I’ve written about the wonderful therapist I worked with for 6-8 months or so during one stage of my recovery. She was awesome. I am eternally indebted to her. Strangely, she was not an anxiety disorder specialist, but we worked so well together. She was amazing at listening to me and letting me set the direction we went in.
She was not the only therapist I had experience with. When I was entering into my second “dance” with anxiety and depression in the 1990s I did go see a therapist for about a month. She was highly recommended and I was in a bad way, so I booked an appointment and off we went. This therapist was a lovely person. I think she truly cared. She was kind and compassionate and really wanted to help. But her theoretical orientation made her slam on the brakes and set up camp the minute I told her that my parents had divorced when I was about ten years old.
Was that a difficult thing for me? Of course it was! Were there all kinds of feelings? You bet. Are there still feelings? You bet. I recognize them. They are here. They are changing over time as one might expect, but I’m quite sure that I will have feelings about that until my time on this planet comes to an end. Why wouldn’t I?
Anyway, in the second session with this particular therapist, she took the experiences I told her about in the first session - panic attacks, anxiety symptoms, a growing sense of pointlessness, increasing difficulty in being home alone, intrusive thoughts about being poisoned, etc. - and glued them directly to my parents’ divorce. She explained that I was probably afraid to be left alone because I was abandoned by my father. She told me I was having panic attacks because I never fully processed and healed from the pain of the divorce. She explained that my obsessive thoughts about my food being poisoned were really just a manifestation of deep unresolved pain that had to be expressed.
OK then. When I asked why I did not have panic attacks for almost ten years between my first go-around and this one, she talked about subconscious processes and repression as a defense mechanism. When I told her that that did not resonate with me in any way and that it didn’t seem right, she told me that my response was just part of that same defense mechanism.
I did not know nearly as much as I know now about different therapy types, but I knew that this was probably not going to work out well for me. I did two more sessions with her. She wanted me to talk about how it felt when my parents split up and if I felt safe and cared for. Those are excellent questions and certainly worthy of asking. I do not deny that in any way. ALL the work must be done. Claire Weekes was not writing about my emotional experience as a ten year old child of divorce in a time before divorce was common and openly acknowledged.
(NOTE: If you have lived through trauma and it is playing a role in how you view yourself, the world, and your recovery today, that will have to be addressed. I will never deny or minimize that.)
I kept returning to the current experiences I was having and she kept trying to tie them back to 1976. About halfway through the fourth session I thanked her for trying to help me and for caring and told her that she could give my time slot to someone else that needed it. I have nothing bad to say about her. She was cordial and professional at all times and she left me with reasonable advice about exploring my feelings and not keeping things bottled up. No argument there. Well said.
The point of this little story is to give you some background on how finding a therapist that you connect with can be challenging. There was a mismatch between my problem and the theoretical orientation of the therapist. In this particular case, we have to acknowledge that sometimes there is trauma or abuse alongside an anxiety disorder. But sometimes there isn’t, even if a qualified and caring therapist is convinced that unhealed pain must be the source of all psychological disturbance. Had I not been loud and clear in what I needed and wanted (which was my right and obligation), that could have gone badly for me. In some ways, maybe it did go badly because I did not look for any other therapist and wound up medicating the problem within about 6 months. Would things have turned out differently if I had tried again with another therapist? Maybe. I guess I’ll never know that. But even in this speculation it’s important for me to reiterate that this particular therapist did nothing wrong. We just didn’t match up.
You’ve heard me talk about this topic now and then. Now you have a little look into my own personal experience when it comes to therapy and anxiety disorders. Maybe it gives you a better idea of how I formed some of my opinions in this area. How those opinions are maintained now is less about me and more about what I hear from you guys and about the state of current treatment theory, but an origin story never hurts.
“It never ceases to amaze me: the things people care about.” - Marty Rubin
Every Friday I’ll share one of my favorite quotes. They’ll often have direct application in recovery, but sometimes they’re just generally funny, inspiring, or thought-provoking. I hope you enjoy them.
214. That Time I Didn't Mesh With My Therapist