When you're upset with your therapist

When it comes down to it, the process of therapy is a relationship. It is being able to open up to someone and finding acceptance, care, empathy, hope and help. But like any other relationship, there can be times when things aren’t going so well. No relationship is perfect.

 

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That doesn’t mean that when you get upset, you should go and replace your therapist. You don’t just switch out family members or close friends. There are certainly circumstances in which changing practitioners is warranted, but you should always try to work things out with your current mental health provider. 

Part of why it’s important to work on repairing ruptures in your therapeutic relationship is because therapy is not entirely unique. You have probably had someone else similarly hurt you. You might have had someone react negatively to you in that particular way. But the great thing about therapy is that you have a chance to work through those problems. You have a captive audience, so to speak, where you can play out the difficulty to its full extent. This can give you incredible
                                                                                                                 insight into your other relationships.

But that doesn’t mean it isn’t hard when something upsetting happens with your therapist. Try hard to see what is actually going on. Was something she said offensive to you? Are you maybe working towards separate goals? Do you disagree with your current treatment plan? Was there a misunderstanding? You need to know what has gone wrong in order to fix it.

And if you want to know what it is, the only way you can find out for sure is through talking about it. Don’t be afraid to say something to your therapist. Some phrases you might try using include:

• “I feel like there is something off in our relationship and I want to work through it. What do you think about that?”
• “I’m not sure we’re heading in the same direction. Could you explain to me why you are choosing the interventions you are using?”
• “I’ve noticed that whenever I ______, you ______. Can you tell me why that is?”
• “It offended me when you said ______, which made me feel ______.”
• “I’m not sure if I/you understood what you/I meant when you/I said ______. How did you interpret that?”

The most important part is getting the conversation going. Therapists know to expect these ruptures. They are trained in how to deal with them. It happens all the time. You are just two people talking and that won’t always work out ideally. It can be a great learning experience. If handled properly, it can help both you and your therapist make progress.

It’s not easy, though, to negotiate when there’s been a breech. At one point my therapist used an intervention that ended up causing me some distress. This caused me to become hesitant to talk about the topic that lead to the intervention. We talked about why he did what he did and why it upset me. We then discussed how that situation could be handled should it arise again. It took me some time to be comfortable discussing that particular topic. I am still very careful about what I say when I talk about it. But we both have a better understanding of how to work with that issue now. I learned to trust him in a new way. He now knows more about what that topic means to me and can act accordingly. 

All in all, you can either look at ruptures in the therapeutic alliance as personal insults that causes resentment and mistrust or you can look at them as a genuine aspect of relationships being played out in the therapy room. I don’t think I have to tell you which is the most helpful when it comes to progressing in your healing. The skill of repairing ruptures is important to all relationships and therapy is an excellent venue to practice doing so.

Have you and your therapist ever not seen eye to eye? Tell us what you learned from it in the comments.