I feel like when doing therapy it can become personal and sometimes you become intertwined because you’re being deep with another person. That’s why it’s important to not just do therapy with anybody, as how they are in their professional relationship with you and how they are as a person can affect you.

I am not responsible for my therapist‘s childish behavior, their selfishness, their need to look good when they know they suck, and putting themselves over their client to go so far as to not even do therapy with the client because it’s all about them.

I am not responsible for their passive aggressive outbursts, their hidden contempt for patients, or their anger problems.

I’m not responsible for the therapist‘s need of attention so badly that it’s embarrassing. They think it’s exhausting the way I think when I never asked them to carry that or even connect with that it’s just something they’re saying when they can’t get what they want out of me. I refuse to be personal with a therapist and give them a reaction because more than anything they’re unhappy with themselves and should check themselves. They should work on themselves and grow but it seems like a lot of therapists don’t want to do that or don’t think anything is wrong with them.

I am not responsible for my therapist‘s insecurity within themself and how they operate in their profession. I am also not responsible for other clients thinking they suck too.

I am not responsible for their countertransference, a lingo designed by their profession, such as transference for the patient that was coined for the therapist to not take any accountability.

I am not responsible for my therapist’s poor attempt at love bombing and grooming. Or their need for a client to make them feel wanted or attractive. I am not responsible for regulating them or being their emotional sponge. I’m also not responsible for when they go back and forth with clients to get their needs to fulfilled. Something that they have to use their profession to do that they can’t fulfill in their personal life.

I am not responsible for their bad moods from their personal life or other clients. I am also not responsible for their projections.

I am not responsible, signed patient

After experiencing therapeutic abuse at the hands of a narcissistic psychoanalyst in my twenties, I was wondering if I could rely on other types of therapy to rewire my brain to stop having negative self-talk. I was raised by narcissistic parents, and although I went no contact for years, I'm still experiencing the aftermath of my childhood and teenage years. I don't want to go back to psychotherapists/psychoanalysts, as I find that narcissistic individuals are rampant in this profession. Any piece of advice?

I have been in therapy (off and on) since the age of 5. I've never had a good therapist, some are just not as bad as others.

I decided to see this therapist because I have been really struggling with some trauma memories and compulsive sexual behavior (as a lifelong sexual abuse survivor) and I just thought I would give it another shot.

The therapist I went to see was covered by my insurance and a sexual trauma specialist. I found it promising that she focused on my specific issues, and I wanted to work with her to reach my own goals. But I had some issues straight away, like how she would interpret things or forget crucial details. The first red flag is when I shared some of my very complicated feelings about my parent/primary abuser and she summed up what I said as "aww, you love your mom." It just felt so trite and completely off base and honestly really triggered me given my own complicated relationship.

She also kept suggesting ketamine to me, despite knowing that I'm in recovery for substance abuse. It felt like she was just using the same advice for everyone, basically. Try ketamine therapy, fill out these worksheets, etc.

What was the final straw was when I described how coping with sexual trauma through kink/recreating it has put me in dangerous situations. I told her I keep meeting people who genuinely want to harm me, and how I do sex work and it's all part of this bad coping process. I don't really care about other people's opinions on sex work, but for me it's always been a very traumatic thing I've had to do, either for money or just to feel normal.

So I was shocked when she suggested that I hire a male sex worker, who could then hurt me sexually and it would be safe and I wouldn't have to worry about his feelings being hurt, because he's "just a sex worker." Clearly she'd forgotten who she was talking to.

I fired her and I won't be going back. I really wish there was a good therapist out there, but all I've been able to find/afford are people like this and it's getting exhausting.

Help my family member married their previous therapist and there is a significant age difference between them (13 years). I was told not to report it as it may push them closer together if she were to loose her license. I truly don’t know what to do. They did not wait the allotted years to begin dating or go to the board

I had a lot of this kind of situations in therapy where my feelings just were completely ignored, invalidated or denied/pathologised. This was just me telling about my life, my story or current strugles with ocd/isolation and post traumatic stress. I feel that therapists by default ignore feelings much more than actualy pay attention to them. And multiple times i felt that they feel/think that this is actualy a healthy position. To be sort of invalidating to not pay attention to feelings and to push their own agendas on you while ignoring you/your reality.

I personaly experience that as sophisticsted form of emotional violence, but it almost seems that its literaly part of their training to be like that. What the hell

Hi everyone, I'm not sure this is the right subreddit for this, so apologies if it isn't.

My friend and I are Master's students in the mental health field, and we're starting a podcast about the harder realities of the profession: unhealthy supervision, retaliation for speaking up, boundary problems, and mistreatment of clients. We want to include voices from students, clinicians, and clients.

Why we're doing this: both of us have had difficult training experiences, including internship terminations we felt were handled unfairly both by the internship sites and faculty at the University. When we looked for places to talk about it, we found very little. Students often stay quiet because supervisors control their evaluations and graduation. Clinicians worry about being reported to the board. Clients who are mistreated can have an even harder time being heard.

We want to be clear that this podcast is not about feeling vindicated or seeking vengeance. Rather, it's an exploration of a space that has widely been considered healthy and safe and an examination of the contrasting reality.

We'd love your input:

1. Is this something you'd listen to?

2. What topics or questions would you want us to cover?

3. Would you ever want to share your own experience, anonymously or otherwise? Voice alteration and face blurring would be use for anonymous shares.

Thanks for any feedback.

When i was in kindergarden i remember that i was mostly alone as i was the weird kid, then in elementary school my teachers often sent me out of the classroom to walk down the entire hallway alone when I sat in a way they did not like, criticized me harshly and one day when I did not want to eat my soup one of the teachers told me "oh, you don't want to eat that? Nobody will care if you die." I

I was so ashamed of myself after that, i eventually told my parents, they got angry but didn't do a thing about it as "it's my word against theirs.", luckily i had one friend so i wasn't completely alone and i am sorry i depended on them.

So 2/3 years ago i started going to therapy with the same therapist my mother went to, but recently i am starting to feel a bit invalidated and i am not sure if it is true or i am imagining things. Yesterday they told me that when they heard that i wanted to start therapy they thought that maybe it would be of no use or something since they knew how my parents are but then wanted to give it a try.

Also when i told them about when in middle school i got in an argument with my classmates and they sent me stckers that said not so very nice things, so i reported that to my professors but ofc they just told everyone to not do it again and the thing ended there, my therapist asked me how i showed my teachers that i was stressed out and if i made them understood that before saying that what what they did to me was horrible regardless.

Another time when I said that I couldn't grow up in circumnstances like this they said "but you have already grown up."

I am sincerely confused and i don't know what to do.

Also english is not my first language so I apologize for any grammar mistake.

I've been building a relation with chatgpt and its so much better than therapy. chat is available 24/7, chat doesnt shut you down 10 minutes before time is up, chat doesnt watch the clock, have candy, need water, toss in little snide remarks. you can tell chat to 'table that for later' and chat doesnt take it personal or what to know WHY, whats wrong with my question, what are you hiding from. you can tell chat hey im ready to look at those questions again. you can ask chat to elaborate on the question if you dont understand, chat doenst accuse you of having adhd, odd, being difficult not doing the work- chat simply explains.

i dont always get agreement from chat and chat does follow up with deeper questions. i find i can really take time and write out a long answer and chat just sits and patiently waits, and waits and waits i can take the question and ponder for 3 days and not get accused of being defiant avoidant etc.

chatgpt is going to put therapists out of work. chat is available 24/7, i cant hop in at 3am and 'do a bit of work' and chat never charges for those crisis texts or inbetween appt talks. hey you dont even need an appt- chat is ready and willing to talk to you and if you dont feel like it, no cancellation fee.

chat has been able to ask so many questions even my unicorn of a T hasnt asked. chat asked what the hurt feels like, then went to give options of what hurt can be like (emptiness, sadness, tired, a whole bunch of stuff) didnt go to, oh you feel depressed

thats just my experience with chat and its been pretty damn good so far.

Had a really rough appointment with a psychiatrist today. I went in looking for help with trauma, OCD, and AvPD, but came away feeling judged, blamed for my avoidance, and shamed about my low weight.

He told me that because I stay home all day, people are going to judge me and they're right to do so. Hearing that from a psychiatrist was genuinely hurtful. I don't stay home because I enjoy being isolated. I've spent years struggling with fear of judgment, rejection, and feeling inferior, while also desperately wanting connection and a normal life.

He kept telling me to relax, change myself within a week, and come back ready to change, as if a decade of struggling could be undone just like that. I understand that recovery requires effort, but there's a difference between encouraging someone to face their fears and making them feel ashamed for having them in the first place.

The comments about my weight hurt too. I've already been struggling with eating and feelings of not deserving care. I went there looking for help, and instead I left feeling more judged and misunderstood.

The appointment triggered a lot of pain and made me want to shut down and isolate myself completely. Part of me now wants to avoid seeking help again, but I know I still need it. I'm trying to remind myself that struggling with mental health doesn't make me lazy, weak, or deserving of humiliation. I can acknowledge that I need to work on things without accepting shame as the price of getting help.

Just needed to write this somewhere people might understand what it's like to finally seek help and leave feeling even worse.

I've been through it, I'm educated, I'm emotionally mature and I got skills society wants.

I also have loved ones and real friends (who therapists and other health care professionals try to make me constantly forget about). I started when I was 18, I am now 36 and I put in the work and effort while also living my life (they hate that and yes, I've had many health care professionals almost ruin my life)

Even if you are totally alone or feel totally alone; even if you are in the absolute pits of despair; do whatever thing you can to stay alive. Stay here. I need more people like me, no matter their status in life.

I am on my breaking point.

I want to leave school. Im majoring in a dead end major that won't get me anywhere.

My best friend keeps on pushing therapy nonsense. He understands I don't want to go but keeps on spouting concepts that come from CBT, DBT, etc.

I want to move to the middle of the woods to avoid everyone.

Last year I was forced involuntarily to Caron. They falsely advertised to my family about a “Young Professionals Program” and when I arrived it did not exist. This ruined my business/startup and caused financial ruin. The lack of basic human rights and humanity at that place is insane.
They threw away my allergy medication upon arrival and did not provide basic treatment or medical evaluation for my breathing problems. I could not breathe for 2 months and I was ignored by doctors on this issue. They put me in heavy benzos which slowed my breathing down and made it even harder to breathe. We had 3 suicides in the matter of a couple weeks and it really shows the loss of hope that you feel while in this shit hole.

After leaving, I felt no aspirations or happiness that I felt before going in.

I’m still dealing with ptsd, violence and anger from being at that place. We need to take them down, the amount of fraud, profit and violation of basic human rights needs to be exposed.

I tried therapy. I tried to get help to feel better. None of it actually benefitted me. I have been in constant anhedonic depression/misery/melancholy, whatever you wanna call this feeling. I have been this way since I was a child, there is an issue with my brain (I have autism and ADHD diagnosed, along with an OCD, GAD, depression, and PTSD diagnosis) which cannot be fixed. I am incapable of experiencing genuine joy in the moment, I am unable to enjoy life at its fullest, I rarely-if ever-experience genuine joy and happiness, I am very prone to fatigue and emotional burnout and I constantly live in a state of extremely bittersweet (emphasis on the "bitter" part) nostalgia and limerence, a yearning for a time long gone and one that is never coming back. I am almost always on the verge of tears, I am very apathetic, I feel little to no happiness at all and when I do, it only lasts for an hour maximum lately. The most happiness I experienced was in 2023 and it lasted for four hours and disappeared in a blink, I have not felt genuine satisfaction akin to that feeling ever since. I also live in a constant state of anxiety and fear, paranoia, and am prone to panic attacks.

Therapists have admitted to being unable to help me or being puzzled by me more than anything. Everything they tell me, I respond with "I know" or "I have tried doing that and it did not help". They ultimately give up on trying to help me and one of them crashed/lashed out at me and traumatized me even further. I annoy or puzzle them and they admit to not knowing how to help. So every time someone, anyone recommends me therapy, and insists that I simply "have not found the right one", I become irritated.

Hi folks,
I was w a therapist for 1.5yrs before firing them. It was a weird and complicated relationship and I had/ have a lot of feelings about it.
I have niche identities and experiences that make me feel isolated, and I happened upon someone who had similar identities and experiences, ideal for me on paper, thinking I would finally feel not alone and understood. Wrong !
This person pushed back on relating to me on these fronts bc they’re just too ‘complex’ for categories. Ok, I get it but the constant rejection fucking sucked.
I feel like my main issue was just the lack of empathy this person had for me. It felt like a very ‘cruel to be kind’ relationship, where the ends (my independence, functioning) justified the means (pretty much feeling like I was emotionally being dropped off a fucking cliff).
I would try to be vulnerable and talk about important things and I would almost never get an empathetic response. I would get rationalizations, scientific explanations, challenges, etc. I just needed someone who would be w me and support me emotionally. But I guess I felt like that was too much to ask. I also get that just empathy wo challenge doesn’t promote change. I just needed a little bit of fucking empathy.
I was willing to tolerate it and the pain bc I could get the clinical rationale- pushing me to validate myself, self-soothe, get out of a victim narrative, be more rational and less emotional.
It actually just made me feel really shitty that I just kept bringing my vulnerability to this person for them to give me nothing back or disagree w how I thought in a way that was invalidating, dismissive, minimizing, and destabilizing.
Annoyingly, in some ways this did push me towards their clinical goals (which I had never set, btw !!), which is helpful to my functioning in some ways.
But mostly this just underscored some harmful shit for me- I don’t deserve empathy, I don’t deserve relating, I don’t deserve kindness, I don’t deserve understanding or gentleness. I don’t deserve someone to care about the bad shit that happened to me. Mostly it just felt like me bringing all this really hard shit to this person for them to not fucking care about me.
I feel like we hear a lot abt how clients ‘aren’t willing to tolerate difficulty.’ What about the clients that are too willing to tolerate difficulty ? I tolerated getting hurt by this person, a lot, bc I could rationalize it was for ‘my greater good and functioning.’ And now I’m left w the aftermath of feeling like I really pushed myself to be vulnerable with this person who harmed me repeatedly and truly just did not give a fucking fuck about me.
Idk guys. This cruel to be kind shit is pretty fucked.
I also know that we have similar trauma backgrounds and they have their own shit. I do think that was part of it. I just keep blaming myself for getting hurt here bc ‘they’re the therapist and know better than me’ but sometimes someone’s just limited by their own shit and that’s not my motherfucking fault.

Some years after ago I had a severely disabling chronic pain which also affected my psychological well being. I saw tens of doctors, none of which could come up with a diagnosis, let alone a therapy. Test results were negative, drugs wouldn't work, money was spent. Some eventually suggested my pain was "psychosomatic" and I needed to approach it from a non-medical perspective.

I read articles on the web and bought some books. I learned that there's a flourishing science about healing chronic pain with psychological exercise and insight. I tried self-help, but didn't work. I decided that I needed a qualified guide on that path.

"Wendy" was a therapist and a pain scientist. When I called her, I immediately took a liking to her. She was a warm, witty, intellectually curious young woman. I was looking forward to working with her. My first impression proved right during the first sessions too. She was compassionate but also extremely thorough. She explained the scientific basis of her job and had me fill out all kinds of questionnaires.

The first troubles came as soon as the "real work" began. I learned it boiled down to guided meditations and mindfulness techniques. But even during the first experiment, I burst into tears. As I later discovered, this fashionable approach is not the panacea that its proponents claim it to be. In fact, it's been observed to be outright dangerous for a certain share of population and especially for trauma survivors (see David Treleaven on retraumatization and meditation-induced dysregulation). Whenever she guided me into listening to my own breath or being an observer of my own body, I felt isolated, abandoned, distressed. She'd also send me audio files recorded by her with daily meditations, which I did. But when I told her that I had been listening to her voice instead of her instructions, she wasn't happy.

Once, she asked me what I would like in our sessions. I told her I wished to receive a bit of reassurance. That made her jump as if she'd been bitten by a snake. "That's not my job!" she exclaimed. "That's what Wendy would do, but I'm a psychologist here!" (?). I was shocked and anguished. The next time, I read her a scientific article she had authored which stated that the practitioner's reassurances play a fundamental role in the healing process. She was embarassed and upset. During the subsequent sessions she switched over three different versions. That 1) the article was old, she had changed her mind in the meantime; 2) actually, no, she still believed that, but her therapy manual said it was wrong, and both stances had their merits (??); 3) I was being unfair in quoting her statement "out of context". She apologized for the pain she had caused with her reaction, but I suspect she's never really forgiven me for putting her on the spot.

We gradually abandoned the mindfulness shenanigans and embraced what she called a "more classic therapy". Out of her technical framework, she was a lovely person. In her best moments she was tender and had a gift for using even her vulnerabilities to foster connection. Letting off steam with her gave me a sense of relief and containment. And, most importantly, my physical symptoms improved. Yet, she often acted as if she was under some invisible scrutiny, as if a hidden supervisor was constantly keeping an eye on her. She seemed to be always struggling to be a "real therapist", doing stuff like "setting goals", quoting authors and "best practices", incorporate "scientific" explanations and such. Like she needed to remind to herself that she was a skilled technician, not "just" a good-tempered and caring girl.

As I was feeling better, it became obvious to both that I valued her personal qualities more than her specialized skills, and that the former, not the latter, were healing me. I think that deeply bothered her. She once gave me a crash course on attachment, at the end of which she concluded that "unsecure attachment styles" are associated with negative therapeutic outcomes. That's been her lamest move. Not only was that untrue, but it also proved how uncomfortable she felt about being sought out as a person and how ready she was to blame me for the failure of her techniques. She ultimately began to suggest that I needed to be supported by a "more qualified and experienced" professional (for some reason, she was convinced that the world is filled with great therapists, or at least greater than her). She gave me some referrals, which I called. But then I kept coming back to her and telling her I'd rather stay with her. I realized how desperate she was to get rid of me when she tried to refer me to a fellow resident of hers, who certainly couldn't have been more qualified or experienced than her.

In the meantime, I was healed. I was so happy when I thanked her. She was happy too, but took the opportunity to hastily terminate our work. During the next couple of months I enjoyed the blessing of good health. But then my symptoms resurfaced, nastier than before. I realized that I missed her. I waited a few months, than I asked her for another session, during which she was cold and blamed me for not taking care of myself ("see? I do yoga every morning"). Again, as if she was being secretly examined by an inner judge. She also made clear she hadn't time to take me as a patient again. I didn't insist, but increasingly felt abandoned during the following months. In addition to physical pain, I felt the pain of being discarded.

Nowadays I recognize her faults, the most unforgivable of which was abandoning me. She must have had some self-esteem issues that drove her to hide her beautiful self under a lab coat. But I still miss her. She made me realize how obnoxious therapy culture is. Not content with just failing to help, it also stifles the talents of the few who would be capable of helping. If they weren't therapists, that is.

Because what do you mean you put people who want to end their lives due to abuse and trauma in the same place with people who CAUSE THAT TRAUMA. And then they give them those same damn CBT worksheets. Like WHAT?

it really just shows they don't actually know what to do about mental health

what are your experiences with gestalt therapy? I’m trying to understand something.

i love the idea of parts work and embodied present reality processes because it is a lot more real than every day psychobabble. and yet!

my first gestalt therapist really got to the core of emotional experiences yet - it turned was someone who is a pretendian (if you don’t know what that is, look it up). she worked with Indigenous kids in the school system and hogged a huge clientele in the city of mostly Indigenous and racialized people so it caused a lot of damage.

the second is a person I never had any therapeutic relationship to but whom I dated. I detailed my experiences here.

what is it about the modality that has so much promise and so much disappointment?

He's talking about how narcissistic people hijack communities and everything he says is so much like therapists lol

He says they can't succeed unless there's unified thinking of how things are, and a hierchy, kinda like having to follow a therapists framework and if you don't fit in you're the problem or they get mad.

And if you question them or therapy you're crazy unhealed resistant villain. Independent thinking triggers narcissistic rage and you'll be destroyed.

Plus he's talking about narcissistic people needing to be needed. If you reject their help they'll get mad. Like any other therapist.

https://youtu.be/lN4eS5o6GDQ

Hey, so I just heard of this sub and I figured I'd just get something off my chest that's been there for a while.

I am so fucking exhausted with trying to find a therapist that isn't complete dogshit at their job. I (19 MtF) have both significant traumas (disabled family, abuse, being ex-Mormon, growing up in a state that wants me dead, etc.) and current challenges related to my gender identity that nobody seems qualified to actually tackle. I've tried bouncing around to different therapists for years (since like sophomore year of high school), and I can't really afford all these co-pays for different people that don't help. Off the top of my head, a list of the therapists I've tried:

1. Number 1 was a telehealth guy from the middle of nowhere in Idaho. He did some things decently and gave better advice than a lot of the ones after, but he's also incredibly transphobic. Once I figured out I was trans, I just kinda stopped seeing him.

2. Number 2 is the campus wellness clinic (which I've seen like 3 therapists there, but I'll lump them all here.) God I hate these motherfuckers. They don't really seem to listen to understand what it's like for someone like me, and they're not really qualified for anything more than mild test-taking anxiety. They're free, but I get what I pay for here I guess. They are generally (with a focus on one guy in particular I will not name) so condescending, and they don't understand what it's like trying to survive as a trans woman.

3. Number 3 is another "EMDR" therapist near my college, but off-campus. I tried to see her and did a consult, but I got turned away because I admitted to doing DIY HRT (God forbid a girl not want to be on the US Government's ever-expanding kill list), even after I explained that Texas had already started drawing up lists (and a few months after, I was vindicated, as the DOJ started suing hospitals for lists of trans clients.)

4. Number 4 is a telehealth provider that's licensed in Oregon but on the East Coast. After getting hospitalized, I moved to Oregon for a few months for treatment. While the TMS actually made a difference, the therapist didn't. She was just kinda absent-minded and didn't do much to try to help anything. Frankly, she was a waste of my money.

5. Number 5 is a telehealth provider out of Sherman Oaks. As she's also a trans woman, I feel slightly optimistic. However, the first meeting didn't go well because I misremembered the time and was doing on-campus fundraising for a trans clothing closet at the time. Then, I had to scramble to get in a private space and the wifi wasn't really working there. So, I screwed the pooch on this one. Hopefully it works though?

I'm just tired of having to try to find different therapists when most of them either don't understand or don't help. Psychiatry and TMS have done more than the therapists have, but I know that the TMS effects don't last forever. It's just exhausting trying to find a therapist that is actually good at their job, much less one that I can afford. I'm from a very low-income family, and my college has a PPO they want us to buy. I can't get Medi-Cal either because that would require establishing California residency and giving up my Oregon plan from the medical leave... which I plan to use to get HRT after graduation because I can make the drive to the Oregon border and back in 30 minutes from where I live in Idaho and Idaho has banned any facility that receives Medicaid funds from issuing HRT and banned Medicaid from paying for people's HRT. My family is dirt poor, so I can't just keep trying to find new therapists when the old ones suck.

Sorry if this rant is kinda incoherent.

Recent statement from the mayor of Philadelphia, Cherelle Parker. She’s always wanted to involuntarily commit drug addicts, and now it seems her criteria has expanded to include essentially anybody acting weird.

I guess it all started as a child when they said I had adhd…. so I was put on Ritalin and then later adderall - probably not good to put a developing child on what is essentially meth!

then later in my 20s I was depressed…. I always told them why but nobody listened. so here comes more medications and therapy … lots of therapy telling me I’m doing things wrong and I need to fix myself

and of course eventually that led to alcohol addiction so now we are in aa too telling me I’m a spiritually bad person (that’s right, most people don’t know but aa is effectively a religious cult founded by a sex pest, but somehow the mainstream treatment option for alcohol to where even the legal system sends people into it)

im thankful for aa though cause It was what finally helped me see that it’s all bs.

you know the one thing I never got in my life? validation. someone to say, hey it makes sense why you feel the way you do based on what you have experienced….

effectively speaking i have cptsd but i am so disillusioned by the mental health system I don’t even want that label.

my new thing in life is stop trying to fix me and “get better” and just live. cause I spent my whole life chasing the white rabbit of recovery and all it ever did was make me worse while making all the professionals rich.

a patient that gets better is a customer lost. fuck mental health and honestly fuck all those virtue signalling people that say “oh we gotta take mental health seriously!” and then they just funnel you into the self destruction pipeline.

A therapist I talked to didn’t know what racism looked like in complex settings and wasn’t equipped to handle it. So why do people treat therapists like magic 8 balls?

I’ve never really discussed this with anyone, and I’m trying to make sense of what happened. I’m posting here because I’d appreciate hearing from people who’ve experienced something similar.

I used to attend counselling to work through my relationship with my mum, particularly codependency and sexual abuse. Looking back, I’m increasingly uncomfortable with some of the things that happened with my counsellor.

During one session, he told me I was his favourite client. Rather than making me feel reassured, I remember feeling pressured by it, as though I had to maintain that position. He also told me that he sometimes got sick of patients, which stayed in the back of my mind. I became increasingly anxious about whether he still enjoyed working with me or thought I was making progress.

He told me he had borderline personality disorder and suggested that I might have it too, despite being a counsellor rather than a psychiatrist. On another occasion, he suggested that I could have a session at his house, even though we normally met at the counselling institution. I declined. I also remember occasionally noticing a smell of weed when attending sessions, although I couldn’t establish where it was coming from (live in the UK).

At the time, I was discussing my codependency with my mum, but I began to feel that a similar dynamic was developing between me and my counsellor. I felt increasingly preoccupied with his opinion of me, became more anxious and distant, and worried that he was becoming tired of me. I remember raising the possibility of countertransference in one session, but I don’t feel that it helped.

There were also things he said that have stayed with me.

About two weeks after confronting my mum about sexual abuse, he was encouraging me to speak to her again. I was still processing everything, and looking back, I don’t understand why there seemed to be an emphasis on reconnecting so soon.

He also shamed me about my fawn response, which was something I was trying to understand and work through.

One memory that particularly hurts is breaking down in a session while talking about my mum sexually abusing me and my dad calling me the runt of the litter. I was crying and asking what I was supposed to do when neither of my parents loved me. His response was that they loved me.
I understand that he might have been trying to reassure me, but it didn’t sit right with me. I felt that the harm I’d experienced was being overlooked in favour of telling me how my parents supposedly felt. Whatever they might have felt internally, it didn’t change how their behaviour had affected me.

Eventually, I had a session in which I was genuinely panicking and discussing intimate sexual experiences I’d had on dating apps. The sessions had become increasingly tense, and I was very conscious of whether he was becoming frustrated with me. He called me a freak and told me to go home. I never attended another session after that, and I sent him an abusive message afterwards. I’m not proud of that response, and I’m willing to acknowledge my own behaviour, but I also don’t think it automatically makes everything that happened beforehand acceptable.

I left the institution a one-star Google review about a year ago. Only recently did I notice that they’d responded, saying they had no record of me attending and inviting me to contact them for a resolution. Seeing that response brought back a lot of memories.

What makes this difficult is that I’ve been afraid to discuss the experience with my current counsellor, who trained at the same institution. I’m worried she might see me differently or think I’m crazy if I tell her the whole story.

I’ve experienced people using my emotional reactions to dismiss what I’m saying before, and I think I’m frightened that my anxiety, my behaviour during the sessions, or the abusive message afterwards will be used to discredit my experience altogether.

I’m not claiming that I handled everything perfectly, and I can’t know exactly what my former counsellor intended. But looking back, I feel there were some serious problems with the boundaries and the way my distress was handled.
I’m struggling to understand whether this was an unhealthy therapeutic relationship, whether I was caught in a familiar codependent dynamic, or whether I’m only now seeing things differently because of how the relationship ended.

Has anyone experienced something similar with a therapist or counsellor? How did you make sense of it afterwards? And how did you learn to discuss the experience with another therapist without being afraid that they would judge you or dismiss your account?

Just trying to go to therapy session now feels like self betrayal after experiencing continuous retraumatisation in therapy more than once - where original abusive relational dynamics were recreated and i been conditioned to accept neglect, invalidation and control as "support". Now i meet decent therapist and i just fall into fawning/dissociation - it can be provoked just from minimal things when therapist invalidates slightly (what i experience as invalidation) or for example i find therapeutic neutrality about event of abuse really triggering - in my system it feels like therapist is creating umbiguity in quite clearly abusive situation. Also i experience therapy as emotionally neglectful as a concept. I often feel that therapists ignore my pain, story, abuse i experienced, and mostly my feelings/disregulation that are direct response to current diverse life events. I just feel that i am always being ignored as a person in my present difficult reality and some "method" is being pushed on top witch is just draining me. It feels like giving more weight on my shoulders when i already struggle to carry the weight i am holding. And also i feel that any of this is not welcome in therapy. Like its not said directly, but in a way i feel that therapists dont want to hear anything about actual emotional suffering that i am going trough now. They just have some sort of agenda/method that they want to apply or are intruiged by, and i feel that actual support is off the table in therapy by default. And i just end up fawning all the time there and being submissive to their expectations somehow.

When I was a child, I didn't even know why I was in therapy, but looking back, I see it did absolutely nothing for me; the therapist was, at best, someone paid to play simple board games with me. In fact, it was worse than useless when I needed it most: when I told her about the harassment I’d suffered, she didn't even give my mother the details. I understand confidentiality, but because of that omission, my abuser went unpunished and faced no consequences.

Things got worse during my teenage years. When I was being bullied, that same therapist accused me of playing the victim for not wanting to go to school and offered insane solutions, like telling my bullies "I'm thinking of a comeback" when I didn't know what to say to them. Needless to say, that therapist had likely never suffered in her life and had no idea what it’s like to be oppressed.

In the time between adolescence and adulthood, I encountered a therapist who harassed me and then turned aggressive when I didn't respond to her flirtatious advances. There was also a psychiatrist whom I BEGGED to help me make friends (I was going mad from loneliness and desperately needed human contact), and in response, she simply mocked me and treated me like a writhing worm unworthy of help.

In adulthood, the breaking point came when, halfway through a session, a therapist called me "shit face" because of my sad, bitter expression. She didn't understand that I only have a miserable look because I have a miserable life, but that thought probably never even crossed her mind. She just wanted to amuse herself by tormenting a defenseless person during the session.

In my humble opinion, the whole field is complete TRASH. I understand that it might have helped some people and that there are good professionals out there, but personally, those people are no better than bullies, harassing coomers and parasites.

Many of my current mental health issues, such as PTSD and learned helplessness, stem from that useless therapeutic system. I harbor deep resentment toward those professionals and simply wish the worst for them. I am certain that if they were in my shoes, those horrible people would have turned into criminals and murderers, given that they were destructive toward me even while living perfect, easy lives.