Hi guys,
Every therapist I have seen, where I talk about my parents, and I have seen alot, either gaslights me further or acts as if I'm mentally ill and directs me to mental health services. No one it seems will believe my story. I am about to give up. How do I find a T that will validate my experiences and give me practical counsel and support?
A lot of them will lie to me, or mislead in the phone conversation and say they can help, then when i meet them in person they clearly can't relate and have no experience of dealing with this. Should I look elsewhere?
Welcome to the forums!
Do your parents seem to fit a definition of someone with a personality disorder? https://outofthefog.website/types-of-personality-disorders
A good therapist ideally can work with you wherever you are, even if they don't necessarily initially believe that you are reporting accurately.
If you yourself have been given an actual mental health diagnosis, maybe it would be worth while checking out mental health services. Do those services in your area include therapy?
Personally, I think that it is worth persisting in your efforts to get practical counsel and support.
Hi there and welcome!
I want to first offer some reassurance that many of us have seen therapists for many reasons, and it can take some time, interviewing, and initial visits to find a good fit. This is a very personal relationship, and finding a good match matters, as does building trust. I'm wishing you all the best on this journey.
Talking to potential therapists on the phone before meeting in person, as it seems you are doing, is a good strategy. What types of questions are you already asking? I don't want to assume that you are not covering certain ground.
Do you have a sense of the types of therapeutic modalities you are seeking? While it is not vital to know what you are seeking before going into therapy, and not all approaches are covered without additional charge to the patient, if you have something specific in mind, it can be good to ask for it in advance.
A good therapist also understands that the relationship is not forever. Several people on this forum will tell you that it can be "for a reason or a season." Some of us have switched therapists who were initially a good fit when we then later felt like we needed something else.
Quote from: HeadAboveWater on September 24, 2019, 09:05:59 PM
Hi there and welcome!
I want to first offer some reassurance that many of us have seen therapists for many reasons, and it can take some time, interviewing, and initial visits to find a good fit. This is a very personal relationship, and finding a good match matters, as does building trust. I'm wishing you all the best on this journey.
Talking to potential therapists on the phone before meeting in person, as it seems you are doing, is a good strategy. What types of questions are you already asking? I don't want to assume that you are not covering certain ground.
Do you have a sense of the types of therapeutic modalities you are seeking? While it is not vital to know what you are seeking before going into therapy, and not all approaches are covered without additional charge to the patient, if you have something specific in mind, it can be good to ask for it in advance.
A good therapist also understands that the relationship is not forever. Several people on this forum will tell you that it can be "for a reason or a season." Some of us have switched therapists who were initially a good fit when we then later felt like we needed something else.
I'm not looking for any particular "modalities", just someone who sides with the victim of abuse, understands abuse and has some degree of moral courage. Most people I have met are apologists for abusers and invalidate me. I am seeing a clinical Psychologist now, hopefully this one will have those qualities, not holding my breath though.
It's kind of an epidemic. There are a few therapists out there that can help you, and there are many with their own control issues. And some with their own issues compound the problem for people coming out of narcissistic abuse.
There is also no one perfect therapist. And even if you find the most highly-rated therapist in your area, you have to *eventually* wean yourself off that dependency, and weaning often is achieved through peer-to-peer groups like 12-step programs or online forums like this one which is an imperfect but effective journey.
I would just try to find someone who listens and is trustworthy, and that will give you the *muscle memory* of talking with someone who doesn't invalidate. I would not rely on seeing how many fancy degrees the person has as a gauge of whether they are the right therapist for you. Sometimes someone who has a Phd is worse and more psycho than a plain old LCSW.
Quote from: SaltwareS on September 26, 2019, 03:30:18 PM
It's kind of an epidemic. There are a few therapists out there that can help you, and there are many with their own control issues. And some with their own issues compound the problem for people coming out of narcissistic abuse.
There is also no one perfect therapist. And even if you find the most highly-rated therapist in your area, you have to *eventually* wean yourself off that dependency, and weaning often is achieved through peer-to-peer groups like 12-step programs or online forums like this one which is an imperfect but effective journey.
I would just try to find someone who listens and is trustworthy, and that will give you the *muscle memory* of talking with someone who doesn't invalidate. I would not rely on seeing how many fancy degrees the person has as a gauge of whether they are the right therapist for you. Sometimes someone who has a Phd is worse and more psycho than a plain old LCSW.
Thanks. I'm finding that the clinical Psychologists do tend to be more "cleverer" but there is a worry that they will just pathologies me. Which is again inadvertently siding with the abuser. I've almost given up finding a "normal" therapist who wont invalidate, misdirect, and make excuses for my abusers. Its quite honestly unbelievable and I'm beginning to think that therapy in general is just a sham and very harmful. Like I said no one has the moral courage to stand by me. It seems they are more afraid of my abusers than I am. I also think it's a cultural issue.
"It seems they are more afraid of my abusers than I am. I also think it's a cultural issue."
If your parents are in the picture and paying for the therapy, it's quite possible they're contaminating the therapy and making it impossible for your therapist and you to connect honestly.
I wish you the best. I went through this. Once I was able to pay for therapy myself without my parents knowing, I had better luck. But that only worked for a while, even my personal therapist eventually blew it and encouraged me to ask my parents for money which is such a bad idea, they use money to control you, and I had a hard time explaining that to my therapist. He didn't understand.
Quotebut there is a worry that they will just pathologies me. Which is again inadvertently siding with the abuser.
It's another bug in the system. If they're getting reimbursed through your parents' insurance, they're required to write down a pathology to get paid. But being the adult child of PDs, I HATED that. I am not the screwed up one in this situation. It's the PD!! This problem is compounded if the therapist tells the PD parent what pathology the teenager has.
If you can get a sense of a therapist who kind of gets that it's the parent, not you, and you get to a point where you "play along" with a minor pathology, but the therapist doesn't get too hung up on it, that might work.
QuoteThis problem is compounded if the therapist tells the PD parent what pathology the teenager has.
By law at least in the U.S. the therapist should not tell a parent the pathology they've used to get reimbursed for insurance.
Quote from: SaltwareS on September 26, 2019, 04:26:02 PM
"It seems they are more afraid of my abusers than I am. I also think it's a cultural issue."
If your parents are in the picture and paying for the therapy, it's quite possible they're contaminating the therapy and making it impossible for your therapist and you to connect honestly.
I wish you the best. I went through this. Once I was able to pay for therapy myself without my parents knowing, I had better luck. But that only worked for a while, even my personal therapist eventually blew it and encouraged me to ask my parents for money which is such a bad idea, they use money to control you, and I had a hard time explaining that to my therapist. He didn't understand.
I live in the UK and the thing is, I am paying for my therapy and my parents don't know about it. The therapist knows that I am living with my parents. Guaranteed, if my parents were out of the picture, i.e very elderly or living in a foreign country I bet I would get a lot more support and disgust about the abuse I have received. It's just cowardice and victim blaming, because that is easier.
Even the clinical psychologist that I am seeing now isn't looking too good. She wouldn't give me any references form previous clients and seemed uncomfortable and defensive when I asked for her personal opinion on generic topics.
Quote from: abusive_parents on September 25, 2019, 03:55:47 PM
I'm not looking for any particular "modalities", just someone who sides with the victim of abuse, understands abuse and has some degree of moral courage. Most people I have met are apologists for abusers and invalidate me. I am seeing a clinical Psychologist now, hopefully this one will have those qualities, not holding my breath though.
I just wanted to say that I have had similar experiences. I worked with a clinical psychologist for a while who was very, very slow to acknowledge what I was telling him about my childhood. When I made specific reference to physical injuries he seemed attentive but the rest of the time seemed to passively support their position over mine. Towards the end (when I ended the interactions) he admitted to 'prescribing' coercive restraint therapy to children, a practice that has long been known to be very harmful. I was just stunned that he would take my money for a number of sessions before saying this...
The next therapist decided she needed to confront me when I told her I had gone no contact with my adopted father and that although it overlapped with the death of my adopted mother had started years before. She pressed me to explain to her what I would do if he "died tomorrow", the thing is that I knew just enough about her circumstances to understand that her younger adult children may be doing something similar to her.
I realize it's a gross generalization that doesn't apply to all psychologists, but I have come to believe that choosing to become a clinical psychologist involves a certain amount of 'cognitive superiority/narcissism'. After all, the job involves assessing and judging (diagnosing by another name) people every day based on what are at best subjective interpretations of psychometric tools that often have questionable development, reliability and validity. How can I say this.... well, I have a doctorate in experimental psychology and have studied many of these tools extensively from a quantitative and theoretical perspective. Taking a more person centered approach though clinical counseling training seems more morally defensible to me. It was only a few years ago psychology regulatory bodies were pushing for prescription privileges... just another cling-on of how the field of clinical psychology suffers from chronic insecurity and the unactuallized desire to be medical professionals rather than the social/inferential scientists they were trained to be i.e. psychological science is based primarily on inferential statistics not randomized clinical trials.
The situation where a diagnosis needs to be assigned in order to receive insurance coverage is profoundly broken and dysfunctional. There are many social trends where increasing assessment and 'diagnosis' leads to social perceptions of increasing prevalence for various disorders. ADHD and ASD are a couple good examples... I won't get into the harms that come to people after being wrongly diagnosed.
Quote from: abusive_parents on October 04, 2019, 10:22:52 AM
Even the clinical psychologist that I am seeing now isn't looking too good. She wouldn't give me any references form previous clients and seemed uncomfortable and defensive when I asked for her personal opinion on generic topics.
I hope you find someone who is a good match.
I wanted to respond to these 2 points above. A therapist must above all else be confidential and not share any information about other clients. I cannot imagine a scenario in which it would be ethical for a therapist to share references. Secondly, a therapist's job is to help their clients reach their own conclusions about their own lives. They are not supposed to bring in their personal opinions, which would also be unethical.
There may be other reasons why this isn't a good match for you, but these 2 above make me hopeful that you may have someone who is behaving within their ethics.
Look for a therapist who specializes in trauma—even better if they mention childhood trauma. And don't be afraid to ask them for an "interview" by phone before you commit.
The therapist who did me the most good was someone I was very skeptical about initially. I was referred by my insurance company, and they did a surprisingly good job of matching me up with him. I was skeptical because he's a man, and because he's quite a bit older than me.
Talking with him on the phone set me more at ease. He answered my questions honestly, and he dropped the first f-bomb in our conversation, so I knew i could swear up a storm if I needed to.
As others said, don't be afraid to say it's not working if it's not. And do be willing to give someone a try, even if you have doubts initially.
Finding a good one, very hard. Just finding one who won't do more damage to you is a challenge within it's self. The last one I had called me a liar and said that there was no such thing as Narcissistice Abuse. This literally came 3 days before PDexgf emailed me on all of my accounts, breaking a no contact order. Sent the T screen shots, haven't heard anything back... wonder why.
Quote"Even the clinical psychologist that I am seeing now isn't looking too good."
I sometimes had worse results with people who had Phds, and *better* results with people who were LCSW (Licensed Clinical Social Worker in the states.)
It's a imperfect process. I also had some growth (the best cure for post-traumatic stress is post-traumatic growth) in peer-to-peer 12 step groups, even though my pdParents were not alcoholics. But that too is an imperfect process.
But it gave me some spiritual knowledge that the therapist I was seeing lacked. For example, prayer can be seen as a form of meditation. But my hyper-atheist therapist grew really nervous at the mention of "prayer" and said instead of prayer, I could look at the side of a steel bus and count down from 10 to 1. I was not arguing to the T that God is a person in the sky. I just found it helpful to think of an entity larger than one's self to pray to, that involves love. The T has yet to reach that stage in life.
Do your best, read the George K. Simon blog and books, and keep going. Try a T, see that T for a while, and grow yourself up.
Of course, you sound like you're growing yourself up already.
Thanks for all the responses.
Quote
They are not supposed to bring in their personal opinions, which would also be unethical.
There may be other reasons why this isn't a good match for you, but these 2 above make me hopeful that you may have someone who is behaving within their ethics.
Well actually I don't think its unethical to get a second opinion from a therapist. Getting told what to do maybe, but just a personal opinion on something, no. In fact if the therapist seems very uncomfortable answering questions, that seems to me to be a red flag. I want someone who is upfront and honest.
I have just fired my current psychologist because of this.
Quote
I realize it's a gross generalization that doesn't apply to all psychologists, but I have come to believe that choosing to become a clinical psychologist involves a certain amount of 'cognitive superiority/narcissism'. After all, the job involves assessing and judging (diagnosing by another name) people every day based on what are at best subjective interpretations of psychometric tools that often have questionable development, reliability and validity. How can I say this.... well, I have a doctorate in experimental psychology and have studied many of these tools extensively from a quantitative and theoretical perspective. Taking a more person centered approach though clinical counseling training seems more morally defensible to me. It was only a few years ago psychology regulatory bodies were pushing for prescription privileges... just another cling-on of how the field of clinical psychology suffers from chronic insecurity and the unactuallized desire to be medical professionals rather than the social/inferential scientists they were trained to be i.e. psychological science is based primarily on inferential statistics not randomized clinical trials.
The situation where a diagnosis needs to be assigned in order to receive insurance coverage is profoundly broken and dysfunctional. There are many social trends where increasing assessment and 'diagnosis' leads to social perceptions of increasing prevalence for various disorders. ADHD and ASD are a couple good examples... I won't get into the harms that come to people after being wrongly diagnosed.
I completely agree with you, and this is why I may just give up. But then who do I turn to for support? Private health care is a largely unregulated and profit making industry. In my opinion it is not ethical at all because of the inherent conflict of interest. These private clinical psychologists sit around all day and basically get paid to diagnose kids with ASD and other "disorders" from their bible, the DSM manual - which is largely unscientific and completely subjective. Parents, who I guess want a diagnose their kid with a mental disorder can pay people to do it. Is that ethical? How do these people sleep at night? I believe the industry is full of scammers and sociopathic types with no morals, and my personal experience has backed this up.
Quote
Try a T, see that T for a while, and grow yourself up.
I'm not sure abuse victims need to grow up. I am not living with my parents out of choice.
abusive_parents,
I sympathize with your problem of finding a good therapist. It can be challenging to find a therapist who "gets it" when it comes to dealing with the underlying dynamics of covert abuse, personality disordered people, or emotional abuse. In defense of therapists lack of knowledge, please understand that unless a therapist has personal experience of long term exposure with a personality disordered person, it is very hard to understand what it is like to deal with them. PD people and abusive people often have two different personas. There is the public persona they cultivate, and a private more abusive persona that is only seen behind closed doors. My best advice is to find a therapist who truly cares, has a strong sense of empathy, and is willing to learn about manipulative tactics abusers use such as gaslighting, smear campaigns, trauma bonding, and darvo etc. If you don't already know all of these terms, it is important in your recovery to learn them yourself because your personality disordered person is probably doing these things. If you already know these terms, and know them well, then that is great. You are already one step ahead in your recovery. When you are aware of the different terms, then you are knowledgeable of the different manipulations PD people commonly use. Then you can deal with your PD person more effectively. I also want to point you to the PD in laws section of Out of the FOG. In the PD in-law forum, we discussed this topic of finding a good therapist who "gets it" when dealing with a PD person. That way you don't get invalidated and further traumatized. Here is my post on finding a good therapist. It is called "Therapist invalidates my experience of emotional abuse." We talked about how to find a therapist who doesn't invalidate, and I gave an explanation of why sometimes therapists do invalidate due to their lack of knowledge. It's long, but hopefully it is helpful to you. Please feel free to click here to the link if you are interested.
https://www.outofthefog.net/forum/index.php?topic=81894.0
I am sorry I haven't had time to read your whole story or all of the advice on this post, but someone brought up the concern about ethics and privacy of giving a person a psychiatric diagnosis when they come to therapy in order to pay for insurance. Unfortunately, therapists are required to put a diagnosis down for each insurance patient in order for insurance to pay. There are privacy issues with this and issues of later being able to get life insurance if you have a diagnosis of depression. If you want to avoid having the label of a diagnosis, you can pay cash for counseling services and they won't give a diagnosis for insurance. I understand that this is expensive, but it is worth it if privacy is important to a client. I hope this answers your question and is helpful to you and others who are looking for a good therapist. There are good therapists out there. If a therapist is not a good match, find a different therapist and see if they meet your needs better. Keep trying till you find one. Also read and research about your issues in books and internet articles. This is a vital part of recovery to. At least it was for me. :cheers:
There isn't necessarily anyone we can go to for support. You can try therapy. I had very good luck with a therapist I saw in college when I was struggling to get good grades in classes I knew I was smart enough to excel in. When I went in with a specific goal, I had good luck. But after college, therapists became less and less helpful.
But. I had made a lot of progress in my life, seeing therapists on and off, reading self-help books, etc. Then I made a fatal mistake. I went to family therapy with my parents. The family therapist wanted us to mix our finances together. I told the therapist this was a bad idea and the family therapist didn't believe me and rolled her eyes that I would not take my parents up on such an offer. I deferred to the family therapist.
Well I turned out to be right, and the npdParents didn't follow through with their promise to pay for my health insurance which I made the mistake of asking them for (in the U.S. we have really expensive health insurance.) The family therapist was so surprised and horrified she advised me to move across the country to get away from my family.
I spent a few years in the wilderness because I mistakenly thought this family therapist was more of an expert than me. And when someone more expert than me advised me my parents were so scary I needed to relocate, I interpreted this as me being in imminent danger.
Eventually, I figured out no, I was not in imminent danger, that family therapist was in fact a fool. And many therapists are fools. And finally, because I had no other choice, I went to 12-step ACA meetings. I'd resisted going for years but now I could not trust therapists any more. And it was messy, I had to deal with some people were not as together as me, plus some people who were more together than me. But because it was peer-to-peer instead of one *superior* therapist and me being a client required to *submit* to that therapist, I finally traveled the final leg of recovery. When I say "grow yourself up" that sounds much harsher than it is. All I mean is a higher power is our only source of support. And that higher power is not a therapist. A higher power is not a single person.
It is a really tricky hand we've been dealt. We have to learn who to trust and we may make some mistakes in trusting the wrong people. And you may need to spend trust on an imperfect therapist, especially now.
I wish you the best.
gettingstronger1, thank you for posting that thread. Please read it everybody.
Quote from: SaltwareS,gettingstronger1, thank you for posting that thread. Please read it everybody.
SaltwareS, thank you for directing people to my post on how to find a good therapist who does not invalidate our experience of dealing with personality disordered parents or abuse in general. Treesgrowslowly asked a very valid question of why it is so hard to find a therapist who "gets it" when you talk about your PD parent. I have seen that topic here on Out of the FOG before, and I felt like it deserved a legitimate answer as to why people were being invalidated by therapist. In that post, I explain in detail why some therapists lack the necessary knowledge. Please understand that I am in no way excusing this lack of knowledge or invalidation. It is never okay to invalidate an abuse survivor, because they just re traumatize the survivor. At any rate here is the link again where I attempt to explain what is going on. Please understand that I am not the definitive authority on this. It is simply my opinion of things I have observed over the last 30 years as I have been on both sides of the mental health field as both a provider and someone who has also received therapy services. I hope it gives reassurance to anyone who has ever been invalidated by a helping professional.
https://www.outofthefog.net/forum/index.php?topic=81894.0