Struggling after bad experience in therapy

[LucyL93]

(tw:suicidal)
I’ve having therapy for 6 months, for anxiety and depression. I have had the occasional good session but have generally felt quite misunderstood by the therapist. I have at times left feeling more confused than when I went in. Sometimes it feels like she thinks I’ve said something completely different to what I actually said. she does not seem to grasp the seriousness of what I am dealing with and how awful it is making me feel. I have at times felt quite invalidated and dismissed. If I pause to think about what to say, she sometimes looks at the clock and acts inpatient. She seemed to remember more about the details of what said in previous sessions, earlier on the process. She seems to forget things I’ve told her lately. On one occasion she looked a bit disgusted when I said I struggled to even shower in the morning sometimes due to how low and tired I was feeling.
I initially felt she was trying very hard at first. Hence why I didn’t end things straight away, I wanted to give it a chance.
I have tried all of the exercises she has given me, some have been useful. I have been open when I have found them not to work and I have asked for her suggestions / if I am doing it right ect. I feel I have tried and put effort in, trying everything she has suggested.
I have taken some positive exercises I can use however I felt so awful during our last session that I said I would like to end our sessions, she probed me and I ended up explaining how awful I felt (not with the above detail) but that I was now feeling suicidal and that therapy was making me feel worse. She was clearly shocked and perhaps didn’t realise what bad shape I was in. She suddenly seemed to take me more seriously (finally), but she agreed to end the sessions there.
I have a depression diagnosis which I told her of at the start and it I felt like she should have taken that seriously. Depression doesn’t always look the same. Just because I’ve brushed my teeth today and got dressed, doesn’t mean I’m not depressed.
I’m so down and struggling to tolerate how I feel after this experience. I’m also so angry with her for this. I feel so let down and now abandoned when I feel my worst. I don’t know where to turn and I am beating myself up too, wondering if I did something wrong or wasn’t open enough.

You don't have to stay with her, the right therapist can be trial and error. Time to start searching for a new one.

Definitely find a new therapist/counsellor. Just because someone is qualified to do it, does not guarantee that they will be any good.

Really sorry to hear how let down you've been by this therapist, @LucyL93 She largely failed to attune to you and how your experiences have impacted on you, and then when she finally realised how serious her failure was, she let you go. Arguably, the right therapist wouldn't have been so misattuned in the first place, but if they had been, once they realised just how depressed you actually are, and how deeply you're struggling, they would have done some effective reparative work on the therapeutic relationship and begun to explore how the neglect and lack of accurate empathy in their approach to you mirrored part of what brought you to therapy in the first place.

I'm sorry you've been left in so much pain, with all the disappointment and confusion layered on top of it now by your therapist's failures. You did a very brave thing seeking out therapy, and I understand it's difficult for you not to feel like this failure is somehow on you, but it definitely isn't! Do whatever you can to stop beating yourself up because that is a pattern which will just hold you back and you genuinely don't deserve that. (I'm angry that your so-called therapist left you with that.) Look after yourself the best you can in whatever ways feel manageable while you create a bit of space within yourself to think about possible next steps. Are there any possible alternatives for you to think about in that respect?

Do you realise how much you stood up for yourself by telling her how you felt?! That's a really powerful step to have taken, for various reasons, and it's actually part of a dynamic process which you have already started out on, even if it doesn't look like that to you on the surface. It tells me you're on the right path to finding the right person for you, one way or another.

Well you've done right by stopping sessions with her. If you get a bad therapist, it's just not helpful and is doing more harm while charging you for the privilege.

You do definitely have to 'shop' for a therapist, it's not one size fits all. I had 3. First was in training and would have been good if not for his inexperience and bitch of a supervisor. I think he has the potential to be a great therapist once he gets a few years practice under his belt.

Second was useless and kept telling me write activities on bits of paper and pull them out of a jar when I was extremely depressed and not even able to do basic self care. She lived in lala land I think.

Third is worth his weight in gold and honestly I'd be dead by now if I hadn't met him.

Shop around a bit. Have trial sessions with a few to see how they work.

Complain about the conduct of this therapist as she undermined you when she sould have been completely unbiased.

You were right to tell her how you felt about the therapy.