Any pointers on finding a good therapist?

[TelHill]

Hello,

I posted about this before:
https://bpdfamily.com/message_board/index.php?topic=356005.0

and did interview a few trauma specialists. I have been seeing someone for two months and have had issues with countertransference again. 

I really want to shame and blame myself for this.  I am working on not doing this.

I wonder if I subconsciously select therapists who resemble my bpd mother in some way?  Sorry if this is more of a vent or if it doesn't make sense.

[Methuen]

Hi Tellhill,

I hope you are ok.

I can tell you what I’ve done that has worked for me, where I live.

I went online to the professional body for registered clinical counsellors in my province/state.  They listed their registrants (in my case there was over 500), and I was able to click on each and read their blurb which included modalities and areas of interest and specialty.  From 500 I narrowed it down to 5.  I connected with her write up, her modalities fit my wants, and she’s both a clinical counselor and a geriatric psych nurse with hospital psych experience in BPD, and she includes virtual therapy in her practice.  Since my BPD mom is 87, it felt like a great fit, so I briefly explained my story and hoped she would take me on.  It’s been great.  It probably took me a week to do the work to narrow down from 500 to 5, but it’s been worth it.

With my previous T, in person in my small community, I phoned around and had brief conversations with them, including asking about their experience with BPD.

She was ok, but I found a better person virtually.  I started the virtual sessions in August.  It’s an excellent fit to have a counselor who is also a geriatric psych nurse.  And shes great.

I hope you are able to find someone that is a good fit for you.

Take care

[TelHill]

Hello Methuen,

I'm well thanks!  I have been attending CODA meetings almost daily. It seems to help calm down my thinking. I'm treating myself with more kindness and others too. I never thought I mistreated myself with negative self talk but I did. I thought that's what I needed to accomplish tasks or I'd sit around the house doing nothing. I accomplish more (& sleep better) when I am kind and understanding towards myself. To be honest, this has helped a lot in a short time.  I've had to step back from working on my self-imposed isolation due to being busy with my small business. That should be done this week I hope!

The issues with therapists are my attachment issues. It's difficult to talk to strangers about issues and I keep going if they seem ok. I minimize red flags because I want to avoid anger from them. I agonize about stopping because I become attached to them quickly.

I do vet them for experience with bpd. I think the experience may be with teens and young adults rather than an adult child of one. It's quite different to be bullied by your caregiver as a toddler.  I think I need to be faster with cutting my losses. It takes practice and living with the pain and fear. The fear takes on a life of its own. I blow it up out of proportion.

Am in a very populous urban area in California where therapists advertise in the online Psychology Today magazine.  There are 5000 therapists within my city of 1 million. There are 600 therapists who state they have experience with bpd. I don't see a way to combine that with trauma when filtering though. I will start on it now and call the ones who look like they may be helpful.

[SaltyDawg]

TellHill,

It sounds like you have been through many therapists, and they all seem to have similar issues with countertransference, and that sounds very frustrating to you.  Unfortunately I find only about 15% of therapists are good, the rest have their own issues that they are dealing with.

Might I suggest some alternative therapies, while you are looking for a new therapist, and you might get some ideas listening to others.  I have used each of these resources, I tend to get the best results with an in-person group meeting with NAMI along with my individual therapist (who has a supervisory license and trains other therapists)

If you are looking for BPD specific help, you have this website, BPD family, you can post and ask questions 24/7 here.  NEABPD has also been mentioned, they have a long wait list, but they have a lot of videos.  I am a strong believer in self-help resources - like youtube, books, etc.

If you are looking for weekly Zoom meetings specific to BPD, sponsored (but not attended) by Randi Kreger, author of "Stop Walking on Eggshells" series of books at https://groups.io/g/MovingForward - look towards the bottom of that page for the list of Zoom meetings, some are general, others are specific.

If you find yourself at your wits end in crisis and have nowhere to turn in the middle of the night, you can try 741741 (text only) or 988 (text and voice) in the US.

If you think you are co-dependent, according to Google 90% of us are, CoDA can be helpful too (CoDA.org), it is not BPD specific.

NAMI has a group is for parents and/or partners (about 3/4 parents) of children with mental health disorders including BPD and other severe mental health issues which share a lot of the same challenges of care for a child who refuses your care, or they don't have the resources to care for them.  The group I attend is 'in person' which I find is more authentic than a Zoom meeting or posting messages.

My biggest recommendation is to be sure to do self-care as dealing with this is so emotionally exhausting, attending one or more of these meetings could meet part of that for you with emotional support - I know it does for me.

Take care with self-care.

SD

[Notwendy]

I can relate to how you may be feeling with the countertransference. Is it that the therapist is over sharing? I think some Ts may do this as a way to "connect" with their client but I think it's difficult for a client who felt overly responsible for their parent's feelings. BPD mother overshared so I feel anoyed when this happens- but is this an issue with the T or something that bothers me because of that experience? I don't know exactly.

I know it sounds simplistic to say "don't feel shamed" about your choices of T- we feel what we feel. I don't know if it is possible to predict the therapy relationship- it is a close one in a way - where we share personal information.

I feel lucky that I had a sponsor in CODA/ACA who I worked well with. I think meetings help but working with a sponsor is what makes the program effective. On one hand, we seek validation and support- but it's for our own good that they also turn the mirror on us. This isn't easy to deal with. There were times I felt angry at my sponsor but I also could see the benefit.

I also don't see choosing a therapist as a single choice. For me, therapy has been shorter term situations related to something - like when my father passed away, or dealing with specific issues with my BPD mother. Some therapists have been better than others. It's possible that the ones you chose don't fit what you need at the moment, or they weren't as experienced with BPD as you thought. It's OK to discontinue and/or change.

One of the most helpful things for me has been to work with a sponsor in the 12 step groups. If you are new to the group, check things out for a while. You will probably find that people come to the groups with all sorts of experiences and abilities to deal with them. You will see who the experienced members are and who might "match" you best- and decide who to ask if they are willing to be your sponsor.

[SaltyDawg]

Countertransference is defined as redirection of a psychotherapist's feelings toward a client – or, more generally, as a therapist's emotional entanglement with a client.

An article on it:  https://www.simplypsychology.org/countertransference.html

An personal example that is extremely blatant - my uBPDw and my first long-term couple's therapist (in the past decade) would take my wife's false narrative as believable, thus perceiving my true statements as false.  My wife had convinced this therapist, I was a self-focused narcissist, and she was the eternal victim of my bad behaviors (which she had established for first 2-2/3 years prior to my wife's most recent suicide attempt where I largely remained silent (unless spoken to) in couple's therapy, where my wife had befriended the therapist to the point where the therapist would almost always take my wife's narrative, no matter how false, as truth, and I didn't push back on it, since I wasn't believed when I told her she had more than one suicide attempt, and my wife indicated she had only thought of it once.

Towards the end of that therapeutic relationship (about 5 sessions from what would become the last one), I was pushing back on my wife's false narrative for the previous month.  I picked one topic to focus on, this time it was the parentification of our children.  I spent about 40 minutes talking about parentification, giving multiple examples, or asking my wife to give examples of our children's behaviors towards her and me.  In the last five minutes, the therapist changed the topic, to my knee (as I had mentioned it was an issue a few sessions before that, and my wife was fixated on it, as I was no longer being her unconditional house slave, as I told my wife I would limit my servitude to 4 hours on my feet per day). 

She then told my wife, I had spent most of the time talking about my knee, a topic that I had supposedly chosen to talk about, according to the T, (not true) with no mention of the parentification issue.

This is a blatant example of countertransference, where the therapist was so convinced I was a narc, she had to fabricate a story where I was obsessed with my knee, without specifically addressing the parentification issue I had raised for the first 40 minutes of the session in order to make the 'facts' match the therapists and my wife's feelings.  If this behavior is intentional it is gas-lighting; however, I believe, like my wife, it was subconscious nature.

My wife believed the therapist's explanation hook, line, sinker, and rod.  I know this therapist was an anorexic and I strongly suspected (after this incident) that she herself was somewhere on the cluster-B spectrum, as she reminded me way too much of my previous uBPD/uNPD-exgf.

In summary, if a T has their own issues, as many do, they are very likely to have some degree of countertransference.

SD

P.S.  In case you are not familiar with my story on this T, she eventually ghosted us as she indicated we are 'not a good fit' just after my wife smacked the sh!t out of the wall just before the 2nd to last session, where the T finally saw the light, and she gave me several parting gifts on how to move forward including changing her mind from my wife doesn't have BPD to "maybe, just maybe..." after my wife confirmed she had 6 suicide attempts (after staunchly denying the first five for years).  This T was well intentioned; however, she sided with my wife almost immediately, and it took 3 years to convince her otherwise.  It is largely a subconscious process much like borderline 'splitting'. 

[kells76]

Hi TelHill;

The issues with therapists are my attachment issues. It's difficult to talk to strangers about issues and I keep going if they seem ok. I minimize red flags because I want to avoid anger from them. I agonize about stopping because I become attached to them quickly.

I do vet them for experience with bpd. I think the experience may be with teens and young adults rather than an adult child of one. It's quite different to be bullied by your caregiver as a toddler.  I think I need to be faster with cutting my losses. It takes practice and living with the pain and fear. The fear takes on a life of its own. I blow it up out of proportion.

I wonder how it'd go for you to try a direct approach with a T:

"I need to be honest -- I'm struggling with what seems to me like attachment and countertransference issues in our sessions, and with how I seem to select therapists that resemble my mom in relational dynamics. I don't usually bring it up because I also struggle with fearing people getting angry with me about it. I am learning that I need X, Y, and Z in a therapist -- and not A, B, or C -- and I'm also learning that I need to speak up about it sooner. Would you be willing to help me by recommending some therapists that might be strong with XYZ and not too ABC?"

Might be good practice on a couple of levels: both getting you a T who really works for you, and also getting you some practice with speaking up to a T and working with the fear of their anger.

You know yourself best -- could that be an option?

[TelHill]

Hello everyone,

I truly appreciate your insight!

SaltyDawg, those are some helpful suggestions! I did try NAMI during the start of the pandemic. They were moving to the Zoom platform and all they had was the Family-To-Family class. 10% (2, including me) had a parent with a severe mental illness. The rest have children who suffer with these disorders.  (A couple parents were blamed or felt blamed for causing their child's problems by poor early parenting. :-(

I did look at their website for my county and they have a support group for Adult Children. Will attend for sure!

I have experience being blamed by my ex's lies and superior acting ability. It's horrible to be scapegoated.

Notwendy, those are good suggestions. I have had 3 very good therapists (have had the same success rate % which Salty Dawg said above.) It makes sense to stick to one area (fear of friends)  and diversify my support.  I believe you're referring to transference as being good. Countertransference isn't.  Telling the client exactly what to do, say that parent is difficult and not suffering from BPD, raising your voice to them week after week, telling them you don't believe they had the career or were employed at a specific company are examples which happened to me with this current therapist and the one before that.

CODA meetings have been more helpful and affirming than therapy. I had no idea it would've been so helpful or would have dealt with discussing unhealthy present day coping patterns due to an abusive FOO's maltreatment.

Kells, thanks but I have been direct and polite. It improves for a week and the next week the issue returns. I could be wrong but they may have problems hearing the depth of abuse we've suffered from our bpd parent during weekly sessions.  It may stir up long buried issues. I don't know.

[TelHill]

notwendy,

So sorry for saying you mixed up transference with countertransference. I totally misread that part. My sincere apologies.

Am looking forward to getting a sponsor in CODA. Am very glad it's helped you. 

[Notwendy]

Not a problem.

I agree that telling a client what to do, raising their voice,  and saying the parent is just being difficult is not helpful and it's invalidating. I'd feel off put by that too.

What the 12 step sponsor does is challenge us to look at ourselves. That can feel uncomfortable at times but since we can only change ourselves- that's where the focus is helpful. So if the topic is about the BPD parent, the sponsor might probe into how one responds to that, or "what is your part in the dynamics" to change the focus. Going through the 12 steps focuses on our own feelings like fear, resentment, and how that has an effect on our relationships. I hope that you find this to be helpful too.

Sponsors are lay people and also like all humans- bring their own personality into the dynamics. If you are new to the group, check things out for a bit- you will hopefully see who you feel would be a good sponsor to work with.

[kells76]

This makes sense:

Kells, thanks but I have been direct and polite. It improves for a week and the next week the issue returns. I could be wrong but they may have problems hearing the depth of abuse we've suffered from our bpd parent during weekly sessions.  It may stir up long buried issues. I don't know.

Maybe it's like -- if the T's were a good fit and could truly hear, then they would respond appropriately to you being direct, and you wouldn't be having the issue. There's both how the T's interact with the content you bring up, and then another layer of how the T's does "logistics"/metaconversations, and the fact that the T's don't do the metaconversations about process stuff -- or, at least, seem to do it, but don't make meaningful adjustments, confirms that they aren't a good fit.

Odd question -- have you tried male T's as well as female T's?

[TelHill]

Hi kells,

It's not an odd question. I thought of it myself.

I have really good health insurance from my former employer (one of the only nice benefits from this workplace!). My out of pocket expenditure is not much so it appeals to clinicians around my High Cost of Living area and the overwhelming supply of therapists in my home area. I could be wrong but wonder if this may be part of it?

I will be looking for psychiatrists who deal with trauma instead. It might be a better fit considering I cannot seem to shake the issue of a fear of people. All other areas of my life are not bad. I think I compartmentalized my life into one huge problem to cope and to be able to live away from my dBPD mother.

I appreciate your input, kells, and everyone else's input too!