Went to therapy for the first time. Therapist made me angry. Agree?

[VIDEO: "What is parental alienation?"]

Wednesday of next week

[Rocknut]

Wednesday of next week

[rosannadanna]

Another thing I'd be careful with is coming up with your own theories. It's the T's job to do that, not yours... .  I would stick it out.

It's not a therapist's job to come up with insensitive, invalidating, perjorative, jargon-filled labels that are used to respond to a client that they are meeting for the first time.  Instead of talking about the structure of her therapy services, obtaining a psychocial assessment, briefly covering therapy goals, and generally starting rapport-building, she managed to really dismiss and invalidate your needs.

I stuck it out with a T for 3 months even though I didn't get a good vibe from day one. We had the occasional good session, but we never clicked. Maybe it was his presentation, or he actually didn't get me. They are human and if she doesn't seem helpful, you shoudl a)say that to her (like everyone has said) and b) think about finding a different T. Thats just my personal experience. My new T and I have a much better dynamic that works for me, the result is feeling like he "gets me". That's pretty important IMO.

Yep.  Sounds like you didn't jive with her.  Are there other therapists in your area you can try?

[rosannadanna]

"though, I also believe to label you codependent on your first session is a bit of a  . It may or may not be true, but I am always cautious about a diagnosis made without the context of time. As a new patient, the T could have focused more on establishing trust, getting to know YOU and making you comfortable with the process.

While we would all like to trust that T's are professionals and know what they are doing, the reality is some of them don't. I know first hand how damaging a T can be when they don't know what they are doing. It's very devastating."

I agree!

"I guess I wanted validation. I wanted her to awknowledge my wounds. She didn't even do that. She acted very nonchalantly about it. I said, "how could someone pretend to be something they're not for 4 months." She shrugged and said, "well I had a client that was married to 15 years to a husband that pretended the whole time."

The whole experience just seemed very off setting."

This is your therapy goal.  I personally think you have PTSD symptoms from this relationship and you need to talk about your experience in order to grieve and you need a therapist who is knows about relationship conflict, grief counseling, and PTSD.  It's gonna be pretty rare to find one that knows about BPD.

I do agree with your therpaist and others on board that you will eventually need to focus on inner work.  But it sounds like you are insightful and will get to that anyway after you grieve the relationship.  A good book for that is Journey From Abdandonment to Healing.

Good luck on your journey!

[Free One]

Yes, rosannadanna! "Crisis" work has to be done before inner work. It's hard to make progress when you are still coming to grips with the trauma. Stabilize, then focus on long term healing.

[trampledfoot]

I think that many of us on this board myself included can attest/admit to having some sort of co-dependency/rescuer issues. This is what draws us to BPD's and what draws BPD's to us. We are gasoline and the BPD is the match. Honestly, if your BF is/was BPD be thankful you only spent 4 months with him. Many of us on here have spent years some decades with BPD's.  We can all attest the pain the have caused us. 

However, at the end of the day you/we are sitting in front of a T not for them but for us.  So the sooner we realize this is about US getting better/healthy/happy rather than diagnosing or helping or exes the sooner we can move on with our lives.

I went through a similar thing I asked my T ":)o you have any books I can give my ex to help her realize"?  She looked at me like "are you kidding me" and I laughed I was like you are right I am hurting, I feel like garbage and I am worrying about diagnosing or helping my ex... .  havent we given enough of ourselves to this person over the course of our relationship.

Stay with your T and look within yourself for change and understanding.

[MaybeSo]

Building trust and rapport is usually the first goal of therapy, everything else builds on that. This, to my ear,  was a very unusual first visit. She sounds like she had had 5 previous clients with a similar story and lost her therapuetic stance out of fatigue or something, it's like she went straight to session 12 and skipped everything in between.

Don't pay a person to help facilitate a feeling of invalidation; you can get that for free all day long and twice on Sunday just walking around.

Pay for what works for you. If she wins you over next session, great. Otherwise, move on to a better therapist that can meet your needs.