Is my counselor a quack?

In My Humble Opinion
1

I’ve been seeing a counselor for a few months now. Most of it regarding my emotions dealing with being in my first serious relationship in over a decade. And, the relationship itself is troubled. (Yeah, we’re back together again for those following)
In my past two sessions, my counselor has been copping a bit of an attitude with me. Basically to the tune of: “Why would you want to be with her?” “She sounds passive aggressive” or “You get what you deserve if you continue to be with her”.

Add to that, my counselor likes to tell me about her troubled marriage with her husband. Which I feel is kind of odd.

So… anyway, is that normal?

I mean, I would expect such feedback from a friend or random strangers on an internet board (Heh). But from a professional? I don’t know. She is only the second counselor I’ve ever seen in my life. So I don’t have a lot to go by.

2

What are her qualifications? Her training?

3

Not sure. I mean, I know she’s a licensed professional. I was refereed to her from my wellness program at work.

4

If you are not trained in counseling, I wouldn’t worry about what she says/does…

Have you asked HER about these things? I would recommend saying to her what you said above. That will help you the most!

You will get the most out of counseling if you are honest with your counselor. This is like taking in your car for repair because the trunk latch is not working properly - and never telling the mechanic it needs fixing. How is he to know the trunk latch needs work if you never discuss it?

5

Her job is not to tell you what’s best for you, it is to help you figure out what’s best for you. Anything else is, in my view, unprofessional.

Generally, self-disclosure like talking about her own relationships is looked down on in the professional community, as it makes the focus her, not you. In some rare cases, it works. In fact, my current therapist does an insane amount of self-disclosure, but it helps me because it fits with my personality (very open and about shared experience) and because she uses her issues as illustrative examples of how she deals with similar things. She does this very deliberately and intentionally, and I’ve never felt like she was taking the focus off of me. But generally speaking, I think self-disclosure is rarely done effectively.

Based on what you’re telling me, I don’t like it. If you have any reservations this early in the process I think it’s totally fair for you to find someone new. I know it’s weird/hard to reject a counselor, but I’ve learned to do it tactfully, and if she is a true professional she will be experienced and equipped to handle clients moving on.

6

To explain what I mean… this is what (in my view, based on having a lot of counseling) makes for good therapy.

You talk about your relationship problems.

She asks you the details of a recent incident gone wrong and asks how you might approach it in the future. She might offer a handful of suggestions. She might give you relationship homework. She might give you some tools for regulating your emotions, like mindfulness practice or CBT. It’s hard to say the best approach without a clearer understanding of your specific issues, but the point is, it should be either solution-oriented or acceptance-oriented, or both.

If she has serious reservations about the relationship itself, she might say,

''Where do you think this relationship will be in 5 years?"
''If nothing changes, do you think you will be content?"
''How likely do you think it is that things will change?"

There are plenty of ways to help people realize someone isn’t good for them without ridiculing and insulting them or their partner.

7

What you have to consider is whether your counselor is helping you or not. I don’t know how often your are going to see this person so a few months may or may not be enough time to make a judgement on that. You also have to consider whether your needs for a counselor allow you make that judgement well, so in that case it’s a good idea to look at her qualifications and experience. Even if it’s not clear if the counseling is working or her practices are valid if you have misgivings you should consider seeing someone else.

8

She does all those things and it has been quite helpful

She’s asked those questions too. It’s just that she seems to be pushing me in the direction of ending it with her. And when I let on that I’m not quite ready to give up just yet, she get’s frustrated with me.

My last session, I told her that my GF and I decided to try to do counseling together before throwing in the towel. She basically pooed all over that idea implying that it isn’t going to work.

I did not particularly appreciate that. But IDK, maybe she was just trying to administer some “tough love”.

9

If you have found her helpful up to this point, it’s totally fair for you to just tell her point blank that the pressure she’s putting on you to end things is not working for you. Hopefully she will adjust her approach in response to your feedback.

Something drove you to write this post, and I have to assume it’s a fairly high level of dissatisfaction with her approach lately. So she either backs off, or you move along. Your therapist should not be adding stress to your life.

ETA: I’m sorry you’re going through this. I would imagine after so much time alone you are feeling pretty desperate to make this relationship work. I wish you the best of luck in that.

10

Has your counselor mat and spoken to your current SO? If not, I’d say the comments about the SO are way out of line.

11

As a trained and licensed counselor, and former professional ethics board member, I couldn’t disagree more. The advice from** Spice Weasel **and **Boyo Jim **is much more accurate.

12

My counselor has never spoken to my GF.

13

Do you talk about problems in your personal relationships with your patients?

14

No. I’m responding to “If you are not trained in counseling…” Clients need to advocate for themselves and no one should trust that just because a person is a professional, s/he is practicing competently.

15

I realized that. I was asking if you would advocate acting like the OP’s counselor, i.e. talking about your own problems in your own personal relationships to a client. I am not in the biz, but that seems mighty “off” to me.

16

Yes.

17

It is. It’s generally considered bad form. My husband (who is a clinical psychologist) considers it unprofessional to do any form of self-disclosure related to his personal life, other than to talk about comic books and video games (he treats a lot of kids.) They know he is married because of his wedding ring but that’s about it. (The absence of information about his life can be highly entertaining when kids try to guess… one kid made up a story about how I manipulated Sr. Weasel into robbing a bank and then framed him for the robbery.)

If you had asked me before I met my current therapist, I would have said it’s unprofessional. When my current therapist started self-disclosing (not minor stuff - personal trauma, parental relationships, challenges with her kids), it totally threw me off at first. But it works for me. In fact, my husband sat in with us on a session where she was doing a lot of self-disclosure, and he walked away impressed as hell, even with his previous biases. He said, ‘‘Normally I’d be against this, but it so totally works for who you are.’’

So I’m not saying it never, ever works. But if Grr! is uncomfortable with it then I’d say this is not a case in which it works.

18

It depends on the particular relationship, the clinical issues, the theoretical orientation of the intervention, and the purpose of the disclosure. For example, it’s quite common for drug counselors to disclose a previous addiction in some settings. Or a therapist might use a personal example to illustrate something. If the counselor can’t explain in a way that make sense to the client why they’re using a personal example, then the disclosure is probably related to something in the counselor and not to the client’s needs. Also, some clients want no disclosure at all and even get upset by things like the counselor’s wedding ring (or absence of same). Others want a lot of personal information not related to their treatment. Some want a reassurance (like, “I need to know if you will still like me now that I’ve revealed I’m gay. Do you know any gay people?”), or it’s culturally appropriate to share some information. I don’t know if “my counselor likes to tell me about her troubled marriage with her husband” means the counselor is chatting, or whether she might have given some examples to illustrate something (like, “When my marriage hit some bumps, we found it helpful to go to couples counseling,” which might not be out of line). It’s an art, and I agree that the OP should voice concerns about this, or any other issues in the counseling itself, to the counselor, with the hope that this will give her some information to help attune her interventions (or give her clear notice that this isn’t what this client needs).

19

I think it definitely depends on the issue being addressed in therapy too.

Sr. Weasel treats kids with OCD, Tourette’s, ADHD, intermittent explosive disorder, etc. I don’t see a lot of room for personal disclosure in that context. The biggest challenge he’s gotten was about his age, especially for older clients, because he looks much younger than he is (he’s 33 but people mistake him for early 20s rather easily.) He would address those concerns not by revealing his age but by giving the client an overview of his experience and qualifications. In other words, he’s seeing past the specifics of the question and getting at the core of their concerns - what they really want to know is, is he qualified?

He is also really on the conservative side about virtually every ethical issue professionally, from self-disclosure to privacy concerns, so YMMV.

Whereas a huge part of what my therapist is helping me to deal with is managing a permanent, chronic set of mental disorders as well as cope with what remains of my trauma. It’s a less structured form of treatment, usually in the form of open discussion. Because she has experiences with all of these things, she has disclosed them and examples of how she copes with them. I find this to be very effective.

The most recent example is I called her on the verge of panic about possibly having ADHD (called because she’s on a long leave – long story.) She did a couple of things. She correctly surmised that the core of my distress was the childhood abuse that resulted from never living up to my mother’s expectations and always being accused of having something ‘‘wrong with my brain.’’ She told me she didn’t give a god damn whether or not I had ADHD, it was no excuse for my mother’s abuse and she thinks I am fucking amazing no matter what. (She did use that language.)

She said she could definitely see the potential for ADHD but that given my seizure history I should get checked out by a specialist. She cautioned me against taking stimulant medications due to my high anxiety, and shared the story of when she tried to control her ADHD with stimulants and had a severe anxious reaction that put her in the hospital. I further described my frustrations with distraction and incomplete tasks. I told her, for example, I’m really struggling to scoop my cat litter daily and it makes me feel like a fucking idiot. She told me how she manages to scoop her own cat litter by constructing a built-in reward system and gave me some very concrete examples of how she manages when she is feeling overwhelmed.

I left that phone call feeling 100% better.

I think that is the best sort of help you can get, and that too many people settle for much less. I am a staunch advocate of evidence-based treatments but there is a lot to be said for the perfect ‘‘fit.’’

20

Well what* exactly* are your goals here in talking to the therapist? You really need to define those fairly specifically or therapy is just any expensive conversation. I’m not clear on what you expect here. A non-breakup solution for dealing with a difficult relationship or difficult/not entirely compatible individual?

If a non kids, non-married GF/BF friend relationship is fraught, and high maintenance you think she’s being negative and slacking by telling you to break it off? This is effectively what any decent friend would likely be telling you given the context you have laid out. I’m not getting the “quack” aspect to her advice. It sounds like you have somewhat unrealistic expectations of the therapy relationship.