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?
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
You’re allowed to be annoyed by it. That’s an annoying thing to have happen. But yelling at her won’t fix the situation, and as you’ve already noted, is only going to make things worse. Feeling angry is OK. Taking it out on someone else is not.
Can you take that emotion and do something else with it? Make a piece of art, play a shoot 'em up game, listen to an angry song, etc?
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.
_ /\ _
Shit happens. Even for therapists
