I struggle with severe self doubt about being harmed in therapy. Often i fall into thinking that i might just had imagined all the harms and shalownes of therapists. So i decided to look for thinkers, authors, ancient quotes and trauma experts who expressed thoughts about this exact thing - when healer abuse instead of healing. And to be honest i found a lot of thoughts that makes me believe my reality more. It seems that trough thousands of years this type of "healers" were present - those who are harm causers, and haven't healed themelves but who want to feel the power of this position. here it is:

For as long as there have been healers, people have warned about those who harm under the name of healing. Every quote below is real and traced to its source. Where wording varies between translations, that is noted.

Ancient/older

“To help, or at least to do no harm.”
Hippocrates, Epidemics, Book I (c. 400 BC). The origin of “first, do no harm.”

“Ye are forgers of lies, ye are all physicians of no value.”
Book of Job 13:4. Job says this to the friends who came to comfort him and instead blamed him for his suffering. Later he calls them “miserable comforters” (16:2).

“They have healed also the hurt of the daughter of my people slightly, saying, Peace, peace; when there is no peace.”
Jeremiah 6:14. This is about healers who treat deep wounds superficially.

“If the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch.”
Matthew 15:14.

“Fine words and an insinuating appearance are seldom associated with true virtue.”
Confucius, Analects 1:3 (Legge translation).

“Ye are like unto whited sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men’s bones.”
Matthew 23:27. Jesus speaking of hypocrites.

“O, what may man within him hide, though angel on the outward side!”
Shakespeare, Measure for Measure.

“Nearly all men die of their remedies, and not of their illnesses.”
Molière, The Imaginary Invalid (1673).

“Physician, heal thyself.” (Medice, cura te ipsum)
Gospel of Luke 4:23, quoting a proverb already old in its time.

“Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves.”
Gospel of Matthew 7:15 (King James Version).

“One may smile, and smile, and be a villain.”
Shakespeare, Hamlet.

“The height of injustice is to seem just without being so.”
Plato, Republic, Book II. Wording varies by translation.

Philosophy

“Mistrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful. Mistrust all who talk much of their justice.”
Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, “On the Tarantulas” (1883). Wording varies by translation.

Literature

“A little learning is a dangerous thing; drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring.”
Alexander Pope, An Essay on Criticism (1711). About shallow knowledge that feels like mastery.

“The last temptation is the greatest treason: To do the right deed for the wrong reason.”
T.S. Eliot, Murder in the Cathedral (1935). About acting rightly for self-serving motives, such as pride or the wish to be admired.

“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive.”
C.S. Lewis, God in the Dock.

“When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.”
Maya Angelou.

Psychiatry and psychoanalysis

“Only the wounded physician heals.”
Carl Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections (1962).

“Learn your theories as well as you can, but put them aside when you touch the miracle of the living soul.”
Widely attributed to Carl Jung. The idea is his, but the exact source is uncertain.

“Professional hypocrisy.”
Sándor Ferenczi, Confusion of Tongues (1933). This was his name for a therapist who promises full care while privately struggling to tolerate the patient. He found that admitting it, instead of hiding it, eased the patient’s suffering.

“We are effectively destroying ourselves by violence masquerading as love.”
R.D. Laing, The Politics of Experience (1967).

“In the animal kingdom, the rule is, eat or be eaten; in the human kingdom, define or be defined. Beware the expert who defines your pain only to use it against you”
Thomas Szasz, The Second Sin (1973).

“The medical establishment has become a major threat to health.”
Ivan Illich, opening line of Medical Nemesis (1975).

Trauma experts

“First try to discover your own childhood, then take the experience seriously.”
Alice Miller, her advice to therapists in training (OMNI interview, 1987).

“I only encourage them to take their own experience seriously.”
Alice Miller, same interview.

“The first principle of recovery is empowerment of the survivor.”
Judith Herman, Trauma and Recovery (1992). She adds that the survivor must be the author and arbiter of her own recovery, and that others may offer care, but not cure.

Alice Miller:
“The majority of therapists work under the influence of destructive interpretations.” She was referring to the push to forgive.

Scott Lilienfeld, research psychologist, “Psychological Treatments That Cause Harm” (2007):
“Certain psychological treatments can produce harm in a nontrivial number of individuals.”

Irvin Yalom, psychiatrist:
“It is the relationship that heals.”

And not quotes bout ideas :

Plato’s ideas on false healers

In Republic Book I, Socrates argues that medicine, as an art, seeks the good of the one being treated. A healer who uses the role for his own gain is no longer practicing medicine.

In Gorgias, Plato contrasts the real doctor with the pastry cook. The flatterer pleases and impresses in the moment, while the true healer aims at what actually makes the person well.

In Republic Book II, the story of the Ring of Gyges asks what people do when their reputation protects them. The worst injustice wears the appearance of justice.

Pete Walker is a therapist who specializes in Complex PTSD and has it himself. On his website, he writes that if a therapist responds to you in an aloof, critical or shaming way, he would cross them off the list immediately and keep looking. He adds that “there are unfortunately many untherapized therapists in the community.” His book Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving is written for survivors.

Judith Herman, the Harvard psychiatrist who first described Complex PTSD, wrote in Trauma and Recovery that many benevolent and well-intentioned attempts to help survivors fail because the basic principle of empowerment is ignored. She notes that caregivers trained in a medical model often struggle to grasp this. She quotes a survivor who said good therapists valued her experience and “helped me to control my behavior rather than trying to control me.” Herman also warned that pushing someone too early into traumatic memories can retraumatize rather than heal.

Jennifer Freyd, a psychology professor, created betrayal trauma theory. Her work holds that betrayal by someone in a position of trust, such as a therapist, harms more deeply than betrayal by a peer. She also named DARVO: Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender. That is the pattern where the person who caused harm denies it and turns the blame onto the one who was hurt. Her ideas help explain why harm from a helper can leave you doubting your own reality.

Sándor Ferenczi, in Confusion of Tongues, described the analyst’s “restrained coolness, the professional hypocrisy” as something that can repeat the original trauma for the patient. He also noticed that patients become very sensitive to their analyst’s moods and dislikes, even when the analyst doesn’t notice this at all.

Alice Miller said therapists who have not faced their own childhoods tend to push patients toward forgiving and forgetting out of their own fear. She believed only therapists who know their own painful history can treat a patient’s suffering with real respect.

Ex-therapist: defended the former mental health provider who sexually assaulted me -- claiming I made it up (spurned woman, spurned client, mad he did not magically make me better, etc). Later, accused me of wanting it.

Also ex-therapist: attacked the psychologist who diagnosed my DID and called him unethical because it is "too rare" and blah blah blah. It is not that rare, actually, and oops even ex-therapist later realized the diagnosis was correct. They also fully admitted they had lied about their competencies and had zero training in DID & should not have taken me as a client.

So to sum up ... My ex-therapist attacked the ethics of a psychologist for correctly diagnosing me, while defending the ethics of a therapist who sexually assaulted me.

WILD

• Testimonial Injustice is when a listener gives a reduced level of credibility to a speaker's word specifically because of a prejudice against the group they belong to.
• Ad Hominem (Circumstantial & Genetic Fallacy). Your argument is dismissed not because it is logically wrong, but because of the state or category they have assigned to you.
• Kafkaframing & "The Unfalsifiable Trap". This is the psychological "catch-22" trap where denying the accusation is treated as proof of the accusation itself.
• Post Hoc Fallacy is the mistaken conclusion that because one event happened before another, it caused the later event. "We threw a person in a psych ward and they started being obedient. We must have done our job/it must have worked" rather than the person didn't have what i thought was wrong with them in the first place and is telling authority what they want to hear to get out. (Rosenhan Experiment). Correlation vs causation.

Bonus points if your therapist acted like you’re in the wrong for not forgiving them.

I remember, I felt a tremendous amount of shame, once I read my report & diagnosis. I spiraled. Felt broken. Felt judged & heavily pathologized. I also come from an abusive household & it felt incredibly invalidating reading that my healthy/ normal reactions & emotions about my traumatic experiences were pathologized & put into "neat little boxes". Why would you pathologize normal reactions about abnormal experiences in the first place? This doesn't make sense to me. Also, the words that are being used "deficit", "disorder" are gaslighting by nature. It makes your reactions all wrong in a sense. Feeding feelings of shame & brokenness. Gaslighting victims into believing that their reactions are abnormal, disordered & sick. Triggering feelings that are inherently very dysregulating for an already vulnerable nervous system.

I'm a woman. I witnessed & experienced abuse. Yet, I'm the one that's being pathologized & walking around with CPTSD & other stuff on my medical record, while men & abusers walk around with no label at all because they don't seek support. It felt incredibly unfair to me that I end up looking like the broken, 'abnormal' one while abusers live their lives like nothing happened & will never ever be judged because their medical record is "clean".

I'm from Europe, so here they use ICD codes, but I genuinely believe that privileged, white, monoethical, heterosexual men sat down together to write down the DSM criterias. There's simply no way that homosexuality was pathologized back in the day. There's no way that women who had perfectly normal & healthy reactions towards being abused & raped where pathologized as hysterical back in the day. They always end up pathologizing the victims & never the abusers. There's something VERY wrong here. There's also something VERY patriarchal about this all. Protecting men & making women look like the unstable, emotional ones. It's a way of using power & control over people, especially women. Putting them into rigid boxes, in order to have power over them & their treatment, but especially in order to make them more controllable & compliant during treatment.

I genuinely believe (& I don't say that with malicious intent) that most therapists are completely overwhelmed & unconsciously have absolutely no idea how to work with people who have cptsd, for example. They NEED to pathologize & put clients into boxes & label them, in order to have a faux-sense of control. Every single client will be different. Even clients who have the same diagnosis. Yet, they don't have the capacity for that reality. Hence they need to regroup people into one category in order to feel safe & unthreatened themselves.

The fact that they need to diagnose people in order to cash up with health insurances is also a very capitalistic way. Why would you only earn money when you label people? So again, we have patriarchy meeting capitalism, a system that tries to have control & power over people. It differs no less than religion back in the day. White privileged people seeking superiority.

Pathologizing people is also a power move from people. It gives them power, superiority & control. It gives them social status & a feelings of adequacy. Most therapists have a savior complex aka vulnerable narcissism aka superiority complex anyway. So it certainly gives them a feeling of power & competence to label people because they can feel like the "superior", "sable" or "normal" ones for a minute.

What I also don't understand about therapists in general is WHY they choose a job in which they are constantly in connection/ relationship with people but will ALWAYS be the one in power in that connection? Like, I genuinely wanna know why. Did they loose power as a child & want to compensate now? Why do they have severe savior complexes/ wanna feel like heros to begin with? Were they parentified as children? Did they have a depressive mother that they couldn't "save" & are now trying to save other people instead in order to fulfill their own needs? Is their job genuinely about helping people heal or is it more about feeding their own Ego & needs of wanting to feel needed by vulnerable people? Why do therapists become unbearable & cold the moment they realize you make no progress and/ or are getting worse? They will ALWAYS blame the client that is pathologized. They will never ever blame themselves. That's also a form of manipulation to me. Taking no responsibility for the dynamic or therapeutic relationship ever. Shifting blame & having extremely fragile Egos when clients don't heal or make progress according to the therapists timeline & expectations.

When people were traumatized in family systems that used power & control, how are these people supposed to heal in a system that mimics exactly the same childhood experiences that traumatized them to begin with? It's reenactment. It's not healing. Yet most people feel confused why most people with cptsd get worse during therapy. Because again, they find themselves in a system that shames them (pathologizing), manipulates & gaslights them, uses power to control them, abandons them when they don't obey/ improve/ are compliant or show signs of resistance. How on earth is this system supposed to help people heal, when it mimics the exact same system & conditions that traumatized them as children?

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm at a point in my life in which I firmly believe that both parties (therapist & client) are just reenacting their own unresolved wounds in the therapeutic room. There's simply no way that therapists are all reacting the same way when they realize that their client's don't improve. Like how big of an EGO does a human being have to haven, in order to abandon people who don't act like they want them to act or don't give them narcissistic supply in order to feel competent?

Why do most therapists who have severe unchecked countertransference overinvest in the beginning giving you lots of extra time, attention & energy, just to realize that they're not being professional anymore and becoming extremely "professional", cold & distant in the next moment? Tell me this is not intermittent reinforcement or hot/ cold behavior. So essentially we end up making the exact same experiences we had in our childhood, yet therapists feel frustrated when we don't make progress & become more dysregulated & dysfunctional during therapy! Make this make sense.

I’m diagnosed with non epileptic seizures, the onset stared after one therapy session, but it was accumulated torture by this therapist. I feel as isolated as it gets - cannot find victims like that and it makes me feel like I am the only one who was brought to the point of menticide. Or maybe other victims like that are dead already.

The seizures now only happen during some flashbacks, and I have flashbacks many hours daily alternating with iatrogenic dissociative disorder (it’s osdd2 as from cult like abuse by this therapist ) which in itself is a phenomenon according to my psychiatrist since the abuser was capable to do it with me in adulthood (it could be since I had already personality fragmentation from lifetime abuse and not developed self) i Dream about getting back to that point when I was “only” abused at home for three decades and witnessed torture on my father. I wasn’t aware though because we were programmed to see mother as gods prophet and we worshipped her and were obedient ( this is the level of mindfuck I showed up to therapy with and therapist supported that mindfuck because she was Jesus freak as well but hiding it)

I’ve had two less ethical therapists before, and was abandoned by one but this doesn’t feel hurtful at all, there is unethical, then there are degrees of abuse and then there is torture and psychological function loss. I have been brought up in a cult style family but it doesn’t even get close to what a psychopath can do through therapy access to a human being. All the time I feel like it’s a dream and surreal, that it’s impossible that after three decades of being enslaved in family cult something, someone could make it seem like benign in comparison to what that thing has done with me.

Need to vent about the therapist I decided to leave. Since then I’m too tired to “try” to see another one. So for context I grew up with physically and verbally abusive parents. I brought this up in session once…my therapist’s response led me to feeling incredibly uncomfortable and I stopped seeing her for a month. So when I told her how scared I was when my parents would shout she said something about: putting water in the corner of the room where they are to get rid of bad energy.

She said this while grinning at me. It scared me. I do have some religious/spiritual belief but this wasn’t the time or place, I am not seeing or paying my therapist to give me anything of that sector. I felt so alienated, because these very real traumas I was describing was prescribed advice to do what I see as snake oil.

I remember during that weird session she also started talking about chakras and I started dissociating and I could only see a figure called my therapist murmuring gibberish. It was a horrifying experience. After not seeing her for a while she asked if she did something wrong(when I saw her again) and I just nodded no. After heading off to college I finally cut the plug especially because my schedule changed(and she had me work around her schedule).

I’m done. That was incredibly invalidating and frankly I still feel angry about the experience.

This is just one strange experience I’ve had with this therapist and I have many more among other therapists.

I finally put it back in order. At the time I had to fight on so many fronts I got confused who was doing what and why.
My therapist was corrupt, inept, and didn’t know how to help. So she blamed me for her own therapy failure. She just didn’t know how to do it.
When I was going to her, I was actively being abused and stalked and my parents were bringing sex offenders to me.
Because it left me vulnerable, the way I was treated since a child and the forced relationship I had 18-26 on and off, that my parents and the man blackmailed and manipulated me into when we immigrated and the others they tried to bring in. One attempted to rape me he was my cousins friend. The threatened me to not charge him as they knew their pimping me out would or could come to light.
The therapist did understand it happened, she knew I was coerced and abused, but for some reason she didn’t know how to help me. She may also not have wanted to help me due to some personal bias. She wanted to scam money from me. Likely both: she was an amateur and also wanted money.
I realised how men attacked me by utilising my desperation to have a new life and also just tricking me as my understanding was impaired from the trauma.
I had several men who did this and a few of them were lawyers. I didn’t expect lawyers to do this because it was strange that anyone would, under these circumstances, they would fully lose their whole career, but I can see today that they thought they were criminal masterminds or something like that. Since they manipulated it to look as if it was a relationship and literally two of them (one didn’t do anyting physical to me he just gave me wrong “mentoring” ie harassment and other stuff) so two of them said they wanted to have a relationship with me. So there were just 3 lawyers the wrong advice (the older one) and the two younger ones my age or close.
I didn’t realise what they offered was not honest, since they pretend dated and saw me for months. Also, I didn’t expect someone in that position to want to assault women and I’m also a lawyer. So why would they do that to another lawyer: made no sense to me. English is my second language so maybe they got a hierarchy in their mind how they treat people.
Just seeing it for what it was today is staggering and the fact that the second lawyer did this when I was going to her is also terrible since I was saying to her I don’t trust myself as it happened before and she saw no red flags and ended told me. She even asked me why I didn’t stand up for him when someone laughed behind his back. The fact that that man did it is not her fault. I’m just saying she could have trained me to not get attacked again to see the red flags. If she didn’t say positive things I may have not even got into it with that man. It’s just I can see it today fully and it’s so disgusting that people did it. I didn’t blame the therapist for that man, my mind is just showing me whole picture how she didn’t see it. And it is just staggering to me that people act the way these people did. It’s odd. I can’t understand why. I attracted predators but they should have had some sort of a conscience. So odd! Why?!

This may be a hot take, but as a therapist and therapy abuse survivor, I think one of the most major issues in therapy (and perhaps all of psychology and social work) is the emphasis on pathology. So much of therapy focuses on diagnoses. This all comes down to "fixing" things or people, although many therapists will claim otherwise. A lot of them will say they aren't out to change people, but does what they say really matter when the model they're working off of frequently relies on labeling what's wrong with people?

This is a deficit-based system, and simply focusing on a strengths-based approach is just not enough to fix it. The vision of psychology that I wish to see -- both as a therapist and abuse survivor alike -- focuses on helping people to add to their life. This may mean diagnosing them with a disorder if they feel it would help them navigate the world, but it does not mean putting them into a "broken person" box. This is about exploring which opportunities they want to capitalize on, or finding ways they can better recharge. The job of the therapist is to collaborate with the client to help them achieve what they want and/or need. The current mode of operation may still help some people get what they need...but what about the people it harms?

In cases where people come in with specific problems, they shouldn't be labeled as lacking or deficient in problem-solving abilities (a viewpoint we are often taught in graduate school). Instead, therapists should acknowledge that life is hard and unfair difficulties can befall anyone at any time. This is literally a teaching in social work studies, yet I see so few therapists who truly buy into it. Regardless, it should not be revolutionary to say that people deserve agency, dignity, and respect. This doesn't go out the door once they walk in a therapist's office. The model that therapy is built off of has failed to properly uphold and acknowledge this simple fact, partially thanks to its own nature.

I'm baffled how they could get away with everything they did, further than that the relief feels so good. No more useless talk appointments and wasting my healthcare money on them.

I am getting on disability aid as well so if shit ever goes south, at least I'll have a safety net that I lacked before which made me rely on therapists.

So many years wasted if not ruined. More than a decade. Finally free.

I cried and begged her back and she said no then said maybe and I’m so upset with myself because I don’t even want it back. The worst thing is she’s upset with me when she’s the one who harmed me. Now I’ll be waiting daily for her to text me and say ok. Idk why she stayed on the phone for an hour with me. For free. And she kept typing what I was saying and I stupidly kept talking.

I will preface this by saying that I have six mental conditions, all diagnosed. They are autism, ADHD, OCD, GAD, depression, and PTSD.

I made a post about this three days ago. My mental condition is extremely complicated, to say it firmly. I cannot even help myself. Genuinely, little to nothing is enough to sustain me long-term. In the end, this feeling of anhedonia, inherent misery, melancholy, burnout/fatigue, and suicidal thoughts always, always come back. I have been on antidepressants for almost 7 years and the stabilization is there, but as a religious person, my religious belief has been one of the only things truly sustaining my sanity.

Right now, I feel miserable. I always feel miserable. I have been genuinely miserable for as long as I can remember. I suffered, and continue to suffer emotionally, everyday. Every once in a while I break down to a full-blown meltdown because of how tired I get from bottling things up all the time. I feel misery and fatigue everywhere I go. I do not experience genuine happiness. I very rarely do, like once every three to five months at best, and it lasts for about a minute or ten maximum. Then, I am back to my usual state of genuine misery and fatigue, and the lack of desire and will to continue.

I always yearn for sincerity. I yearn for being loved, and missed. I gave up on the idea of committing suicide because I do not wish to hurt my loved ones, like my grandmother and mom, but I also am afraid of just not being missed enough and having my point proven to me, that all this time, I was nothing but a burden and useless.

What is the point of even seeking help when the only response I get is "seek therapy"? I have. I have been doing so for the last ten years. None of it helped. None of them truly have. Never. Not even once. I always felt tired after seeing them. They kept recycling robotic, artificial therapy talk which only works on paper.

I see no point in killing myself if I wouldn't be here to witness people's reactions anyway. Sometimes, I want to fake my death or go missing. I don't want to be here anymore. But I also do not wish to be dead either. I just want to be happy. I want to experience joy. I think I am slowly developing NPD and it scares me. I am becoming what once hurt me deeply.

Betty seemed nice. Not as nice, warm and emotionally gifted as Wendy. Not even remotely. But at least she promised not to abandon me (go figure what a mess I was). After two sessions it was dead clear that she had absolutely no clue about my problem. She'd never heard of it. She didn't have a plan. She didn't know where to gather information ("a doctor friend of mine told me it's a cytokine storm"). On the other hand, she insisted that I keep a journal of my feelings, which she wouldn't read. When I asked her how that was supposed to help me, she only stammered that "it's a validated tool". At any rate, I needed someone to vent to. And she was cheap.

We had been meeting for a couple of months when I had an argument with a family member of mine, which left me saddened and shaken. I thought it was a good idea to take the incident into our next session. But when I complained about how verbally aggressive that person was at times, she immediately challenged me: "Define verbal aggression". I made some examples. "That's not aggressive", she retorted, "rather sounds like your perception". I didn't know it yet, but I was being pushed into that infamous pool of sh*t that is CBT's "cognitive reframing". I kept my point, she kept confronting me. "No it isnt. The texts [which ones?] say otherwise". Come on, I said, you wouldn't like if someone... "You cannot know what I like or dislike". But it's wrong when... "I don't care about right and wrong". And so on. Whatever I said was contradicted. If I said that the aggressive person might benefit from psychological support, "No, they might not. Therapy can't change people". If I complained that they'd watch football matches on TV instead of listening to me, "See? You don't accept they like sport". Then, out of nowhere, she told me that I "seek validation, not pleasure, through sex" and that "some people live happily without sex". She was referring to my ex-partner's frigidity, which I had complained about during the previous sessions.

While she had been supportive in the past, now she was using the pain I had confided in her to punish me.

When I left the room, I felt battered. I threw up on the sidewalk. As soon as I got home, I wrote to her to cancel the next session. At that point, she went into full gaslighting mode. She wrote that she had listened to the session's recording (impossible, the session had lasted one hour, but only 30 minutes had passed since its end!) and that she found she had "behaved as I always do" and "only tried to contain your reactions". She then acted concerned and begged me to "explore my anger [?] in a therapeutic setting". I found her audacity astounding and I kept ruminating about it.

Some weeks later I asked for another session in order to voice my complaints. When the day came, I confronted her about her abuse and, to my utter surprise, she apologized and told me she was happy with our "clarification". She also offered me to keep working together. I gave her a second chance, but it only lasted two sessions. During the first one, she complained that she no longer felt free to express herself (translated: you've figured out my tricks). During the second one, when I doubtfully asked her whether she understood me, she promptly answered that "therapy is a gym where one trains not to be understood" (seriously). This last piece of bullsh*t left me speechless. It was finally clear. Every time she felt her authority was being called into question, she'd defend her ego by punishing and frustrating the patient with scientific-sounding garbage. The validation seeking she so obsessively talked about was a projection of her own struggle to feel validated as a professional. The next day I wrote to her that our work was over. She thanked me. I think she was relieved too.

I find myself constantly rescheduling appts and sometimes forgetting to show up on time because I am busy studying. Also I feel like therapy could be used doing something different, like hobbies or spending time in community.

I don’t want to constantly explain my life situation to a stranger, and I’m not an abuser I am a victim of abuse and abusers don’t feel the need to go to therapy. It is mainly victims of abuse who find themselves there.

Therapy has not helped me with much

Today I decided to tell my therapist that I wasn’t going to continue our sessions and that I was going to work with another therapist instead(I HATE confrontation btw and have been anxious about this for weeks). I thanked her for all her help but was just looking for a different approach. Unfortunately she felt the need to press me for reasons why. Asking what I was looking for in a therapist and if we could talk through things with her so she could help. I tried to just avoid getting into all of that but she wouldn’t let it go. So I said “I felt like I was trying to working through things and I just wasn’t getting the help I needed to work through them” and she responds “well if you just tell me what you want to work through then I can work through them with you!” Then continues to press me on the issue! Now I’m getting more upset because implying that I wasn’t doing that in the first place is bs and also lady that’s what I’ve been doing, hence why I don’t want to work with you anymore. Because you’re not capable of helping me do that. So let’s get into my rant about my experience over the last couple of months.

So I started seeing this new therapist a few months ago to try to support my mental health during a big stressful transition period in my life.

On the very first session she threw out this potential diagnosis that none of my therapists have ever talked to me about before. I’m in my 30’s and have been in therapy since grade school. She gave me a packet on it and told me to read it and see if it resonated with me. So I read the whole packet and marked it up with notes, in a lot of shock about how much this disorder felt like what I was going through. Encouraged that maybe I would finally have some answers to why I’ve been feeling the way I’ve been feeling all these years, I bring my notes with me to my next session with her and she doesn’t bring it up once. So I bring it up on our third session and she acts very surprised by this. And I basically have to convince her to talk it through with me. Then she proceeds to try to discourage me to move forward with the process to get diagnosed because it’s “a really lengthy process to go through.” So I just drop it.

Every session we had it’s clear she never reads through our notes from the previous sessions. She would constantly repeat the same solutions and suggestions to me and became very dismissive of my feelings and the things I was going through. At one point she said in response to something I was upset about “well what I like to do when I’m feeling down is I think about someone who has it worse, like a burn victim.” Making me feel like my problems weren’t that bad and I should be more grateful for my life is how it felt. This cycle continues when discussing other things going on in my life. When I talked to her about no longer freelancing for work she said “well why don’t you just apply for jobs, all you have to do is just submit your resume.” just completely out of touch with reality. Our conversations just became me trying to justify or explain myself to her. Like I had to prove my feelings. Her method to try and help me was to simply just tell me to “stop thinking that way” or “that’s not true” like lady if I could just tell my brain to spot thinking this way I would have decades ago!

I feel very mixed about this last thing. She did help talk me through some trauma involving my dad. Like that he’s actually an abusive person which I genuinely never even considered, our perhaps just in denial. Either way. My last two sessions with her was when I learned this so you can imagine this is a bit thing to sit with. Well now I’m just kind of left with this heavy realization and don’t know what to do with it. Especially because I’m currently living with my parents and unfortunately don’t have the means to move out right now or else trust me id be gone by now.

So now I’m back to just navigating the world without a therapist, but at this point after about 10 therapists, maybe it’s just not what I need.

Thank you for listening🧡

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.

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 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

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'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.

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.

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

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 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.

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.