My therapist fired me

[RaineyMae]

We had an agreement that I was allowed to email (with paid for reading time).

The content of one batch of emails got emotive and she took it as criticism.

Fired me by email on the grounds that I am ‘overwhelming’.

Ghosted my apology for upsetting her and my request for a termination session.

AIBU to feel hard done by?

LolaSmiles

Yes but right now isn’t the best time for OP to be feeling rubbish about things. She has a difficult day tomorrow and DCs with complex needs. Now isn’t the time to be unpicking who was right and who was wrong.

Lostmarbles2021
I do agree and see your point. I didn't mean to sound harsh.
Perhaps I'm a being a bit wary of the OP cherry picking anything that she can use to prove the therapist was awful and she was right, and that wouldn't be helpful to her either.

Given she's evidently not able to give an objective view, and we lack the therapist's perspective, none of us can give the OP what they crave right now.

What bothers me if that in 3 hours this thread could still be going and the OP is still arguing with everyone that the therapist was awful, character assassination, etc, which isn't productive or healthy for her.

OP if you are in the UK it’s late now. Can I gently and kindly suggest that you come off mumsnet and focus on getting some rest. I’ve made a couple of suggestions above that might help to temporarily put this stuff to one side and some ideas about self care.

Now is not the time for more debate. Your body needs rest for it’s challenge tomorrow.

Sending you warmth and thoughts and good luck tomorrow.

Please turn your phone off and take care of yourself. You won’t get the closure you need here.

Yes but right now isn’t the best time for OP to be feeling rubbish about things. She has a difficult day tomorrow and DCs with complex needs. Now isn’t the time to be unpicking who was right and who was wrong

I know you mean well, marbles, and I realise OP clearly has some ongoing issues, but it comes across as rather patronising to act like matron and indicate that you know better than OP what's best for her.

It sounds like you're saying "OP doesn't have the sense to step away from this thread if it's getting too much for her, so instead, I'm going to rally round on her behalf and control the whole internet to save her from herself".

@RaineyMae I hope you get some sleep before your surgery. I don't think you should take this as a slur on your character. It's just a learning point. We learn as much from difficult experiences as good ones.

@RaineyMae I agree with @Lostmarbles2021 try to switch off now

When you are over the surgery try getting in touch with the charity Contact a Family. They have helped me a lot. There is a helpline and you can book three one hour listening calls with their listening ear service. They also offer a virtual well-being course for carers which I’ve been on and it’s good

It’s a fair point - and thank you for looking out for me @Lostmarbles2021

Bath then bed

At least the surgery means I can’t carry on circling tomorrow - ha ha.

Thank you for giving me a bit of space to process what happened.

I guess you guys are my termination session.

As an autistic/ADHD veteran of therapy, trauma and MH issues, I think you might be better off looking for therapy that focuses on coping mechanisms generally - obviously with someone who has genuine knowledge/experience of neurodiversity.

This is as opposed to a therapist who is there to listen to each situation as it arises. I’m not sure the latter approach is actually so helpful long term, even though it feels like it at the time.

The problem is if you’re in such a fucking awful situation (and I’m very sorry you are - best of luck with the surgery 💐) it’s not something that can be changed and in future when something happens you’ll feel lost again if you don’t have that instant support.

I found an ex NHS psychologist who now works as a therapist. Her NHS work was largely with autistic adults. The first few sessions, other than telling her the basics of my past and current circumstances, actually ended up being focused on learning how to cope with therapy sessions - very meta 🤔🤣.

Recently I’ve realised how well the therapy has worked because it’s got to the point where I can face difficult situations and apply the techniques she’s taught me. I’ve had sessions where I thought I’d be talking about some really difficult situations, but by the time I have the session I don’t need to other than the basics, because holy shit, I have actually learned to cope SO much better. Never ever thought that would happen.

I don’t know, I just wonder if that may be a better approach for you. It’s not invalidating the fact you have a really tough life with lots of responsibility, not at all, but it sounds like the sort of “talking stuff through as it happens” therapy may not be right for you. 💐

Also sorry if I’ve missed stuff as not quite caught up, but it may be worth getting an Early Help Plan if appropriate (not sure if your situations involve things like social services already) - possibly a family support worker could be an ideal person to help you now.

Oh bollocks to unhelpable. I'm autistic too, and have also done the whole "The therapist said I could email background info… she didn't say how much to write. Hmm. How much is too much? I don't want to leave out anything important…" email deluge thing. And my therapist dealt with that, and now I'm a lot better.

I'm willing to bet that your problem here isn't primarily that you know a final session would be particularly helpful to you. The problem is that you've read that the proper thing for a therapist to do is to offer a termination session, except in cases of dangerous etc. behaviour. So the fact that she's either a) come to the conclusion you're dangerous or b) isn't following The Rules is fucking with your head, because things are meant to happen like this but they've actually happened like that ARGH DOES NOT COMPUTE, and now you've got an untidy ending It's probably easiest to put it down to one of those "sometimes, normies don't seem to follow the rules in the way you'd expect and everyone acts like that's totally fine" things, where autists and normies just don't get why the other group feels differently and have to just accept that It Is So.

At what point am I expressing myself and stating what I need - and at what point am I breaching boundaries in a way that can't be fixed?
@RaineyMae
At the point where giving you what you need means going against her professional assessment of what you need.

Hypothetical example:
OP - I need a 'You go girl' from you now, today.
Therapist - In my opinion, you need to sit down and examine your part in creating the crisis, and to reflect immediately on what you can do to salvage the situation. As I see it, our therapy goal is to help you become more self sufficient emotionally, more resilient, less frightened of crisis.

Can you see how those two approaches to the situation are incompatible?

You cannot demand that the therapist give you something that might be against her professional judgement of what you need.

You especially can't demand it at a time when you no longer have an appointment. That is trampling all over her expertise as a professional and all over her time as a professional selling professional services in certain time slots (which are forfeit if canceled).

What is to stop you from canceling in future and then demanding 55 minutes of a 60 minute slot even if she has rearranged her day, slotted in an alternative patient who was able to take up a canceled slot?

There's also the stress associated with feeling like you've broken rules which nobody ever told you about, which is a consistent autistic experience that people underestimate the impact of. If I were you I'd put this down to autist-normie miscommunication, and look for a therapist who can speak your language, and help you work out how to operate in a world that largely speaks theirs.

@FrankensteinIsTheMonster - I am literally sitting here laughing in recognition.

That’s totally it.

Therapists are supposed to offer termination sessions.

So she’s either decided that I am so dangerous that I will throttle her through the Zoom screen

Or she’s not following the rules while I’m being told off for being the one that didn’t follow the rules … rules that I wasn’t told.

And totally does not compute. And really stressful and upsetting and hard to let go of.

Exactly!

Find yourself a therapist who speaks autist and is willing to be Really Very Clear about exactly what it is you're supposed to do.

I didn’t want someone to talk to.

I wanted to provide background information in the most compact and efficient format so that in the sessions I felt able to ease off the info dumping and to have an actual conversation.

It’s not the best communication style - but it’s really hard for me to have a meaningful two way conversation if my brain is clogged up with important information waiting to be shared

lostmarbles advice is very good and wise. I’d take that.

And I’m really sorry. My therapist had to stop a couple of weeks ago, and handled it so compassionately and kindly, and I’m still really upset and liable to get tearful. So I know what it’s like a little bit, but it sounds much worse for you.
Take care rainey and I hope the surgery goes well.

That sort of information-based approach assumes that facts are facts, not observations of events.

A therapy session is often a session where individual words, or individual emotionality associated with specific words, repetitions, etc, can be picked up on by a therapist, and the significance hashed out. There can be many tangents.

I hope tomorrow goes well op.

Yep yep. Totally standard autistic behaviour (well, one of them). The therapist doesn't seem experienced in how to work with you and your autism-influenced social and communication differences in order to manage them and craft a workable and productive therapeutic relationship. Other therapists out there can do this. It's just a matter of finding one.

Maybe you need a life coach. One with a psychology background and experience as a therapist, but who has moved into life coaching. That would give you the service of "all this stuff has happened and I dont know what to do. Help ke plan".

Since you say you don’t want to return to therapy in the meantime this could prove helpful llttf.com/
Obviously not a substitute for therapy but many find it helpful for skills building at their own pace as it is online

Anyway, now you have more info about how complex the unspoken rules around volume of email contact and rescheduling of sessions can be, you know what kind of questions to ask therapists in order to clarify what is and is not acceptable to them. And I assume that, having been given more explicit info, you'll be able to stick within whatever boundaries any new therapist may have.

I don't know if it's as clear to everyone on this thread as it is to me that you were trying to be helpful and save your therapist work in the long term, though your good intentions didn't work out well. I think that to you, giving her a written explanation with lots of detail and paying her for the time it takes to read that seems like a fair and more efficient way of getting baseline info across, freeing up session time for more interactive conversation. But that's not how it came across to the therapist, and not how it comes across to many people here. It sounds like you need a proper conversation with your next therapist about what would be most helpful to her and to you, otherwise you'll risk acting at cross-purposes with your therapist again.

Incidentally I think there's also been miscommunication on this thread, for example about "a different interpretation/perspective" — seems like you meant you wanted to give the therapist info on things that had happened so she could provide a perspective on things that may be different to yours, whereas people are reading it as the therapist having an opinion, and then you barraging her with extra info to get her to change to a interpretation that's different from her previous one.

Yes - absolutely that to your last para.

I wanted to see what someone else would have seen in the situation. Look at it with her neurotypical & qualified psychologist eyes and tell me what she saw. I knew it would be different to what I saw - I wanted her opinion, not my own opinion replayed.

And yes to the first para too. @FrankensteinIsTheMonster

Exactly that

In my work I like to be given full access to raw data - not piecemeal drib drab of peoples opinions about the data - and random
bombshells thrown in at the 11th hour that wreck my analysis.

Raw data is best passed on in print - because then it’s ‘there’ - and can be referred to when needed - rather needing to be processed and memorised in the moment like you have to when people tell you stuff verbally.

I know passing stuff on verbally makes me more likeable and relatable - but I felt that I could trust her to work with me as a client and discover my sweet side as we went along - rather than vice versa: charming her at the outset, and them clobbering her with all the hard stuff I really needed to discuss.

Not everyone is like you. HTH.
I’m out! You can’t even vaguely see it from her point of view. You’re so fixated on her behaviour as a professional.
Not everyone thinks like you.