Therapist spent half the session arguing with me over politics..?
TW: talk of SA
Really not sure how I can continue with this therapist honestly, this seems really wrong but I've never had this experience before. Keen to hear any opinions.
I'm in therapy due to PSTD from CSA. I've been with this therapist for a year or so.
Recently I had a weird session with her. I had to start off by talking about this unrelated, random other thing that was necessary but did take up the first half of the session. No biggie.
We had about 20 minutes of the session left and I pivoted to the second (bigger) issue.
There's been some things happening here in our justice system and in our media and political realms that relates to my own personal experience. There's a petition calling to no longer allow sexual criminals to get discounts on sentences due to "good character" references. There's an article here if anyone's interested. It's become a political issue and is being discussed a lot here right now.
There was a big development that happened for me as a result of sharing this petition and using it as a way of talking about my own experience for the first time with the people in my life. And it wasn't the petition I wanted to talk about, but the stuff that happened afterwards, that's what I wanted to focus on in session.
My opinion and my feelings around the petition and the political discourse aren't complicated. I simply agree that sexual criminals shouldn't have sentences reduced because of "good character" references (that don't get even vetted btw). It's just my opinion. I don't mind if somebody disagrees with that, and I don't mind having a debate about it either, I just didn't expect that with my therapist.
When I first brought this up I didn't even address the petition/political stuff and tried to go straight to the stuff that happened for me as a result of this. She interrupted pretty quickly to ask me "what caused this?", which, fair question. I told her about the petition. She cocked her head and made this face like that was preposterous. I was confused by that. I wasn't sure what she didn't like about it. I just kinda assumed she'd be in agreement I guess. We kinda started arguing about it which was so unexpected.
Her and I not agreeing on this issue isn't great, but it wouldn't be a dealbreaker. I didn't want to argue about it though. I felt like she was really going in on this debate and even quizzing me. I actually told her that I couldn't remember all the details off the top of my head (I have really bad memory problems) so suggested that if she wanted to, she could read the article for herself later, that would explain things better than I could. I was trying not to engage in this argument and tried multiple times to just have the conversation move on to the stuff I actually really needed to talk about.
We argued about it until I had a few minutes left and I just abruptly said "well what I wanted to talk about was-" and rushed through everything. It felt so silly and pointless honestly. And at this point I was kinda worked up about the argument and feeling really confused. We hadn't even agreed to disagree and then moved on, I had to interrupt our debate and force the conversation back to what I was trying to talk about in the first place. And I got maybe 3 minutes to do that, when it was the biggest thing I wanted to cover in that whole session.
I just don't think it was professional, or normal, for a therapist to argue with a client about something like that. A difference in opinion is fine, but should we not have just agreed to disagree? Especially when this is a topic that relates directly to why I'm there in the first place.
Am I wrong to think that she should have just let me have my opinion? If this was an opinion that was causing problems for me I think then that would be reasonable, but this opinion is benign in the context of my life and also makes sense given my history. Honestly I wouldn't even have minded if she's let me know she disagreed, but to talk about it for 15+ minutes in a way where I felt like she was trying to sway my opinion.. It was so odd.
I'm curious what others would think of this, is this reasonable for me to be upset about?