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 you've answered your own question by what you say here.

You have built a relationship with this therapist and that's a big part of the process. You feel you can trust him. He has cocked up (or he has put other priorities in front of you, but actually they are significant and important priorities of his elderly mother's health versus yours of getting your nails done - and that is not meant to be snide, but to add perspective). I think he would not usually reveal that to you due to the professional relationship, but realised how upset you were so wanted you to understand he did not let you down lightly.

In other real life relationships, this kind of thing happens a lot so to have this incident to reflect on, that has actually caused you minor annoyance/ inconvenience versus his huge upheaval re his mother could be a very valuable reflective tool for you. You see this as betrayal of your needs to a point you plan to jettison this relationship with someone who you describe as having helped you and better than other therapists. What you could do is realise that you need to work through those feelings and not jettison something that's really beneficial for you because you've over-magnified an imperfection.

No one is perfect so every relationship you encounter in real life will have similar issues. Being able to sort out small everyday issues and get your emotional reaction regulated about them versus the huge red flags of abuse you've previously suffered seems to be central to the work you need to do. And in a bizarre way this incident can help you to do that.

I would stay with your therapist, especially if lots of other things in your life are about to change significantly.

I am understanding about all the posters saying to find a female therapist.

I will put out there though that I have a lot of experience with therapists, I work directly with them, I know them, I've trained a lot of them and I've had therapy several times myself, and I can honestly say some of the best therapists I know are male (not all) and some of the ones I am dubious about the abilities of, are female (again, not all).

The therapist that helped me the most was male and I've had several females who were utterly useless. It's not always better to have a female.

@cordiallyuninvited , surely what’s important isn’t whether men and women make equally good therapists, but whether OP’s previous experiences make it harder for her to work with a male?

I'm afraid I can't really see what he did wrong. I do think you've over reacted. An individual or a business can reasonably say they need to move or re-arrange an appointment and you were offered a Saturday which you declined. Unfortunately the Monday was not possible afterall.

It does suggest - said with kind intentions - from your emotional response that you have a high level of dependency on your therapist. Although perhaps unsurprising with your traumatic history it is actually a bit dangerous in terms of therapeutic relationships. There does have to be professional boundaries and at times a service may not be deliverable due to sickness, holidays or emergencies and he was a number of clients who he provides a service to. It might be that you need to discuss boundaries and expectations. A professional therapist is not a friend or family and can only provide a service when they can - they are not morally obligated because it's an especially difficult week even if they try to offer a consistent and reliable service to you. They are not a husband, parent, best friend or sibling.

I do think there are the kind of people who think being on time is to arrive five minutes early (like me) and the kind of people who think arriving ten minutes late is still to be on time. I think my therapist is the second type of person and I do think we have wildly different expectations of arrangements because of this. All my friends are timely people and I do find poor planning quite upsetting in general.

I sometimes do online tuition sessions and I think my agency would be very annoyed if I cancelled a session without refunding or rescheduling. I also think the time to tell me he had a family emergency (if he wanted to) was when he cancelled on Thursday night, not when we had our session yesterday. And I think he should have replied to my message when he read it, even if it was just to tell me he would set up the session later. I also think at least 24 hours notice of an appointment is a reasonable expectation. I did not know his mother had had a fall at this point and so I don't think it's fair to suggest I thought my nails were more important than his mum.

If this was a service I got from another professional I certainly wouldn't be crying but equally I probably wouldn't be wild about using them again.

I will continue with my therapist because we have a relationship and I can see the value of working through this with him, but I think the people who suggest I'm behaving like he's my boyfriend are reaching a bit. I wanted to be treated like the paying customer I am.

@TerracottaWorrier - I am not sure if your comment saying it's a bit unfair to say you think your nails are more important to you than his mother's health was directed at me, because I know other people brought that up and I was careful to say it was just to show perspective.

I certainly didn't mean to say I thought you would actually think that - as I know that at the point you became very upset by his treatment of you, you weren't aware of the significant reason. I more meant it that moving forward, as a point of reflection on the whole episode, you can see that he had very significant issues, which usually he would be right not to reveal to you as that is a professional approach in therapy, but then decided to do so as he realised how upset you had become by his changing of plans, so he wanted you to realise he would not do that to you unless it was for an extremely good reason.

I certainly didn't mean to imply I thought you would think your nails are more important than his mother's health.

More that to reflect on how very upset that made you is quite an important part of your therapy process in the light of the bigger picture.

Yes-I definitely don't disagree with that.

It isn't always the case that having bad experiences with men makes it better to have a female therapist however, sometimes it can be the opposite. A man affirming that decent men do not do these things or agree that they're okay for example, genuineness rather than what can be a client's subconscious thought of 'agreeing because they're a woman' (of course I understand it is much more complex than that.

I was mainly replying to a lot of responses saying 'find a female therapist' as though they're always better. There are plenty of crap therapists around unfortunately. A few years ago it made a lot of money to open training centres for therapists. Male and females can be equally crap. Sometimes, a male wanting to be a therapist says more about their character than a female wanting to be-a lot of men can choose a career like that based on their genuine need to help, some females being naturally good at it and think it will be a nice little side-hustle. I am not explaining this well I realise-, a good male therapist can be an excellent choice is what I mean.

I am afraid I cannot remember the title of the book but there was a woman who wrote about her experiences of shocking CSA. It was a very harrowing read. She wrote that as an adult she was referred to a therapist, walked into the room and was shocked at the fact he was male and said 'But no!! You're a man!!' and he said something like 'well, there's a long waiting list, why don't you just give me a try, as you're here now?'

She did and said he was the best thing that ever happened to her (I realise that's just an example).

@TerracottaWorrier
And I suppose the point is we often don't know the whole bigger picture in our relationships with other people in real life, and sometimes have to give them the benefit of the doubt and realise it's not really about us. And that can actually be quite helpful.

Also, regarding the male/female therapist thing. I know it's not a popular experience on here but it was my mother who was the perpetuater of my CSA so I don't have a great relationship with women of a certain age either.

You seem to have over reacted a lot.

I'm not sure why you couldn't book a nail appointment around the therapy appointments. You didn't know he'd cancel Friday but you could have just booked it begore/ after it, it's not an all day thing- especially given its just online. Also if Monday is your regular day why didn't you have an appointment time already booked?

I think you're blurring lines a lot, he's not your friend. It's a professional relationship, he doesn't have to reply to you outside of work hours.

I don't know where you live but I live in a village without any salons and I don't have a car. If I get given a 2 pm therapy session, I'm not going to be able to leave the village and be certain I'll make it back in time.

Our sessions tend to always be at a different time. Could be 1:30. Could be 17:00. That's ok and I can be flexible, but only if I know what time it's going to be.

I did book nails and eyebrows for yesterday. And then when he finally told me our session was at 2 pm, I had to cancel because I couldn't accomplish the round trip in time.

That actually isn't the case. NHS therapy is very very different to private practice. Therapists in private practice deal with you directly, not through an office and its very normal to text regarding scheduling conflicts. Even in NHS therapy, I had my therapists number and could message him if I was stuck in traffic.

Many private therapists work from their homes and see clients in person there.

Any relationship dealing with people's emotions and mental health is going to be deeper and more emotionally fraught than what you would have with, say, a doctor or beautician.

Therapy relies on a strong bond between you and the therapist. Not so much for things like CBT, you can do that from a workbook but trauma therapy and attachment work is very different.

She is overreacting in a normal way for the stage of therapy she is at and her therapist appears to be perfectly capable of handling that. Boundaries are his job, not hers.

Edit: I also second the poster who says that female therapists are not automatically better for female clients. I've had 2 of each. Both the women were useless and judgemental and had no understanding of PTSD whatsoever.

One man was really kind and understanding but lacked experience to handle trauma and the other man has been the best accidental decision I ever made, even going out of his way to sign up for extra training specifically because he didn't know how best to help me.

Female to female isn't always the best choice.

I sometimes do online tuition sessions and I think my agency would be very annoyed if I cancelled a session without refunding or rescheduling. I also think the time to tell me he had a family emergency (if he wanted to) was when he cancelled on Thursday night, not when we had our session yesterday. And I think he should have replied to my message when he read it, even if it was just to tell me he would set up the session later.

In an ideal world he would have responded exactly as you describe however we don’t live in that world. He may not have been able to tell you about his mum when cancelling the meeting - he may have been upset and focussed on clearing his diary. It’s likely he checked his WhatsApp to check for anything urgent, but didn’t have capacity to respond to anything less urgent.

I remember needing to phone clients to cancel sessions at very short notice. It was all I could do to say I needed to reschedule, I couldn’t explain why because it was too immediate and I’m sure my clients found it difficult. I needed to do it because my client list is confidential so I couldn’t have someone else take care of it who might have been more on top of things. It’s very hard, and you need what you need but sometimes it’s just not possible to focus on your work practices when you’re dealing with a personal crisis.

And he does have to reply to me outside of fucking work hours if he fails to schedule our next appointment. Or he can refund me. But he cannot just keep my cash and expect I'll be available whenever is next good for him.

Nothing useful to add regarding the therapist, but a massive WELL DONE for recognizing your feelings and the reasons for them, and working through them rather than acting immediately. That level of insight into yourself is really rare and shows how good a job you are doing in healing yourself! Onwards and upwards, and may 2025 and your new move be fabulous for you!!

And some unmumsnetty hugs, just in case you need some

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.

It’s perfectly normal to phone, text and email a therapist in the UK, the NHS model isn’t relevant to private practice. While conversations outside of session may be limited, they need to be long and detailed enough to deal with the matter at hand.

A professional therapy relationship is quite different to any other in that it is both personal and professional. Depending on the type of therapy all the thoughts, dynamics and misgivings that are part and parcel of relationships show themselves. In the context of a therapeutic relationship the OP isn’t overreacting, she’s reacting in a way that is consistent for - which is what happens in therapy. It’s then the therapists job to work with that reaction to repair the relationship. Treating therapy like a GP appointment just doesn’t work, which is one of the problems with the NHS model.

You don't know why he didn't. If he was in the middle of a emergency, maybe he sorted things with his clients out as soon as he could. He has refunded you now, so move on, and get another therapist. It is very clear you actually don't trust him, and that you feel betrayed because you really believe he couldn't be bother, instead of believing the most plausible explanation that it is that he wasn't able to until later due to an emergency. You are too emotionally involved with this therapist. It isn't healthy to feel like this because in an emergency he could not text you to rearrange an appointment.

This is a rupture and should he be a decent therapist, working through it could very well strengthen your relationship.
I’ve had extensive therapy for childhood and adult sexual trauma and abandonment.
My main therapist for the trauma, I was with 6 years. He’s human. He messed up a few times. He also had to learn what would really trigger and make allowances. And further more work on those triggers.

My suggestion would be to be completely honest. And work through it. Any therapist worth their salt, should welcome all feedback and should work through your issues as to why you’ve reacted how you have but also to repair his rupture in the relationship.. by being sure to communicate better about sessions going forward.

Therapists have families, lives, and problems like everybody else. It's not helpful you going off on one at him.

Just another thought, I hate not having my therapy at set times and day. My newest therapist, he would schedule people into what I considered to be my a lot and it really bothered me. So I told him that it bothered me. And now I have it every week same time, with the understanding that should he need to change it to another long term slot that’s ok, but I don’t want chopping and changing.
Could you ask for a fixed slot?

Personally I think the most healing thing for you is to work through this with him. Your experience in the past I'm guessing it's that people who've let down haven't validated your rightful hurt feelings. I t sounds like your therapist is willing to take responsibility for letting you down.

There is a huge amount of transference going on for you here. I am a therapist and hope that I would recognise this and be working through it with you. Your expectations of the therapeutic relationship are inappropriate and clearly much work needs to be done. Whether he is the therapist to work through this with you, I don't know.

I would suggest you bring up all that you have written in this thread with him - if he is as well qualified and experienced as you say he should be able to decide how to go forward with you after this rupture but he does need to know how you feel. You certainly can't just go back to "business as usual".

Where did I say that I went off on one to him? I was very polite when I told him I was upset. My fury is not something I would impose on him. It was something I felt not something I acted out.

I think @TanginaBarrons makes some really valid points @TerracottaWorrier - would you be able to let him read this thread and then work through the issues with you?

The fact you want to mask how angry you feel and not tell him (although I agree with you, not go off on one, but allow him to know how deeply this has affected you) is probably really important for your ongoing therapeutic work with him. He doesn't have a crystal ball so unless you tell him, the importance of this may get overlooked in your upcoming move and his focus on supporting his mother.