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hungrystudent , 22 Feb 2020

Opinions on therapist behaviour

Haven't posted here before so hello!

I was hoping to ask people's opinions so that I can do the right thing.

I used to see a really great psychologist for therapy for something other than trich, who helped me a lot. I'm thinking of going back to see her, but there's one thing she did that bothered me.

I'd never talked to her about pulling, because there were more pressing issues and I was mostly managing to not pull. But one time, after I'd been seeing her a while, I'd relapsed on my eyebrows due to stress, after several years of barely pulling and only in non-visible places. So I wore a cap to the next appointment, to hide them.

I was talking to her in that appointment about my social difficulties, and lamenting the fact that people think I'm weird (I have autism), and asked how I could seem more normal. She joked "Well, you could lose the cap when you're indoors!" So I said, "Can't. Got no eyebrows." I think she felt a bit shit cause she immediately apologised and went into heavy-duty empathy mode, but then she asked if I could take the cap off so she could see. I refused, which was extremely hard for me as I'm a compliant person and hate conflict. But it's now several years later, and I still remember that moment of horror and shame, and how hard it was to say no.

So this is my question.

If I go back to see her, I really want to say to her, "Never, ever just straight out ask a hairpuller to show you where they've pulled. Never. Not ever."

But before I say anything like that, I'd need to know that I wouldn't be persuading her not to do something that other people have found helpful.

So. If you were seeing a therapist, and as soon as they found out that you pulled, they asked to see it, would you find that unhelpful?

Thanks for any replies! Sorry it was a bit long.

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