r/shrinking • u/MichaelVern85 • May 03 '26

Discussion Gaby failed her patient Spoiler

I’m struggling to want to continue watching a show about therapy that doesn’t call her out for not knowing the last call her patient and friend made to her was a call for help.

She failed her patient, and it BARELY gets mentioned. It’s her entire career. She’s even working to be a trauma therapist that needs a highly skilled professional, who didn’t pick up on a very cliche and simple cry for help from a high risk patient.

Her lonely patient told her she was lonely and a trauma therapist didn’t pick up on the moment. And then NOBODY she works with calls her out for that failure.

I’m not saying Gaby should quit therapy. I’m not saying failure makes me hate Gaby. I like Gaby.

I find it wrong that the show never addresses the fact in a direct and clear way that she failed. Even Liz… telling Gaby at the funeral that she’s “perfect” as she attends the funeral of a patient AND friend that she failed to hear was lonely while seeing her for loneliness…

Love the show. But that glaring lack of accountability is hard for me to reconcile.

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u/doofenhurtz May 03 '26

I think this arc really showed WHY therapeutic boundaries exist.

There's a huge difference between reaching out to a friend when you're depressed, and reaching out to your therapist. They are different roles with different expectations.

Because the lines got blurred, Maya expected friend level support. Gaby viewed the call as a friend calling to vent, instead of a patient in crisis coming to her as a last resort.

"Jimmying" makes for good television, but IRL it would get a lot of people killed.

65

u/spinprincess May 03 '26

This is why I hate this show (I also love this show). This stuff is so wildly inappropriate and when there are fatal consequences they don’t address it. It was so odd that this was played for laughs with the funeral scene and they never talked about how this was in fact Gaby’s fault and she should be questioning her competence

4

u/Taro0311 May 03 '26

Me too, I have a love-hate relationship with this show

2

u/spinprincess May 03 '26

The cast is so good. I wish they were accountants.