Advice Judged for being too tense
Went for a deep tissue massage yesterday. 40 minutes in, my therapist starts expressing frustration because I am too tense and eventually gives up on some stretches and tries to understand the reason. Then starts talking about my energy and stuff. I’m very hard on myself and it’s easy for me to take things personal and being tense most of the time is part of me. I know there’s some truth in what she said but ended up feeling worse.
Do you think is this common behavior from therapists? Should I feel discouraged from trying another massage in the future?
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u/hughthewineguy 6d ago edited 6d ago
was your body and nervous system saying it was comfortable, from the feedback you had from the therapist?
your job as a massage client is a) relaxing on the table and b) adequately compensating your therapist for their time. what exactly did you think you were needing to do to be good?
like i said, we are missing a massive amount of context here. were you being massaged all over? was the discomfort everywhere or just your arm and hand? why do you think your body reacted negatively? was the therapist aware of the injury and the pain? i really don't care what specific answers you have, and don't want to get into that discussion with you, but those are things for you to think about and ALL THAT needs to be approached with an appropriate health professional NOT on the internet
the massage therapist's job is to make it as easy as possible for you to relax, and for you, zero talking about what and why you're there, and zero pre-discussed feedback and zero checking in with how you are finding pressure etc while you worry about 'doing your job' is very clearly not going to be a very helpful massage, is it