When your therapist is a tortured soul with unresolved issues, their issues will eventually show up in your therapy.
There isn’t enough training in the world that a therapist can undergo that will allow them to avoid their personal issues indefinitely. Eventually, a client will trigger them and they’ll react to something as a human being instead of as a well-trained therapy robot. What can help with that is therapists getting their own therapy, which is generally recommended. But they won’t be perfect, and it will show in a session at some point. Like in other relationships, certain combinations of therapist and client personalities and histories can make it more likely to happen sooner and more frequently.
It’s unrealistic to expect therapists to be able to keep things with clients at arm’s length all of the time. Acknowledging this, therapists and clients can both improve their ability and willingness to recognize sooner rather than later if their dynamic or their relatable past experiences and traumas are likely to cause more problems than they’ll help solve.
The responsibility of recognizing if a client might be too triggering for the therapist, falls on the therapist. The client is in a self-focused role and has limited ability to get to know the “real” person behind the therapist’s professional-facing persona.
Major differences can be evident in the beginning, but not always. Unless there are obvious big red flags, it’s too much to expect a client to be able to look objectively beyond the reasons they’re in therapy in the first place, and be able to differentiate, at least initially, which issues are coming from their own baggage and which issues lie with the therapist.
Many clients are reactive from surviving awful situations and haven’t developed confidence in their ability to recognize or trust or act on their gut feelings. If there’s an overlap of past experiences or trauma between client and therapist, things can be even less clear. Therefore, it’s understandable that an unhealthy dynamic between client and therapist might not be readily apparent to the client in the initial sessions.
Choosing a therapist is largely educated guesswork. Looking through online profiles for a therapist feels similar to using dating apps. You can often get a general sense of who someone is, but it’s just a snapshot and leaves a lot of unknowns.
When I stumbled upon Aaron’s profile on Psychology Today, I got the impression that he possessed emotional intelligence and empathy in abundance. His profile pic also gave the impression of a guy who buys organic produce and is an outspoken defender of human rights. He even looked like someone who reads actual books.
Based on my sessions with him, he did indeed seem to have empathy and to care about human rights. I found him excellent for when I needed to vent or process women’s issues and politics and many other systemic problems within our society, as well as the human condition in general. However, I was disappointed that he never appears to read or study. The only book he seems to have ever read is Come as You Are by Emily Nagoski. At least it’s a helpful book about sex. I read it and recommend it and am glad he suggested it to me. Beyond that, I’m convinced that he’d rather be waterboarded than read a book.
I personally prefer people, including educated, trained professionals, who consistently read and study. I think it shows their open mindedness and how they value knowledge and self-improvement. Those who study and read usually have more to contribute. After my experience with Aaron, I’ve decided to be more intentional in learning in the beginning how much any future therapists are actively engaged in reading and studying of their own free will. This is one way I’m more likely to tell how compatible we’ll be.
Another thing I took from Aaron’s profile, specifically his profile pic, was the feeling that he’d suffered from depression at some point and/or that he was a perpetually emotionally tortured soul. This was almost a dealbreaker level red flag for me, and now I realize it probably should have been. I have a history of getting with “nice” guys who turned out to be insufferable cavemen due to their inability to deal with their emotions (let alone anyone else’s needs!) in a healthy way.
In what should’ve come as no surprise to me, Aaron eventually behaved like an emotionally overwhelmed, addict ex-boyfriend in our final few sessions. This was crushing to me. I really do feel like our dynamic provided the perfect opportunity to safely work on and correct some of my unhealthy relationship and communication patterns. I’m convinced it would’ve been uncomfortable, yet highly productive for both of us. In that regard, I don’t feel bad about letting him be my therapist in the first place. Our relationship was also a terrific opportunity for a healthy experience of relationship repair after a rupture, which has been a very rare occurrence in my life and can be exceptionally productive. Unfortunately, like most guys who are emotionally tortured, Aaron Gleaves completely shut down and ended things between us before we got that chance.
Official Correspondence:
To My Fellow Members of The Tortured Clients Department,
For the confusion, frustration, encouragement, tension, beauty, idealism, honesty, fairness, respect, disrespect, negativity, optimism, elation, devastation, gentleness, and strength that he brought to my therapy, all of which culminated in a truly terrible and emotionally excruciating therapy termination, I hereby grant Aaron Gleaves membership into The Tortured Therapists Department.
Let other clients be warned herewith that Aaron Gleaves has shown emotional instability with how he interacted with me and is thus potentially emotionally unreliable as a therapist.
I enter into evidence:
My battered heart, from him making me think that he cared about me and me believing him and caring about him in return because of how kind he was and the way he showed up weekly as a passionate protector of my mental and emotional health, yet at the end he was very cold and acted without compassion for me.
My bruised ego, from him treating me at the end as though I was a failed student without any future promise, when in fact I was an industrious client who was consistently progressing in therapy and he had often told me so.
My confused mind, from him sharing freely of his wisdom, patience, acceptance, encouragement, and kind, noble spirit, then suddenly and coldly withholding everything from me without sensible explanation.
My conflicted feelings, for on the one hand I despise him for treating me like I’m nothing, and on the other hand I still care deeply for him because of his warm and seemingly genuine character and all of the support he provided me.
My pain, for the pain of being abandoned is like no other and cuts me at my core. This he knew was a deep wound to me and him hurting me that way feels like a huge betrayal and has reopened other such wounds from my past.
My withdrawal from therapy and sometimes from connecting with people in general as readily as I did before, for he has left a deep scar and I’m still reeling from him casting me away, and I don’t ever want to be hurt that way again.
All isn’t fair in love or in therapy, as we know all too well, my fellow members, but we can choose to be brave and resilient, and that is my hope for each of us.
Sincerely,
The Chairman
of The Tortured Clients Department