Therapists, Your Biggest "I Know I'm Not Supposed To Judge You But Holy S#%T" Moment? (r/AskReddit)

therapists have read it what was your biggest i know i'm not supposed to judge you but holy [ __ ] moment 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 i was once in my psychiatrist's office ab monthly 15 minutes med check she asked me what was going on maura's conversation i told her that my in the last six weeks my three elders aunt and two uncles i was guardian conservator for had died one right after the other my wife had a heart attack my daughter attempted suicide and my mom broke her hip and had laid on her floor for a week before being found she drank and ate from the dog's bowls i got that call within 10 minutes of setting up the last funeral he stopped the meeting got on the phone with a therapist in the office next to her and had her postpone her next meeting to speak with me i was so fed up i had no idea i think she saved my life 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 judge the f 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 i 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 here's my most recent one as the pandemic worsened here in the us 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 or covered 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'm super extroverted and the struggle in 2020 is real i just spend a lot of time on discord chatting to people amazingly i haven't caught covered i work with youth and adolescents who have anxiety trauma and 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 abuse but you have to understand the emotional abuse 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 are scared of their traumatic nightmares but feel like you will just yell at them if they wake you up 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 shtai 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 who said she doesn't want to see a parent because they haven't paid child support excuse me what 5 yo knows understand or needs to be worried about child support just checking in that nobody wrote my story opie you mentioned you're getting ready to start therapy i know we're different but therapy was one of the best decisions i have made for myself it's good to have a neutral third party weigh in on what troubles you and remember you don't have to stay with a therapist if you don't want therapy like any psychological treatment is often more about trial and error to find what works for the individual than anything also you'll get out of it what you put in so be upfront frank and honest with your therapist that will help them work with you on determining the best therapy course for you i wish you the best of luck it too many goddamn responsible professionals i came here to read the salacious stories of how some docs went ham on patients and lost their certifications instead all i've gained is even more respect than i already had for the backbreaking and sometimes thankless hard work these individuals do every day work i could never do not with any consistency anyway responsible jerks when i was underage i got caught with a drink on bourbon street and got a minor in possession i was telling my therapist about it and said that the police caught me with a hand grenade in new orleans he didn't realize that a hand grenade was a type of drink and it was funny to watch him try to process that his patient might have just casually told him that he had been caught with a fragmentation grenade he took a big long pause and said where did you even find a grenade i realized the misunderstanding quickly and corrected him but for a moment he definitely was thinking holy sh how do i deal with this at last i have a similar story so this was back when i was in my first year of engineering study and i just thought that the materials paper was the sh i especially liked the whole steel section and at the time my depression and general situation wasn't amazing so it was one of the things sort of keeping me going yeah no so of course when my therapist asks about my passions and goals i said well i like steel and she paused and said okay what do you like about stealing this poor woman thought i had pulled out some surprise kleptomanialate in the game luckily like a good therapist she was non-judgmental but still obviously relieved when i corrected her 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 suicidal ideation who was dealing with a lot of sh 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 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 patient side here i had been seeing a therapist for a few months to help with chronic depression and self-harm with some pretty intense suicidal ideation i had tried suprax in the past didn't like the side effects and put it down but i was ready to try something new to supplement therapy everyone within earshot was calling welbutrin a miracle and lifesaver so i figured i'd give it a shot since my therapist couldn't prescribe drugs i got an appointment with a psychiatrist my first appointment i explain what i've got going on what i'm doing to work on it and what i'm looking for in seeing him i do a pretty good job holding myself together in public i dress myself i hold down jobs at that point i lived on my own now living with my partner all in all i've got a well-polished mask i guess it's too good because pretty early in our session he looked at me and said i don't think you're depressed bro this is the first time we met i've been here for 20 minutes and you're ready to reverse my diagnosis cool bro well i quit my last therapist because i made him cry uncontrollably he tried not to but he just couldn't hold it back i felt guilty and won't see him anymore i think he may have lost a child before i described watching my aunt grieve over her son's body i felt so much pain losing him but was explaining how watching my aunt was dramatically worse the details about her is what made him lose it i could tell he was reliving something inside his own head i work in healthcare and i've never heard a therapist psychologist or psychiatrist judge patients openly other nurses and doctors on the other hand holish at some of the clinics i've been in the conversations in the break room and at the nurse's station blew my mind 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 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 this sounds scary but props to the therapists that can deal with that stuff that dude seriously needs help but the fact that there are people out there willing and able really shows how far we've come as a society this is it everyone says x needs help and pawn them off to the system but what do they think the system is people helping these individuals those people are actual humans too 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 lead 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 of 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 that being said the people i worked with were expressing extreme remorse i know that working in this area could never be my specialty and i refer clients out because i would have to work through too much of my own feelings about their actions i talked about this with one therapist i know he said he felt sorry for one pedophile he didn't committed any crime but the attraction was there but also there was that mental struggle which he was trying to control and fear of failing so he seeked help as the child of a convicted pedophile who died in prison i can attest to the fact that most people get off on how much they hate pedophiles and don't bother thinking any deeper or engaging any more than that it's a hard thing to love someone or give them the support and help they need it's exactly because my father couldn't talk about it or get any help without judgment that the internal struggle compulsions evolved into external actions but nobody wants to talk about that and everyone just wants to blame them for being born with handed this problem obviously your actions are your own and you're accountable for them but it's useless and self-serving to take that fact and turn it into a smug blame game without ever envisioning a future where these people don't harm others and figuring out what role you play in that future i've never judged my patients my co-workers however i've judged the shout of those i'm also judging the hell out of myself for picking up smoking again but my patience never therapist people need understanding and empathy to work through their challenges therapist brain except for you you piece of therapist except for me 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 omg 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 not a therapist but a patient me and my fiance at the time went in to see if we could figure out how to make things work after he hit me after our art history came out and i divulged his infidelity etc the therapist basically said no there's no hope you need to get help for yourself so you can get the courage to leave and end this i was angry at the time but both therapists knew there was no point as he was as screwed up as it gets i'm a dude i was brutally red multiple times between the ages of seven and ten my one and only attempt to try to get help from a therapist was one of the most awful experiences of my life i attempted to get help in my early twenties upon first going in i was asked what had happened to me after explaining a basic outline of the abuse i could already see that she was very dismissive and seemed not to really believe me she then asked about my relationship status at the time i was in a long-term relationship with a woman who had two kids boys upon finding this out she immediately demanded the names and address of my girlfriend names of the kids and said she would be immediately getting in touch with social services to ensure that i wasn't abusing them i can't put into words just how much that destroyed me mentally that she could obviously see something in me that i couldn't see that somehow she was certain that i would be an abuser i started to cry she told me to pull myself together i also can't put into words the pathological visceral hatred i have for paedophiles and artists if i could get away with murdering the my word i would never never ever inflict the absolute nightmare i went through on any child i got up and left i came very very close to the edge of suicide that day i also immediately ended the relationship because i couldn't deal with the thought that the kids might be at risk because of me it's now 21 years later and i'm tearing up typing this because of that experience i have never sought therapist help again i survive mentally but it's not good survival they should be reported they are not fit to practice i just wanna show up when some low effort text to speech channel covers this can i answer from the other side i had something close to a mental breakdown after a painful breakup started seeing a therapist it was going more or less well at one point i had a sort of revelation about all my [ __ ] about my own responsibility in the whole mess so next session i'm actually thrilled to share this with the therapist about how i finally see a bunch of my own problems in the way i interact with women and which caused a relationship that wasn't really healthy from the get-go i'm halfway through trying to explain this and the therapist goes oh you know women are weird so that was that i never went back if that guy okay real therapist here i got one some of my clients are shockingly bad at giving themselves credit holy sh like they might get a nearly straight agpa in a brutal major while battling depression or overcome years of phobia and get behind the wheel again or write a literal novel or 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 this needs more attention i came here for juicy stories and ended up with an empathy punch to the gut our wednesday on reddit it is wednesday my dudes i'm a licensed psychologist and i'll tell you i've never judged my patience 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 in 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 as someone that's just about to start therapy this is very reassuring to hear [Music] so [Music] you

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Id: JvDHEnK00TM

Length: 19min 14sec (1154 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 13 2020