Posted by crushedout on March 7, 2004, at 10:11:40
In reply to Re: Feeling invalidated, angry, confused (kinda long) » crushedout, posted by tabitha on March 7, 2004, at 1:11:43
Okay, so I was thinking a lot about this lying in bed last night, and here's one of the problems I have about expressing anger toward my therapist. It seems to me she has a conflict of interest. Usually, when I tell her about something someone did (for example, my father) that I either feel angry about or *should* feel angry about, she says something about how outrageous what he did was, or how it makes her angry, or something to that effect to validate me. You know what I mean? Sometimes she's even needed to be angry *for* me because I don't feel it (I know this contradicts what I said earlier in the thread about being in touch with my anger -- perhaps I was wrong about that at least partly).
Anyway, so if I tell her -- if we tell our therapists we're angry at them for something they actually did that was f'ed up -- not just anger because they can't meet all our needs or some other type of irrational anger which seems easier for them to validate -- how can they validate us without admitting to themselves that they've been jerks? What I mean is, unlike when you're discussing anger at another person for something they did *to* you, when you're discussing your anger at your T for something your T did that was "wrong," the T has a conflict between validating your anger toward her (by saying "what a bad T!!!") and protecting her own ego.
Am I making any sense?
poster:crushedout
thread:321200
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20040303/msgs/321556.html