Every time I articulate an idea, a personal feeling, a vulnerability, or something about what’s going on inside, it’s as if a switch turns off in people’s brains. Like the ideas in my words just don’t compute and cannot be received by my spouse or even our couples therapist.
It’s a frustrating experience. Somehow, the thing they actually do receive is my frustration (in my tone, or my volume); but somehow the actual words coming out of my mouth may as well sound like “womp womp womp WOMP womp womp womp”.
Even as my spouse or therapist articulate an idea I can directly respond to them. But literally whenever I talk, no one actually responds to the ideas. They just pivot, change subjects, or generally act like nothing important was actually said.
What is happening? Is this a man-related thing? Or could it just be a me-related thing?
For added context: I’m a professor and have no problem communicating ideas in the function of my job at all.
Comments
Man up and speak up. Make yourself heard whatever it takes
What is it you’re saying? Could be the content, could be the delivery.
People read into tone of voice a lot. Try your best to not raise your voice and slow down when you speak. Even the slightest hint of aggression can cause softer people to shut down.
Have you raised this issue with your spouse outside of the therapy session? It may help getting on the same page before a session starts, so they’re aware of their lack of acknowledgement before it occurs.
You might be dead like Bruce Willis in the Sixth Sense
To me it sounds like there is a mismatch in what you think are neutral statements and what other people think of as neutral statements.
If I go to your house and say “your house is dirty”, I could argue that it’s just a factual statement, but 99% of people will perceive it as criticism to mean “you should clean up your house”.
That’s just something you need to work on and be more aware of.
My advice for your couples sessions would be to not say a word at all. Let your wife rant, even if she goes on for 3 or 4 sessions. Don’t reply, don’t defend, don’t correct her. Eventually the therapist will ask for your feeling/opinion and then you can ask for the same respect you gave your wife and ask her to let you finish.
At the moment the two of you both feel unheard and keep talking over each other, just perpetuating the problem of neither of you feeling heard.
Your spouse doesn’t care what you say. Not good.
Your therapist is listening but doesn’t want to judge you or tell you what to do. You need to ask if you want a different style.
Not all people are smart people. Staying on topic is HARD. They birth just might not be the brightest. Also, is this an actual therapist who studied psychology, or a better help quack?
It’s because you have a bad therapist
I’d suggest getting your own personal therapist and discussing this with them. They can help you work out strategies, plus whether it’s your perception of a situation OR you need a new couples therapist.
When you are saying. Are you saying it in a structured manner? Cause it may be the stress getting into you and the way you say it makes it quite jumbled. Making the receiver not grasp the context but understand the tone.
Maybe try slow down and cut the thoughts in small chunks to see if there’s response to the smaller chunks, then proceed once the first part is understood
I’d make them say the highly important ones back to you to check they understood.
Are you very emotional? Emotion regulation helps, some times we get so emotional it’s hard to see past it.
Or a number of reasons, without specifics it’s hard to say.
Not every therapist is good for everyone, sounds to me like you’ve got one of them.
Taken what you’ve written at face value if the therapist is following your spouse’s lead/behaviour then it’s possible they’ve picked a side, which also isn’t good.
Either way it’s not going to help anything so you’ll need to change them.
You sound coherent on here and from what you’ve said generally coherent (such as with your students). Even if you were expressing badly in the context of therapy there should still be some clear effort made to understand you.
Is there a strong criticizing element to it? Such as they’re criticizing your tone and delivery but ignore the point you’re trying to express?
I’ve heard of cases where bad therapists prioritize and push the needs of the wife over the husband and it ends up becoming a subtle 2 vs 1 emotional and psychological beatdown. There’s not enough context to say for sure that’s what’s happening here but it’s something to consider.
Dear god get out of therapy as quickly as you possibly can. Therapy is the most over-prescribed treatment in America today. It’s a racket to keep you coming back, indefinitely, with zero guarantee of results, and in this case prescribe additional therapy on top of the couples counseling. It’s clearly not a helpful tool here and it’s causing you additional frustrations on top of your relationship issues. More specifically that particular therapist seems utterly useless. Save your money.
The bigger question is, outside of therapy, does your wife listen to you? Does she respond directly to you? Do you believe she wants to resolve this and stay together or do you feel she is merely going through the paces of therapy to say she gave it a try before an inevitable split?
I went through several rough patches with my wife over the years. At various times we tried different therapists. We ended up firing them all because they made things worse. The only value they added ultimately was helping us realize by their own generic script-based incompetence that all we ever needed to get through it was was each other in the first place. But both have to want that. And all the therapy in the world isn’t going to bring love back into a relationship if it’s already lost.
>Her: “This week he raised his voice at me and was clapping his hands. It was really scary.”
Soooo. She doesn’t see you as an equal, but a patient. At least that’s how it sounds. Sounds like she does see you as inhibited/mentally handicapped and want’s to “fix” you with a easy fix, expecting whatever bothers her to simply go away.
She treats you like you have heavy cognitive disabilities.
Not taking anything you say seriously.
As others have said, she preforms for the therapist.
She doesn’t even see you as a peer. But herself as your guardian. She 100% only blames you for your couples issues.
You both seem to lack basic respect for eachother. I understand your lack of reapect when treated like that.
How did you become spouces in the first place? Why are you tryong couples therapy? You don’t seem at all compatible in the first place.
Unless your wife accepts and actually sees you as an equal, nothing is gonna change.
The therapist is imho milking you. Because he tells you both, that you need individual therapy. Before that nothing will change. He will listen to you, because he still makes his money as long as you go.
Either change your therapist or separate/divorce already. There is too much mismatch between you guys, too little respect for echother, lots of soley blaming the other party, and arrogance and contempt for eachother.