Confused about situation with my therapist

[TerracottaWorrier]

It's long, but it's got paragraphs 😉

I have online therapy twice a week for trauma. Being abused and neglected as a child. Domestic violence. Cheerful stuff. I've been talking to my therapist since the summer and it's been really good for me. I've begun to trust him more and more and show more of myself to him without feeling scared.

This year has seen a lot of upheaval for me but I'm days away from moving to the other side of the world for work. I've spent most of my adult life doing this but this is the first one I'll do alone, since I'm now divorced. My therapist knows this, of course.

We usually have our sessions on Monday and Friday. Last Thursday evening he messaged me and asked if we could move our Friday session to Saturday. I suggested we just wait until Monday instead (because honestly I feel a bit gross about being so needy that my poor therapist would work weekends).

Previously when we rescheduled (generally moving our session a couple of hours backwards or forwards) he would refund the booked session and set it back up as a new one, which I expected to happen this time, as usual. But Friday came and the session wasn't cancelled or refunded and I was still getting reminders through the app that it was scheduled. I ignored this but it felt a bit odd.

All through Saturday I expected a message giving me a time for Monday (today) but I didn't receive one, and all through yesterday I felt very anxious anticipating it since it was so late. At 7 pm yesterday I contacted him on WhatsApp asking what time our session was and although he read the message, he didn't reply.

Finally, at midnight last night I messaged him again and said I assumed Monday's session wasn't going ahead and asked that he refund me for Friday's session which he had cancelled. He replied immediately and apologised and said he was just about to set up his bookings for the week. It's worth bearing in mind that we're on different parts of the planet so it was earlier in the day for him than it was for me.

But by this point I was actually furious. And distressed. I have a lot of little and probably somewhat inconsequential things I need to do before I leave, like get new nails and my eyebrows sorted. These kinds of things need booking and I wasn't able to get them done Friday because he cancelled too late for me to know I'd have the day free, and I wasn't able to book anything for today because I didn't know what time our session was going to be or if it was even going ahead.

My therapist seemed quite surprised that I was as upset as I was, and originally I didn't want to continue with him as my therapist because I felt really very hurt that he was being so casual with my time and also leaving me on read on WhatsApp when I tried to clarify. In the process of our WhatsApp discussion last night, he sent me a message which had been written by chatgpt and which had evidently been done in this manner because he accidentally pasted chatgpt's intro when he sent it to me. I was pissy and told him maybe me and chatgpt could just figure it out between us. He's not a native English speaker although he is fluent in English, but he said he was using chatgpt to guarantee his grammar.

Eventually I agreed to have today's session as normal.

We spoke about all this a bit in our session today, but I feel in some ways worse for doing so. I've had a lot of relationships with men who lie to me or gaslight me, who neglect my needs, who minimise their actions or their effect on me, and my therapist has been the person who has helped me see this pattern. I tend to stay in relationships with these men because I'm scared of being alone or think I'm being too hasty in cutting them off. But I feel like I'm now in a similar dynamic with my therapist. I do think his actions were unreasonable and unprofessional.

I felt anguish when he told me the reason he'd acted this way was because his elderly mother had had a fall, but I also felt quite sick because I feel like I don't want to carry any of his emotional burden. Previously, I have worked through quite extreme anxiety before telling him about sexual abuse I experienced as a child and most of my anxiety about telling him was not wanting to burden another human with the knowledge. I managed to do that by somewhat dehumanising him, I suppose. I was hoping at some point to talk through with him that one time I got anally raped in 2023, but I need him to not have feelings in order for me to do this. Now I feel like he has feelings and they are something I'm meant to be able to give space to. And I just cannot. I don't want to. I do not burden my students with my private life ever ever ever, because I want to be a safe space for them. I feel like he's not a safe space for me now he's a guy whose mum falls over and who uses chatgpt to reply to me and who leaves me on read and who stole my final two free days in the UK by not being reliable.

But I'm scared of moving into this new stage of my life without his support. But I feel deeply uncomfortable with how similar this feels to every other time I've been let down by a man and accepted it because I was scared of being without them or because I felt bad for them.

Of all the weeks that my therapist could have done this, this is probably the hardest for it to happen in. I feel like I've compromised my values in order to ensure his ongoing support of me. I thought by paying all this money to someone neutral I wouldn't end up feeling hurt or exploited, but I do. Am I being too sensitive?

For extra context, he is a very experienced and very very qualified therapist. I'm lucky to have such a fancy therapist. He is usually lovely and totally supports me in being me, and I have felt much stronger and more sure of myself since we started working together. But fuck. He feels like just another guy who got my trust and then shit on me at the moment.

Can I have some perspective, please?

I think this will make you stronger.

In the past you'd have crumbled when a therapist let you down. You felt let down this time. Yet no crumbling. You're even thinking of dumping him you're so strong! You've come a long way.

I'd keep him. Try another couple of sessions. See how you feel. You can always dump him later if needs be.

He shared private info so you understood it wasn't personal that he (like many of us) would put a mum falling first. That was kind of him. He didn't have to.

See how you feel. If you can't move past it dump and move on.

If my mum fell I'd drop everything and run to her. And pick up the pierces later. It's normal for many people.

I feel so vulnerable having therapy. I want to be a good patient and work hard to get better and recognise how I'm fucking up my own life. And I know this relies on me reflecting on the dynamics I find myself in. But I feel really scared that I need to trust him when trusting people has been my downfall.

Thats the very work of therapy, learning to trust someone to have your best interests at heart even when the relationship hits a bump in the road. When trusting people has meant they’ve hurt and abused you it can be very difficult to know what a safe relationship looks like. To trust when someone is vulnerable with you (as he was in telling you his mum fell), because abusers use their vulnerability to draw you in and abuse you more.

It’s good you were able to go back to him, and to explore the feelings you had. Yes it makes you feel very exposed, but you need to feel that and then observe how the therapist responds and learn what a healthy response looks like. You can then use that as a measure of what a safe relationship looks like outside of therapy.

Thats the part of healing from trauma that things like CBT and EMDR can’t do, having a hear and now safe relationship to learn how that feels (not just what safe boundaries are but how it feels to set a boundary and have that respected, to know how to safely deal with conflict and what that feels like). You can always change therapist when you move, but it sounds like you’re working hard with him.

Hmmm, see the thing is, you're reacting like a spurned lover and conflating him with all these other men who have hurt you. He's your therapist, it's a totally different situation and you sound like you are coming to overly rely on him. This is his job. He had to look after his elderly mother, it was an emergency.

Wanting to 'dehumanise' him does actually sound awful to be honest. But it's at odds with you worrying about him working too much, etc.

It sounds to me like you could do with a different therapist. This all sounds like you are confused about the situation and that won't be helpful to you.

I agree with this. Who wouldn't run to their mum?

My therapist has shared things with me like this to reassure me that he is not rejecting me. Just an emergency has come up.

Repairing relationship ruptures does make you stronger. I'm more secure in this relationship than I've ever been in my life. He's going nowhere, no matter what I say. 'We' are the default. But good god, one thing this relationship has never been short of is conflict! I've 'quit' like 3 times and every time he just sends me the zoom invite anyway. 😂

You will have conflict too. All good therapy has ruptures and repairs. That's what it's teaching you I guess. To work out your differences in a healthy way.

It's good that you got so upset about this, in a way. If you weren't forming an attachment, you wouldn't have cared. That attachment is what will get you through the hard painful, vulnerable parts.

You're going to be fine, it's all part of the process.

Also, do not be surprised if you fall in love with him, just go with it, use it, its fine, it's normal. A year down the line you'll know him so much better, realise you'd kill him after like a week and those romantic feels will make like Cillit Bang.

He is veggie, I couldn't live without pigs in blankets, I'm not capable of loving anyone that much

Rupture and repair is where progress happens.

Oh OP, this all sounds very tough. Something has changed in the way you know therapy and that’s understandably going to impact how you feel about it. It’s great that you’ve told him and you’ve identified how similar this feels to previous relationships. What will shape the therapy now is what happens next and how this is handled. I really understand that by imagining your therapist as completely robust and able to manage his owns responses, you can share your trauma and feel safe enough to do so. However, it’s not necessarily a bad thing that you have seen his humanity. There’s a lovely quote “we are hurt in relationship and we can heal in relationship”. Therapy is essentially experiencing relationship, rupturing in relationship and knowing repair is possible. I hope you find a way to move forward with your therapist as there could be something very significant in what this has brought up for you. Best of luck my luv x

He clearly had an emergency with his mum and that’s ok, he’s human and of course family have to come first. I think you should consider how he has been over the last 6 months rather than the last 3 days. He has a great track record. The last 6 months have been a great support to you, while the last three days have been a challenge. Please don’t put him in the same group as the gaslighting blokes, there’s a massive difference between someone having a brief genuine emergency and someone taking the piss.

I think you should push through and work out what you can learn through the process.

Respectfully, this feels like all of your ‘stuff’ influencing your experience here. Your therapist is human too and he got some things wrong here. But you appear to be holding his humanness against him, which is unfair. You said you were distressed, and that he was surprised at your reaction, and in trying to explain what happened by sharing his mother had fallen, I presume to help explain his reasons for cancelling and failing to quickly reschedule your session, you’ve been left feeling like he’s unloaded onto you.

You absolutely can end your sessions if the rupture is too severe; but consider if working through the difficulties that happen in an imperfect relationship can have benefits for you.

He did share about her mother falling, not to share his problems or his emotional baggage with you, or to worry you or to give you any problems, it was just quite basic and objective information so you knew that he could not keep the appointment due to a family emergency. It is a therapist,a professional relationship and not a personal relationship, friend or boyfriend. Him having a family emergency, a fall from his mother, is just pretty basic objective information without sharing any emotions there, so you knew why he could not keep the appointment . He didn't share any worries he had about his situation either or any emotions regarding the situation. Therapists are just doing a job. They care professionally but not in a deep emotional level as much as it appear they do. You should not expect an emotional connection from a therapist and neither for them to put your needs before their own family on an emergency . It is a job for them, that's all. As much as they care, and they can demonstrate that, it is professionally they care. Not any other way. It isn't even a friend, just a therapist. They don't carry your emotional baggage back home just because you share it with them , because if they did that for every client, they would go crazy with carrying everybody's problems . They just tend to emotionally detach after they do their job every day , their real emotions are for their love ones, not for their clients. That's how it is. If you are expecting him to feel emotions to worth your problems, instead of just supporting you in helping you with finding your own solutions , maybe you are with the wrong therapist because he can't give you or feel those emotions about your baggage , he isn't your friend. And the baggage is yours not his to also feel it. He is just there to help you to learn how to help yourself get rid of your baggage.

Thank you, everyone. I will keep working with him after your feedback. This has actually reminded me that I bailed out of psychotherapy in a similarly dramatic way when I was 15. I can't even really remember what it was my therapist said that upset me so much then. Something about what my mum had done to me, and I hadn't even got to the bad bits with him, then.

I have been more open about myself and my past with my current therapist than I have with anyone in my whole life. I promised myself I would do my best to be open when I started working with him. But I guess part of me is waiting for an excuse to stop doing that.

I'm having a lot of feelings about moving overseas again, to be honest. I'm feeling a lot of grief after being desperate to get away for so long. I've been living with my dad since January 2024. He's quite abusive. I guess I'm projecting my anger at my dad onto my therapist while I play nice with my real dad in our final few days together.

This happened exactly because it is this week, you are reenacting patterns which is what therapy is all about and it's safe to be furious with him. But I seriously recommend you work it through in therapy and not outside therapy, for the best healing. It's absolutely safe to be angry, to leave, to work it through. Talk to him. This is the work.

You are obviously dealing with a huge amount of trauma due to your past and I'm so sorry for all that you've been through. But in this particular situation you are transferring these past issues and massively overreacting. He has had a family emergency and I don't think he was deliberately over sharing his personal issues, he only told you when you were so distressed about changing the appointment which is not a normal reaction. If he usually handles changes differently, like you've said he does, then because he was so busy dealing with the emergency he wasn't able to this time, which is why he told you what happened.

100% this

"I felt relatively chill about him cancelling the appointment until it became clear that I wasn't going to know when my next one was until the day it was supposed to happen."

You should see this for what it was. Nothing. He had a good reason. Clearly you need to continue therapy and continuing with him seems like the right plan. Good luck !

I’m a therapist.
OP you aren’t “overreacting”. You are reacting v strongly because by the sounds of it you and your therapist had what is called an enactment. That it feels so strong is part and parcel of therapy. If he is psychoanalytically trained he will hopefully recognise this. It is not wrong that he said specifics about his private life but it DOES reenact that you are put in a position to protect him vs being able to just be angry with him. And unconsciously he also contributed to that. Not a bad thing— it can show you both have a close therapeutic connection.

Your feelings aren’t wrong. Keep talking about this with him as much as feels necessary. Pay attention how he reacts. If he starts being defensive or putting it on you in a way that cuts things off (rather than allowing you to explore your emotions), then however I would think about changing therapist.

A good therapist is also paid to endure the strong “irrational” emotions of the client.

Hi OP you're going through such stress atm that it's not surprising that the things that make you feel safe & contained are adhered to, and equally that your appointments, the certainty they'll happen & your routine with this therapist are maintained too. Esp when there is so much literal & emotional upheaval on your life atm.

So while you might have panicked a bit & got angry, I think this is only natural & I disagree with most on this. Contracting is really critical to the therapeutic alliance & is everything to do with the scheduling of your appointments, the length of time your therapist believes your contract needs to be with them, based on their formulation of your difficulties & what they feel will benefit you etc. But it's a really important part of the process as you are being asked to trust & depend on your therapist - not easy things - & any chinks in the strength of that contract with you & how they conduct themselves, will impact on you in all number of ways. Therapists - well good ones - usually take these matters very rigorously because they are common areas that are going to cause their client to react in some way eg feel abandoned, rejected, uncertain, let down, disappointed, like they can no longer rely on them etc etc And that reaction needs sensitive management too.

Hence why there are strict codes of conduct about managing the business & the therapeutic contract & IMO this therapist has been quite unprofessional & sloppy. Psychoanalysts do not reveal or disclose any personal information because their being a blank canvas is in itself part of the unique aspect of the therapeutic relationship. Now suddenly having this human with an elderly mother & health needs & emergencies is a huge personal disclosure & the lack of profuse apology for having left you in the lurch, inconveniencing you, being unable to let you know sooner etc etc is concerning to me.

Instead none of your feelings were taken into account - which is his job & you now understandably feel you have no grounds to feel the way you do because it was an elderly lady in need./ so have been effectively guilt tripped.

The use of Chat GPT is inauthentic & another red flag IMO. Yes therapists are humans with lives but their conduct is really critical & should be informed by the therapeutic modality they're practising. Thy should be modelling what a good relationship looks like in the context of conveying unconditional regard, mutual respect. & empathy.

It's positive he has broached how you felt & has given you permission to be completely honest about how it made you feel, but I don't like how all that onus is on you. That cos of your "stuff" you're now worrying you've overreacted or projected your experience of men onto him - when he was responsible for that. He doesn't get to expect you to do all the responsibility taking.

I'd see this as the 2nd strike & if anything crops up again that demonstrates poor practice on his part I'd look somewhere else.

Yes in reality they are human & real life events & technology is going to occur - but these people are being tasked with holding & containing such hugely important personal private information & are asking you to take real personal leaps & actually feel that you can trust them with your emotional well-being. They therefore need to be trusted with how they relate to you in return.

Thank you for this. It reflects back how I felt about it. He did apologise unreservedly and profusely, and he said he would reflect on his blue ticks on WhatsApp. I don't know why but I felt most upset that he read my message last night and didn't reply until four hours later when I messaged again and asked for a refund. I think if you don't want to reply to messages, either don't open them, or don't have your WhatsApp set to turn the ticks blue. I do get anxiety about messages and their response, but only with men. My best friend ignores around 70% of my messages after reading and I still continue sending her bullshit without worrying that she's cut me off or stopped loving me.

Honestly I did feel like maybe he'd dumped me as a client last night. I just... I don't know. I feel like I need him at the moment because I'm so in the middle of therapy. I don't feel like I can stop right now.

I spent a really long time doing a really great impression of being totally fine and high achieving and since I left my violent ex husband it has just crumbled and in the summer I totally fell apart. I feel like I've started to be honest about how totally not fine I am and I cannot be abandoned while we're looking at all the pieces of me.

@TerracottaWorrier of course & the last thing you need is more upheaval & not having the support this therapy is giving you. So plse don’t feel you should or ought change therapist. More that this has been an important insight into how he takes care of things & how that does relate to the way he takes care of the therapeutic relationship & your feelings. Don’t be too hard on yourself for how you’re feeling atm or how you’re reacting about things. It’s a huge undertaking to be going through trauma therapy & it can be really destabilising & hard to carry on with everything while you’re trying to work through all of that. Just do what intuitively feels right for you & plse don’t feel you should find another therapist or attempt to certainly not just b’cos from a completely objective view that’s what I’d suggest b’cos as you say security & containment going forwards sounds like the best option.

I personally wld find WhatsApp contact too loose & not structured enough though & would not want the blue tick dynamic (& all of its associations!) be a part of my therapy but I’m prob v old fashioned & perhaps this is how a lot of therapists privately operate now. It feels very casual but again that’s just my personal opinion not a criticism. It’s good you’ve expressed what having that dynamic in your sessions is doing to you & how uncontained it’s making you feel. Hopefully he’ll start responding more quickly & consider your feelings about it.

Make sure your he knows how vulnerable you’re feeling atm & what kind of impact the therapy is having on you b’cos if there’s a lot of upheaval in changing countries etc & trying to settle you may just need some supportive sessions while you regroup & get onto a more even keel. It sounds like you’ve come such a long way leaving your abusive ex & now trying to fathom out the next steps. Tread gently & take care of yourself 💐

I was recommended a specific type of therapy for my past issues and found a therapist (male) fairly locally who specialized in this.

We never even made it to the first appointment as he dicked me around in a very similar way to yours, and then tried to gaslight me and I decided he wasn’t the right therapist for me. I wrote him an email setting out the reasons why I would like to cancel my appointment and get a refund, and he responded with a really condescending reply about how basically I was overreacting and he’d obviously triggered something in me which we could talk about in therapy.

I responded along the lines of no, I’m not triggered, I just have healthy boundaries in place now when it comes to how I allow myself to be treated by men.

I got my money back and that was the end of that.

Therapists should never talk about their personal lives, that’s therapist 101, so I think you’re right to feel off about that.

I’m not some snowflake nightmare by the way, I’ve had very successful therapy relationships in the past. I really hate people trying to bullshit me though and I also really hate people wasting my time.

I think go with your gut, there’s a gazillion therapists out there and you need to feel 💯 about the one you have.

Personally, I think your expectations of your therapist are unhealthy and unrealistic.

It sounds like managing this rupture in your therapeutic relationship could be paramount to your healing. I would not run at this point, try to stay with it, explore the feelings it has brought up. Your therapist has taken responsibility and apologized and refunded you. He is not abusing you. He is human, he is not infallible.

The use of ChatGPT for grammar or English might be true, but I do wonder how is he conducting therapy with you if he is needing to rely on this for a response to you.

You mention how good he has been with you, how you have felt safe enough to share deeply traumatic things with him. Do not forget this, this is so important. Try not to put him on too much of a pedestal. At some stage or another, we need to own our past, and develop resilience to recognise and overcome how our past could be effecting our here and now. It sounds like you’ve got some great awareness and insight - I’d try to work through this rupture and redevelop trust, I think it could be good for you. Otherwise you may repeat these kinds of patterns and dynamics in your relationships, particularly with men in the future.

Best of luck to you!

There’s a lack of boundaries here on your part OP and the therapist could do more to instil boundaries also. He shouldn’t be texting you, but I know other countries have relaxed guidelines regarding this, in the UK you would never text your therapist, not in the NHS anyway, you’d be lucky to even get an email response, rescheduling should be done over the phone with number withheld. Conversation outside sessions should be brief/ minimal. You are over reacting OP and you are not treating this as a professional relationship.

Perspective, he's your therapist not your boyfriend. I think you need to find another one, why not a woman?

I think, gently, that this is very much a 'you' issue and not something he's done especially wrong. His elderly mother had a fall and you seem to be upset that he didn't prioritise contacting you so you can get your nails and eyebrows done instead of being worried and focussing on his elderly, injured mother.

Therapists are humans too and they're not perfect in every way or able to read minds. Accidents and emergencies happen to even the best and most responsible people.

You're blaming him for other people's behaviour in your life and that's not really his fault. He didn't really do anything wrong.