. This is so incredibly hurtful and cruel, a dead child easier to hold in your arms, omg, unbelievable. I'm so sorry you lost your baby, and also all those others on this thread. I had other children, and love them all to bits, but will never forget the little one who couldn't stay. Hugs.

14 weeks after the death of a child? Give over with the psychodynamics, this is a newly bereaved mother in the first shock of grief and loss it's not a sign her grief is complex, or that her response pushed some kind of button. The therapist was wrong to say this.