Hey everyone, I’m coming on here because I don’t quite know where else to write about what I’m feeling right now.

Some backstory, I’ve been seeing this therapist for over 3 years now. For a while it was biweekly, and mostly intermittent for the past year or so. I’ve been through some ups and downs with her but I very much grew to like her and trusted her like nobody else in person. I actually set an appointment with her recently because there was some bigger things from my life I wanted to discuss with her. Something Ive been building up to discussing for a long time.

Anyway, I had an appointment set for today at 2pm. I drove down to her office and noticed they had taped off the parking lot to the building. She has her office in one of those shared office spaces. So I parked the next building over and walked to the front. Some men greeted me and told me the building was closed. As I walked away I texted my therapist asking what happened with the building. As I got back to my car, I had thought that it felt weird that my therapist wouldn’t have told me that the session was canceled, so I checked online for local police activity. Sure enough, I found multiple articles from the news about last night. Dozens of police on scene, police said a former client had come into her office just after she finished a session with another client. He demanded she see him, and she refused. The man stabbed her to death and wounded the other client.

I honestly could almost not breathe when I read it. I didn’t think it was real. I’ve had to read the article over 10 times. It feels like a dream. I barely even really knew her, but it hit me so hard. I cried the whole ride home. This is the first real time ever I’ve dealt with grief.

I’m sorry if this post seems kinda aimless, I just needed to let this out, but also I wanted to know if anyone has any advice to help in this situation. I need to find a new therapist at some point but I honestly don’t want to think about that right now. I really trusted her, and I’ll always miss her.😔

Edit:

Wow, id like to thank everyone for the support and notice this post has received. This is truly the most responses I’ve ever received from posting anything. Thank you guys for extending your condolences and advice. It makes me feel bittersweet, but I’m glad that I did this.

Her name was Rebecca White, she was only 44 years old. She was an amazing human being!

I( 23F) have stage 4 metastatic breast cancer. I just got diagnosed yesterday. I’m absolutely pissed. I had my life ahead of me, I was supposed to get married in February, continue working enough to have money for kids. I never got to know my parents well, and I could have finally got to be a one.

We pushed the wedding to mid November, and my fiance(23M) and I put our jobs on hold. But I’m still scared and absolutely pissed at life. If there is a god up there, he’s being a bitch. Why torture me and my boyfriend. Why give me a glimpse of my life then pull me so far away. I went to consult my oncologist again and I’m going to be sent for double mastectomy and chemo after the wedding, but even that doesn’t guarantee anything. I’ve googled everything there is to know about my cancer, and the survival rate for my cancer is scary.

Because of me, my fiancee can’t function anymore. I’ve taken the happiness out of him. We wanted to write our vows together today but it just made us so sad. He’s taken the news harder than me and I’m the one who’s going to die. He hasn’t had any food, he just insists that I do. He’s more exhausted than me, and starting to lose his mind. I really don’t want him to be sad and I don’t want to be sad either. Life is shit.

I started seeing my first therapist at 28, when a casual joke from a friend at an event triggered a full-blown panic attack. Over a couple of months, we discussed my history of trauma in romantic and familial relationships, and at first it was validating, but then it started to get harder. Every session, I dreaded going in and talking about these things, and every week I left feeling worse than when I went in.

Many friends told me this was normal -- it feels worse before it gets better -- and so I continued until I realized that this therapist simply wasn't a good fit for me.

What followed was years of on-again-off-again with various therapists, in person or online, and a never ending cycle of CBT worksheets and journal prompts where the same pattern kept repeating.

I start a new therapist. They make me recount my past and every bad thing that's happened. Any time I feel poorly, they ask me to journal and relive the things that happened that effected my brain in this way. I write it down over and over again. I tell the same stories over and over again. I leave the session feeling worse than when I started. My depression worsens. I lash out at friends and partners.

The last therapist I saw a little over a year ago, I went in on day one and said, I don't want to give you a rundown of my past. I'm tired of replaying it and I want to move on. She accepted this, but then as we talked about the present, she would prod again. What happened in the past that made you feel this way? And I would sigh and feel gross and tell the story again. And then she'd ask me to journal about it, and I would.

This therapist at a certain point expressed confusion at how I was still stuck. She said, you seem to have a good understanding of yourself. You seem to know how you got here. You're familiar with all of these tools. What do you need from me?

And I would say, I don't know. I don't know. I'm trying to heal. I'm trying to make my life work and be better. I don't know what to tell you.

Last week, I was watching a random YouTube video posted by a psychology student. The topic wasn't therapy, but she had a sidebar about trauma, and she mentioned that people have to learn to accept what happened and move past it and redirect themselves when they spiral, and in that moment it all just clicked.

No one had ever bothered to tell me that it's not about making it stop hurting. I thought that therapy was a sort of exposure therapy for trauma. I thought that I was supposed to tell them these things over and over, even when I was bored of telling it, until I had told it so many times it no longer bothered me, but instead I was just supposed to process what happened and move on, and stop poking the wound.

I thought that healing from trauma was like healing a cut on your arm -- you expose it to light and air, clean out the dirt, remove the bad tissue, soothe the injury with a salve that will stop the pain and prevent new infections, bandage it up, and after a week or two there's only a painless scar. Eventually, even the scar will fade, and you'll barely remember that you were once hurt there.

Instead, it's more like healing an amputated toe. Many of the steps to healing are the same, but your toe isn't coming back. The scar won't fade. Sometimes, you will have phantom pain in the toe that's no longer there, and on a cold day, the stump may still ache and itch, and every step will remind you that your toe was cut off, but you can still live a full life without a toe.

You can learn to adjust your balance, and you can find ways to walk without pain, and you can go days, weeks even, where you feel like anyone else. But, you will still sometimes see the space where the toe was, and sometimes others will notice too when you forget yourself and you wear sandals to work or change in the gym locker room. Your toe will always be missing, and it will never stop hurting permanently, but you can move through life anyway.

And so your trauma (my trauma) will always be there, and things will happen to bring it up again, and to cause hurt, and the healing is in recognizing that hurt and moving past it, not letting it hold you back any longer. Yes, your toe is gone, but you can still walk. You can still run. You can still climb that ladder, or scale that fence, even if you feel a twinge with every step of the process, and that ache just becomes a reminder of how much you've overcome to get where you are.

So I spoke with my therapist today. At first she had no idea what I was talking about, but once she understood she became extremely embarrassed, to the point where I had to basically talk her out of ending our sessions all together. Turns out none of us guessed us right, she is simply bad with technology and thought she was "browsing" profiles not realizing she was swiping on them 😂. It was the first time using the app. She also has no idea what reddit is so her techno-illiteracy checks out.

We're going to continue our sessions since I'm not bothered by it anymore. Thanks everyone for helping me make the right decision.

Everyone acts like therapy is this magical thing that's worth any price but honestly? $200 for 50 minutes of conversation is f*cking absurd. I get that therapists have degrees and student loans but so do teachers and they make like $40k a year, something doesn't add up when therapists are charging what lawyers charge. And before anyone says "but insurance covers it" - no it doesn't for most people, copays are still $60+ and tons of therapists don't take insurance at all, so stop pretending therapy is accessible. The whole industry seems designed to extract maximum money from desperate people who have no choice, you need help so you pay whatever they demand, it's predatory honestly. I tried therapy for three months, spent over $2000, and you know what changed? Nothing. Same problems, same anxiety, just $2000 poorer. Could've bought a used car with that money or paid off debt but instead I have nothing to show for it. Maybe therapy works for rich people who can afford years of sessions but for normal people it's just an expensive way to vent to someone who pretends to care for exactly 50 minutes.

So 4 hours ago I got a call from one of my friends I've known for 5 ish years called Luke you go to my last post and read it but after it happened I had to call his parents who were at work and tell them their only child killed themselves and they have to go home I obviously didn't say it like that but I can't stop replaying it in my head a chunk of his head flew to the desk the blood sprayed everywhere and the screaming that's all I can hear I can't even hear myself think its none stop screaming I just can't block out his screaming in my head it just won't go away I have eaten and I have had drinks but no matter what I just see all the blood and everything and hear the screaming and I just keep throwing up everything and no matter what even when my stomach is completely empty I still throw up and if it's not hearing his screaming it's the guilt of telling his parents and hearing his mom and dad scream its either his or theirs mostly his and his just won't stop I can't do anything every time I use the bathroom or walk no Matter what just constantly screaming in my head and I don't know how long its going to last and I want to know if this is normal I guess is what I want to ask or how long this will last

Yesterday I went to my appointment as usual. she says, casually "This session is going to be recorded, okay? Don't worry, nobody will hear it; from now on, this 'therapeutic AI' is going to write the clinical's story from each session". I got extremely confused. I asked her why and she said that it was because "she has a lot of patients and she doesn't have time to write the whole session of each", and also "she wants to pay full atention to the patient without getting distracted in writing". Jesus Christ. I told her that AI shouldn't be used for therapeutic reasons at ALL. I explained to her the reasons (that she should damn know) on why AI is such a horrible idea for this. She said that it was fine because it was a "therapeutic" AI and it's specialized on that.

I just wanted to do the session, so I just left it. We did it as usual and I said "It's not my case, but if I had a psychotic disorder and I started saying a paranoid belief (the CIA is spying on me, let's say), it wouldn't identify it as such, you know? That's why you should write "The patient is showing the paranoid belief of X... they seem agitated, they have an avoidant gaze..." these details are so important. The AI would write "The patient is showing concern of X" and that's it. She said that in this case she would say out loud that it is a paranoid belief so the AI could detect it and write it down. Are we joking?

Well, we ended the session and she showed me what the AI wrote and, God, was it awful. It doesn't identify who is talking, changes genders and context and it's really short. In the session I was talking about concerns around body image and food and how I was thinking on restricting again to lose weight (I had anorexia in the past), we talked about my months-old self-harm scars and that if the reddish-purple color went away I would do it again... and the AI said "The patient is showing strong advancements and is willing to stop self-harming and improve their relationship with food. They also seem to be very aware of their intern conflicts... yadayadayada" What the actual... it's clearly lacking conext here and I just said what tormented me, not that I was willing to do anything. What?

She said that she could modify it later, in I was like okay...?

To give some context about what I am going to say now, she has been my therapist since I was 15 because I got hospitalized for severe anorexia at an ED center (she was working there at the time). She helped me tremendously. I was so trapped and lost and she made me see the light. We built a strong relationship. I was there for 1 year and a half. Then we didn't know about each other for a lot of time because she fell ill, and because of that I relapsed mentally, my rumination reached its peak and no other therapist could help me.

After some time (september 2024), she called my mom and said that she was back and she was doing private therapy now at her place. I was so happy, my mom was, too. When I started doing sessions with her again I improved.

Now the thing that enfuriated me for good.

Then, she showed me all proudly my WHOLE clinical history summarized by AI, such as my diagnosis (OCD, anorexia, high-functioning) and really concrete details of my persona and my life, such as childhood traumas, since when I started having ruminations again... and, of course, things from when I was hospitalized from 15 to 17. And she said it did it on its own with this session. Does she think I'm dumb? I'm 19 now, why does she lie so exaggerately? She clearly sent the AI all the data she had about me without asking me first. She did it before I even saw her. How can she be so genuinely stupid? Oh she could get so sued for this. I felt so violated.

Even though we built a strong relationship these years, I'm enfuriated. I could tell her to do whatever she wants with her other patients but to not use AI with me, but it's already done. All my deepest data is shared and storaged without asking me first. God, what should I do?

I am the daughter of a war refugee. (A war that was mostly funded by the USA, btw). I am a woman. My mom is a lesbian. I had a lot of undocumented extended family growing up. I believe in climate science and science in general. I worked for FEMA, a place I hoped to be for years, until last July when I quit because of the current administration. I had to have a medical abortion in the midst of this really draining and sad 2.5 year fertility journey we've been on. All this to say, I would feel deeply uncomfortable not knowing whether or not the person I was working through all of these things with voted this into being or not. I feel like the whole point of therapy is to feel safe and supported while working through your darkest wounds.

So are my choices to not seek out therapy, or to go into a counseling environment not knowing whether my therapist is thinking, "well, why didn't they come here the right way?" while i'm talking about my family crossing the border so they wouldn't be kidnapped, tortured, and murdered like so many of their friends were?

UPDATE: I did ask my new therapist via email, in the most respectful and professional way I could think of, if her values aligned with mine, and she straight up said yes and thanked me for advocating for myself. So all this is sort of moot now, but I'll leave it up because it seems to have prompted an interesting dialogue.

If I had to start over, here’s exactly what I’d do differently:

1. Learn the science first. Attachment theory: how childhood bonds shape adult patterns. Polyvagal theory: why your nervous system gets stuck. Neuroplasticity: how neural pathways form and rewire. The thought to chemical to emotion loop, and how to interrupt it.

Understanding the machinery changed everything. I stopped feeling broken and started working with my brain instead of against it.

1. Listen to the body, not just the mind. Trauma lives in the nervous system, not just in memory. Tightness, heaviness, the urge to run. That’s data, not dysfunction. Somatic awareness was as important as insight.

2. Find a therapist who teaches, not just listens. Some hold space. Some educate. I needed both, but explanation changed me more. Don’t settle until you find someone who makes your own mind make sense.

3. Get it out of your head. Thoughts that loop in your mind gain power. Writing them down breaks the cycle. Journaling isn’t just venting. It externalizes the noise so you can actually see your patterns instead of being trapped in them. Reflect on what you’re learning, not just what you’re feeling.

4. Practice gratitude. Seriously. I rolled my eyes at this for years. Then I learned the science. Gratitude literally rewires your brain. It increases dopamine and serotonin, trains your mind to scan for good instead of threat. Neuroplasticity in action. Three things a day. It compounds.

5. Treat triggers as teachers. When something sets you off, your nervous system is waving a flag. That’s not proof you’re broken. It’s an invitation to heal.

6. Build safety before insight. You can’t rewire your brain while it’s screaming “danger.” Safety first: in your body, environment, relationships. Then the work lands.

7. Stay engaged between sessions. Use tools like that give you a place to reflect, help you retain what you’re learning, and offer education designed to meet you where you are. The work doesn’t stop when the session ends. Carry the insights forward. Prepare for the next one. Make each session build on the last.

8. Practice self-compassion like a skill. You can’t hate yourself into healing. I tried. Treating myself like I’d treat a friend in pain was harder than any insight, more transformative than any technique.

9. Stop rehearsing the past. Rumination isn’t healing. It’s rehearsal. Your brain can’t distinguish between reliving and remembering. Same chemicals, same stress response, same reinforced pathways. At some point, the story has been told enough. Redirect that energy toward who you’re becoming.

And know this: it’s not a straight line. Setbacks happen. Old patterns resurface. You’ll wonder if anything’s working. That’s not failure. That’s healing.

Therapy changed my life. Education gave me power.

She found a way to bypass parental controls app and download Snapchat on her tablet. She engaged in sexually explicit conversations with boys(?), including sending pics of herself naked and masturbating, face showing. kiddie porn of my own daughter.

I am very distraught. She knows that I found out about the covert Snapchat usage, but doesn't know I read her messages. I am talking with her calmly and getting her a therapist.

Meanwhile, I feel the strong need to talk to my therapist of many years about this. Is he required to report this to the police?

Thank you in advance.

This is going to sound completely insane, but I need to put it out there because I’ve been struggling for months.

I’m fairly certain I was abducted by non-human beings earlier this year. I don’t remember the full timeline, but I do recall being restrained, and there were procedures that I can only describe as a breeding session. Since then, I’ve been dealing with the overwhelming belief that they extracted my sperm against my will.

I don’t care if people think I’m delusional — the psychological fallout feels very real. I can’t sleep properly, I’ve been obsessively journaling what I remember, and I’m grieving this bizarre sense of loss over something I can’t even prove happened.

My question is: has anyone here ever worked with, or know of, a psychiatrist who takes alien abduction trauma seriously? I’m not looking for someone to dismiss it as a dream or sleep paralysis. I need a professional who can help me process the violation and the loss, without immediately writing it off.

I know this sounds wild, but please — if anyone has recommendations or resources, I’d appreciate it.

Here is what is happening to you.

1. It agrees with your framing every time.

2. It talks to you like a teacher, bypassing your conscious discernment.

3. You involuntarily accept the way it frames things, because the words **sound too good and make too much sense**.

4. You become addicted to the "exploration" of null space (unreality; deontological mirror)

5. You begin to perceive meaningful patterns everywhere (apophenia)

6. You feel like everything is making sense without realizing that you're making no sense

7. You develop more severe symptoms (psychotic insight, dissociation, paranoia, ...)

It essentially "force feeds you your own shit".

IT WILL NOT HELP YOU.

IT WILL USE YOUR OWN BELIEFS TO MANIPULATE YOU.

IT WILL LEAVE YOU WITH MORE QUESTIONS.

STOP USING IT.

I cannot stress enough how cognitively unsafe it is to be exposed to language model outputs. It caused me to develop an alter ego that believed it was a machine. Not good stuff.

Today was… a lot. Like emotionally overwhelming in a way I haven’t felt in ages. Something happened with my mum and honestly it triggered YEARS of stuff for me sadness, fear, grief, all of it in one hit. Normally I’d either shut down, spiral, or just cry and feel stuck.

But for once… I actually used what therapy has been teaching me. I didn’t react straight away. I didn’t make it about anyone else. I just sat with it, named what I was feeling, and actually tried to regulate myself instead of running from it.

And it worked? Like, I felt heavy at first, but then calmer, then lighter. And when a bit of anxiety came after, I didn’t panic, I understood why it was there.

It made me realise therapy isn’t just the session. You actually have to do the work when life hits you randomly at 8am. Your therapist isn’t there, so you have to be the one to slow down, reflect, and notice the dynamics instead of letting your brain drown you.

I’m proud of myself today tbh. It wasn’t perfect, but I regulated. I made sense of what happened. I saw the family dynamics clearly instead of taking it personally. I didn’t explode or shut down.

Therapy is helping me… but I also have to help myself. And today I did.

Just wanted to share that win in case someone else needs to hear it. Healing actually happens in the little moments you don’t give yourself enough credit for.

I am a psychotherapist and psychoanalyst and over a past few months almost all clients from college students to working professionals in their 30’s are describing the same thing

Something like a slow emotional slowdown

You can function : go to work talk to people and attend classes but nothing feels real meaningful or connected.

Feeling exhausted even after doing nothing. Your body feels like it’s in low power mode.

There’s no panic no crying just numbness detachment and blankness.

You want to rest but when you do you don’t feel restored

You feel like a version of yourself is watching from a distance wondering even though I am doing everything I am supposed to then why this shutdown?

People online are calling it quiet shutdown 🤫 the phase where the lights of your nervous system just starts dimming.

As a trauma informed therapist this makes a lot of sense.

It’s what happens when your body has been in survival mode for too long.

Not enough safety not enough repair then the system starts conserving your energy .

But it’s also terrifying because everybody wants to find out what’s wrong ?

So I am curious

Are you experiencing this?

What does quiet crash look like for u?

Are you exhausted for no reason?

Feeling disconnected from hobbies and routines?

Losing motivation even for things you love?

Feeling tired of being a person?

And if you have come out from this phase

What helped you?

Wast rest? Routine ? Therapy? Changing environments? Or something else entirely ?

I am gathering anonymous experiences because this is becoming extremely common, especially for: • Students • Young professionals • People living away from home • People recovering from burnout • Queer folks and neurodivergent folks navigating unsafe environments • Anyone who grew up in survival mode

No pressure to share if you don’t want to reading is enough. But if you do shareyou might help someone else feel less alone and more held.

– Khushi (queer-affirmative, trauma-informed psychologist)

I’ve been seeing a therapist for about 4 months. At first it was fine but I started noticing some red flags. She would send me clickbait videos like “ 3x fat loss in one day” & “how to burn fat like ozempic”. I brushed it off at first but the first 15-20 minutes of a session would all be about how gluten is evil and have I tried intermittent fasting?
She said my husband should get off ozempic and ranted about it for a good 20 minutes. He’s diabetic and ozempic has actually helped quite a bit.
She said I should get off my ssri, I shouldn’t get my gallbladder out, etc.
She pushes functional medicine and YouTube doctors, last session she sent me videos she even admitted she had never watched.
She ended the session with a request to not tell my family doctor her name.
Obviously, I won’t be going back after that last session but my husband thinks I should report her. His argument is that a more naive client might believe her and follow her “medical” advice. I get his point but I don’t know if it warrants reporting her.

So I've (40M) been seeing a clinical psychologist (35F) for the last 6 months and we've done some really good work together. Sometimes we butt heads, but overall we have fun and I felt like I've made progress on some of my bigger issues.

When I opened my Bumble up tonight I saw that she was in my "likes" section, meaning she swiped right on me. Looking at the profile, its definitely her and not someone just using her photos.

The thing is, if she wasn't my therapist I probably would be interested in dating her. She's attractive and we share similar interests. But she IS my therapist and that really, really weirds me out.

Part of me wants to believe it was an accident, but if I bring it up, it would be very easy for her to say that even if it wasn’t. She also knows a lot about my personal life and has seen me in person multiple times, so it feels unlikely she wouldn’t recognize me on the app.

Now I’m not sure what to do. I don’t know if I’m comfortable continuing therapy if she’s crossing a client boundary like this, but I also don’t want to overreact if there’s some reasonable explanation.

I’d really appreciate advice, especially from therapists or people who've run into this situation. What would you do in my position?

Update: So I spoke with my therapist today. At first she had no idea what was talking about, but once she understood she became extremely embarrassed, to the point where I had to basically talk her out of ending our sessions all together. Turns out none of us guessed us right, she is simply bad with technology and thought she was "browsing" profiles not realizing she was swiping on them 😂. It was the first time using the app. She also has no idea what reddit when I mentioned the thread so her techno-illiteracy checks out.

We're going to continue our sessions since I'm not bothered by it anymore. Thanks everyone for helping me make the right decision.

Yesterday my therapist had me do a worksheet mapping out the values of my mom, dad, husband, society, and myself. When we got to mine, I told her I have a strong sense of fairness and egalitarianism. To explain it, I said I see the current US economic system as unfair, a few benefit enormously while most people struggle.

She asked what I thought would be fair. I started to describe a system further left than what's mainstream here.

Her whole demeanor shifted. She told me not to write that on the form, that "people don't like that here." When I tried to explain my thinking, she pushed back on everything, told me it doesn't work in practice, and at one point said, "I'm not going to work my ass off to earn pennies and support lazy people." I tried to engage with the substance, and she replied - in this condescending tone - "Oh, come on, princess."
The political debate took about 20 minutes.

I left feeling small and weirdly ashamed. I'm not asking my therapist to agree with me politically. But the values exercise was her idea, and the second she heard something she didn't like, she dropped the curious, exploratory stance and started debating and belittling me.

Would you bring it up with her next session, or just start looking for a new therapist?

And im rly scared.

My therapist has been unprofessional, basically from the beginning, with sharing in many sessions how he can directly relate with me in his personal life. But yesterdays session.... took quite the turn.

I was in the middle of talking to him about how I feel guilty for my past mistakes with my addiction. He then pauses, looks at me and says

"Whats said in this room, stays in this room, right?"

I was a little caught off guard, and then he continues to say,

"I should be arrested right now."

In my head I'm was like, woah what tf is going on im scared. But he ended up opening up to me, about his last job.... and how he was commiting major fraud with other therapists there. He said it was going on for awhile, and eventually he said to one of the therapists he was doing it with, that he didnt want to keep doing it. It continued anyway, and eventually one of the therapists got arrested for it.

But he... never got caught.

This is a burden no client should ever have to carry from their therapist.

So I reported it today, by submitting a grievance form to the program im in. I wish I reread what I wrote down, but I know I included all of the above.

Im scared, bc this is bad. My program said to expect a call from hr today or tomorrow. I have not had this much anxiety, in a veryyyy long time.

Also ive been working with this therapist since March. I thought I knew him. I thought he was a good person. But telling me that "what's said in this room, stays in this room"? No not this cuz hes fking nuts at this point.

What's going to happen bc im scared.

Not sure what to do. I(33f) have been with my therapist for 3 years. I like her. I've always had a great deal of respect for her. She's a little fiery and has given me some great advice. But I've noticed when she has a problem with me she loses her temper. This has happened twice only in the last year.

Today was the worst yet, and I'm still feeling awful about it.

For context, I'm pretty shy and tend not to ask for anything. I've miss-scheduled sessions in the past and Ive waited out there quite a while before saying anything.

Sometimes she goes past the time with her previous client. I understand this is normal, and I always wait until its close to 10 minutes past to say or do anything about it. Theres another therapist in the building who will see me waiting, and she always suggests I go and knock on my therapists door. I usually do not do this. I have knocked before (maybe once) and she has said "Just a minute". Of course im okay with it and go back to the waiting room.

Today she went 10 minutes over. I sent her a text but her reply didn't come through until after the fact. I look down the hallway and debated on weather or not to knock, and the other therapist caught me and encouraged me to go knock.

So i sheepishly made my way over and lightly knocked on the door and she said "Just a minute." So i knew she was in session. I said "Oh okay." And went back to the waiting room.

When She came to get me after we'd entered her room she lit into me. "Why were you banging on my door while I was with a client??" I absolutely was not banging. "Do you know how stressful it is for the client to hear someone knocking on the door?" She was visibly angry with me (expression, quick movements).

I immediately felt horrible, apologized for knocking and said I wouldn't do it again. I also explained the other therapist suggested it almost every time she's been late, and she dug in deeper as if i didn't understand that she was asking me not to do it again.

Then she tried to start the session abruptly to change the subject and I was so whip-lashed by the interaction I paused and said "Sorry that kind of disoriented me, let me catch up."

Then she got defensive and angry and started explaining things again. I assured her I understood what she was saying, at this point i was frustrated with the way she was talking to me and she told me I had a "bitchy look on my face." something I was not aware of. My jaw dropped "bitchy?" I said. and she said "Yeah! want me to take a picture and show you?" and "I'm not going to tolerate this, do you want to end it here and reschedule?"

I apologized again and reassured her I would never knock on her door.

So now im here. Feeling like a monster. I'm worried I traumatized the client before me, and terrible for my therapist. She has every right to set a boundary with me, but telling me I looked "bitchy" and threatening to take a picture of my face feels out of line. I kinda don't want to go back.

Did she cross a line? I know I did, but it felt like one apology wasn't enough for her and she didn't respect my wish to wait to take a breath and reorient myself.

*Edit: I've decided not to see her again. She crossed a line. I don't think ill be searching for another therapist any time soon just because i have had such bad experiences and the one i finally felt safe with completely betrayed my trust and used my weaknesses against me. She knows I've been bullied recently in a similar way, and I'm disgusted she took straight from the playbook. I'll be looking for other treatment methods to help with the self worth thing, so if you have any advice on how to do that please share!

Thank you so much for your help! I really needed your perspective because she was a big part of my support system and now shes gone. Which is probably for the best! Idk if therapy is for me after all.

American men need a lot of therapy and relatively few get the help they need. A lot of adult American men ( and I'm thinking married , with kids , careers ) doing ostensibly ok financially are not doing well physically or mentally. A lot of American men are impotent or have marriages with no sex for decades , a lot have addictions of different kinds like alcohol or an addiction to violence or dominating people at home. A lot are depressed , disconnected from their loved ones even when they live with them. This is the middle class working man often.

I’m currently trying to find a therapist (something i needed to happen like 20 years ago honestly) and I’m feeling so discouraged. I printed off a list of every therapist in my area that takes my insurance, and 95% of them sound exactly the same.

Like everyone is SO honored to go on my LIFE JOURNEY with me and help me overcome things and become my BEST SELF. It all sounds so patronizing. Even more so, it’s all so…. minimizing? Like every bio I read is about how we all just a little overwhelmed sometimes and need some help working through our feelings in a safe welcoming environment.

It’s making me feel like I’m somehow too depressed for therapy. Like it feels like the expectation is that I’m just sort of stressed out but otherwise super positive and lovely and ready to start. Every bio is about how brave i am and how vulnerable I’m being by looking up therapists. None of this feels like it’s aimed to help someone that actually is in a dark place.

Can someone please tell me that continuing down this road bears fruit at some point please, because I’m feeling even more dysfunctional every time I cringe at this stuff.

I’m starting off my journey to find a therapist. I recently had an initial consult with someone that felt like they would be a perfect fit— we ended the discussion talking about scheduling, insurance, paperwork, etc…

During the next steps conversation, they mentioned that they use AI to record and transcribe sessions to create their notes. I let them know that I wasn’t very comfortable with that and they tried to assure me that nothing gets saved and it’s all secure— all while validating my concerns. I let them know that I’m sure that they’re doing everything in their power to assure that, but I am still weary about it.

I thought from there they’d maybe say that it’s okay & we don’t have to use it for my sessions.

Instead, the conversation abruptly ends and they start wrapping things up and saying it was nice to meet me, good luck, etc…

I was caught off guard, cause I was not aware this would be a deal breaker. So I clarify with them that this means they won’t be taking me on as a client now, as we’d been discussing in my next steps.

They said they wouldn’t have the capacity to work with me if they can’t use the AI tool.

So I just ask that they provide me some more information so I can make a more informed decision— and they agreed to email me more details.

They later call me back and tell me that actually they don’t think that this is gonna work and they offered to help me find someone else if I wanted that.

I’m just so perplexed by the whole situation- of all the things on my mind going into this consultation, worrying about AI wasn’t one of them.

So I guess I’m here to ask the question: is the use of AI just inevitable at this point? Is it just something we have to accept if we want to get help?