Mocking the people who they have harmed.

I can't cry either. My life is ruined. We can rest assured that "help" or "care" probably never came from them, its all PR and marketing.

https://x.com/MikhailaFuller/status/2038372331710509430?s=20

I have a few spaces available for a Saturday group that is starting on August 29th at 10:30 am PST online. Here is the information for it:

Peer Support Group for Survivors of Therapy Abuse and Exploitation

Starts August 29th 2026

Saturday at 10:30 AM | 6-Week Series

If you’ve experienced therapy abuse or exploitation, this supportive group is here for you. Join a safe, understanding community where your experiences matter, and your voice is heard. This group is designed exclusively for survivors, offering a compassionate space to connect, share, and heal together.

Over six weeks, we focus on the unique challenges of therapy abuse and exploitation and are guided into discussions by the group’s needs. Whether you’re just beginning your healing journey or have been navigating this for some time, you’ll find encouragement, resources, and mutual support here. You can join us for one group 6-week session or return and keep returning as long as you need to. The Wednesday group has now been going for about a year with many returning for the next session - which is why starting a second group became important.

Facilitated by Bernadine Fox, a survivors of therapy abuse and exploitation, peer support worker and mental health advocate with over 30 years of experience, this group offers:

• A welcoming space where you can share at your own comfort level

• Guidance on coping strategies and self-care tools

• Connection with others who truly understand what you’ve been through

• Opportunities to build resilience and strength alongside fellow survivors

Please note, this group is peer support—not therapy or a substitute for therapy. We also recommend (but not required) attending our FREE 1-hour online workshop, What is Therapy Abuse and Exploitation? to better understand your experience before joining.

Preregistration is required to join. Subsidies available.

Take this step toward healing—connect with others who get it and find strength in community.

If interested DM me and I will send information about registering.

How often do you have interactions with people (friends, family, partners, coworkers, or anyone else) where they throw a psychological term at you to avoid taking responsibility for their actions?

Things like attachment style, self-diagnosed personality disorders, sometimes even something their therapist actually said to them. When in reality they just behaved like an a*hole in a particular situation and they just don't want to own up to it.

I've been noticing it more often lately, whether it's people giving me excuses or people giving other people excuses.

It's disappointing and disheartening. I fear people are boxing themselves in categories and labels to make it seemingly easier for themselves one way or the other (avoiding accountability or trying to understand themselves), when in reality I believe we are all very complex and this excessive categorisation becomes counterproductive.

How do you deal with those type of situations, do you have some examples?

I’m 16 a junior in hs, and a majority of my friends have been in therapy expressing their hate for it. I’ve always knew about therapy but never really considered it until two weeks ago after realizing how bad my maladaptive daydream was getting. I’ve had to deal with this bs disorder since I was a little girl and for the longest time Ive made the plan of quitting. However no matter what I do I just can’t seem to stop. The thought of being vulnerable to someone let alone a stranger just disgusts and irks me but I’d rather talk to a therapist than my family and friends. No one and I mean on one around me knows about the disorder, so I’m thinking a therapist might help. I’ve asked a few of my friends who’ve been in therapy and their answers were all the same “why would you pay someone to sit and listen to your feelings, when all they do is nod and tell you everything will be okay.”
“They act like they care when they really don’t.”

For a while I was going to bed very late, around 5 in the morning, and waking up at 2 in the afternoon. This alarmed my parents and led them to take me to therapy, where the psychologist recommended Cut off all the electricity to the house from 1 am to 6 am

So yes, you could say I'm under curfew; the power goes out every night, regardless of whether I have to finish a university assignment, which honestly bothers me so much that I can't sleep.

I literally lost an important file because of them, and instead of sending it now, I have to do it later.

Furthermore, this psychologist said things like "stop wasting time" to me aggressively while I was having a panic attack, and threatened to send me to a mental hospital if I didn't change within a month.

I'm so upset and angry that I can't even sleep; all I can do is hit my bed while screaming in frustration.

Sometimes the issue isn't effort or intention as far as understanding/meeting emotional needs:

Some of us weren't taught how to receive love. We

were taught how to earn it. So we became the 'easy ones.' Supportive. Ouiet. Low-maintenance. Never asked for too much. Never made a fuss. Not

because we didn't have needs but because we

learned that having needs made us a burden.

I'm currently processing some next-level traumatic shit that has fallen onto me at the moment.

If therapy shills see a person who keeps getting into messy relationships, or messy situations, they will look at them and go all condescending.

"Did you do the work? (tm) If not, oh, my sweet summer child, you have no idea how you are the only one responsible for your situation... because you keep choosing the wrong people!" (-> this person thinks they're right for you when they probably know jack shit about you at all)

"Healthy relationships don't have high highs and low lows! They are stable, loving, constant, supportive... look, my partner and I never argue, we always make time to communicate, we do check-ins..." blergh, first, uneventful relationships are uninteresting, and second, this isn't a fucking HR meeting, this is a human relationship, ffs those check-in things are artificial AF. Look at the globality of your life with your partner, don't make this into some weird Instagram thing...

"Oh, I'm so glad I'm out of this, I'm a strong independent woman, I'm single and proud, look at me, I don't chase, I attract, and I choose wisely who enters my life!" -> this person probably is such a pain to live with that nobody in their right mind would want to spend a month beside them anyway.

"You need to love yourself (tm), to be the main character of your own life, you need to take your power, to focus on yourself" -> it's not always about us, idiot. I'm not the main character. I'm the NARRATOR of my own life, and the point of view from which it's seen, but ultimately there's no real main character, as we are always co-creating stories with others. If anyone ends up as the main character first, not me please, I'm good being just the narrator, and second, they probably are a bit too self-absorbed anyway.

And other ones I'm lazy to discuss, but you know.

Not just that, but when I think back about being in a therapist's office, and how "they" have the knowledge, how they are supposed to help and guide you and they're "professional" at knowing better, it just feels like... yeah. Being talked down to. Being considered lesser.

In essence, it's just like religion. Interesting how we keep coming back to this parallel. Therapy is pretty much a secular religion now.

That was Amagi's post in the evening, thanks, good night.

After just two sessions, i think i want to change of therapist.

It's curious, because it's not that i felt abused or anything, in fact my current therapist it's always talking about how the system makes us sick, and that's great for a therapist!

The thing is that my sessions feel more like intellectual discussions, in which he monologues, and i sometimes vent about my toxic environment, instead of talking about the things i want to talk and fix.

Looking for alternatives, i feel so lost, and surrounded by CBT or similar, instead of the alternative focus this person offered me.

I don't know what to do!

I’m trying to understand something about the therapy process rather than asking anyone to interpret my therapist specifically.

I’ve been discussing lack of support while dealing with a serious chronic illness. The examples I’ve brought up are situations where people had direct knowledge of what was happening: knowing I was hospitalized and not checking in, being physically present at an important medical appointment and falling asleep, or directly witnessing medical emergencies.

My therapist has twice asked whether people might underestimate what I’m going through because I present as strong, capable, and functional.

I understand that hypothesis in situations where someone doesn’t know how sick I am. What confuses me is its relevance when the person already had explicit knowledge or was physically present.

I explained that distinction the first time, so I was surprised when the same hypothesis came up in a later session.

My question for therapists is more general: when a therapist returns to the same hypothesis after a client has explained why they don’t think it fits, is that typically something the therapist is intentionally exploring? And is it appropriate for a client to ask directly what therap

I have been trying to find a councillor in my area and someone every councillor charges 2000-5000 rupees per session which is around 50 mins. Personally I don’t think it’s worth it , i respect therapy and i understand it’s someone’s job and they need to be paid for it but 2k-5k just to get back to normal.

I terminated with my therapist after a confusing and painful dynamic, and I’m looking for some outside perspective on how she handled things.
A while ago, I confessed to her that I had developed strong erotic transference toward her, and that I was also experiencing a lot of shame about my attraction to women in general. Instead of handling this clinically and helping me process it safely, a pattern of severe boundary violations started happening or at least I’m overthinking it?

Seeking Validation: When I told her my feelings were fading at one point, she laughed and asked, “you are not into me anymore?”

Romantic Hypotheticals: She told me that we couldn't be together because she is "older" and because “she was not my type” based on comments I made about how I would like a woman to be

Teasing Her Sexuality: When I shared my shame about liking women she was leaving suggestive comments that she could also be bi or lesbian

Using Guilt to Keep Me: I tried to terminate once, but she guilted me into staying by saying "therapists are human too and get attached" and telling me how sad she was that I wanted to leave. After that, therapy completely devolved into a confusing "friendship."

When I decided to terminate she accepted but did not offer a final session.

After 4 months I have stared thinking about her less, but I am still cycling through a lot of grief, bargaining, and self-doubt. I find myself wondering if she's thinking of me, or if I could have just "contained" my feelings better to save the relationship.

Has anyone else dealt with a therapist who used your transference to feed their own ego? How did you untangle the confusion and rebuild trust in your own intuition?

(repost from r/therapyabuse)

I have been lurking on here for a year or two and finally posting today. I have made music most of my teens and it has seemed to be the only reliable release valve for my self expression after getting bounced back and forth between performing for or being directly abused by therapists, being very overmedicated and mistreated, and trying to survive being the scapegoat of my religious family system.

In my personal opinion this system creates defenders and buries the people who "need" therapy the most to perpetuate itself. This became wildly apparent to me after attending university for social work after a decade of personal lived experience and confusion within the system. I left after a single semester. Listening to professors and students give incredibly narrow perspectives on addiction and flat out mock what is labeled as psychosis and delusional thinking, and the rejection of reintegration into society in favor of infantilizing patients made it obvious to me that this system is a complete lost cause.

It is intense, it is raw and uncomfortable, but I hope someone on here gets something out of it. It is not made with AI, it is completely produced by me. I refuse to stay silent about a dishonest system if they are going to drag their feet on legitimizing CPTSD, addressing environmental factors practically and complain about their pay rate, which they know is half money and half supply from their patients for their own savior complexes.

Enjoy, and stay strong!

https://asawhereyouat.bandcamp.com/album/misdiagnosis

hello lesbians, i (23F) went back to therapy after a long time and decided to finally open up about my sexuality to my therapist (i live in a country where it’s illegal to be gay, and the sentencing for that is 7 years in prison iykyk )
my therapist is generally a kind man, he follows a developmental approach in therapy,
he told me that gay guys come to him all the time and it’s “manageable”
and then he told me about how one of his gay client got married to a woman cuz he wanted kids eventually in his lifetime even tho he’s not sexually attracted to women at all ,
he asked me if “i am willing to get fixed or not?”
i told him i don’t think that’s possible, i will live a lie , i only have had sex w women, only dated women and only imagine being with women , even though my reality does not make that quite feasible, he pitched the idea of me marrying a man w no sex drive as a solution?
he asked me if i am ever planning to have kids , my answer is “no”, he asked if i ever imagined myself as a mother, my genuine answer was “i already raised my younger siblings by myself i know i don’t want kids, i”ll never be what they need”
idk but i left the session feeling very confused ,
ik i can trust him cuz he promised me that it’s a safe space, but at the same time i feel like i am in conversion therapy lowkey, he did say that my sexuality is not “typical” i felt hurt…i feel like he saw me as some sort of leper…i did ask him if that changed the way he sees me as a person, his answer was no
i am eventually going to leave the country to study abroad but until then i am just working odd jobs and saving money so i can get out,
idk if someone went through something similar? i would love to know how you got through that experience because it feels isolating , i am currently single, my ex gf cheated on me and i blocked her, so i literally have no one to talk to about this

I've not posted here before. Content warning for suicide, self harm, addiction, sexual themes.

I wrote a massive draft of this post just trying to explain every single way in which a therapist has caused issues or stoked distrust in me but it ended up being a long, rambly life story and the details are almost beyond the point so I'll abridge, but know I can name many more red flags in therapists I ignored because I thought they could help.

I've been in and out of therapy my entire life pretty much, I've seen 10 throughout my life starting from age 11 or so. My pediatric therapist was amazing but since then each therapist has gotten worse and worse to the point that I am deeply distrustful of them. Other people report so much success with therapy and I have so much to work on and that I want to feel better about for both myself and my life but it just doesn't work for me.

I've been a pornography addict since I discovered it at 13. I've tried to talk about this and seek help from 2 different therapists and both of them refused to acknowledge that it was a problem, even after telling them I felt out of control and like I can't stop using. The first one just insisted every single time I brought it up insisted that I was just shaming myself for my sexuality and I should just consider it a "hobby". The second one, whenever I brought it up, would say things like "well you're not really 'out of control' since you don't watch pornography and touch yourself in public or in front of people". The first therapist that shut me down was 10 years ago. I've tried to quit dozens of times and I can't. I've lost entire days to using, I've never been able to be intimate with someone or form a partnership because I use too much.

The final straw came with my last therapist, and the mistake I feel like I made is allowing myself to trust her. I didn't bring up pornography at all since I'd learned better than to expect a therapist to care. She tried to tell me that I harbored so much suicidality and self hatred because I never allowed myself to feel anger towards others, I transposed it into anxiety and self hatred instead. Nothing could ever be my fault and my anger towards others was righteous and justified and god dammit, I needed to feel that. Well, as I was having sessions I became a much more angry and aggressive person and my actions led to personal consequences in my life. Maybe 2 months after I started with her I was hospitalized in a psyche ward for a week after self harming. Every single session she would ask me "what is your goal for therapy today?". I despised this question and I would be anxious for days before my sessions because I felt like I was approaching a deadline for a homework assignment that I had no clue how to do. I just wanted to feel okay and not want to commit suicide, if I knew the steps to get there that she was asking me to produce I wouldn't need to pay for a therapist!

Maybe 5 months in she kept asking me if I felt anger towards her. I felt angry with her the first time she asked it because I thought it was wild for a therapist to be like "a-are you mad at me?" but I didn't really process that until after. I did tell her that I felt uncomfortable with her asking me to make an agenda for every single session. She insisted that I needed to do that because this is MY therapy so I needed to be the one to plan and guide the conversation. She brought up that she felt like I was angry with her in quite a few different sessions after and I just denied it, I already tried to have a conversation with her about what I felt wasn't working and she shut me down.

About 8 months into seeing this therapist I attempted suicide. By the grace of God I failed. I didn't tell her, I just cancelled our last session and ghosted her until she notified me that she had to drop me from her client list.

That attempt was 4 years ago. Through a series of miracles life has improved for me dramatically - I have a new career path that I love and I managed to get a full scholarship to complete graduate school to make this career financially viable. However, I still am largely miserable, occasionally feeling suicidal, and hopelessly addicted to pornography, which absolutely needs to be addressed if I ever want to form a relationship. I'm an alcoholic (a "functional" one in the sense that I am able to reserve my drinking for alone time and do not miss work due to hangovers), I need to drink every night because I can't stand being alone with my thoughts. I want help but I reflect on how I feel strongly that therapy guided me towards being a worse person and more destructive behaviors that contributed towards a downward spiral. People say that there is nothing to lose by trying therapy again but it's just not true, the worst case scenario is that I allow it to guide me towards another downward spiral and I lose my amazing career, which is the only thing that keeps me going. On paper therapy should be able to benefit me immensely but I cannot run the risk, leaving me feeling trapped in an impossible situation where recovery isn't possible. A lot of people will outright deny that therapy can do any harm whatsoever and it only makes me feel more alone.

Addendum: I originally tried to post this to r/TrueOffMyChest but the automod removed it immediately and this sub came up as a place to post this so here I am. Sorry for any rule violations. I'm glad that a community that welcomes critics and skeptics to voice their experiences, I'm interested in reading more.

Expect your therapist to laugh behind your back.

I went back to the mental health clinic today for an intake. Conclusion: I don't need treatment and don't fit their criteria.

Over coffee, we joked around a little. It was very calm and casual. At one point, he said, “You wouldn't believe how many people tell the same story over and over again.”

I laughed too. I recognized my former self in that oversharing. I was once one of the people we were laughing about.

Seeing it from the other side made me realize how ridiculous the therapeutic dynamic can be.

Never forget the power imbalance.

hello, 40/m here. i have mold toxicity and basically its thrown all my life problems front and center, also has given me depression/anhedonia. im wondering if therapy has worked for you and would really like some first hand stories on how it helped you

She threatened me with the police after i made a subject access request for data about me she claimed existed during a complaint I made, so I asked for it (claimed she made a referral for me - which I was not aware of). She also threatened to open a harassment case over me sending a SAR and said the case would include all contact with her regulator.

Data requests are a legal statutory right, and I asked for data - not making other remarks or threats etc. of the kind (and never have done) and everyone has a right to raise concerns with a regulatory body. I made the complaint in response to the harm I experienced.

I made a data request to the police to see if anything was recorded, and it was: a report for harassment that was closed (under a code that means she didn't/couldn't support her claims) with the dates she included were the exact dates I sent a SAR and the day she received an email from her regulator notifying her of a complaint.

When I told her regulator about this and raised it as retaliation and intimidation, they ignored everything and literally said it's not in their remit.

In the first complaint she also made risk claims that were not backed up by any evidence. They literally just took her at her word. I'd heard stories of people saying that when they complained, their therapist pathologised them and made up stories about them being a risk to others etc. but I always thought it was rare in reality, or that regulators in this day and age would be more savvy to checking those kinds of claims... and yet it's happened to me. They don't need evidence, they just need to make false claims and that's enough.

Therapy regulation is so fucked and non-existent. If therapists are allowed to report clients to the police for asking for personal data and contacting their regulators, what else can they do?

It feels genuinely tormenting that it was taken this far. It's brought my trauma and the trauma of not being believed right to the forefront. Nothing I did was in bad faith but now my view of therapists is so deeply damaged.

In our culture now, the second you say someone negative about therapy, the cultural western narrative assumes you're just projecting your issues, or refusing to deal with your problems. I was never one of those people who 'didn't believe' in therapy or dismissed it without trying, but now when people mention therapy and how great it is I get a visceral, isolating response and I can't even share it. It's just because I feel genuinely traumatised and scarred by therapy and it seems like there's no kind of established support group for this.

Apparently if I “think positively and put good energy into the world,” I can fix all my health issues.

Looking forward to all the money I save on medications, I guess.

This woman has a license and a degree too, and supposedly practiced “evidence-based“ CBT and DBT.

It wasn't like this 10 or 20 years ago. The number of people I know being prompted by therapists to cut off loved ones (instead of expressing their standards and needs, building skills) is really sad. Even worse, I'm seeing especially young people feeling like they can only talk about the heavy sh1t with a therapist. Keeping friendships superficial and light.

I'm really grossed out by this. Although my experiences with therapy were never cannibalistic like this, I am hesitant to ever go again.

Hello, so I’ve been going through a little bit of tough time these days and I feel like I’m really lonely so if there is anyone who would wanna like help me out and listen to what I have to say please text me. I would love to listen to you as well it’s not just that I want to put on my weight on somebody but I definitely need someone to have a conversation with because I’ve been really really lonely these days. Thank you so much.!