My Therapist Was Wrong, Part 2

You can read “My Therapist was Wrong” for context, but it’s not necessary. That’s a gentle exfoliation compared to the excoriation here. I’m not mad anymore, but I’m not done writing about it. It’s paywalled part way down, but if you feel like it would be helpful to read it, if, for example, you feel stuck in a bad marriage and need some encouragement to leave, just message me and I’ll comp you so you can access it.

For some background, CBT is not supposed to be long-term therapy; that’s one of its big selling points supposedly, that it’s not an open-ended, ongoing treatment like psychoanalysis.

Somehow, though, I got stuck having basically the same conversation with my CBT therapist every 1-4 weeks for more than 16 years. (I did eventually find a therapeutic approach that helped me fix myself, because yes, I was broken).

When my now ex-husband and I started seeing a marriage counselor in the same practice as my therapist, that person also extolled the benefits of CBT, that its efficacy was “proven,” etc. etc. compared to the shortcomings of regular, ongoing talk therapy and medication. When I brought up that I had been seeing his colleague for more than 15 years at that point, he paused, smiled, and said “well, some clients are just very special in the situations they are in.” Like I should be proud that I had “special” treatment-resistant PTSD or something.

It was weird, and not helpful, and another clue I didn’t pick up on that I wasn’t getting the help I needed.

The prevailing narrative in my first marriage up to that point was that because I was the “crazy” one, any and all issues we ever had in our marriage were my fault (notable: this dynamic was very similar to the one in my in-laws’ marriage, and in my parents’ marriage, too. The patriarchy held strong in this respect, in all three situations). So when, after a few sessions, the marriage counselor suggested that my husband start seeing his own therapist, I was grateful, and I signed a release saying that my therapist could talk to him, as did my husband with his therapist. I was ready for my secrets to come to light.

Otherwise, he, that marriage counselor, was a mess. He was our second of three marriage counselors altogether, and the one who did the most damage (e.g., suggesting that I “walk around naked” after I dissociated when my husband asked me for sex). He was awkward, talked about himself too much, and opened every session with “what’s changed?”, as if he could fix our marriage just by imposing his will on it. At the start of our time with him, he’d stated that sometimes, “success” doesn’t mean that the marriage survives, that sometimes, it can be a helpful way to have a healthy divorce. But he clearly didn’t believe it.

I hope some marriage counselors believe it and practice that way, but none of the three we saw did. It was just failure, failure, failure if we didn’t stay together; it reflected poorly on them, on us; divorce wasn’t the desired outcome. Whole industries are built on preserving heterosexual marriage at all costs, so being caught in a bad marriage is like being caught in a riptide: you have to swim parallel to shore, acting like everything’s okay until you sense an opening, a gap in the current, and then you swim for safety as fast as you can.

I had told my therapist about the affair I was having with Nate; it had become all we talked about, every session, up to and during the time my husband and I were in