3 Tips for Telling Your Therapist They Upset You

Telling someone that they’ve done something to hurt your feelings is never easy. 

It’s vulnerable–you’re exposing yourself as someone who isn’t infallible. It’s opening yourself up to the risk that the person you’re trying to communicate with will misunderstand you. And while sometimes this sort of communication is exactly what we’re working on in therapy, it can still happen that your therapist says something to upset you in session. 

Maybe they poke at an old wound, maybe they misunderstand something difficult you’re struggling to communicate, maybe they’re reactivating old dynamics that hurt you in the past. No matter how it comes about, it’s possible–and in fact normal–that at some point, your therapist will say something that upsets you, rubs you the wrong way, or just generally hurts your feelings.

But, isn’t therapy supposed to be a safe space?

Yes! But your idea of a safe space might be different than what that safe space actually needs to be. Feeling safe and being safe–while both important!–are two different things. Things that make us feel safe might not actually be things that keep us safe in every context. If you grew up in a dysfunctional home, avoiding conflict may have literally kept you safe. Now however, in a different context, that avoidance can create more problems and be a hindrance to your emotional safety. 

A safe space isn’t a space where you will never face discomfort or conflict, it is a place that provides safety to you while you navigate those things. 

In that way, going through the experience of telling your therapist that they’ve hurt your feelings can be an extremely valuable tool in the healing process. Part of how therapy works is through relational healing–your therapist is someone who is there to hear you without judgment, who won’t be mad at you for expressing something unpleasant, and who will demonstrate healthy ways to navigate those moments with you, so you have a model for how it looks outside of therapy. 

Basically, therapy helps us to heal wounds we’ve gotten in other relationships by giving us a relationship where conflict is managed safely. 

So when you tell your therapist that something they’ve done has hurt your feelings, you’re giving yourself an opportunity to write a new script about what happens when you do that. When before it may have gotten you yelled at or berated, your therapist is there to listen to what you’re saying to them, to hear what you’re trying to communicate. When you do this more and more, you’re learning that conflict doesn’t just mean danger–it can also mean an opportunity for deeper understanding, stronger communication, and an emotionally safe relationship. 

That doesn’t mean it’s easy to do! We know it’s hard. If you’re trying to figure out how to let your therapist know they’ve said something that upset you, here are three tips: 

Acknowledge the difficulty of the situation: 

Starting the conversation is hard. But in therapy, you’re in a very unique position where the person you’re talking to you knows a lot about your emotional world, the history you have, and the general bravery it takes to be vulnerable in this way. It’s okay to start with “I’m struggling a lot with how to say this,” or “I’m nervous about bringing this up.” That’s actually helpful information for your therapist to have–they can help address the root of those fears as well as the specific issue you’re hoping to talk about. 

Tell them what you’re worried about: 

Are you worried they’ll be mad at you? That you’ll get kicked out of their office? That they’ll yell at you? Tell you your feelings don’t matter? There are so many reasons we avoid conflict, and they’re often informed by how we’ve experienced conflict in the past. It’s okay to call those fears out, right away. No matter how outlandish that fear may seem in comparison to the conflict, your therapist is there to hold space for those feelings, not judge them. And sometimes, just voicing what you’re afraid of lessens the feeling of fear!

Focus on the feelings it brought up in you: 

When someone says something that hurts our feelings, it’s often about something we’re a little sensitive about anyway. When your therapist says something that hurts your feelings, before you bring it up in session, reflect on what feelings that hurt brought up in you. Did it bring you back to a moment where you’d been hurt before? It’s okay if they seem totally unrelated–brains are funny little things and sometimes they latch onto moments that don’t make any sense to us. If you can let your therapist know not just what hurt your feelings, but how you experienced those hurt feelings, they can help address both the moment in your own relationship, and the history it brought up. 

Do you struggle to communicate when someone has hurt your feelings? We can help support you. Reach out today to get in touch with one of our clinicians! 

7 Blogs to Read if You’re Dealing with Chronic Illness

Living with chronic illness impacts your whole life. 

From your relationships, to your work life, to your self-image, chronic illness finds a way to influence everything. Many of us prefer to think that chronic illness is something we’ll never have to deal with, so it can seem jarring or even frightening to consider what our lives would be like if we dealt with chronic illness.

Part of the fear that comes from imagining life with chronic illness is that we live in a world that was not designed for disabled or chronically ill people to move through. We understand, on some level, how difficult it is to navigate a world that is at best indifferent to you and at worst hostile to your participation. 

When we understand more about the experience of folks living with chronic illness, it's easier to be empathetic and to extend compassion to others and to yourself. Studies show that six out of every ten adults in the United States are living with a chronic illness, so chronic illness is definitely not as rare as we might like to think. 

Especially in the wake of a mass disabling event like the Covid-19 pandemic, it’s important to consider what the world is like as a chronically ill person and what we can all do to make things a little easier on folks who do live with a chronic illness. 

To help make a difficult experience a little easier, we’ve gathered 7 of our blog posts related to living your best life with a chronic illness: 

The majority of people in the United States will experience chronic illness at some point in their lives. 

There’s no doubt about it - living with a chronic illness has an impact on your mental health because our mental and physical health is interconnected. Just because you don’t have to worry about chronic illness right now doesn’t mean that will always be the case.

It’s critical to understand the ways that chronic illness can impact mental health because the odds are that you will experience chronic illness at some point in your life, whether for yourself or through someone you love.

Read 5 Ways Chronic Illness can Affect Your Mental Health

Do you have a loved one who deals with chronic pain?

It’s not always easy to know how to show up for someone when they’re going through something serious or life-changing, like dealing with chronic illness or pain. It’s also difficult for folks who don’t live with chronic illness or chronic pain to really understand all the different ways that it impacts everyday life. 

Learning ways to be more conscientious about making plans and prioritizing accommodations for your chronically ill friends can make them feel safe and cared for, which is ideally how we want our friends to feel in our presence, right? 

Read How to Be There for A Friend with Chronic Pain

When you can have reasonable expectations for yourself & your limits, you can start to develop compassion for those limits. 

It can be frustrating as a chronically ill person to feel like your limits change from day to day. Your energy levels change, your symptoms shift, and it can be hard to find a routine that you can sustain for more than a few days. At times it can even feel like you’re working against your own body, which can feel heartbreaking and confusing. 

It’s important to learn how to be compassionate with yourself when you’re chronically ill. There are already enough things to deal with when you’re in pain or symptomatic without being hard on yourself on top of it. 

Read Developing Self Compassion While Living with Chronic Illness

Are you parenting a child with chronic pain?

Watching your child suffer is devastating as a parent. You might feel helpless when your child is in pain or stuck, like you don’t know where to turn for help. It’s also logistically difficult to parent a child with complicated medical needs, and parents of chronically ill children often feel isolated or burnt out. 

Finding ways to support both children with chronic pain and their parents as they navigate this complicated experience can help improve quality of life, even in the face of pain. 

Read 3 Tips for Parenting a Child with Chronic Pain

Since chronic illness is longer term than acute illness, it tends to ripple out and affect even more of people’s everyday lives, including their relationships. 

Unfortunately, the reality for many chronically ill people is that their relationships change after their diagnosis. There are lots of reasons why this happens, but it often feels extremely personal and painful. 

Many people don’t realize how isolating and exhausting chronic illness is, and since it’s a long-term condition, the impacts on relationships can be long-lasting. Practicing speaking up for your needs, setting boundaries, and practicing coping with grief can all help you navigate changing relationships in the aftermath of your chronic illness diagnosis. 

Read How to Cope With Losing Relationships as a Result of Your Chronic Illness

One thing that might surprise folks about living with a chronic illness is the amount of grief there is to navigate. 

Chronic illness has a way of changing everything about your life, from the way you relax to your job to your relationships. Major changes and upheaval in your life often lead to grief, and learning how to cope with that grief can make it easier to navigate. 

The grief that comes up in response to chronic illness can come from your changing relationships, the dream of what could have been if you hadn’t gotten sick, and even from the way the world treats folks with chronic illness. Learning how to move through the world in this new way takes time and lots of self compassion, and you’re not alone for feeling this way. 

Read Understanding Grief and Chronic Illness

If you suffer from chronic pain, the idea of body positivity might feel like asking a lot. 

It can be hard to feel positively about a body that is letting you down or causing you pain. Learning how to love your body and feel positively about it isn’t the only way you can have a healthy relationship with it, though.

You might need to practice readjusting your expectations and understanding your new limits. Remember that you and your body are worthy of respect and care, no matter what else is going on.  

Read Can I Have a Healthy Relationship with My Body Without Loving It?

If you would like more support in coping with chronic illness or dealing with body changes, our therapists at Hope+Wellness can help. Reach out today to make an appointment! 

Tending to Plants for Better Mental Health

Have you ever considered the benefit of taking care of something else as part of your own self care process? 

It may sound counterintuitive, but it’s true: creating routines where you tend to something else (a pet, a garden, a community project) benefits not just what you’re tending to, but your own mental wellness. Today we’re going to look at tending to plants specifically, but many of the benefits can come from making space to tend to other things (pets, community spaces, etc.) as well. 

So, how do indoor plants help our mental health? Here are 4 ways that caring for houseplants can help you care for your mental health: 

It helps promote mindfulness:

When you’re taking care of your plants, you have a chance to focus your attention on the nurturing that is taking place. Instead of your mind wandering around in a thousand different directions, you’re focused on the task at hand: which plants need care today? What do they need? Sunlight? Water? Do any need to be repotted or trimmed back? When you let your mind stay in the present moment, you reduce the opportunity for negative thoughts to land and stick in your mind. Taking care of your houseplants gets you into a regular mindfulness practice, which you can then bring to other areas of your life. It allows you to take the opportunity to slow down. We live in a hustle dominated culture, but that hustle isn’t always what is best for us! Tending to your plants requires care and attention so you have to slow down. . 

They give you reminders for your own care

Your plants need regular things like water and sunlight to survive; what are the things you need daily? You need things like food, water, and sunlight too, but what else? You need joyful movement, supportive relationships, opportunities for creativity and fun. Are your needs being met?

And sometimes your plant will need a change and you won’t know exactly what it will need. You might have to try a few different things to find the best way to take care of your plants; did you give it too much water? Not enough sunlight? A combination of both? It can be tricky to figure out what your plant needs and if you wind up giving it the wrong thing, just remember it’s all part of the learning process. This is also true for you. 

Easy companionship

Plants are living things! They have needs you have to get to know them to meet, they contribute to the well being and beauty of your space, and it’s important for the relationship between you and your houseplants that what each of you bring to the home is valued. 

But they aren’t like pets who require constant care and attention. Houseplants need us–we’ve taken them out of their natural habitat so it’s our responsibility to take care of them, but unlike a dog who might need multiple walks a day, someone to clean up after them, someone to devote a good portion of their day to petting and playing with the dog, etc. plants just need a good space to be in and someone to check in on them to make sure they’re getting enough water and sun. That makes them a good option for people who want something to take care of but don’t have the time or money to commit to a pet.  

They remind you small steps matter

Your plant isn’t going to fully grow overnight; it needs regular care. Watering it once and putting it in the window isn’t enough. This is a helpful reminder to us about our own wellness and growth: it’s a constant, daily practice. And each time we tend to our plants (or ourselves) matters and aids in the growth. 

Tending to houseplants has many mental health benefits, and it’s a coping skill you can keep in your mental health toolbox for when you need it. If you’re looking for other skills and tools to help support your mental health, working with a therapist can help you find what works for you.