My therapist made me feel worse...

Vent to US about exN,,for real,,we get it, we have been there,,,therapy is concentrate on bringing to you to next level, healing. In other words.... We here have all suffered an injury... We do not need to go reinjure ourselves,,, Stay away from the Narc NC Learn. Learn the red flags. Do NOT date for a while. Give it 18 months So you can heal. Seriously. You WILL get persective if you do this And you will NOT let it EVER ever happen again. Understand this from many perspectives, and you will be okay. By this I mean: Understand what Cluster B, Narc, psychopaths are. Understand how you were perhaps predisosed to attracting this type, and 'letting him in' or being empathic to the type. Understand that this was very destructive to you, to everyone. Learn so as to recognize the signs, and hold yourself to a highter standard. Work. Work on it. Empower yourelf. If you do not learn you will repeat the cycle.

That urge to disgorge yourself of all the stuff he did to you, and discuss why and how and all that . . . what it amounts to is obsession. A completely understandable obsession, and one that every one of us will do . . . until someone says the right thing at the right time and we go "Hey. Wait a minute. What about ME?" We must process it. MUST. Must get it out. Too much of a good thing becomes a bad thing (ask me about macaroni and cheese and my butt :P ). It is much easier to maintain your focus upon your Narc than to face yourself. Why is that? Because your Self is in a state of grief, rage, resentment and all sorts of very difficult and frightening emotions. Your Self doesn't give a squit about him. It is really pissed off at YOU. I'm sure you've read the posts by people who say "I can't believe I allowed this to happen. I am so angry with myself. I must be the stupidest person alive to have put up with that. What is wrong with me that I put up with that??" These people are looking at their own Self and getting majorly confronted. You can avoid this confrontation by staying focused forever on HIM and what HE is doing and what HE must be thinking or did think. What's really sick about that is that all you thought about when you were with him was HIM and now that he's gone you are STILL thinking HIM HIM HIM HIM. You have a very good therapist to not let this HIM HIM HIM go on. Your feelings of weakness and sadness after the session, of feeling worse than ever? THAT is what you are avoiding by talking about HIM HIM HIM HIM. And I have to say, I honestly feel for you because that horrid sense of victimization, of self betrayal, is about the worst thing you could feel :( But you can't ignore it, you have to let it have it's time with you. The more you resist it, the bigger and uglier it gets. Even though it is a simple thing, a simple matter of accepting with honesty what you think you did to yourself, it feels like a sea monster about to eat your boat. This sea monster is your savior. The feelings of weakness and self betrayal are avenging angels, they are ON YOUR SIDE. They are the residues of your healthy self trying so hard to come back into your life. Try to see them as your benefactors, not your enemy. Still, it is a very difficult period to go through. Ask any of us who have. It is inevitable, too, if you are going to recovery and come out of this better than ever. It will go much easier for you if you welcome it. It will show you it's angel wings much sooner than if you resist.

It sounds to me like your therapist was doing a good thing, and trying to get you to move on.

FUMB. Shortly after my horrific D & D I posted some details here and someone posted a simple reply "You must take a look at yourself to see why you would stay in something like that." I hurt and hit like a rock. But it was one of those "truth hurts" type hurt. I was not in the mood to hear that I must have been deeply troubled to allow these things with the N, but I knew that was true. I allowed him to slowly dismantle my life. I allowed him in my life when I was very vulnerable. Like the true predator he is, he saw my vulnerability and exploited it to the max. I was so weak that I couldn't discern exploitation from "caring." The thing is, my self-esteem issues and other deeply rooted issues have little to do with the N. He just made them worse. The D & D and NC have allowed me to finally deal with these things...difficult though it is. I agree with Darkspark and relate to what she said a lot. I am freeing myself from more than the terrible N thing. I am working on aligning with my true nature once again...something that got lost slowly, and if I'm honest, long before I met the N. I urge you to stay NC. FUMB, I can tell from your posts that you truly want to get "better" and that your inner-self knows the situation was and is messed up and not worthy of your time and your precious self. I hope this rambling helps some. In other words, don't feel like you're the messed up one, you're not because you know you have some work to do and are willing to do it. Hang in there, FUMB. Hugs to you, girlfriend. Sincerely (trying to stop) spinning

After the final D&D, I went to the on-campus therapist, who was also a professor. She had been my therapist AND the professor of one of my classes my freshman year when I first dealt with the ex-Psych professor. So, he was her colleague, I was her student AND her patient. Talk about awkward. My therapist has come to the conclusion that the whole situation sounded emotionally incestuous. After the final D&D, my on-campus therapist (this was 11 years ago) said the SAME thing. She told me to focus on myself, to focus on my feelings. It was incredibly disheartening. I had found more validation with my friends- who aren't professionals- than with her. In retrospect, she was trying to focus. She tried, to her credit, to get me focused on the positives in my life. My upcoming graduation. That MOST of my professors had been good to me. At the time, her "focus on yourself" and her "he's your teacher, not a friend" struck me as hurtful. I had been discarded like trash... and yes, I DID consider him my friend. (She also thought he was incredibly disordered&that I needed to keep my distance-very difficult for her, since this was a professional colleague-she did diagnose him as a Narc, if not worse) I felt down for the count, and that the person who was supposed to be helping me was hurting me. I'm not mad at her. I was frustrated, especially then, considering the circumstances. I felt like I was being punished for falling in love with a teacher... which was the theme of the whole final D&D. That I was being punished for falling in love.

It is completely understandable to me why you left your appointment feeling the way you did. Ultimately you will need to address those questions about yourself to really understand your own motives as you heal, so it is a good direction to go in. But it is hard to see even ourselves clearly until the fog begins to lift. There were control and abuse tactics which played a big part in why we stayed too long, why we might even still love or miss them. Come here when you need validation and to understand how their behavior affects us and why. We're here to remind you that it takes two healthy people to have a happy, healthy relationship and he is disordered. I think that in itself has to be accepted and processed just as much as our need to understand why we attract an N, why we miss the red flags etc. Journey on...

I know how you feel. We want answers about our N's and we want to talk about them and explain everything. I was seeing a therapist last Summer and she said the same thing to me. That we need to stop focusing on him and it's really about me. We need to talk about me. Well I didn't want to talk about me. I wanted to hear her thoughts about the N. I guess she's right though. It all comes back that it's really about us and we need to relearn certain things and learn to appreciate ourselves. I plan on calling my therapist again tomorrow and hope to see her next week. It's time to start working on recovery and not the narc.

I can understand how your therapist may have made you feel shut down in a way. It's hard when we feel like we just need to get the story out, get someone else to understand and acknowledge how we feel, get confirmation that HIS behavior is crazy, not ours. The thing is though, she's right. You are not meek, you are not weak, you are not a victim. You are strong and you will get stronger every day, so long as you focus on what you can change. Forget trying to figure him out; he is an unsolvable puzzle. But, you can figure YOURSELF out. I know in my case there were a lot of red flags that I missed. I can look at them now and see that they were there. Looking at them is empowering! It helps confirm for me that I wasn't just duped - I ignored a lot that I shouldn't have. This is great news, because I will never ignore those flags again. I am in control. Tough talk aside, I know how hard this is. I still have days when I want to curl up in a ball with a bag of potato chips and cry myself into a trans-fat coma. Good days and bad days, hopefully more of the good ones as time passes. Chin up! You are not helpless and you are taking steps to take care of yourself. It's okay to fall apart sometimes. You will heal. I'm sending you a big, virtual hug!