RL Peeves
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@Pavel said:
Yeah, that’s fuckin horrible, incompetent, and unethical therapy. Sadly common, but that’s not how it’s meant to be.It’s horrible. I’m not sure what a therapist could do about it, though.
I would guess (maybe because I’m naive and actually tend to think well of people until they really prove otherwise) that ex’s therapist is competent and ethical, but what’s he gonna do when the client lies and/or withholds so much relevant information that it’s a lie all but technically? The complaint of “My partner got mad at me and kicked me out of our shared house for an hour,” sounds terrible and is believable. “My partner stopped me from physically abusing a cat and insisted I go outside and cool off,” would be accurate, but the therapist isn’t likely to guess that. Ex’s therapist totally caused harm this way, but I can’t blame the therapist.
Ex’s mom’s therapist did similar stuff, and helped MiL harm me, too. Eventually that therapist did figure it out, and the result was really classic. MiL actually said, “My therapist says I have Borderline Personality Disorder and described it to me. It’s true, but it’s really disrespectful for her to have said that, so I fired her.”
There’s probably some super-expert therapist out there who teaches other therapists how to deal with this, but it does sound like a hell of a challenge and a special skill.
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It’s horrible. I’m not sure what a therapist could do about it, though.
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There’s probably some super-expert therapist out there who teaches other therapists how to deal with this, but it does sound like a hell of a challenge and a special skill.
Disclaimer that I’m not a therapist/doctor of any kind, but my understanding is that mentalisation therapy (MBT) can be effective on abusive types if they’re at the point where they actually want to change. That can sometimes happen after they’ve burned every last bridge and start to gain an inkling that they might be the problem, but don’t bank on it.
What I’m probably more qualified to say is what helped me personally, which is letting go. Like I would just stop spending so much energy wondering what’s wrong with them, and how they can be helped, and why they did what they did, and how they can be made to understand your perspective, etc. In a way they’re still controlling you when you have this mindset because your inner world still revolves around them, and you wanna snatch that right back and instead start thinking about who you are, and what you want, and all the cool things you can do without all that dead weight dragging you down, regardless of whatever irrelevant motives they had for all the nonsense they caused.
I have a family member who’s genuinely very insane, whom I still have to see on occasion. And I’ve come to just think of them as a cat. A cat has no intention to hurt you. A cat isn’t thinking about you at all. A cat doesn’t knock the glass off the counter or bite your feet and scratch up your legs in the night because of some misunderstanding, miscommunication, or wrongdoing on your part, they’re just doing what cats do. And no amount of tearfully explaining to that cat how important it is to you that they don’t knock the glass off the counter is gonna make them understand or care or not do it, because they’re a cat and have a cat brain. And it doesn’t make the cat evil, it just makes them a cat, they literally cannot comprehend evil. There’s no reason to ever take anything a cat does personally; they’re a cat. So then whenever I see this person and they act insane or make inappropriate comments about my body or whatever else I can just think: cat, and compartmentalise all their lunacy separate from any standards or thoughts or feelings I would ordinarily apply to interactions with an actual human being. Oh and you know, don’t try to rub their belly when you know it’s a trap.
That’s what helps me, anyway.
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Thanks to everyone for investing your time in my little gripe. I do honestly appreciate it. The matter is further complicated (or not) that I am an Operations Manager and he is a team member, so it skews power balance and things, I guess. Maybe.
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@Kestrel The online support-groupies I used to groupie with. Some of them were, for whatever reason, unable to go no-contact, and of that set was a subset who played Emotional and Verbal Abuse Bingo. There were quite a lot of cards made up where each little square was some common hurtful behaviour. It was a Thanksgiving event to compare results and ‘win’ chocolate bars. You might play it with your family.
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It’s complicated; every client is different, etc, etc., caveat, caveat…
Therapy, at its core, is helping someone to make a change.
Often, what a client thinks they need or want to change isn’t at all what they need to change, and it’s part of a therapist’s job to help a client explore those unseen avenues.
Admittedly, my scope is typically working with survivors of domestic abuse—there’s something delightfully fulfilling about being a Safe Male Figure in someone’s life for, perhaps, the first time. But the intention is the same: Help a client uncover maladaptive or dangerous behaviours, thought patterns, etc, and then with time help them overcome the need for such strategies, untangle the core of their particular problems while also helping them mitigate the impact of their, for lack of a better term, symptoms.
If all a therapist does is validate and ego-boost, they’ve failed both the client and themselves. That’s an emotional fluffer, not a therapeutic partner.
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