Some of my comments in an email discussion with my support group about the letter I wrote to the therapist I'd decided wasn't working for me:
As for the way the preparatory phase kept dragging on and on without us ever actually doing EMDR...I would have been totally ok with that part if she had said, "Whoa, girl! It's going to take longer with you because we need to do a, b, and c to get you ready" -- and if we had actually done those things. Or if she would have said, "Since your dissociating is such a big problem, here's how we are going to address that." Instead, each time I asked her for specifics about preparing me, she would sidestep the issue with one of her little speeches that would never answer the question. But it usually worked to distract me. Then I'd get home and talk to my husband and he would point out that she still had never answered my questions, so I'd ask them the next time, only to get distracted by her non-answers...Now that my brain works better, it's easier to see through that shit.
I just realized something else. My husband read my letter and one of his comments was that June didn't realize that I'm not the typical client. None of us are or we wouldn't be part of this group. We don't just show up for our sessions; we read stuff; we discuss amongst ourselves; we grill speakers and authors with questions; etc. What I realized is that her speechifying and lecturing probably impresses the snot out of a lot of other people, but I was all, "Yeah, yeah, I know that already." When I would tell her a polite version of that, or ask her to recommend stuff for me to read so we could make more efficient use of our sessions, I think it really put her off her game. Also, I wasn't impressed with her knowledge because my attitude was, "Well, duh, I expect someone who claims to be an EMDR expert to actually know stuff!" So, instead, I was all, "What? Why is she is so clueless about how to treat people like me? She really thinks it's ok to touch me?"
