My therapist seems politically opposed to my feminist views

[idontknowhowtodreamyourdreams]

I didn't know where else to post this and could do with a sense check/ideas as to how to deal with this.

I've been seeing a therapist for about a year for a range of issues, including substance misuse and recovering from abuse during my childhood and teens (sexual, violence). We've spoken about some really difficult and personal things that I have never discussed before and I have felt that the therapy has been useful. I thought I trusted him and trust is not an easy thing for me.

I'm a GC feminist. I'm also a lawyer and so I tend to have a legal lens on some of the debates around issues of trans rights and the rights of women and girls. I have talked in therapy about how I have found the tone of the debate around trans rights increasingly upsetting and hostile (on one side) and I had been upset over the discussion re the Supreme Court and the Equality Act. I've talked about both this and how hard it can be to feel like there's no space for women to express certain views without being dismissed or labelled.

My error (I totally accept I shouldn't have looked, but he should have locked down his settings) - I looked and saw a pic on SM of him at a protest. I don't want to out myself or him but he was holding a banner basically slagging off the Supreme Court.

And now I feel . . . the trust has gone. Has he been quietly judging me while I shared some frankly painful stuff? Does he respect my perspective? As I don't know if I can work with someone who doesn't. It's not a difference in political views, I feel like my views on these issues are fundamentally part of who I am as a person.

I know I crossed a boundary and shouldn't have looked, but would appreciate any thoughts as to whether I am being overly sensitive and/or whether it's something I should bring up.

Or maybe I am just wrong to care? Thoughts welcome!

It's totally unacceptable to claim that someone who believes in trans rights doesn't uphold women's rights also. They simply take a different viewpoint from you. They haven't let this view into their professional life and I suspect they aren't talking about their confidential therapy sessions with you on MN or equivalent.

I would not go back. I would under no circumstances bring this to therapy and attempt to discuss. I wouldn’t waste my precious time and energy. Good therapy isn’t an intellectual exercise.

How is it possible to protest the Supreme Court judgement and also comprehend the need for single sex provisions?
It reveals an unacceptable lack of awareness or care for women’s lives and boundaries, and a real disregard for the safeguarding of girls. At the same time as he surely has several female clients looking to heal from all the hurts caused by precisely these issues.

It was perfectly fine and sensible to look at his social media!

I have spoken of my beliefs and feelings about all this in therapy too. There have been times I’ve felt physically sick or deeply confused and blindsided by the cruelty towards women and girls of the past several years of gender nonsense. I wanted to explore that as I could sense the connections to abuse I had suffered personally. I found a wonderful therapist ( female, older) who helped unravel all that. No idea her personal views on gender matters but her understanding of the dynamics of abuse was outstanding.

You may feel strange or adrift to end abruptly but you can get through that. It’s you that’s had the strength to go to therapy and make such progress. You are worth more than sharing your most private experiences with someone who hasn’t the inclination or compassion to understand women’s lives. Other therapists are available! Very good luck.

@thelongestwayhome thanks so much for sharing this. I'm really glad to read that you found such a skilled therapist who helped you talk through and unravel some of this.

I would hope so too @Denimrules as a therapist has duties of confidentiality towards their clients and he would be in breach of those if he were to chat away. I on the other hand am not bound by confidentiality and can discuss the content of sessions with whoever I want, whenever I want and wherever I want. I don't owe him anything in that respect, thanks.

Thanks @Wolfpinkola. Maybe there is some truth in that and I will need to reflect on it further. Maybe it is partly an attempt to run.

Whatever you think OP, but therapy takes place in a highly personal space and for most the comprehensive confidentially aid healing and is part of the process. But we are all different

I work in this field and I certainly wouldn't see this as something worthy of declaring a conflict of interest - ALL counsellors will have a range of political opinions and actually I'd say a lot will lean more towards visible activism to some extent given the work they are in. They're counsellors because they believe in making life better for the community they exist in in terms of mental health so I don't think it's a stretch to think that will also extend to other political viewpoints. Do you think that a feminist would be unable to counsel a male? In that respect does it not matter what their political ideology is provided its one you agree with?

I'm strongly pro-choice but I've supported lots of people who are staunchly pro-life. I have also worked with people who've been criminally violent towards my demographic of the population due to their politics and honestly I'm not sure if they knew my background as they never directly asked me. I've worked with plenty of people who are openly racist and anti immigration or who have been abusive to spouses. With counselling or any similar profession you are taught that you will always have judgements and your own life experience clouding things (because you're human and we all do it on instinct) but crucially- how to recognise it and how to set judgements aside so you can focus on the goals and welfare of the client in front of you and how to present yourself as neutral. So if he's not GC in his free time I'd say that is okay - provided his focus is on YOUR best interests when you're in the room. I will always,always advocate the hardest for my clients even when I may personally disagree with them because I respect their right to an opinion that's different to mine and tbh I feel like I also learn a lot and get food for thought from them as well at times.

At the end of the day, you've snooped which I would say is an overstep- as you've recognised - counsellors are entitled to privacy and private life as well. And equally I would say yes, his SM should be more private. However, he may also work with people who are gender questioning who would feel safer in counselling as a result of his posts - who knows.

Either way I think now you've really left yourself with two options- either you decide this is something you cannot move past and you look for a different counsellor and you raise this at the start (although I'm not sure many counsellors will be that willing to tell you their political stances because they should be positioned neutral in the therapeutic space) OR you raise this with him directly. You be honest and explain what you've seen, admit you recognise it was a bit of an invasion of his privacy and state your concerns and see what he says. He'll either be able to reassure you and you can try to move forward, or he won't and you'll be able to walk away from it and look elsewhere having at least cleared the air in your own mind.

I would just say op, that conflicts do happen in therapy - I've experienced it personally when I've been receiving counselling, and in my experience- it's usually better to try to be honest so you can reflect on the right way forward (and a good counsellor will help you do that in a way that feels safe even if that means stopping working with them). But it's very easy to use it as an excuse to hide from painful work or as you mentioned 'run away'. It sounds like up to now, you've had a really positive working relationship with this counsellor and presumably if you hadn't looked online, you would have continued to do so. So up to now, his personal views have at no point clouded the quality of the work he's completed with you? That would make me think he's very good at keeping this all separate to focus on you, otherwise you seem shrewd enough that your spidy senses would have been tingling. I've left counsellors before that I just didn't feel I "gelled" with without being able to put a finger on why.

Also, just incase you aren't aware - you might already be - your counsellor should be undergoing his own regular therapeutic supervisions where he meets with another qualified counsellor to discuss (not the details or anything identifiable) his sessions and that's his space to unpick any unconscious bias or internal conflicts he's having with a particular client so he can park it completely and focus on their best interests. So while I said its not worth declaring as a conflict of interest formally (which I still would stand by), he may have actually been doing this informally in his own confidential sessions as a means to safeguard you and protect the quality of your sessions. But that's where you'd probably need to ask him what safeguards are in place.

I'd say 7 years is a very good amount of time for someone to have been qualified. You'd get a significant amount of experience in that time frame if you have had a regular client base. And many counsellors will have worked in parallel roles previously as the training is expensive. All of the counsellors I know have previously been support workers/ worked in mental health or with addiction etc in some capacity so would have many more years of experience than number of years post qualifying. Again, it's a question to ask if you want more detail which is fair enough.

She is quite clear it’s because he was protesting with a banner- it would be outing of her to say what the banner said, but would you still call it just ‘believing in trans rights’ if the banner said ‘decapitate a terf’? As some have? I expect his banner was not that extreme but can easily imagine it conveyed a strong ‘get out of our way with your whining about rights women and girls’ vibe, which shows no understanding or respect at all of how vulnerable a woman with the ops history would feel in intimate spaces with males where she hasn’t consented. It would make the therapy relationship very hard.

This is a fair enough point if we knew it advocated violence or similar, but we don't know that and that's a judgement op needs to make as she is the only one who knows what it said. Obviously this therapeutic relationship has been important to op up to now, so I don't think it's fair for us to give any advice thats not laid in fact so we're not derailing a positive support network op has had without knowing the full facts. So let's not jump to conclusions that he wants to decapitate anyone.

I can understand feeling you can’t open up now OP.

A lot of protestors against the SC judgment didn’t really understand what it was about or the implications so to me his attendance is more revealing than having more general pro trans views or just a different view to you. I’d question his empathy, ability to reflect, levels of misogyny, ability to independently assess or reason etc etc. I think if you bring it up how he responds will probably tell you everything you need to know about continuing.

I’m sorry for what you went through.

Other PPs have already talked about how getting into a political discussion or debate with him is deflecting from the therapy work, and that's something to think about for sure.

My guess is that if he believes that TWAW there's a strong possibility he won't perceive that there is any contradiction between his views around trans rights and women and girls rights and safety. If he believes that literally TWAW (to the point where he's going to protests) then he wouldn't see that there is any infringement of women and girls spaces. For me that is a fundamentally different view of material reality, and as the client I'm not sure I could get past it. If he's more of the #BeKind point of view I would feel a bit differently.

From your previous comments it doesn't sound like he's attempted to "educate" you or has talked about his own opinions in sessions. So that's a positive. You said he's been registered about 7 years, so he would have done his training during peak gender craziness. If he's in particularly progressive circles, which many therapists are, it's possible he's got caught up in a social contagion of supporting what he perceives as a persecuted minority, especially since the Supreme Court ruling.

I do think that gender is now something that has become uniquely destabilising in the therapy world. Like in many professions it's often impossible to talk about and there's a lot of self-censorship. I work in an environment where I wouldn't bring up gender or defer from the gender affirming perspective because I would be professionally ostracised. I avoid it in supervision. This is a huge problem and damages the integrity of the profession. This is going to be something the profession will have to reckon with as we start to see the effects of this belief system, particularly in terms of child and youth gender transitions. Sorry, going a bit off topic from your post there!

@idontknowhowtodreamyourdreams I hope you're able to navigate this safely.
It may be that you're actually leaning more heavily on this therapist than you realise, in your healing, and if you stop seeing him you risk relapse, worsening symptoms - at least until you find another service provider you can trust.
On the other hand, the thing about trans rights / gender identity movement in particular is the way they seem to have targeted women seeking help after experiencing sexual violence. If you have started to trust this person, and he takes it on himself to guide you to "reframe your trauma" (in the way that Edinburgh Rape Relief service were) - that will be, imo, gaslighting and super super damaging i.e. no you don't really know the meaning of your experience, you don't experience those male people as men you experience them as if they're other women - you don't know what the words coming out your own mouth mean when you tell your story. That is SO MUCH a replication of the damage of childhood abuse I think any risk of this happening makes the therapy dangerous.
I've thought about this alot because I think I'm very lucky I'm not ten years younger than I am. I accessed counselling through a women's only rape crisis centre in the noughts, and also a women only group for CSA survivors. I think the gaslighting if I was trying to access that help now would have broken me, broken my psyche.

I hope I'm not bogging your thread down with my own story and baggage. I really hope you can navigate this safely and for your own healing. It's a big deal for you to work out.

I think the poster who uses the analogy of white supremacy nails it. Could an avowed, card carrying white supremacist be an effective therapist for a black client, especially one who had been the victim of racist violence?

This man believes TWAW, so if you ask him if he believes in women’s rights he will say yes. So that won’t get you anywhere.

Personally I don’t think any male is really a suitable confidant for women’s sexual abuse trauma. It’s just too risky. Men just do not understand what it is like to be raped or vulnerable to rape as a woman living in our time and place and I don’t think they could be of any use helping any woman to truly come to terms with it productively. Especially this man who doesn’t appear to believe that women even exist outside the fantasy worlds of men. I would back away slowly from this therapist and find a wise, preferably older female as confidant. Don’t tell him why. He will only try to gaslight you and make you feel like you are the problem. You are not the problem.

I think the best thing you can do is end the therapeutic relationship. The trust is gone. Perhaps a letter would be better (and I have trained as a therapist so realise this unusual). If I were you I would explain that you have seen a photo of him at a protest online and you no longer feel comfortable discussing the ways in which you were a victim of male violence with someone who has publicly expressed views which make you feel unsafe). He can unwrap that one with his supervisor. Whatever notice period you have agreed you can pay him for.

He is a fool - not only to put such personal stuff up on public social media (and he is the professional in this relationship, not you) but to allow his political views to bleed into your discussion to the extent that you wanted to understand in the first place.

I agree with the other posters who have said that they would not go back and would not attempt to discuss this in therapy and that this is the start of you unconsciously trying to end the relationship.
You have looked at his social media and you have said that you are invested and attached and that it would be painful to leave. These things will not go away in this therapy setting now and I think you want out. I would find a professional way to draw to and end as soon as possible. I have heard that abrupt endings from therapy can be painful and I am not an expert so be mindful of that. I personally would not write it in a letter as someone else has suggested and hope that you don’t. If you do decide to end, hopefully you can find the positives and start afresh elsewhere ❤️

I think to some extent the discussion around whether or not he can separate his views from his work with you is irrelevant. It’s about whether you can continue now you know his views. For a completely different reason I once lost trust in a therapist and it just wasn’t possible for me to continue after that, it very quickly changed how I felt and in the situation I was in I couldn’t do the mental gymnastics to separate the two things.
While he has helped you over the last year don’t underestimate how much you personally have achieved and contributed to that progress. I’m not sure that starting and building trust with a new therapist would be any more difficult than working with one you don’t trust.

However, he may also work with people who are gender questioning who would feel safer in counselling as a result of his posts - who knows.

Well that, @Lavender14 , in the middle of the rest of your lengthy posts, tells me exactly why the OP feels less safe now.

And would those clients be told off by you for ‘snooping’ ?

I am also a lawyer OP and I would find the protesting against the SC decision as difficult to process as the TRA views. Nobody questions my boy Hodge and gets away with it.

I'd probably not return. I don't think I'd be strong enough to 'have it out' with him. I'd find myself a new counsellor and possibly with a bit of distance I'd explain to the previous one how I felt. He will write you off as a nasty TERF but realistically he likely views you as one already.

Don't be dismayed, the progress you have made is on YOU. Keep that with you and hold onto it. You have done amazingly well not to drink or smoke for a year (a year!) and you are learning to repair the damage of your youth. Those tools are within you now and you can continue to use them and to grow and learn.

Good luck.

I don’t think I could continue with a therapist who I knew had those views. You won’t feel that you can be open with him, and that’s obviously a very important part of therapy.

I doubt someone holding a banner protesting against women's rights will ever be able to get your point of view, OP.

I doubt someone holding a banner protesting against women's rights will ever be able to get your point of view, OP.

There are individuals who believe that gay marriage and abortion rights are politically contentious topics.

This isn't pontificating’ or ‘intellectualising’ etc, the Safe Space is at the heart of this.

OP, your therapist is supposed to be your own safe space.

Your therapist is someone who quite simply does not accept that in certain circumstances, including rape survivor groups, women might need a space free of male bodies persons.

As it happens you have been able to work with him, a man, and make your own good progress, but his political views tell you that outside his room he does not accept your need for that safe space or recognise what it is.

OK, as a professional he might be able to construct a therapeutic safe space for you but that is something he constructs and you trust in. He doesn’t believe you have a right to it outside his carefully constructed professional protocols.

Supervision blah blah… so he gets supervision partly to ensure he remains ok in the face of the trauma he hears. Like your experiences. What protects you, outside his room?

That is my non-expert, no experience take on this.

And I am so sorry that those things happened to you and you have been very brave in going through therapy and writing about it here.