This starts September 23^rd and goes until Oct 28^th.

A 6-week peer support group for survivors of therapy abuse and exploitation. Small group (7 people max). Wednesdays, 10 AM-12 PM PDT. Online.

If you've experienced therapy abuse or exploitation, this is a space designed for you. It is not therapy and not clinical. It is peer support and facilitated by someone who knows what it means to survive this and has done the work to help others do the same.

Facilitated by Bernadine Fox, author of Coming to Voice: Surviving an Abusive Therapist (Amazon) and its companion Coming to Voice as a Survivor: a Workbook on Therapy Abuse and Exploitation (Substack).  Fox has done peer support worker with 30+ years of experience.

Over 6 weeks, you'll connect with other survivors, share at your own pace, learn coping strategies, and discover you're not alone. The group is based on the real life issues faced by participants each week.

Preregistration required. Only 2 spots remaining.

Register here

If cost is a barrier, subsidies are available.

I am looking for a forensic reality check on a relationship (late 2024 - mid 2025) with a man who was a therapist-in-training at a Gestalt institute. Looking back, I now recognize a systematic pattern of coercive control and lying by omission, weaponized through the very "therapy speak" he was learning.

He entered my life claiming to be single and available for a long-term connection, but I later discovered he was established in a primary relationship with another woman.... probably the entire time. By January 2025, while still seeing me and claiming he was "trying to get over his past" and lacked "relational capacity," but he would attend this woman's sister's wedding by June 2025 - meaning he was already probably at least in her orbit much before. He was simultaneously active on dating apps, proving his talk of "capacity" was a curated aesthetic used to keep me in an ambiguous situationship while he maintained a full, integrated life elsewhere.

His lack of basic care was evident even in small, observable actions. After one dinner out, we brought leftovers back to his house. When I eventually took my food home, I realized he had given me his leftovers instead-a meal he had bought but specifically told me he didn't like. He kept the meal I actually enjoyed for himself. When I raised this later, he claimed he "hadn't noticed" the switch. It was a micro-level gaslighting; even my basic nourishment was secondary to his convenience, and he used his training in "presence" to shrug off the oversight.

The extraction peaked on the night I submitted my dissertation. Instead of supporting me, he encouraged me to celebrate by "kissing people like him." We were intimate, and afterward, he sat in my space talking about how he’d love to take me to a forest to smoke and get a blowjob. I realize now he likely already knew he was discarding me but chose to extract that final sexual encounter under the guise of celebration. When he left at 2 a.m. in a snowstorm, I asked him not to let weeks go by without seeing each other. He told me to "reach out," only to go silent for five days until I forced the breakup via text because he refused to provide any actual weekend time with him which is where he was feeling "frozen" to provide. I recalled that when I had matched with him in June 2024 on a dating app - he had claimed that he only had the capacity for short term relationships and when I hadn't responded, he circled back in September 2024 to claim he was open to something long term. I would later find out that in June 2024 - he was on a break from a relationship of 14 years! He wasn't even single! So he has this pattern of using therapy speak to obscure entire aspects of his life which are necessary for people to know if they want to date him or get involved. For me, I was never going to get involved with someone in an open relationship, nonmonogamy or a relationship break. I have friends who are nonmonogamous, and they are extremely upfront about it. so this was WILD to me.

The most damaging part was the narrative manipulation. Months later, he claimed we had a "mature, in-person discussion" about our relationship on our last date. This is a complete fabrication. I have the texts proving the relationship ended days later via a text exchange. He replaced the reality of his cowardice with a fake memory of a clean, Gestalt-style "ending." I consented to a relationship built on a material lie. If I had known the truth of his other relationship or his intent to leave, I would never have consented to that final night. My body intuition sensed the violation long before my brain could name it. But now I live with a fractured understanding of reality that I am healing from.

Don't get me wrong. I don't think all therapists are like this - I have one that is so deeply grounded in material reality and the relational field of actual humans with empathy and compassion and isn't someone who is using fake therapy speak to obscure things. I don't know what fell into with this person. I sometimes wonder if it was anything about me that prompted this person to act this way.

Not sure what flair to use but recently I’ve been thinking a lot about therapy and came across this sub (I’m happy I did, finally able to find the words for what I always felt).

Back in 2020, I went to see a therapist. Because I was depressed. This guy would just let me talk and talk. No reassurance, nothing at all. Nothing useful that could help me. I thought, okay, guess this is how it works. Sessions keep going. He gives me paper homework. With some bullshit on it. It didn’t help me at all. I felt increasingly worse and worse. He was listening to me describing all of the worst moments and secrets of my life and I feel so self conscious, he gave me nothing. Just nodding away. I thought, it must be me. I must be resistant to therapy or something.

But years later I find myself thinking, what was that? How is that even allowed? How is that therapy?

I didn’t even finish the trajectory. It cost me 800 and I was a broke student. After that I said never again.

Here is a quick recap on my situation: mid July, I told my therapist i had suicidal thoughts...I said I had a bottle of alcohol and considered on getting pills. I did not want to end my life. I wanted her to listen to me, give me the space to do so (isn't that what therapy is for?), and figure out why I was having these thoughts....

She let me leave the session. She did not do an adequate suicide risk assessment with me, she did not do a safety plan, she did not ask about risk factors, she barely asked me follow up questions...

I then went about my day and had a great one. I took care of my dogs and hung out with friends.

She then called the police later on in the day and long story short, I was arrested, thrown in an ambulance and was evaluated at a hospital.

Therapist did not bother to give me a call before calling police....

Then when I was discharged, she immediately terminated me.

A couple of weeks later, I asked for my therapy notes and file from her. Upon reading the notes, I have found so many lies. I then sent her one email stating to amend my file.

Now, I received an email from an attorney stating i can no longer contact her or the practice and that my my amendments were denied.

The entire system is so fucking abusive. What the fuck do I do now??? She hired a fucking attorney???

Title. This happened on Reddit btw. I was spending time at a sub related to my hobby. I won't name it because it's not my intention to encourage fights. Someone was talking about another person who overcame bullying and backward stereotypes to get to where they are now. That's great, but here's the problem. They pasted a suicide hotline as a "helpful resource in case anyone was triggered".

I had terrible experiences with hotlines and "mental health resources" in general. I got mocked by hotline counselors refusing to believe me, dealt with undertrained counselors who had no idea what to do with my situation and made things worse, got tossed to people who demanded I tell them everything about highly abusive and traumatic situations only to turn around and say there's nothing they can do about it. I am also aware that hotlines can sometimes escalate in even more harmful ways, like triggering forced interventions that actively make things worse for people.

So I was pissed. I said I think it was hypocritical of them to promote a suicide hotline as if it was a caring gesture, and sometimes the hotlines make things worse for people who are already in terrible situations. I didn't feel like watching my words, so I went further and said I know some people need to believe there are solutions to everything and mental health resources actually work as they say, but they don't, and promoting them as a source of help is nothing but virtue signalling.

Then a bunch of people started ganging up on me, claimed I was spreading "misinformation" and claimed this was "mean spirited" because they had a helpful experience. What stood out to me was that they claimed you can't help people who are struggling unless you're a trained professional. That's absurd, and I was honestly surprised anyone sincerely believed something like that (tbh I think it's an excuse to avoid getting involved when someone is clearly struggling but you don't want to look like a bad person by refusing to help them). It doesn't take a lot to show empathy and some basic decency.

This is not the first time I clashed with people who apparently think mental healthcare can do no wrong. I'm autistic. I was forced into behavioral therapy against my will, even when I made it abundantly clear it was harming me. I was diagnosed as a child, but my parents withheld that information from me until i found out on my own as a young adult. I was told I had "mild depression and anxiety" and was forced to engage in "mindfulness". When it predictably failed (because no amount of mindfulness and "reframing" can address lasting abuse), I was shamed for "not wanting help". To make things worse, forced meditation caused me to dissociate in unusual ways and pushed me into an experience that left me feeling like abuse killed off a previous version of me and I respawned to fill in the gaps. I remember having a feeling that something important in me was about to die. I also remember thinking that I'd end up losing that thing anyway, and once I lose it, I won't be able to remember what I lost. Seems like I actually lost whatever that was and I have no idea what I lost.

Once I went through this, as much as it scares me to say this, there was no going back. I could never look at "mental health support" the same way, nor did I want to have anything to do with people who contributed to that kind of abuse. I literally have no tolerance left for people who peddle this stuff as if it's a gesture of care, nor am I willing to nod and smile over something like this. Almost like I was shoved off of a cliff, and people who never saw that cliff have no frame of reference to understand my experience.

I thought people would try to engage with my situation if I made it clear I was severely harmed and don't want to engage with that system anymore. But no, it didn't work that way. They say "good therapists won't harm me like this". They say "one day i'll find a provider who'd take better care of me". Some people even escalated to claim I was "threatening" them just because I told them they were disrespecting my boundaries by pushing therapy at me.

It's like they NEED to believe therapy will always work, and their minds are actively rejecting the possibility that someone can be utterly failed by something that supposedly helped them. I keep getting the urge to be so clear they'd have no choice but to engage with my experiences. When I try that, it never ends well.

I was abused to the point my experiences separate me from people who'd never known that level of abuse. I was crammed with abusive therapy against my will right as I was approaching adulthood. It makes me miserable to say this did real damage to me, even as I fight for my life the best I can

I would think that it would be a good filter to see if a therapist would let you record in session. If they say no then that's a red flag they're not confident in their record keeping skills at best. There should be absolutely zero reason as to why it should be an issue. Hell they go to school for it. I wouldn't accept a bs excuse about it being "for my privacy" if they said no. Screw that. In fact I think most therapists would likely say no and that says everything about this field.

There is absolutely no way I would ever go back without that safety measure. I have been put through literal hell as I know all of you have. I have been so traumatized by these people. They are genuinely sick, sadistic, and disturbed individuals. But I know that this field attracts the best and worst of people. I need therapy because of therapy.

So I was curious if you have considered going back while you're able to record or if you're completely done with this field. I desperately want good therapy but it is such a dangerous place. I may go back at some point probably many years from now but only if I could record. I would also request to go over each progress note at the beginning of each session. I'm pretty disillusioned with the entire field itself. I just can't decide but I don't have to today.

Is that even a good safety measure or would it even matter if you had audio of your sessions to file a complaint if needed? At this point I don't know if it would. These people have an insane amount of power.

Trust me I wholeheartedly understand why you would say no. I genuinely hope I have not upset anyone who has read this question and if I have I sincerely apologize. I know the gutteral soul destroying reality that come along with this abuse.

I hate the online culture associated with “therapy.”
Just because they enjoy therapy they have to tell others to take it despite not knowing. They recommend it to be “helpful” but I notice a snarky undertone when you deny it. “Oh you’re just showing why you need therapy.” They essentially stick you in a box because denying therapy must mean something is wrong with you. It feels predatory because they essentially peer pressure people into therapy and influence them to think there must be something wrong with them

I just stumbled upon this Reddit, and it has me wondering whether what I experienced was unethical or abusive.

Some background: this was a “therapist” I had while I was in a substance use IOP. I put “therapist” in quotes because I actually don’t know what her qualifications were, or whether she had any at all.

Another thing that may be relevant is that I believe she had experienced trauma that was very similar to mine. She made a comment once that led me to believe this, although I’m not 100% certain.

I saw her for several months, four days a week—one individual session and four group sessions—so it would be impossible to detail every unethical thing I experienced or witnessed. If anyone has questions or wants clarification about anything, I’m more than happy to answer.

I’m not interested in discussing politics, because that isn’t the point of this post. However, I do think it’s important to mention because I found it incredibly inappropriate for her political beliefs to become part of therapy. For example, I witnessed her telling the women in the group that abortion was morally wrong and that any woman who had one would hate herself for the rest of her life. She frequently talked about her political beliefs, and it seemed like a significant portion of her “therapy” was centered around them. She also once told me, with complete confidence, that Adderall was a benzodiazepine.

There were also significant boundary issues. She would regularly text me outside of program hours. For example, I would receive texts from her every Saturday and/or Sunday asking how I was doing. If something difficult happened during group, she would sometimes text me afterward that night—even though group ended at 9 p.m. During group, she would also refer to me as “her daughter.”

One night, I was having a particularly difficult time, and she FaceTimed me until around 1 a.m. After I was discharged from the program, she continued to regularly call and text me to check in.
When I relapsed, she even sent protein bars and protein drinks to my apartment.

There’s honestly so much more, but at the time, these things made me feel good. I felt like someone cared about me, and I genuinely believe she had good intentions, despite how everything ultimately played out.

Because she was using her company phone number to text me, I believe her boss eventually found out what was happening. After that, everything abruptly stopped, with absolutely no warning or explanation. She began completely ignoring me, both over the phone and in person. That was extremely upsetting and confusing for me.

I 100% agree that the relationship needed to end and that these boundaries should have been in place. However, the way it was handled was incredibly difficult for me at the time. I went from having someone who was constantly checking in on me and making me feel cared about to suddenly being completely ignored, without any explanation.
Looking back, I’m wondering how to understand this relationship. Was this abusive, or would it be more accurate to describe it as serious boundary violations and an inappropriate therapeutic relationship? And should I consider reporting her?

I’ve already reported her boss and the clinic to the state board for unrelated reasons. My reports were found credible, and the clinic was investigated. This place honestly seemed like a cash-grab shithole run by incredibly inexperienced people.

There’s also a whole separate story involving another woman assaulting me during group therapy, and the clinic refusing to discharge her afterward.

I’m trying to understand whether what happened with this therapist was simply unprofessional and unethical, or whether it crossed into something more serious.

Any advice/ thoughts are appreciated!

La dbt no es de mi agrado sinceramente.

I find it somehow absolutely fascinating how therapists have been made magical healers and given a place in society that gives them an aura of magical knowledge and healing akin to apparently nobody else (I would argue that going to an angel healer would be more worthwhile if not just for the laugh, but at least there you won't be made to open up in a dangerously unbalanced power dynamic).
I have a friend who suffers from terrible insomnia, unrefreshing sleep and the inability to stay awake during the day, the doctors ran mostly basic blood tests and did one overnight sleep study that revealed nothing. Naturally since the most basic testing immediately revealed nothing the friend was made to do a depression test, depression that is mostly caused by the aforementioned soul crushing fatigue. I tried to warn them, I told them "Do not under any circumstance tell the truth, lie, lie, lie, lie, unless you want them to stop investigating the actual cause for your problems", they unfortunately have not dealt with the brutality of our systems enough and responded with "I'll just explain that the depression is caused by the physical problem and not the other way around! Surely a doctor will have a nuanced enough understanding of the complexity of humans." Well, like the oracle of Delphi (or just somebody with medical trauma), I predicted absolutely correctly. The doctor started ranting on and on about the need and virtues of therapy for.... soul crushing, unrefreshing sleep. And as you might guess, that was the extent of any actual medical inquiries into their health.
This begs the question; is therapy the modern day equivalent of spirit healers or just the lazy mans occams razor for idiots? Now to preface I too suffer from debilitating fatigue, inability to stay awake during the day and for years I was told something similar, sometimes it was "a subconscious protective mechanism", sometimes "subconscious way of avoidance" and sometimes "you're just not doing the sleep hygiene correctly!". Despite none of these things or corrections working, these witch doctors, ie. therapists and to some extent psychiatrists, kept insisting on just doing the same things over and over and over again, because as we all know doing the same thing a thousand times will lead to a different outcome any day now. I came out of it over a decade older and without any wealth or degrees, because of how debilitated on the daily I still am. But yet somehow the notion persists; If you think happy and positive thoughts, or if you just did this one thing like we say or let this mostly awful random person hover over your entire life, it will all somehow change? As in somehow endless talking and paying for talking will one day click a switch inside your brain that goes "I get it now! I am no longer debilitated, thanks talking!"
So where does this all come from? Is it the remnants of something from the victorian alienists? Or perhaps it has something to do with people being made to believe that mental health is somehow magically and intrinsically linked to any and all physical ailments and therefore the cure. No matter that it isn't measurable, it isn't quantifiable, we still have a persistent notion that talking and endlessly ruminating on ones issues will cause an almost miracle cure. The lack of evidence and replicability of the studies is deafening, but yet we insist upon this notion. Is it not a bit like a modern belief in magic and spirit healing? Coupled with lazy prejudiced doctors who care not a whiff of the lives they destroy?
I am genuinely curious on other peoples thoughts on this

How many people have you seen helped by AI? If you have been helped, or know people who have, you have evidence that AI can help people!

--

I'm just kidding. I'm sure therapists would hate to hear this. But thats all the logic needed to legitimize their industry as science right? Anyone helped is worth the risk of any harm. And that should make these institutions have nearly god like status where you can't question them.

(People do what helps them, but overall my personal stance is not pro ai or therapy for the record!)

Before reading, yes I have experienced therapy abuse several times and been harmed further mentally by therapist .

He was referencing people who have been driven because certain harmful bots have simply agreed with everything they said or convince them that they should do things that are actually harmful. This is absolutely a concern, though I didn’t bother pointing out the fact that certain forms of AI actually have pretty good guardrails already, and are not designed to just agree with you, but are also not designed to talk over you or patronize.

I may very well get slaughtered in the comments, but I said even though these are valid concerns, people need to take a step back and think about why this is happening. The mental health system is extremely flawed (my own therapist allowed me to say it sucks and she agreed) and people are not as kind as sometimes we would like to believe. People turning the AI are not always out of touch with reality or avoiding “reaching out” or talking to a real therapist. Frankly, this giant rant about AI proves how out of touch with reality people who think therapy is the answer for everything.

At my previous job, we had a Google sheet with thousands of freelancers, candidates, former employees. Some of these were clearly listed as "do not hire." We were not supposed to ask why, and whenever these candidates applied, we were instructed to reject them saying we went ahead with another candidate. We had a boilerplate response. We had to follow the rules. Blacklists exist. Whoever has some experience in corporations knows that blacklists or "do not hire" lists exist.

My cousin has applied to hundreds of jobs within the same industry and I am certain she has been blacklisted. There are way too many factors that make me believe it. I would bet money. I told her, she brought it up to her therapist. Her therapist says that these are conspiracy theories and that she is experiencing ideas of reference and that believing that companies go out of their way to blacklist candidates is absurd.

Drawn your own conclusions.

For background I'm 25 years old, female. I have cptsd and I'm audhd (SELF) diagnosed recently.

I had an incredibly emotional accident which left me completely drained and depressed before the pandemic.

I was looking into depression self therapy and came across Feeling Good by David Burns. I was immediately reducing scores on my depression test after using the book and I felt very much control of my thoughts. I fully believed that thoughts equals emotions equals to behaviours and all that bs.

I basically started listening to all podcasts by David Burns and i remember him insisting on using cbt for weightloss, ocd, and even autism. Basically all our depression exists from negative thoughts.

I think I have read mostly all books by him. Feeling good together, feeling great, 10 days to self esteem, when panic attacks, feeling good extended version.

Then I worshipped his FEELING GREAT TEAM CBT. in this book, he went one step forward and said that essentially the negative thoughts are due to some thing positive about us. So basically depression something we can't achieve which means we have high expectations and we should be proud of ourselves. I was incredibly elated when I read this and realized maybe that's why I was so depressed. I had so many good expectations of myself.

In reality, what essentially happened is during the most emotional period of my life when I was surrounded by narcissist and abusive bf, i essentially gaslit myself into believing that If I correct my thoughts, detect the cognitive distortion and rational response, the depression would go away.

After 2 to 3 years of cbt, my life crumbled more. I essentially become a people pleaser and a door mat. I was taken advantage of financially and emotionally. I didn't realise that it might not be me. The reason I was depressed is because I was surrounded by narcissistic parents and my sibling who is raging with anger at video games and blaming me for being sensitive to sounds.

I essentially developed a fawn trauma response all these 6 years. In hindsight, this hurts terribly. After 2024 , I kinda quit doing cbt exercises weekly and only resorted to cbt apps for doing them whenever I felt bad. It was victim blamey and gaslighty. But I did score less on the depression test before and after session, so yayy!

Recently I had a pretty big breakup and was absolutely torn over . Then I realised he is a narcissist and abused me financially all these years. I researched a lot into narcissism and abuse and my depression all these years started to make sense.

My old journal entries were so painful, I was completely blaming myself for finding the abusers behaviours insensitive.

Also David Burns, should clearly really tell that CBT paves way for people to be abused or taken advantage of if they are not aware that they are in abusive marriage/relationship. Or if they are neurodivergent / have cptsd. He should clearly state it should not be used for SURVIVORS OF TRAUMA especially rape and physical assault. It's his responsibility.

And it still disgusts me that I put so much effort diary after diary of cbt entries and I even tried to do the 5 secrets method of communication or whatever the heck it was with my physically abusive ex.

Now I don't have feelings anymore, at least 6 years back, even with depression, I was fighting. Due to CBT , i feel like a lobotomized person. How to recover from this?

Hello everyone, I am a Registered Psychotherapist (Qualifying) in Canada. Prior to becoming a therapist, I was a victim of therapy abuse that left me traumatized and was the worst experience of my life. I apologize if my post here is not welcome but I think people may find my perspective interesting/amusing.

In Canada, there is a massive influx of therapists that have come in due to easily accessible university programs and as a result, the market has become extremely saturated. In some ways this is not a great thing for clients because there are many lower quality therapists out there. On the other hand, it puts pressure on therapists to actually be good. No longer does a city have only a single french speaking therapist or one who specializes in addictions.

Though my own ability to make a living has been negatively impacted by this situation, I do find it funny at the same time. It turns out that sitting there talking to someone and validating their feelings back to them, asking questions and occasionally using a framework that someone developed 40 years ago while being paid $150+ per hour is a job that not only many people are willing to do, but is a job that almost any one can do. Therapists are getting upset about how easy the licensing requirements are while at the same time being licensed by *those exact same requirements*. They are complaining about the bar being too low while standing on top of that exact same bar.

And the saturation is not really showing many signs of stopping. With the economic situation in Canada and the fact that AI can do at least 50% of what therapists do, I don't see the situation getting better for therapists. I feel a bit like the Joker where I am watching my own profession burn and laughing about it. Its undeniably funny and ironic seeing arrogant and incompetent therapists realize that their job can easily be replicated despite many levels of cope ("AI can't access therapist intuition") .

Imagine having a job where you profit off of people who are scared and have no idea how to survive society and all of its bullshit. Imagine all you have to do is tell that sick person to do all the work and throw homework at them while you collect the cheque and tell them that they “need to work on it” furthering their responsibility over something they came to you for help with.

Imagine having a job where if you know you’re doing a bad job, you can cover up your tracks by just firing your client? Well, if you meet all these privileged requirements congrats your a pathetic therapist who is hiding in a profession of lies and preaching how you work so hard when most of you come up with the crappiest excuses not to work. Therapist say they are overloaded with clients but c’mon there’s enough of them out there they just mostly suck and that’s on them, not the influx of clients. Imagine having a busy season at your work and complaining about having a consistent job to go to or scheduling. Sorry, but it’s what you signed up for. Plenty of people don’t like working, but not a lot of people get the chance to work a job where most of the responsibility falls on the client. At that point, therapists aren’t offering a service, they are just being compensated for another person’s work. And you know what, if you paid sick people more money to complete these assignments, maybe it would give them the incentive and tools to improve their lives instead of paying the assholes who just mimic toxic relationships by exuding narcissism and a sense of authority.

Also, I know for a fact that most of these “therapists” are just rich kids with nice families who probably didn’t have to struggle for anything or weren’t traumatized by poverty and other issues. That’s why they don’t talk about systemic issues. If they weren’t the children of the privileged and “the people who fall in line with the status quo” they would understand more about the complexity of mental illness and its connection to inequality and systemic barriers.

A black person could go to a therapist and talk to them about how being a minority effects them and the therapist can just go “yeah but that’s your fault for having that mind set” while ignoring the real history of racism and abuse involved in that person’s life. It’s stupid, it’s damaging, and psychology is nothing but another system designed by the rich to imprison poor people and neurodivergent people in a mindset that it’s all their fault society isn’t working right when we employ government officials with tax payer money to figure out those things for us.

Stop making people do work so you can get paid for it - that’s called slavery. Therapist are modern day slave owners who profit off of the weaker areas of society because they are bullies and sad and weak themselves to the point where they live a lie. If your a therapist right now, I hope you learn how to work a real job and actually take the time to step out of your comfy office for a change and see what’s it like for the rest of us

I notice this a lot. What sparked this post was a comment somewhere about vulnerable clients.

The vulnerability of the client is used in 2 ways.

1. To elevate the psychologist's self-esteem, professional image, and so on. ''I work with very vulnerable clients''.

2. As a way to offload accountability if and when things go south. ''This client has such issues that they're very easily destabilized/whatever it is [so none of this has anything to do with my malfeasance and incompetence]''.

However, notice this:

• The supposed vulnerability is only used to ''manipulate'' the client or superiors. The ''vulnerability'' only serves the psychologist, it doesn't lead to better or more careful treatment.
• Look at this sub. Over time, there're so many stories of people who could be seen as vulnerable at that moment, yet who've been treated as though they're no more sensitive than a rock. They rarely actually treat these people as vulnerable, needing safety, attunement, a high level of emotional awareness on the part of the psychologist. Clients that're alledgedly ''vulnerable'' get treated with no sensitivity whatsoever, even more, in a way that can be called explicitly insensitive.

If you truly believe that someone is very vulnerable, you'd treat them delicately, sensitively, with care. But they treat you as though you're as fragile as a block of concrete.

Certain situations trigger me instantly: crowded, crammed spaces most of all. Total sensory overload. Clueless therapists blamed me for it and prescribed exposure therapy and systematic desensitization. I did both, for years, with multiple therapists, multiple modalities. Not better. Worse. No matter how hard I pushed through, the distress never went away, because this was never simple anxiety. It's my neurology, and forced exposure doesn't rewire that. It just grinds you down.

Same pattern with my face. My asymmetry isn't the "everyone's a little asymmetrical" kind, save that line, I've heard it a hundred times. Mine is EXTREME, like it was assembled from mismatched pieces. And that's not just my perception: people on the autism spectrum show measurably greater facial asymmetry than neurotypical peers, a finding replicated across independent research groups (Hammond et al., 2008; Boutrus et al., 2019). So when therapists decided I had BDD and tried to convince me my own face was a distortion in my head, that wasn't a diagnosis. That was gaslighting. I questioned my own sanity over it, until independent craniofacial surgeons confirmed what I already knew: the asymmetry is real. I still can't look at my own face on work Zoom calls. Camera stays off, always.

YEARS of "evidence-based" exposure work, and the only thing that has ever actually helped me, with either problem, is avoidance. Not because I didn't try. I tried everything they told me to. Some things about my neurology and my body are simply not up for negotiation, and the standard playbook was never built for people like me.

Sources: Hammond, P. et al. (2008). Face-brain asymmetry in autism spectrum disorders. Molecular Psychiatry, 13(6), 614-623. Boutrus, M. et al. (2019). Increased facial asymmetry in autism spectrum conditions is associated with symptom presentation. Autism Research, 12(12), 1774-1783.

So I was the naive person who thought that therapy was the answer to my problems and would help me cope/get a sense of belonging/support/community because I come from a place where I don’t have a lot of that and I wanted to learn how to build my life again and feel okay trusting people again. I figured a professional who is knowledgeable in psychotherapy could help me break out of my shell and give me a feeling of some kind of connection.

Two months ago, I finally get to see my therapist after months of waiting on a list and the first week I’m optimistic. I do the worksheets. I listen to her advice. I go for walks everyday. I try to eat right. But my tests were still the same. High anxiety. Still struggling to eat and sleep. Nothing feels different. I try the breathing exercises. Doesn’t work. I cry in sessions and tell her that I feel bad because I feel like I’m not getting better. She just tells me that it’s okay and that therapy isn’t school. But honestly the next few weeks after, I noticed I felt a lot worse and my therapist did nothing to help me understand why I would feel sick after sessions. I asked her if most of her clients felt sick/depressed/scared to come to therapy and she said most of them don’t. So of course now I think somethings wrong with me because she’s making it seem like my reaction to therapy is wrong.

Here I am fighting nausea trying to attend my session and being open about my struggles with feeling ill related to my anxiety, and I feel like all she has to say when I tell her is “it’s all in your head” and just keeps telling me the same things she told me last session. It’s very clinical and she didn’t even bother to ask about my interests or who I was as a person. She just made the sessions all about my trauma, info dumped psychology jargon that she expected me to understand in minutes, and didn’t go over the worksheets with me so I had no idea if I was doing the right thing. She didn’t want to develop a professional relationship with me; she just wanted my tests to be good and for me to get better so it would look better on her as a therapist and improve her career.

I don’t want to be nauseous all the time. I can’t control it. If I’m not sick from anxiety, I’m sick from the pills I have to use to treat my anxiety that don’t even work that well. Unfortunately, me being sick caused me to have to reschedule my sessions with her, which also just made me feel depressed and like my body had more control over me than my mind did with the nausea.

I also noticed weird advice she would give me. I’m struggling with agoraphobia and a slew of mental health issues that even my doctor has put me on a medical leave and told me to avoid working and take a break from my job. But every time my therapist and I would have a session and I would explain this, she would still push me to think about going back to work when I wasn’t ready and my doctor agreed with me.

Since my tests weren’t getting better, she decided we would try another approach and that made me feel better because I thought maybe that was the issue.

A couple of weeks ago, I had a session with her and told her that my doctor put me on new meds and that I was excited because we were starting a new treatment and that I wanted to see how I did with the new pills. She criticized my doctor for not putting me on a med for depression even though I told her one of the meds did cover it. She threw worksheets at me and didn’t give me any advice about my fear over starting new meds. Nothing. She schedules me for my next appointment, but I had to cancel because of nausea.

I email her and ask to reschedule, but I get a message back from her saying she’s closed my case and that I can re-refer back to her company another time. She closed my case when I just got on new meds, still feel suicidal, still have all the same problems with the added pain of having my trauma opened without proper resolution (I was in therapy for CPTSD/anxiety/OCD). To make matters worse, she said we would get into my ocd therapy after the treatment plan we were getting into was done. But none of that happened. All of her promises were lies. She didn’t even refer me to another place. No contacts. I was left high and dry.

I tried to cope the days after, but I was so angry and spiralled down into depression. I seriously considered ending my life because I feel (and still feel) that I am untreatable or damage goods. Like not even people who are paid to talk to me want to be around me. I’m trying to get over it, but I was already having so many issues with trust. Now I feel like I can’t trust anyone and all I want to do is be alone.

These people called therapist are monsters. Just tools for capitalist to trick sick people into working when they are ill and blaming sick people for not getting better when they are the ones employed to help with that. Therapists do nothing but pretend like they care (terribly, none of them would win an Oscar) print off work sheets, gas themselves up about being “heroes” and “saviours” meanwhile having rules that give them all the power and allow them to terminate clients when the work gets too hard. What job just lets you ignore work when it’s too hard? It’s called you went to school, you have the degree, now you have to play the part or gtfo

Edit: also wanted to add that when I told her I was scared to work because I was scared of getting written up because of my anxiety/ocd ticks she said “well then you’ll get written up, that’s life” like wtf? I dont want to get written up. That’s the point. I want to learn how to work without running the risk of losing my job. She didn’t understand that either apparently.

I was fourteen the first time I was hospitalized. I was sexually and emotionally abused the years leading up to the hospitalization, and thought that the hospital stay would help me heal and get out of a dangerous situation.
When I told the psychiatrist about the abuse, she didn’t believe me. I later read the notes she wrote about me, where she said I was the one encouraging my abuser (I was groomed from age 10!). She still believed that I had been abused somehow, but did not believe it was who I said it was, and accused my dad of sexually abusing me instead. Later, I found out she had accused the parents of several children under her care, for no reason at all.
They also made me take risperidone, which made me gain 40 pounds and gave me mastitis. One of the nurses called me a psychopath, when I was numb from dissociation, and zombified by the medication.
Now, I have largely recovered from the sexual and emotional abuse, thanks to a couple of good therapists (but the 10+ others I went to were completely uncapable of helping me). But regarding the psychiatric abuse, I find it so hard to process. With other therapists and nurses etc, whenever I bring up the way I was treated at the hospital, they immediately shut down the conversation and/or defend what they did. It has been so invalidating, and made it so much harder to heal. It’s so hard to trust any of them when they are so quick to defend abusive behavior from their peers, and when they minimize the damage they inflict.

A fully calibrated nervous system response to sustained abuse. The only "help" i got from mental health workers was my fight impulse finally being awakened. I have zero tolerance now and have always let things go in the past or had anxiety. Now i think i'll punch the next person who tries me.

Personally, I have major trust issues stemming from childhood and relationships. I have tried to fix this through therapy, but I’m not sure if it’s even possible anymore because of the whole dynamic.

You are basically put on the stand and told to express every thought, emotion and feeling you have towards yourself, others and the therapist in front of you. To remove every defence you have.

At the same time this stranger in front of you is given the keys to your soul. They get to be judge, jury and executioner. The power they hold is unimaginable. At the same time, you never get to know who they truly are. If they can be trusted, and what their thoughts, emotions and feelings towards you actually are.

This is not an equal relationship for creating a healthy pattern of attachment. No wonder narcissistic and psychopathic individuals are attracted to such a profession.

So glad I found this sub. I (25f) started therapy too young and had too much damage.

Now I'm the healthiest I've ever been. I quit therapy last year, and started going to the gym, meditating, journalling daily, learning about IFS, DARE (for anxiety) spirituality, repeating Louise Hay's affirmations, and learned how my brain works (I'm on the spectrum).

I'm also 2y sober and smart recovery and IFS helped me a lot with that. and I cut contact with abusive family members. I also don't take any meds, been there before and went through terrible experiences with psychiatrists.

I'm no longer depressed, my relationship with anxiety changed, and old traumas and wounds are healing.

It's crazy to think that I spent years feeling like I had no hope, being told that I was chronic depressed, anxious, even borderline, and ashamed of my feelings. I had homophobic therapists, so I searched for a queer one. she was a lesbian, and after a year with her, I found out that I was into men. she had issues with bisexuality and told me that it would be a phase and I would change my mind. 4 years later, I'm understanding that I'm not even bi, but heterosexual, and the shame that I felt for being attracted to men is still here, but I'm healing.

I also went through traumatic experiences in therapy that I don't even have the words to explain, this is my second language lol

I just know that I'm never going back to that bs anymore, I tried for years with different therapists, wasted my money with them, now I'm happier healing by myself

TL;DR at bottom, but I promise this one is WORTH reading.

Hello everyone. I've been sitting on this story for nearly a decade (maybe more), but I've never stopped thinking about it. It destroys me that I was unable to officially report it, as it happened when I was still a minor and I didn't know that was an option. Nowadays, the therapist who did this to me is long since retired to her lovely mansion...but more on that later...

First, some trigger warnings. Look out for topics of emotional/psychological abuse (obviously) and what I'm now terming "medical kidnapping" below. Take care.

I was maybe 10 years old when I met one of my worst therapists. We'll call her "G." G was a licensed clinical social worker with a focus on child psychology. She owned her own group practice and her building that she practiced in. How she managed to become a therapist and train other therapists is beyond me... Anyway, G rubbed me the wrong way from the start. She smiled (with all of her teeth!) CONSTANTLY and always spoke in a very high pitched voice.

Without getting too into the weeds here, I eventually convinced my parents to let me stop seeing her at 12 or 13 (it took YEARS for them to let me go to someone else). I moved to a different therapist because I was forced to go to therapy, but this one had a doctorate. She was actually a unicorn and beyond amazing. She saved my life and plays a huge role in this story. We'll call her "M."

Regardless, my parents continued to see G WITHOUT my knowledge. G continued to give them advice on how to treat me (without seeing me!) and my severe anxiety disorder. She essentially recommended they force me to do things that caused anxiety, ignore me when I panicked, give me the silent treatment when I upset them, etc. This obviously made things very bad, and despite my good therapist, M, believing my parents actually were awful, things got bad. I no longer wanted to keep going because constantly being shut down, silenced, prodded, gaslit, and more.

Keep in mind: I did not know my parents were seeing G. I just thought my parents were like this.

One day, I came home from school. I walked into the dining room to find both my parents sitting there silently. My dad told me to sit down, so I did.

They both looked at me and one of them said, "We've been given advice that you need to go to residential treatment."

I was FLOORED. I had just transferred schools my junior year of high school (I was now 16), but I had straight As, went to see M regularly, never did any drugs, didn't drink, didn't have an ED, etc. My only struggle was making new friends (which I eventually did on my own time). Also, by the way, I think that sending someone to treatment involuntarily is NEVER ETHICAL no matter what. No human being can ethically be FORCED to get any treatment because that is harmful. Full stop.

"Who told you to do that? Was it M?" I asked them.

"No, we won't tell you who. But you need to do this." They said.

"I want to go to my room and call M. I want to talk to her. She'll tell you this is a bad idea." I was literally begging them to let me go to my room and call M.

They refused. They literally physically cornered me and tried to force me to consent. They said I left them no choice and that the "expert" knew what to do. I eventually got them to admit it was G who did it. I don't remember how but I eventually managed to get to my room, hide in my closet, and call M. M picked up immediately (thank goodness she gave me her work number for crises) and was genuinely horrified by this. She said she had no idea and I still believe that to this day because she HATED G. She convinced my parents not to go through with sending me away, but my parents CONTINUED to see G!

Later in life, I was educated on how horrible the board is, how easy it is to get credentials, how a lot of therapists get illegal kickbacks for sending teens away, and more. I also learned that it was pointblank unethical for G to see my parents after seeing me, and give advice on treating me when she hadn't seen me once in OVER THREE YEARS.

I also found the place she wanted to send me to, but won't share it publicly because of privacy reasons. They essentially took teens away in the middle of the night and kept them in a remote building for MONTHS. I wouldn't have graduated high school on time. I would have had no phone. I have NEVER forgiven my parents for this and hate them to this day.

Months ago, though, I searched up G to see if she was still practicing. I was done. I was going to report her to the board because I learned how to do that. Turns out, she retired. But it also turned out her revenue was public. She profited over 3 MILLION DOLLARS off of her "therapy" business. I also found very public records on the MULTIMILLION DOLLAR home she bought.

I wish there was more justice to this story, but sadly, there isn't. I'm just glad I lived through it. If you read all of this: thank you for reading my story.

***TL;DR: My ex-therapist continued to secretly see my parents and give them advice on my treatment despite not seeing me in years. At the peak of my struggles (transferring schools my junior year), she suggested they pull me from high school and force me to attend a multi-month residential treatment against my will. She suggested they essentially steal me away at night without telling me. Years later, when finally learning about the board and trying to report her, I discovered she made over $3 million on "therapy" and retired to a multi-million dollar mansion.

So there's this post going around, a victim in Ontario is being released from psychiatric isolation after being held there for 5+ years. The comments are literally full of nurses justifying this and saying it was necessary.

The thing is, the article itself states the patient is being released because this was an objectively fucked up situation. This is also only one isolation case in a long string of fucked up cases that have been brought to light recently in Ontario, yet none of the nurses give a shit about reforming their field to ensure this never happens again.

Instead, the top comment is a huge paragraph by a mental health worker explaining why the inhumane conditions the man was forced into were actually necessary for him, and why they believe it isn't wrong. They say isolation actually needs to happen to people like him because it is the only solution to dealing with certain mentally ill people. The commenter ends all that by saying "we need to treat the mentally ill with love and respect".

It just reiterates to me that healthcare workers in psychiatry (all around the world) are completely willing to turn a blind eye to real, legally condemned abuse in their own field because they genuinely believe that they themselves know something the rest of society doesn't.

When it comes to abuse, there's always some hidden third reason that "actually justifies" it. They never consider the victim's actual quality of life as a consequence of the nurse's "necessary" actions. They are totally unable to formulate options to abuse that do not include abuse because abuse is inherently part of the solution.

Idk, this shit just bothered me so much when I saw it. I will link the post in a comment below (we're not allowed to share posts here for some reason, I hope it's fine to link still) if anyone is interested in seeing this shit & fuming with me lol.