today was supposed to be my first day of therapy and the therapist didn’t show up. I’m pissed off. I wasted 2 hours for nothing.
I’ve sent her a polite message, asking if she’s sick and hoping she is well, but in reality I wanted to yell at her. However, if I yell at her, chances are she won’t treat me.
Before you suggest to find another therapist, finding a shrink where I live is very difficult and the other ones I contacted have either ignored me or are overbooked. I need therapy and it bothers me to be so dependent on one person.
For those of you who have experienced something similar, how doesn’t it bother you?
Lots of advice here, some of it good, some of it questionable.
Two things I’ll amplify from other comments: there’s a reason your therapist missed. It’s could be anything from messing up in their calendar app to a pet or a family member being injured it passing unexpectedly. This falls into the “shit happens” category. You’re allowed to be angry, upset, disappointed, or any combination - your time was wasted. There are generally two outcomes - 1) the miss was unintentional or unavoidable or 2) the therapist is unreliable. Until you find out that it’s case 2, recognize that a couple of wasted hours - in the course of your life- is small potatoes (perspective).
Another is the concept of “agency”. There are things you can affect in your life, in your relationships, and in the world. There are things you cannot. Nobody can force you to allow yourself to ignore the latter. They will always get under your skin. However, if you find yourself dwelling on those items, try and take a step back and identify things in your life you control or which you can alter/adjust. Finding those areas where you have agency allows you to impart your will, to be a positive force in your life trajectory.
I won’t even begin to tell you this is easy. It is a process and a way of interacting. Here’s an example - recognize your disappointment with your therapist but take the initiative to reschedule. Taking it a step further, the day before your next meeting, confirm the appointment. It can be a text or email - simple, low contact. If you don’t get a response, escalate near the end if the work day (or first thing the morning of the appointment) with a call. These are things you can do to manage your therapist and your collective schedules. Most professionals (I am one fwiw) will not be offended in the least with good (but not excessive) communication. If they are, or if the therapist still flakes out on you - well, we’re back to case (2) above and you’re on the troublesome path of finding a new / another therapist. BUT - you’ve done all you can in your power to make this a success. Recognize your initiative as a positive, personal attribute you will continue to leverage in your life.
I wish you the best!
Get a job, get married, have children. In that order. It is a progressive program, proven time and time again in real-world trials. If you stall at any of the lower steps, do not progress further until you achieve proficiency. If you aren’t ready for a job yet because people are asses, try some tolerance building exercises like staying in one lane when driving, no matter how slowly the person ahead of you is driving.
The way to get stronger is to lift heavy things. The way to become tolerant is to be in annoying situations.
Shit happens. Even for therapists
Flip it around. If you missed an appointment, would you want them pissed off you wasted their time? Would you want them to yell at you? Most likely you would have had a good reason and would want them to understand. It’s most likely the same for them.
Except the therapist works for the OP, not the other way around. If it were just OP’s friend who stood them up, then you’d have a point. But this is someone OP had an agreed-upon appointment with someone they are paying to treat them. And also keep in mind that many doctor’s offices will charge for a missed appointment if the patient didn’t show and made no attempt to communicate ahead of time.
Sure, there are probably understandable circumstances that have caused this, and the therapist will probably make it up to them. But that doesn’t invalidate OP’s feelings and expectations, especially in the moment.
I’d feel safer with a person who raised their voice at me for being late, than with a person who just let it go.
God why? I wouldn’t want to be around someone so angry.
Raising one’s voice isn’t a loss of control. I don’t feel safe around people who let others abuse them, because I know their lack of a visible response doesn’t mean a total lack of response.
Someone who isn’t visibly addressing disrespect against them, is instead building up resentment.
People with boundaries that are too permissive are less safe, in my book, than people who address disrespect immediately and openly.
Do you mean “speaking up” when you say that? Because “raising one’s voice” implies yelling to most people, I think. If yes, then I agree. Being comfortable addressing issues like this is very valuable. That said, I disagree that not addressing it means they’re just “building up resentment”. They could be, but it’s not a certainty by any stretch.
Why is that? That opinion confuses me
Repressed rage tends to cause spectacular blowouts.
Emotionally mature adults shouldn’t have to shout at anyone in daily life. It’s not repressed rage if you have an even temperament.
I do know several volatile people who consider it normal to ‘blow off steam’ by having a raging argument every now and then. It may be helpful to them but it’s childish and unfair to those around them.
This is therapy. Ffs read the context.
Talk about being completely unaware…
You dont yell at your therapist either. Anger management seems like a good first target if you cant stop yourself from yelling at people.
No therapist should put up with being yelled at.
The context of the comment I asked the question to was a situation flip where they stated they’d be more comfortable if the therapist raised their voice in response to them being late…
So, yes. I wouldn’t expect a therapist to have anger issues like that.
I didn’t say “shout”. I said “raised their voice”.
Raising one’s voice means speaking with more force than casual.
You can split hairs, but I certainly don’t ‘feel safer’ around people who raise their voice to me. It’s intemperate, threatening and often bullying. But I can see we won’t agree.
Not only does this phenomenon have a name (Fundamental Attribution Error), OP’s situation is the example case given on the wikipedia page:
In other words, observers tend to overattribute the behaviors of others to their personality (e.g., he is late because he’s selfish) and underattribute them to the situation or context (e.g., he is late because he got stuck in traffic).
I know how you feel. I was ghosted by my therapist for months and so I just politely told him I am no longer in need of his services and went about my day.
I still haven’t found a new one because everyone else is even worse.
This fucking system blows.
The only time I ever caused a vehicle accident was in a parking garage at my therapist’s building.
I really needed that session, and he no-call-no-showed. I sat there in my truck feeling miserable, then went to back out of the space. I forgot there was a pillar to the right of my truck, and bent up the side of it scraping along that pillar.
It’s pretty unprofessional for a therapist to fully blow off a first session with no communication.
That being said, I’d honestly suggest that when you do start with her, you tell her how her absence made you feel (in a respectful way). Therapy works best if you come to the sessions being honest about your own flaws that you want to improve. It sounds to me like you don’t like feeling the way this incident made you feel. If she is a good therapist, she will not be offended and instead help to provide you strategies to manage the negative emotions you are feeling.
I legit thought you wanted thiccer skin from the headline.
Have you tried any of the remote options like betterhelp or similar? I have a buddy who is employed through one of these platforms, the flexibility for both client and therapist seems really great. It’s not at all a case of having sub-par professionals on these sites, if that’s a concern.
If you simply prefer in-person, that’s understandable too. Just know that the options are out there, location shouldn’t limit someone’s therapy options in 2024.
Rub the skin area often and frequently, it’ll grow thicker with time
For those of you who have experienced something similar, how doesn’t it bother you?
Get smarter. Back when I was younger, I’d often go on a date only to meet a ghost. Took me 2 times to learn to call the girl 30 minutes before the date to confirm if it was still up. No answer? I’m not getting out.
Your case was a professional appointment. I don’t suppose your therapist said she wouldn’t be available today? If she didn’t, that’s her fault. When you manage to meet her face to face, calmly state that it made her look unprofessional (if she gets upset at that, well, she’s not a good professional, imo)
In the meantime, just remember that whatever gets you worked up will be thrown into your face, either by life, internet randos or something else. Feeling angry is addicting, but it’s pointless most of the time.
No! Calmly state that it made you feel unsafe. There’s no reason to go straight to a character attack; any competent adult will recognize they fucked up when another tells them that their actions made them feel bad.
I am on the anxiety spectrum and have had anger management issues, panic attacks, and the whole business.
My coping strategy has evolved into something like this. I have done a fair amount of body surfing in my day. For this, there is an ideal type of wave you want to ride. Big enough to carry you, but not so big that it’ll bash you about. (My general rule of thumb is that I don’t trust a wave that’s taller than I am!)
So inevitably, you will encounter a big angry wave that wants to pummel you once in awhile. You can’t stop it. The best you can do is take a deep breath, dive straight into it, and let it wash over your head. Not a pleasant experience as you still get knocked about, but you know it will inevitably pass and you just keep your body loose and let it do its thing.
I think of something like a panic attack in the same way. People who say don’t stress over things are unhelpful. You can’t control that. But you can ride it out in a loose, detached sort of way. Let that wave consume you as it must but rest assured it will pass over your head eventually. And when I say stay loose, I mean literally. If you feeling your muscles clenching or your breathing getting fast, focus on those first before working on the detached, stoic mental state.
I hope this helps you a bit? I learned this all the hard way.
I think that’s a great metaphor and great advice. When it dawned on me that I don’t have to react it was actually quite relieving. It’s never easy, but it doesn’t have to be so hard.
Rather-than developing a thick-skin,
which requires enduring progressive hazing, as male-culture realized, oh, millions of years ago…
instead develop equanimity:
take-up whichever subset of yoga it is, that heals your metabolism right, see?
Frawley’s “Ayurvedic Healing” helps you identify which metabolism/dosha you are in, and once you’ve found that ( & you can do the foods-pacifying that metabolism vs foods-aggravating that metabolism experiment, too, using that book’s ingredients-list ),
then you use Frawley & Kozak’s “Yoga for Your TYPE” book, to find the subset of yoga asanas suited to your metabolism,
and you practice those, as a means of getting-past the inner/unconscious obstacles, until yoga becomes a natural habit, then you concentrate on piercing the unconscious-obstacles, while your habit of yoga takes care of which asanas you need, and are doing…
I’ve replicated both the undermethylated-DNA treatment & the pyrrol-disorder treatment in William J. Walsh’s “Nutrient Power”, and verify that they objectively work, but he left-out a couple key informations…
( there are 3 epigenetic disorders which underly about 90% of psychiatric-conditions, but the hatred in psychiatry when an Australian researcher gutted “ulcers are a psychiatric-condition” is NOTHING compared with what’d happen if the evidence that Walsh’s research is replicable were to pierce authority-based-medicine. The 3rd is overmethylated-DNA.
He also identified that some people’s biology accumulates lead or cadmium, as-in you can have several boys in the same family, in the same house, and 1 of 'em’ll be accumulating high blood-lead or high blood-cadmium, and they tend to end up in prison.
He also identified that there is an opposite-to-pyrrol-disorder with too-high-zinc, instead of too-high-copper, which also creates specific “psychiatric” disorder. )
I discovered that treating undermethylated-DNA disorder requires enteric-coated SAMe, taken with clear-water ( ZERO carbs or sweeteners of any kind ), 40-ish mins before breakfast.
Once the nausea hits, then you can eat, but it must get past the stomach, still sealed, for it to work.
It took 3 months to treat my undermethylated-DNA disorder, & then I discovered what ZERO-stress felt-like, for the 1st time in my life.
Never imagined anything like that, before…
It also removed my academic-drive, though, so I didn’t continue ( I could have lowered the dosage, instead )
I’ve also used Methionine to treat undermethylated-DNA disorder.
It works, I never had the dosage high-enough, and it took 4 months.
Each of those I’d done 2x, and all 4 of the experiments produced the same effect.
Pyrrol-disorder requires arachidonic-acid-precursor, which is why he mentions Evening Primrose Oil, but he doesn’t explain that that’s why he mentions it.
( assuming that people already know that is … stupid )
So, the components of pyrrol-disorder treatment are evening-primrose oil, P5P, I think it’s called, one of the B-vitamins, & zinc.
I found that a 50%/50% mix of zinc gluconate & zinc picolinate was best.
Do NOT use zinc citrate, which hits so fast, that it produces a savage emotional-roller-coaster & can lock one ( who has pyrrol-disorder ) in RAGE intermittently during the 1/2h to 4h after taking the zinc citrate…
( that is, itself, a perfect diagnostic for pyrrol-disorder, btw:
get a person with PTSD-style RAGEs on the P5P & evg primrose oil for a couple of days, then put 'em in a padded room, & give 'em either a zinc citrate or a placebo, & watch & wait…
IF the placebo doesn’t, but the zinc-citrate does, make 'em deranged, then that IS pyrrol-disorder.
No debate: that is as evidence-based as medicine can be, for anybody who accepts objectivity & scientific-method. )
Anyways, now I know to use methionine to “take the edge off”, whenever life’s crushing me, & I supplement zinc, to help my body keep … saner.
Mostly I’m using meditations to counter it all, though.
These work, I cannot test the overmethylated-DNA disorder treatment ( niacinimide & folate ), because I simply don’t have that condition.
May something in this hand you the leverage to keep a more-even keel when life’s smashing-you-up…
This stuff does work for me.
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Get a job in retail. You’ll be amazed at how fast you learn to not give a hoot about anything.
I think there should be mandatory retail service like some countries do mandatory military service.
I feel like society would chill out a lot.
“Zombie Jamboree” by Robert Merkin. A pretty funny novel about Vietnam War. At one point a draftee is asked about ending the draft. He’s against it because draftees are the people who are going to go home after the war and will not put up with lifers doing ‘lifer shit.’
I don’t think of it as developing a thicker skin, but after some weeks of practising metta meditation, I noticed that I found it easier not to take personally the actions of others. This is also known as loving-kindness meditation. It sounds very strange and yet it seems to help.
I used to think similarly and wonder how not to let these things bother me. Then that changed to letting them bother me, but for shorter periods of time. Now I tend to think of it as letting them bother me, but then not feeling bad about letting them bother me, which allows me to let go of those feelings sooner.
It’s not a quick fix, but it might help you very much over the rest of your life. Even basic mindfulness meditation, such as breath meditation, might suffice to start.
Good luck.
I stopped giving a shit when I was high on weed for 6 years. The bad shroom trip where I came to the conclusion that nothing matters (but it doesn’t need to matter) might have contributed too.
But really, you just have to recognize the things that you have control over and learn to let go of the things you don’t.
Your therapist is a human, and life happens.
It’s been my experience that people telling you to get thicker skin are abusing you.
