Therapists Share Their WTF Moments - AskReddit

he had smashed their tv with an axe therapists what was your biggest i know i'm not supposed to judge you but holy hell moment i work with youth and adolescents who have anxiety trauma or depression some of the kids i worked with had some pretty severe attachment issues regardless of this i never thought i'd have to seriously explain you can't just buy a straight jacket for your kid feeding your kid ultra spicy ramen each night instead of the meal everyone else is eating isn't specifically defined as mistreatment but you have to understand the emotional mistreatment that this causes your kid isn't trying to kill you because they stand in your doorway at night crying that's likely because they're scared of their traumatic nightmares but feel like you will just yell at them if they wake you up i'll never judge someone especially someone who has come to me hurting the world is full of a-holes already that said i found out while i was still doing internships that i'm very uncomfortable working with abusers so i don't do it it took one recount of a man describing in detail how he was strangling his wife up against a wall and making her look at the beam he was gonna hung her from i got out of the office and told my supervisor i just couldn't do it it's worth mentioning i was just an observer back then i didn't act as the therapist my supervisor was she wanted me to be prepared to work not only with victims but with victimizers as well i'm a licensed psychologist and i'll tell you i've never judged my patients the world is so full of judgment and it's my job to objectively look at someone who's suffering and offer them empathy and a path towards healing the one thing i've judged is the situations that people survive and continue to live their lives i've worked with torture survivors survivors of genocide and famine i've worked with people whose entire villages were wiped out because a warlord wanted the water well that was sitting in the town it always gives me pause in terms of the anguish some people face and their resilience so if i have one message it would be in the words of rj palacio be kind for everyone is fighting a hard battle clinical psychologist working primarily in forensics here this means my clients are usually involved in legal proceedings family court juvenile court criminal court etc my job is usually to evaluate or provide treatment i'm not there to judge that's the judge's job but of course i have my thoughts i am usually impressed by the justifications people make for poor behavior the one that irks me the most is when parents manipulate their child against the other parent i've had to do therapy for a five-year-old who said she doesn't want to see a parent because they haven't paid child support excuse me what five-year-old knows understands or needs to be worried about child support during my training i was asked how would you feel if a client were to come to you and admitted they were a pedophile that was on the edge of committing seriously horrific acts could you see that person as another human being that needed help or were your personal feelings about the abhorrent behavior too strong this factor leads some people to not continue my course on to the next level but it really illustrates the level of non-judgment needed in this field we all have our own personal feelings of course but these get talked about in supervision pedophiles are a great example for whether you're cut out for this field or not i've thought a lot about this and have worked with a few but was able to view them as people having severe psychiatric troubles from trauma they've endured here's my most recent one as the pandemic worsened here in the u.s and more lockdowns are on their way one of my most extroverted clients and i brainstormed ways to meet her social needs while remaining safe the following week she cancelled her session and told me that she's positive for covid after attending an orgy which definitely wasn't one of our ideas i let out the deepest most defeated psy after i hung up the phone i feel like a lot of the comments saying that they never judge their clients might be working in voluntary services or they've been very fortunate in their client base judgement isn't an inherently bad thing it's how we know that murdering people is wrong so when a convicted pedophile client told me nothing gets me going like a pair of little girls worn panties you better believe i judged the hell out of him i continued to work with him and i treated him with compassion and respect because he's a human being worthy of both i did my job because i'm a professional but i can't honestly say that i didn't judge him a judge that he should never be around children i judge that he is not yet ready for change i judge that his access to his own daughter should be closely supervised that's a lot of judgments understanding your own inherent biases and how they influence your work is a very important part of training and practice once had a patient whose wife shook their baby to death he wanted help reconnecting with his wife at the time i was a young father of a newborn myself and he triggered a lot of fear in me for my own child a deep loathing of his spouse and pity the how pathetic kind for the patient i tried for three sessions met his spouse and everything before handing the case over to my supervisor who knew about my initial reactions and tried to help me through it unfortunately it ended up being more about my feelings than his and i was new to the profession at the time these things are expected to crop up from time to time but i was still taken aback by my own reactions lots of people discussing pedophilia as an example of the toughest stuff to not judge despite our training i haven't yet treated a pedophile thankfully at least not an identified one i did run a men's anger management group though and some of those men had done some terrible things to women most of them i found ways to like and admire for their positive aspects but there were two guys in that group i just could never find unconditional positive regard for one guy basically never spoke in group he would give one word answers and occasionally just discuss how unfair the system was to him i worked really hard to open him up and find things to connect over but he never opened up to me or the group he left the group after he strangled his girlfriend and went to jail she survived the other left group early routinely showed up late participated minimally and similarly never wanted to open up honestly he left early one group after we had discussed him staying to the end and threatened me when i told him he wasn't going to get credit for attendance something the court required oddly i eventually moved into the apartment below him completely without knowledge and listen to him scream at his girlfriend and break stuff while i called the cops i judge these men they're poor maybe they're redeemable but redemption requires self-exploration and they both refuse to do so it's worth noting how differently i felt about them than so many others in the group men i found ways to help and admire and respect even in spite of their awful behavior in the past my mom was a psychologist she passed away and those two stories are decades old one after two years of sessions one lady still felt she wasn't able to overcome her dog's ears failed surgery your dog needs to have certain specific traits to be able to do dog shows hers had flappy ears when pointy ones were required there was obviously an underlying personality problem but even though the lady really wanted to pursue therapy further she refused to work talk or address anything else 2. parents of a troubled child which turn out to be the problem themselves total refusal to do any kind of introspection try to convince everybody cps police psychologist doctor the kid was the problem they complained the kid was a kid a teenager at that point by growing too fast and costing money to feed and clothes he had smashed their tv with an axe turns out they hadn't speak or pay any attention to him in several years and they spent 99 of their free time watching tv the kid had no other behavior problem great in school very calm he just reached a point where he couldn't stand being ignore any longer so he had what she called a fried green tomatoes moment parents dismissed their responsibility the only problem they saw was the wac tv kid got emancipated at 16 and moved the hell out of there she had a private practice and the only time she expressed any judgment was when someone seeked therapy but refused to do any work or partake in the process paying a therapist is not paying someone to agree with you you need to show up you need to at least try i joined in a review of a secluded patient and he threw a cup of wee and poo in my face when we opened the door i tried to be objective about his experience but i just thought what a butthole i work in inpatient services so it can be hard to challenge myself at times individuals with diagnosis of personality disorder for example can do things that in isolation make you think they're just being bratty or manipulative but to think of the experiences that shaped them to react like that in a given situation can help to clear my judgment and find compassion harder when someone bites me or hits me with one of our fabulously detachable anti-ligature curtain poles though two contacts come to mind i often work with people in abusive relationships and it is incredibly common for people to go back to their abusive partners after leaving some studies show the average number of times someone goes back before leaving for goodies seven times i know why people go back and i get that it's often a combination of manipulation financial control gaslighting love low self-esteem fear etc but man it is hard to watch and appear neutral i can say i am worried about their safety but i can't yell for god's sake stop going back what is it going to take like i want to the other situation isn't really judging the person it's more judging ocd but ocd is weird the infinitely weird ways it can show up are so funny and bizarre again i would never judge a person for having the intrusive thoughts they have or doing the compulsions that are somehow linked in their mind to those obsessions but i absolutely judge ocd and constantly marvel at how creative and weird the human brain can be it's not often i get to talk about my profession but here goes i was working at a drug and alcohol rehabilitation center and had a client come in who was a self-proclaimed drug lord as we work together he told me about his history included in this history was how he got to where he was currently at during the conversation this man admitted to selling his sister into sex slavery forcibly injecting her with several sedatives and narcotics and having several people teach her a lesson what this meant he never shared he told this story with a blank face smiling only when he recalled the good times which he referred to as times when he had enough heroin to get through the day i'm not sure where he is at now but this man inspired me to work with victims of sex trafficking because not only do they deal with the stigma of selling their bodies they often manage drug addictions people would honestly be floored if they realized how many people were addicted to chemicals that they were forcibly given not a judgment you kind of train your brain not to judge because you are seeking to understand and help when you do those things you can't simultaneously judge we could all use a little more of that in real life i suppose i'll share this though i do feel concerned about this recent phenomenon of young people i worked with self-diagnosing sharing and identifying very closely with mental illness as if the pendulum quickly swung from never ever share your feelings to oh my god you're depressed all of us are too life's challenges can be tough and they don't need a scientific sounding label to be valid and real you are not your diagnosis we can find validation and support in healthier ways therapist here some of my clients are shockingly bad at giving themselves credit holy hell like they might get a nearly straight agpa and a brutal major while battling depression or overcome years of phobia and get behind the wheel again or write a literal novel or they raise a kid as a single parent with low income or build new relationships after being burned or cope with ocd well enough to hold down a job and they'll talk about themselves as if everyone on earth is better than them as if their accomplishments are worthless and i know it's because of depression or anxiety or another condition but i'm often stunned by how differently i see them compared to how they see themselves therapist here to piggyback on what others have said it is highly unlikely for me to have moments where i judge my clients it happens sometimes but i'm able to shut down those thoughts quickly in my head and return to being present for the people i see people are so incredibly complex that my judgment wouldn't have any meaning anyway and it doesn't have a place in our work together i will admit though something that does get me feeling a little salty is when i have a client's parent that attempts to sabotage the therapeutic relationship i have with their child or pulling them out of therapy entirely when some of the things we talk about challenges some potentially unhealthy family dynamics i don't feel anger toward the parents mostly i feel bad for the kid i work in mental health and have worked in acute and crisis settings for the majority of my career the most notable event i experienced was when a young person had presented with significant ongoing self-destructive ideation who was dealing with a lot of bs i spent a lot of time with them mostly de-escalation and working out what the plan should be moving forward one of their parents came in a little while later and i had the opportunity to speak to them about where their child was and what had been going on with their consent of course midway through me trying to explain some of the psychological constructs and ways the parent could help they said to me is this going to take much longer i have a show to go and watch all i can say is i never judge my patients i have never walked their path or viewed the world through their eyes but the people around them who perpetuate the suffering of the people i work with through ignorance malice and selfishness i judge them thanks for listening to radio tts hit the subscribe button and activate the notification bell for daily online therapy with no judgment click the right box for the medal playlist let us know in the comments what you think about these stories you

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Id: RLQ96DMFrkA

Length: 14min 17sec (857 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 12 2020