Has anyone here felt like assaulting their therapist?

Not physically.
I've been angry and wanted to say things intended to hurt him. Some pretty cruel stuff.
I usually tell him. It's often stuff I've written out ahead of time and I'm no longer angry.
I feel conflicted about sharing them with him.

I've also wanted to hurt myself because I was mad at him, in part to hurt him

No, but my husband threatened to. Fortunately, he didn't know who my therapist was, but it caused some strife in the therapy relationship that thankfully we weathered.

I have DID. there were two young alters who acted up all the time, internally and externally. both of them, a couple years apart, tried hitting, punching, slapping our therapist. however she is bigger and stronger, and she was easily able to hold their hands down and stop them after the first attempt. which of course made them mad, so they started yelling at her and trying harder to hit. but she was able to defend herself. apparently this happened with both boys, just at different times. i dont remember the events very well but she told me about it and a couple of the inside girls did.
they were very angry kids who had a lot of angry words to say to her. sometimes she yelled back. which was fine. eventually though she hugged them which made them cry and after awhile they got attached to her, now they love her.

this definilty resonates with me, although i did actually SH a few times because i was hurt by things he did/didn't do and angry at him for it. since there was no way i could actually hurt him nor did i have the courage at the time to express that anger at him, it was more effective to take it out on myself.

i'm envious of those whose Ts have offered to let them throw cushions at them in fits or tantrums of anger. i did ask once if i could (even at time when he was encouraging me to be angry at him and 'express' that anger) and he denied me permission too, mainly because he did not believe in physical violence. he wanted me to 'talk' my anger out and express it with words. to me, the anger was so physically stuck in every fiber of my body that there was no way i was going to be able to 'talk' about it in an effective way to get the release i needed. i definilty felt i needed to do something physical with my body to release the pent up anger and T just didn't seem to understand that. needless to say, that was a missed opportunity that was never revisited while working with him.

this is the kind of healing emotional corrective experince that i often was hoping to have happened with my ex-T, especially when child parts were struggling with anger and disappointment with him. unfortunately, those experiences often were 'missed' or completely misunderstood by him and never happened that way.

i'm glad you have had those kind of healing experiences with your T SN

I've engaged in SH because I was upset by something he did, and even resentful. My own motives aren't completely clear to me because I overanalyze them so much. Like sometimes I'll SH because I'm feeling hurt by something he said and I know it would upset him, but I do so not intending to tell him about the SH, so it won't actually hurt him.
There have been some times I did tell him. It's just never clear to me when I do it whether or not I'm actually planning to tell him. I usually try not to tell him about specific incidents because I worry that it reinforces the behavior.

I think it's a bit different than your experiences though. It's not really that kind of anger. I never want to throw anything at him. I think when I want to lash out it's usually a desire to make him feel guilty. Like even the cruel things I want to say are meant to make him feel guilty.

When you talk about the anger feeling stuck, do you think screaming could help? Like as a way to express that kind of anger without words but also not physically?

During year 1 with L I threw a pen (sort of) at her out of absolute frustration.

I was somewhat shocked, as I said, when the vengeful impulses and feelings toward my last T showed up. I didn't get where they were coming from, what they were about, and they were very bothersome.

My cat gave me a clue, I think, about what they may have been about. She is very spoiled and gets up on the desk when I am working on the computer and likes to be petted. OK, for awhile. But if I go back to using the keyboard, instead of petting her, then she will "mouth" my hand. Not a vicious bite, just a little painful.

Well, she, of course doesn't have any words! And so, isn't she telling/showing me that she is irritated with me and wants me to stop doing what I am doing with my hands and pet her instead? Yes, it certainly seems like that.

What about people, or our ancestors, before there were words? Might not they have done similar things? Revenge impulses may be a way of demonstrating "Don't do that to me. This is what that feels like. If you continue to hurt/frustrate me, then this is how I will hurt/frustrate you, too."

So, then, when words or more "civil" ways of communicating or patterns of interacting fail, maybe the more primitive, active impulses may rear their heads.

That rationale helped me calm down a bit about how awful the impulses seemed, and to be more accepting of them and what they might be indicating.

Same. I still want this so much I cry reading about it. I too am glad others have been able to realize this.

Again, same here. I had never SH’ed before therapy and the lows I experienced (particularly after being shamed for verbal expressions of anger) are chilling after the fact.

Honestly, never crossed my mind to even think about harm physically or otherwise to my therapists (or anyone for that matter). Kind of glad that is an issue I haven't had to confront. Sounds frightening.

I think those people are taught to expect some violent fantasies from non-violent people. A quick google search will reveal that it is not uncommon

Oh, I'm sure it is fairly common, just not a common experience for me. Seems rather foreign; my brain just doesn't go there.

It seems like the effects of shaming clients for verbal expressions of anger are not well-recognized or accepted by the therapist profession? Or else, practitioners just ignore it. I got it, too, by two different therapists.

Chilling is an apt, frightening description.

A "hot" response would be a counterattack, I guess? Either one destroys any capacity to be relational -- which, in the presence of someone who shames you -- how would a relationship be possible?

It seems like Starry Night and koru_kiwi may have put their finger on it, though:

I never got that in therapy -- or anywhere else in life, for that matter. I don't/can't cry about it though -- still either numb or angry. Sucks!

Maybe I could imagine a world in which that had happened, though? Give it to myself somehow? I'm not going to try any more (potentially shaming) T's.

I’m really sorry here today.

I’m going to guess that a good number of clients who’ve experienced violent ideology might be stuck in a similar cycle - anger with no outlet which generates more anger.

There are obviously more than a handful of therapists who don’t get it. I understand that working with belligerent clients can be a difficult job, but I also think a good number of therapists are ill equipped to handle emotional turmoil. Seems most want to be idealized helpers and reap the warm fuzzies of the job without withstanding the harsh reality of the other side of human emotions. Anyone who does depth work with human beings should be able to accept all facets of a human personality.

It's strange - I've noticed this thread for the past several days and haven't been tempted to respond, but today for some reason I thought I'd look into it. Probably because I suddenly remembered how much I wanted to murder one of my former therapists. After terminating with him I bought a book called "Getting Even" or something like that and poured through it, looking for awful things to do to the guy, but they weren't awful enough - things like slashing tires - and I figured that if I ever got caught at it I'd just end up looking and feeling even more pitiful than I already did. I thought often about killing him, and I had the means to do so, but in the end I just couldn't sell it to myself, because I would end up looking just too pathetic, not to speak of being put in jail and leaving my husband all alone.

I read all the prior responses, but I'm going to read through them again in a little while a little more carefully. Some are heartwarming, some unbelievably sad.

Many hugs and much love to all of you.

I never have felt that way. Once in a while, I burst into tears and want to walk out, but I've only done it once. Fight, Flight, or Freeze?

I haven't felt any strong anger towards my T. At most, I've only been a tad annoyed. I hope I never get so angry that I want to think of violence.

Also, I'm afraid of expressing anger outside home, since I have a belief that it can only lead to bad things. For example destruction of treasured relationships, getting hurt & so on.

Anger is different at different times. I threatened a therapist once because he didn't seem to know the different between talk and physical violence. I wanted to make him get it. I wanted him to feel what being a small child victim of extreme physical violence feels like, even just for one second. It worked in that he was terrified, but. aargh, that didn't lead us to a better understanding. He was terrified, started to dial for the police, and then immediately switched himself back off again

I once smashed up a consulting room. That sounds shocking but I had been referred to this specialist woman when I was in a situation of terrible pain. She made the appointment but when I arrived she refused to see me because of some bureaucratic stuff, like I was the wrong age or lived out of area. She told the referral agency that she completely understood why I needed to lash out, and in retrospect I still feel proud of it. That was a more conscious decision - to let the bureaucratic system know that their mess-up wasn't acceptable. Yes I am proud of that carefully weighed up decision to let out my pain and rage. She said it was "justified". It was fighting injustice. But it didn't help my situation either.

Other times when someone didn't listen I just yelled, LOUD. Now I often just turn my back on someone who makes me angry. It doesn't take violence or shouting any more to make them see me, thank goodness!

that's an interesting question and sure, i have experienced times that letting out a scream has been helpful when i may not have had the right words or became so overwhelmed that i could not express my anger with words in that moment. unfortunately, those times that i have screamed in anger have only been in the safety of my home and often with my husband (not nesicarily at my husband, but in his presence). looking back, i never felt comfortable enough to let out a primal scream in the confinement of my ex-Ts office under my own agency nor did my T ever try to coax or encourage me to do so, perhaps because he knew that my anger was directed towards him and my perceived failings of his.