relationship counsellors or those doing relate - does this sound appropriate?

[bossykate]

dh & i have been going to relate for approximately 3m now. dh has found it quite helpful. i on the other hand have found it has made things worse. part of the problem for me is some of the behaviour/comments from the counsellor herself and i would like to hear mumsnetters' opinions on whether this sounds reasonable/appropriate/professional.

(1) i do not feel our sessions are well facilitated. too often they degenerate into rows and the counsellor makes little effort to diffuse the tension. i am frequently "ambushed" in the sessions by dh - this is unchallenged by the counsellor, e.g. dh said in our last joint session that he wishes we had never got married - counsellor left this statement unexplored - for me it was like a nuclear bomb going off!

(2) focus is totally on what i understand is psychodynamic therapy - how the past influences present behaviours. we are told that it will be a long and painful process - and that's it. i was expecting more "handy hints" and exercises to help us cope outside the sessions.

(3) i feel the counsellor has totally bought in to dh's view of our marriage and its problems, i.e. it's all my fault. not surprisingly, i don't agree! i feel that my issues with the marriage are not being explored.

(4) counsellor has told me off on more than one occasion, that i am too angry and hostile. i think this is inappropriate - surely the sessions are places where uncomfortable difficult emotions can be explored?

(5) counsellor has told me on more than one occasion how what i say makes her feel. surely her feelings are irrelevant?

(6) told me yesterday that dh and i were like arguing toddlers! now this may well be true but i don't feel this is a helpful, constructive, professional way of describing the situation.

i have already decided to find another counsellor but i wondered whether my experience is normal and whether i should expect more of the same or whether she is just hopelessly mismanaging me?

TIA

bossykate - you are not deficient - you are going through some serious shit and you are not feeling supported and heard by your husband or the counsellor. This is how you feel and its important.

Instead of saying (just as an extreme example, i'm not saying you're doing this) "you're a fucking twat husband and I hate you, you're always belittling me and ignoring me, how do you think it makes me FEEL when you say those things about me"

Instead focus on your feelings of sadness/rage/hurt by saying - "I feel really hurt when you say that you wish you'd never married me, I feel sad cos it feels like you're saying you don't love me and have never loved me"

Noone can take away your feelings and if you say how you feel (not how he makes you feel - noone can make us feel anything, we choose to feel like that, yes, people say hurtful words but we choose to feel them as hurtful)

If my husband said he wished he'd never married me I would be thinking about whether he said it in anger (you said he was very ambushy) or whether he was just rolling it around outside his head to see how it felt to say, or wondering whether he was saying it to try and hurt me.

And if he said it to try and hurt me I would be asking if he did say it to hurt me and if so why? Why do you want me to feel hurt here?

If he's saying it cos he means it at that moment (and I'm quite sure my husband and I have said it to each other and meant it in that moment) then thats valid too - maybe he does wish that in that moment but big picture here, he is sat in a room with a stranger working out his relationship with you - he is at least committed to arguing with you

The opposite of love is not hate (or all the anger you're feeling towards each other), it's indifference. You two are not indifferent to each other

Say how you feel inside when he says words you think he may mean hurtful to you.

I'm a newbie here, but I have gone to relate with my now DH. I remember on odd occasions feeling she was siding with him but overall I felt she was very balanced about both our concerns/ POV and I can't see how she could have helped if she wasn't - even if at the time I thought his were selfish and childish!

She was also very positive about us both wanting to save our relationship just by the act of going there. Personally, I'd be pretty annoyed if she'd suggested I wasn't committed because I didn't behave how she expected.

I'd certainly agree that you need to like the person who is counselling you. When we were going through this bad patch, I made an appointment to see a counsellor alone (we'd seperated) and I just didn't like her or her views. I was able to go and see a counsellor I'd seen previously (I'd moved)and she was so helpful because I trusted her.

"she suggested that if i didn't like what she was doing i obviously wasn't committed to saving the marriage"

Oh god there are just so many ways to respond to this. First of all this is what you heard, filtered through your own experience, we all hear things differently.

I have walked out of a counselling session before (as a client obviously) and i can assure you that right at that moment I did not want to save or work on with my relationship with her - I wanted to strop out, furiously angry

She said "I can see you're not committed to doing this right now"

She was right - descriptively right - not judgementally right.

I think that if she is not right for you then you are wasting your money tbh. don't be put off though, there are amazingly good people out there who will be right for you, it's trial and error really

The problem with couples counselling is often at different times one person is not feeling heard.

I urge you to find someone you like just for individual support - you deserve that

Bottom line, you don't like how you're feeling at the moment, the hour moves too fast for you to feel you get to explore how you feel enough.

Everyone needs to find a counsellor who will care for them and support them through shit, you have to feel she likes and cares for you and wants the best for you. It may be very difficult to get that in a joint session.

You deserve support and I'm sorry things are so tough for you right now.

it was just me and her yesterday and i didn't feel heard or supported or yada yada yada! lol!

i will think about what's been said and come back.

thanks very much to all

And it definitely is trial and error (along with exploring why you don't like them with them)

I did not like my first counsellor, I did not feel supported. 7 years later I look back and realise now that if I had only told her how I felt then at least I could have expressed it. I was going through a divorce and it was much easier to project feelings onto her 'she doesn't care about me' rather than deal with my soon to be exhusband.

This experience ended up being very useful cos when I look back now i can see that projecting those feelings onto her protected me and gave me something to focus on - rather than the hideousness of what I was going through at home.

i can recommend someone fab bk

i have told her how i feel! gah!

Message withdrawn

Bossykate - after reading your op i just want to say that dp and i also had relate counselling and after a few sessions i shared many of your same concerns. Like you, i thought that his side of the story was being accepted as 'fact' by the counsellor. and i too was accused of being overly aggressive and hostile. will watch this thread with interest.

let me try and make sense of my thoughts to respond to the comments here.

justaboutto wrote>> "
Look, the bottom line is really clear here. Is she, in your opinion, going to be helpful in saving the marriage?

This isn't about exploring your inner psyche and having a wonderful longterm psychotherapeutic relatoinship. This is about hard practical facts.

If you stay with her, do you think that you are more or less likely to split up?

That is the ONLY issue IMHO."

agreed - the situation has got worse, not better, in the last 3 months.

and...

"The issue is how you and your husband relate to each other, not your counsellor. If she's not facilitating that towards getting better, you need someone else."

again, i agree. it's so not about her or it shouldn't be - but it seems to be getting that way. i can't be arsed to explore my relationship with her - i'm supposed to be saving my relationship with dh.

these are the most helpful comments in terms of decision making about how to go forward.

lauriefairycake, you're right i don't feel that she "hears" what i am saying and that is a red flag to me because that is one of my key issues with dh. that is what annoyed me about your first post - basically you told me seemed to be saying that all the issues were all my own fault in some way. however, i would like to thank you for your later posts because they were very helpful.

in terms of how to go forward - i'm torn between two options.

(1) sticking with my original plan of going through some "ground rules" for the sessions which would involve raising these concerns (again) or (2) just binning her and moving on.

i doubt i will decide before the final moment next monday!

thanks very much to all for your help

hello yummers. what happened then? are you still going?

countess, sorry, thanks for the offer, as i said i will email you tonight from home.

bossykate, I would strongly advise you to follow lauriefairycake's advice and take all these thoughts and feelings to your session next week. At no point was she saying that any of the issues with your DH were your fault.

If I may throw a curveball, I sense that you are scared of what this therapy might throw up for you (and it is about you and your DH individually as well as a couple) and you are throwing up the defences so as not to confront what may come up.

Many of the issues which come up in a therapy room simply replicate what happens in the outside world. You yourself say that the way the counsellor is with you replicates a dynamic which happens in your own relationship. You need to tell the counsellor this. Indeed a lot of the things you say you have an issue with the counsellor for seem, from what you say, to be replicated in your RL relationship. This is why I would stick with her. You are connecting with how you feel in a relationship, what makes you angry, what frustrates you. It is the skill (it seems) of the counsellor which is bringing this stuff out for you.

So, I repeat, I really would follow LFC's well thought out advice and stick with the process. Giving it up would only, I fear, feed into many of the issues which are currently between you and your DH finding ways forward.

Sorry to be so firm, I feel quite strongly about this.

We had relate counselling a few years ago and I too felt a little like this bk, though less acutely.

I also eventually felt that the "therapy" (freudian, with splash of other stuff, iirc) felt too invasive, that everything had to be "talked round" to her pov and anything outside it was ignored.

In the end dh and I sort of sided together against her as we both found her too reductive.

We did get back together but in spite of - rather than because of - her.

I'm currently having counselling (basically going back to the death of my father just over a year ago, but lots of other stuff going on too) and I have been referred to a very gentle counsellor via my GP practice. They have a psychotherapy coordinator who does 2 sessions with you (I cried a lot) and then refers you on to reputable people close to where you live.

This person does not sound right - either for you or any sort of counselling (if she's saying how she feels - I mean, who gives a toss??)

Since you posted an hour ago I have been thinking about you while washing dishes and mopping the floors.

You said I "told you the issues were all your fault"

I think I did not(and it is definitely not what I think). I think I sat down and posted in response to all your queries and thoughts. Your dh and counsellor aren't here, I can only respond to what I think you are saying

Now, what went on is not a matter of fact but a matter of feelings and opinions.

Either I am some machiavellian loony out to hurt you by posting that I think its all your fault

or

you thought I was attacking you because of your own filtering and thoughts.

I am not blaming you for your filtering - just pointing out your defensive reaction. Its the same reaction you have in real life with your counsellor.

I am not telling you its all your fault - you have plenty of reason to feel this defensive, you are going and working through some unbelievable shit.

I really really wish you all the best - therapy is tremendously hard word - I know this because I had to sit there for 200 hours going through what you're going through.

And I'm really interested in what you say about ground rules - what d'you mean??

And I must try and give bundle an example of why what the counsellor feeds back to you about their feelings is important. If someone is consistently late for example then the therapist can ask "what do you think its like for me sitting here waiting for you". Then the client can begin to assess their impact on others, have empathy with others, bring others feelings into their own experiencing. Its a safe place to work out what others might think of you while the counsellor supports you.

Yep, there are bad counsellors too as in every profession (as well as ones not suited to you)

too true - when I was training to be a counsellor there was one person on my course who went to 8 counsellors and pronounced them all rubbish.

four years of everyone gently saying - do you think maybe this is about you ??

Bossykate, sorry to hear what a shit time you have been having.

I think that with counselling you need to find a good "fit" for you - so if it were just you getting counselling you should be prepared to try out a few counsellors until you find one who suits you. Maybe you should get another counsellor for yourself independent of the couples stuff - sounds like you could do with a bit of support for yourself as an individual?

Presumably a couples counsellor would ideally be a good fit for both of you - but as a minimum you should both feel like you are making progress - not necessarily at each individual session, but over the course of a few sessions.

Before you give up on this counsellor, the advice on this thread to raise with her how you feel about her is constructive. If her replies leave you cold then find a new counsellor.

It is possible that this woman is a rubbish counsellor. It is also possible that the issues it is raising are extremely difficult for you to deal with. Bottom line is even if it were true that you are reacting in a difficult and unconstructive way to the issues raised, the counsellor should be able to help guide you through in a positive way...if she can't then she is the wrong counsellor for you.

I would really advocate getting an individual counsellor who you have a good relationship with in addition to the joint sessions. Alot of heavy stuff can emerge in couples counselling and it is nice to be able to reflect on it in a safe environment.

Good luck!

lauriefairycake, i appreciate your efforts but i feel it is actually you who have exhibited some defensiveness here on behalf of the counselling profession! nevertheless, i am grateful for your insights on how to deal with the content if not the form, thank you.

hello again. really must get some work done today! although my contract is finishing in a couple of weeks and then i am taking a sabbatical - that's one thing to be cheerful about at any rate

posting - what i am most scared about is the marriage breaking up - what we are doing at the moment is not helping, in fact i think it is driving me closer to divorce so i can't simply carry on as is.

bundle - thanks for your post. i'm sorry to hear you have "stuff" going on at the moment. hope the counselling goes well for you.

justabout - thanks for that!

darthvader - "even if it were true that you are reacting in a difficult and unconstructive way to the issues raised, the counsellor should be able to help guide you through in a positive way..." yes, this is what i think, i may be "scared" or "not ready to face issues" but the counsellor should be helping me through that gently otherwise what is she for?

countess - sorry couldn't get to the computer last night to email you.

i do think some individual sessions would help me and i will try and get something sorted.

thanks very much to all for your help