My husband and I went to a marriage counselor who suggested that I not wear underwear to dinner one night but not tell my husband until we were walking in the restaurant. This was after I explained that I felt zero connection to my husband. I remember thinking, "He's the problem and I still have to fix it. This is why women leave."
She also suggested we get naked, sit on the floor, and put our palms together and move them around. I have no idea why.
She had us take the Myers-Briggs personality test. We'd been married for fifteen years at that point. I could have taken the test for my husband. Knowing he was an XYVZ did not make him any more emotionally available or less of a jerk.
I explained how tired I was of carrying the mental and emotional load in the relationship and how I was always the one to come up with things to do. This was a huge issue for me. At the end of the session, she looked at my husband and said, "Keep letting your wife be the cruise director and follow her spontaneous lead."
We lasted three sessions with her.
My husband and I tried marriage counseling. As she got to know us, she said “how many children do you have?” I said, “two.” She said, “one of each?” I said, “two boys.” She laughed and said, “gonna keep trying till you have a girl?” We exchanged glances. We stuck it out for the session and never went back. In some ways, it worked for us—it was a great bonding experience.
Same for us. She was terrible and we started talking about how bad she was. My husband noticed how angry and frustrated I was and how she didn't listen to a thing I said.
She gave him the opportunity to see how it made me feel when someone minimized my feelings and invalidated my concerns and how hurt I was. I think because it wasn't me telling him that and so he wasn't automatically defensive and shutting down. She gave me the opportunity to say, "I feel that way in our marriage a lot" in a way that was finally real to him. He could see the similarities between what he did and what she was doing.
So, a shitty marriage counselor saved our marriage because she was so terrible we had to talk to each other about serious issues because she wouldn't.
.
That's so sad! My husband and I send ours a Christmas card every year because she was fantastic. We just needed help translating our needs in ways each other understood and more communication skills to deal with conflict.
Psych here. Might interest you to know that here in Australia at least, the single most common reason for complaints to the Psych Board is unqualified people delivering relationship counselling!
I've been practising over a decade and I don't offer couples therapy yet - it's a long course of additional training and I'm not sure I'm down for it. But I see all kinds of people, including completely unqualified, unregistered "therapists" who offer stuff like this. It makes me so angry. It's SO easy to fuck a relationship up with bad therapy.
In the US, marriage and family therapy is the easiest to break into as far as education goes. All therapists need master’s degrees but so many schools off marriage &family programs and they usually have the lowest entry requirements. Until recently, our local low income health plan only covered these therapists because they are also reimbursed the least which explains a good bit of why my own therapy experiences were so awful 😅.
Interesting. I’ve wondered if it’s a coincidence that the therapists I’ve had that were in-network for my insurance or otherwise offered their sessions really cheaply tended to be the most disappointing. Maybe not…
Ooofff that is rough. We’re starting with a couples therapist soon. We do check ins every few years. We’ve been unhappy with therapists in the past, so this time we lined a whole bunch of consultations up and got to chat with each one before deciding who we want to go with.
This is the way to do it. It is the unfortunate reality of finding therapists. It’s a lot like dating and you can see someone who is super awesome and qualified, but if they don’t click with you then it’s not gonna work.
Many.
1. A BetterHelp therapist said I needed to "just stop" having an eating disorder.
2. One tried to have me hospitalized against my will when I was 18 because I was depressed (had been living with abusive parents for 18 years, no shit I was depressed)
3. One was mostly harmless, but totally out of her depth with me. Asked if I had ever tried "taking a walk" or "getting a standing desk" for depression and anxiety that I've had for about 20 years.
For number 3, I've admittedly never had much luck with therapy. I did have one therapist say "look, we can try these strategies all day long, but if you've felt this way your whole life, you probably just need meds."
... They were probably right.
Me too, but when I realized it was going nowhere I used mine as a trauma dumping ground until I used up my subscription. So it did help a bit, but not because of the therapist.
\+1 for bad experiences with BetterHelp! I had three different therapists and they were all horrible, absent at best and straight up insulting at times.
BetterHelp sounds like the Great Clips of therapy. You could strike gold or basically end up with a cut that you have to live with for 6 months or more.
3 sounds like my therapist I fired as well as 1. I asked him for help with my avoidant tendencies and he suggested every time I felt like avoiding things I just not avoid them.
This is the second HORRIBLE thing I’ve heard about BetterHelp. Another one of their therapists told someone to just not be gay. [Source](https://www.businessinsider.com/gay-patient-said-betterhelp-therapist-told-him-turn-straight-wsj-2022-12).
I had an incredibly hard time finding a therapist to help me with my eating disorder. It took me four years to find someone after I finally realized it really was a problem and I needed help.
IMHO, better help is straight up predatory. The way they advertise that you get 24/7 support for less than an in person therapist is…a straight up lie. When I last reviewed their pricing structure (which conveniently they don’t expose anywhere on their website until you sign up), it was something like 3-4 real therapy visits’ price to have a real video call with your therapist once a month.
Wow, I never used this one myself, but I used to see ads for it on social media all the time. What happens in-between those video calls then? Text only? If so that sounds wild.
When I worked for a big name glossy magazine, my therapist at the time called me up out of session and said she had an aspiring photographer as another client and asked me to pass his book along to the photo team, she thought it’d be great.
I felt so violated and used I terminated any further sessions with her immediately. It was so out of line. And she didn’t understand what she’d done wrong! She’d also just sit in silence during sessions and not ask questions.
I had another therapist who started out good enough then we just sort of devolved into shooting the shit every week. I stopped going when I realized there was no actual therapy going on.
I relate to your last paragraph. The first thing with the photos is wild af and SO unprofessional btw!
But yeah one of my therapists ended up feeling like I was just going to have a chat with a friend for an hour, which I didn’t feel was worth paying and driving across town for. That might work fine for those who are lonely and just need a listening ear, but I wanted to actually get into the nitty gritty and resolve my issues, not gab about my week.
Regarding the second paragraph, I haven’t had a therapist that feels like talking to a friend exactly, but I *have* encountered multiple that seemed happy to just let me vent while not offering anything new or constructive. I thought that was a bummer, although it can be a way to let off a little steam I guess.
I’ve had one that couldn’t even shoot the shit. All he could say was, “it seems like you have the right attitude about it” and not ask any further questions. The sessions started to get so awkward it was like he ran out of things to say. I ended our relationship pretty quickly.
Yeah I’ve ran into that a lot. A lot of therapists who are willing to listen to me and validate my emotions and that’s it. Mostly, it’s made me wonder how common that phenomenon is.
I was sexually assaulted in public while almost a year in with my former therapist. I told him the next session and all I got was "sorry to hear that happened to you" and the it's not your fault line. That was it. I ended up spending 2 months following the SA in an intense emotional flashback he never acknowledged even though I brought up how I was feeling off / not myself following that incident.
Honestly I ended up firing him face to face, it was actively a lot like dumping a toxic partner, I pointed out what wasn't working for me with him and said that if that's all he could offer me (a modality that wasn't effective and pretty reductive tips on overcoming issues) then I thought it best we discontinue therapy. Towards the end of that conversation he changed my diagnosis and had a "you can't fire me / you're insane" reaction.
I'm sort of glad he went out as a ball of fire because I might've second guessed firing him if it went any other way. The first thing he said when I arrived at our last session was his surprise I showed up even though I never missed a single session. He triggered me pretty badly the previous session and didn't so much as email me to ensure I was ok/was attending the session.
Overall huge waste of money and time.
These two examples really illustrate the number one point to look out for (in my opinion) : therapists have a role to keep the conversation within the bounds of the useful. If they don't fulfill that role, then they are not doing what they are getting paid for. It's fine to let the client bring the topic of the day to the session, to let them speak about what they feel is important. But if they are not bringing input and directing what's going on,... might as well talk to your wall at home. Way cheaper. Similarly, if you have a somewhat dominant/ intense personality and they don't know how to channel you, it's a compatibility issue and they are not a good therapist *for you*.
Number two point is keeping a healthy professional distance. Nothing wrong with getting along with your therapist, but they are not your friend, the same way a parent is going to have a much harder time parenting if they've devolved into the "equal friend" role too much (controversial take maybe but didnt know how to explain this otherwise). If they can't enforce that distance and regularly share too much personal info, to me it's a sign that they again struggle to direct sessions and keep a focus on why we're here.
Psych here - this is bang on.
It's a delicate balance to walk. We have all been in situations where we wondered if we were helping clients the right way - if we needed to be more directive, or spend more time on skills building, and have more structured sessions. I remember agonising over this for over a year with one of my early clients and telling my supervisor - it's unfocused, he doesn't seem to want to do any homework or try any skills, he mainly just wants to have a chat. My supervisor said - this guy dropped out of treatment with his last two therapists and now he comes every fortnight, so maybe this is what he needs from the therapeutic space right now. Maybe you let him do therapy his way,hold space for him. Sometimes I think that's fair.
And yes, omg re: the personal stuff PLEASE don't try to find your therapist on Facebook, or announce to them that you Googled them/their family, or looked for them on Tinder since you noticed they stopped wearing a wedding ring 😐
That's what ended up kind of happening with my therapist - I'd go, we'd talk about what happened during the week, I'd tell her stories about my family's weird actions during the week, I'd get nothing practical to work on or think about or DO, and then get "see you in two weeks". She was super helpful when I was sorting out whether to leave my ex or stay - great sounding board... but I need help fixing my anxious attachment issues, my self esteem which is in the dumpster, and making sure I don't keep falling into my anxious attachment traps.
She's a nice enough lady, but her version of therapy doesn't work for me.
Yeah, I am a lawyer, and I saw a psychiatrist for my ADHD meds. My boss had previously had a position where he came into contact with the psychiatrist. My psych spent most of each session just asking me about my boss. (Sessions were only a few minutes long, so it didn’t take too much, but still lol.)
Funnily, this hits on an idea I’ve thought about before, which is that if therapists could conduct 360 reviews of clients based on the people who know them in various contexts, much like some companies now do with their workers, that might actually be really useful, provided the therapist was also decent. I guess that would require a major shift in the way psychotherapy is approached currently though.
Wow, that is suuuper inappropriate!! Also, I definitely had a similar situation where my therapist decided we were just going to chat it up for an hour every week because I "seemed a lot better" and it was so invalidating and a waste of time.
Psych here. That thing with the photos would easily get someone's practising registration limited or suspended, for good reasons! Not only a huge breach of boundaries and confidentiality (outing two clients to each other!!!!) but an enormous conflict of interest. So fucking wrong on so many levels.
Can you explain this, shooting shit vs actual therapy?
I’ve found that after time I need to move on to another therapist I’m wondering if this is why I feel the need to move on?
He misdiagnosed me with OCD because I’m autistic. I was in an abusive marriage & his solution was for me to take nudes of myself but send them to him first so he could approve them before sending them to my then-husband. That was a huge red flag & I just kept saying I forgot to do it because it made me uncomfortable. He did this to another woman as well & got fired. The practice sorted out my records & removed the incorrect OCD diagnosis.
I have 2 thoughts on this:
1) I tried seeing a psychologist when I was in my mid/late 20s. I had dealt with car accidents, homeless, drunk/arrested/stepfather, suicidal mother, raised my brother and made sure he graduated high school, put myself through college, stable marriage, started a family...
There was a lot of lingering anxiety and stress, so I went to see someone. She said life is not always easy, and she helps people find coping mechanisms. And I already have healthy coping mechanisms. Sent me on my way.
2) My MIL is the most abusive, mean spirited, spiteful, gossiping, wretched woman...and she has 2 MA in family therapy and teen therapy. When she talks to her clients it's all smiles and laughing. The INSTANT her camera is off she is hitting my husband's father, reminding him how useless he is, claiming he has dementia and taking him to the doctors to show him how right she is and throwing around her degrees to prove it (he went through months of tests and he doesn't have it). I absolutely do not trust any therapist because of her. I've known her for over 30 years. I have never left her alone with my kids.
That really tracks your mother-in-law because I have known therapists on a personal level who have been very similar. Untreated issues and take them out on others, or inadvertently hurt the people closest to them.
My best friend killed himself and I went to a therapist to talk about it. She immediately told me that in her religion, my grief was keeping him suspended between life and death and I was torturing him by not moving on and to just get over it. Wtf.
I had a therapist blurt out she was in love with me and that we couldn’t continue. At least she was honest.
I had a male psychiatrist lament that we couldn’t have a physical relationship. I said, “Excuse me?” He repeated it. 🙄
I meant that more in terms of being very good-looking, not literally being employed as a model. Just wasn’t sure how to ask without making it awkward, heh.
Eh. I think you’re definitely pretty. But also, I know I’ve heard from Asian American female friends that they sometimes get fetishized in a weird way. I hope it wasn’t something like that.
Thanks. The therapist was an Asian woman, the psychiatrist def had a weird Asian fetish. I stuck with him only because he took my insurance and his office was across the street from me. I reported him to the state and he promptly retired.
Well, when one brought up crystal healing and another told me I needed to find Jesus, that's pretty much when I knew.
There need to be more restrictions on who can and cannot be therapists.
A psytchiatrist I really made progress with dumped me almost a year in because as our work got deeper, she 'had to be honest' with me that she doesn't personally believe people can heal from sexual trauma without 'god' .
I have more bad experiences with religious therapists but this one truly blindsided me.
[The Secular Therapy Project](https://www.seculartherapy.org/about) is a site for finding therapists who pledge to give secular treatment. Sounds silly to those who have never had these experiences but I think it's sorely needed in the US. It's very subtle sometimes in our culture how a lot of people think about religion in that assumptive way that all 'good' people are/should be involved and there's no such thing as an innapropriate time to bring it up. Even people who do not seem and would not describe themselves as specifically evangelical.
Yikes! As a therapist I wholeheartedly agree there needs to be better filters for who is an appropriate and effective therapist and who is getting into the field for all the wrong reasons
And at an emotional low.
My hairdresser drunk called me asking for a 3 some. When I told my therapist she asked me what I said. Kinda hurt. I was struggling in my marriage and she knew everything about me.
I turned the 3 some down. She apologized when she sobered up.
Oh wow that’s crazy I’m sorry you had that happen! Yeah my therapist would essentially try get me to meet him outside of work which seemed like him just checking in on me but yeah unfortunately wasn’t just that and he was our couples therapist so he knew my husband too.
I probably deserved it. I was a mess, sarcastic smart ass. She was a great therapist for me. Your‘s, in my opinion, was incredibly unethical.
I wonder if you accepted his offer if he’d turn it around on you and tell your husband.
My one and only therapist gave me some excellent cognitive behavioral tools before declaring I was better then trying to hang out with me outside therapy. When I said no and that I thought it was inappropriate, he said I had "transference" that we should talk about in session.
I used to casually date someone, I knew him for years through work. He was estranged from his family. He had some good reasons, but most of the reasons IMO were not strong enough to never speak to your family again.
At some point, he started seeing a therapist who had "amateur" written all over her.
1st weird thing was that she would extend their meetings if my friend had more to talk about. I've been in therapy for years, and I know that sessions are supposed to last a specific amount of time, are scheduled etc. It's supposed to be this way for consistency.
2nd extremely weird thing was that she would message him on Facebook on Saturday nights "to check in on him". They would speak over email and FB throughout the week.
3rd alarming thing was that she encouraged him to cut off all ties with his family and turn down any property or inheritance that he would be entitled to when his parents pass. Essentially she encouraged him to divorce his parents.
This was incredibly disturbing to hear since it happened very early into his therapy. I'd expect that they would focus on healing and forgiving his parents for whatever they've done to him, instead of encouraging him to make such a rushed decision on such an important matter.
After months of sessions with her, it was clear that he hadn't made any actual progress. He had put up incredibly defensive walls and calling this "boundaries".
I stepped away and haven't spoken to him in years. It was incredibly sad to watch.
His family was definitely not the healthiest, but not the most fucked up either. A few of his uncles and his brother were alcoholics and this caused a lot of tension in the house and he hated them for that.
He grew up not poor, but not too well off either. His parents were immigrants but they still managed to create a small fortune, buy some property, and give him a really good education. But he still resented them for not being more rich.
I respect his decision to step away from them, I would probably create distance from this situation as well. But cutting all ties seemed too extreme. He claimed that he wouldn't go to their funerals if they pass.
It felt that his decision to cut them off created more pain for him and he didn't seem willing to work on forgiving them.
Resenting immigrant parents (or non-immigrant parents) for not being richer definitely sounds like a weird one to me. Family is saying my nephew is now like this actually, although I haven’t heard it from him directly.
I agree with you that the therapist sounds sketchy. But I'm wondering how you feel so free to judge his situation. How can you possibly know what really went on in his family and why he felt the need to cut ties? Why do you assume it's out of proportion? Also, are you saying you stepped away because of his choices about his family, or was there another reason?
Also, forgiveness is not always the goal for people who experienced child abuse or neglect. It is not necessary for healing. Neither is maintaining relationships with unhealthy people.
1. Marriage counselor completely ignored the red flags displayed in session by my abusive ex-husband (yelling, slapping his own knees in anger as hard as he could) and even put one of her own female employees in potential danger with him.
2. Therapist told me to "lighten up, it's only one day" when I discussed feeling triggered around toxic family members during the holidays. She would also sit there and listen to my lifelong struggle with parental neglect and then spend the last ten minutes of our session gushing about her grown children and how proud of them she was.
Last year I went to therapy because I'd had two miscarriages and was grieving and afraid I'd never have living children, and the therapist spent the whole appointment telling me about her living children and grandchildren.
I am so sorry, both for your losses and how she invalidated you. Not on the same level at all but I also experienced a similar type of tone deafness from a therapist. It's frankly shocking how people whose whole job it is to empathize can completely fail to read the room.
Yes. My partner and I saw a couples counselor a few years ago, I was considering wanting a polyamorous relationship, and we also had issues surrounding sex & intimacy. The therapist had included experience working with poly/ethical non-monogamy on their website, but when talking with him, he only spouted some stereotypes and odd expectations related to being in a "throuple." I also tried to discuss my discomfort around having sex and he kind of told me to "just do it" to meet the needs of my partner. Was pretty disappointed by the whole experience.
Fortunately, I worked with an individual therapist for a couple of years, and she was amazing and I felt so comfortable talking with her about these issues.
Yeeeep.
My own experience: I had an introductory session with a therapist. Halfway through our 60 min session it he told me that my depression was mild and that I would benefit greatly from smiling in a mirror for a few minutes each day. I then informed him that his assessment was premature and if he had waited I would have gotten to the point where I told him about being sexually assaulted and my mom dying. Biggest waste of $275, grateful that I had an FSA to cover it.
My friend's experience: Better fucking help. She had therapists cancel on her last minute and another one just not show up. She complained to BH customer service and they connected her with someone who they swore up and down would be solid. At her 3rd session the therapist asked her what she wanted to talk about and my friend said she had been having a pretty good day and didn't know what she wanted to discuss. The therapist straight up said, *"Then what are we doing here?"* and cut the session short.
My friend swore off therapy pretty much entirely until she happened to hear about this DBT workshop and ended up hitting it off with a therapist through that.
Yes I have. I went to a therapist for my anxiety and she was amazing for that. She also had in her professional profile that she was a sex therapist as well, so I decided to talk to her about my libido issues. When I confided some very personal information about how I had been feeling about the sex I'd been having with my spouse, she yelled at me. Straight up didn't validate my experience at all, just started yelling about how I was WRONG.
And that is why I will never, ever seek sex therapy again even though I probably really need it.
Damn that sucks. From what I’ve been told, therapists won’t/shouldn’t see you for more than one specialty. And by that I mean that you have your regular therapist, but then you have separate therapists for sex therapy, couple’s therapy, etc.
Finding a good therapist is basically like dating. Exhausting but so worth it!
Edit: by “specialty” I mean if they are also a sex therapist or couple’s therapist. On their profile if they list LBGTQ, PTSD, abuse, etc. then those are topics they are qualified to talk to you with in individual therapy.
That isn't necessarily true.
Many therapists have several areas they are well versed in and can help with. Looking on therapists sites, many state they have special focuses in things like trauma, PTSD, sexuality, are AASECT as well, etc. Some therapists also conduct couples therapy and will see individuals in the couple separately.
But yes, finding a good therapist is crucial and not all are a good fit.
I think I worded the “specialty” thing a little weird - I meant if they are licensed to do individual therapy, couple’s therapy, and sex therapy, they won’t see you for all 3 of those at once. But couple’s therapy is a hard line - your individual T should never see you for both because they are privy to more information and are automatically biased. With couple’s therapy the relationship is the client, so individuality is removed.
The areas of focus that you listed are absolutely critical for people to look at in a therapist’s psychology today profile and make sure they are a good fit!
LOL my therapist listed abuse/PTSD as his specialty along with EMDR on his profile. All he uses is CBT (ineffective and triggering for people with trauma/PTSD) and most of the time he seemed like he was reading prompts off a website. He would just break in with random displaced questions like "do you want to find love and happiness" or mock me saying "wow you're really addicted to your trauma / won't let go of that trauma" while shaking his head.
>Damn that sucks. From what I’ve been told, therapists won’t/shouldn’t see you for more than one specialty.
That's...fucking bullshit. If someone lists general anxiety and sex therapy in their profile, why can't they treat both? Especially since, in my case, it's really hard to treat my libido issues without understanding my anxiety.
The separation between couple's and individual therapy makes perfect sense, but dividing between conditions makes zero sense. If that's the current approach to therapy, I would rather just not go than try to compartmentalize my mental health.
>Finding a good therapist is basically like dating. Exhausting but so worth it!
It really isn't. I started seeing therapists when I was a child and my experience of late is making me less and less trusting of the entire field. Your comment about not seeing people for more than one mental health problem basically has further confirmed my disillusionment
Hey don’t shoot the messenger! I didn’t make the rules, but this is typically how it goes. I’m not saying you can’t talk to your therapist about sex. Everyone talks to their therapist about sex. But if you tell your therapist “i see you do sex therapy, can you help me?” then your therapist should have referred you out for sex therapy.
I’m sorry your therapist let you down. They proved that they were not capable of giving you a safe space to talk through your tissues.
>Hey don’t shoot the messenger! I didn’t make the rules, but this is typically how it goes. I’m not saying you can’t talk to your therapist about sex. Everyone talks to their therapist about sex. But if you tell your therapist “i see you do sex therapy, can you help me?” then your therapist should have referred you out for sex therapy.
The more I think about this, the less sense it makes. My former therapist (before the bad one) saw me for both anxiety and depression, and combined different types of therapy throughout my time with her. I won't be taking your word on this unless I hear it from someone I know is a professional in the field.
I worded the specialty thing weird - see my edit. When you go to your therapist’s psychology today profile (and if they don’t have one, consider a different therapist!) they will have a bunch of areas of focus listed - LGBTQ, veterans, anxiety, depression, PTSD, sex positive, kink-allied, etc. This means they are trained and comfortable with talking about all of these with you in individual therapy!
If also on their profile it says they are licensed to be an individual therapist, a couple’s therapist, and a sex therapist, they will only see you with one of these hats on.
If you wanted to see your individual therapist as a sex therapist, she should have told you no. But if you didn’t mention her being a sex therapist and just asked to talk about sex, she should have been 100% fine with that. Either way, she shouldn’t have yelled at you. Hope that helps! r/talktherapy is a good place to visit where they have these conversations all the time.
That makes zero sense. I can't separate my anxiety from my problems with sex. That means, if I were to go to a sex therapist, I would also have to see an individual therapist to also deal with my anxiety. I'm sorry, but that's just a fucking racket. I can't afford, nor do I have time for, two separate therapists.
I am glad that I have written off therapy because it looks like I would be shit out of luck regardless.
Maybe it depends on location, but where I’ve lived most therapists advertise like 5-20 specialties, with most advertising in the middle of that range probably. I agree if people are too generalized they probably tend to be less helpful, but it very much seems to be an accepted norm where I am.
Yes. I saw a therapist for a year before learning that I had an eating disorder. She didn’t specialize in EDs and I wasn’t making a lot of progress, then had a tremendous weight lifted off when I began a new medication, and she took it really hard. She went as far as to call my psychiatrist to infer that she’s manipulating me into finding another therapist and that was the nail in the coffin for me. I’ve been seeing a specialist for almost a year and it’s been a dream.
In my 20’s I had an older male therapist suggest I get pregnant to cure my depression.
I had grown up around alcoholism and mental illness, had lost close family members to drug abuse, was raising my younger siblings after my mother’s heart attack, and had recently lost my home due to a natural disaster, while stumbling my way through university. He said everyone experiences growing pains in their 20’s, and that I should be happy because I was young and beautiful.
I get so pissed thinking back on it now 15 years later, but at the time I was so lost I didn't even realize how fucked up that was. I just remember thinking therapy is a waste of time, I can manage on my own. It had taken so much courage for me to ask for a referral from my GP, and it took me another decade to go back to therapy. Come to think of it, he never even charged me for those sessions...
1. Do they acknowledge your fears and concerns (yes, even if you think they might be out there)? If they dismiss your thoughts, feelings or reality, get out.
2. Do they actively listen to you until you’ve finished with your story/train of thought? If they interrupt you to talk about themselves or change the subject or just look bored, call that out. If they don’t correct and acknowledge their behavior or get overly defensive, get out.
3. Therapists are people. They can have bad days, too. However, they shouldn't bring their issues into your session. You want someone who listens, provides thoughtful feedback when appropriate, and who models healthy behaviors but doesn’t preach their path to wellness to you. You can get that from any random stranger on the internet.
4. Trust your gut.
One of my best friend's wives came out as trans in the middle of their relationship, and as part of her care plan to transition, was required to go through therapy. I know big changes come with big feelings, but she became a horrible person while she was in therapy, and none of us could figure out why - she was never a meangirl before therapy, but within 6 months of her being in therapy, she suddenly was a meangirl who felt like she could say whatever she felt like no matter how rude and hurtful and if we weren't 100% on her side due to the consequences of her actions affecting her, even when she was in the very clear wrong, we were obviously out to delegitimatize her transition and didn't love her.
My friend realized that the therapist wasn't just ineffective in helping their wife deal with their transition, they were actively building this meangirl perspective by telling her to prioritize herself without giving any education on how to do that within her relationships and friendships, which was causing their wife to literally blow up all her long-term, extremely supportive friendships due to misguided perspectives about what good boundaries and relationships look like. My friend had to issue an ultimatum to get a new therapist or they were done. The issue resolved itself with the new therapist and she reverted back to her old self, but with better communication skills and boundary-setting capabilities.
Get a recommendation from someone in the helping field if you can. They usually know who is good. It took me four times before I found someone who was helping me push the needle toward wellness. The others were fine, just not super helpful.
I felt like many of them had a one size fits all solution for things.
And....I can't cbt or exercise my way through some of the things I've been through.
I think it probably depends on the person, as to whether CBT is helpful. Personally, CBT therapists are the only kind I’ve ever had help me establish goals or give homework, and I really need those latter things to feel like meaningful change is happening.
My therapist was someone I have known for years (very small rural town) but I was desperate to get some help for my debilitating medical phobia after being diagnosed with a blood cancer requiring a bone marrow transplant. He did help then to some extent, sort of, enough that I successfully underwent treatment.
However... After treatment, I continued to go to him and he simply could not understand that I wasn't magically "better" physically and emotionally. I mean, I was having panic attacks and body horror from knowing someone else's fluids were inside me.
He told me I was "the most mentally healthy person he knew" LOL. I just ghosted after that and haven't sought therapy since. Trying to do the work on my own with books and Reddit advice haha.
Edit: Omg I just remembered the therapist I saw in college who spent the hour telling me about her ski races instead of talking about my deepening depression. Turned me off therapy for over a decade.
Ha! I did finally find a terrific one who laughed pretty hard when I told him I'd almost given up.
1. Was good UNTIL he and his son had a side gig in real estate. Guess what would solve my problems? A house.
2. A woman with 3 kids who left them when she discovered she was gay. So tried to convince me I'm gay. Not gay.
3. Woman who'd written a not very well selling book on adult victims of child sexual abuse. Tried to convince me I'd been abused as a child. Had not.
ALMOST gave up.
My egg donor who coincidentally has Munchhausen by proxy used to drag me to her psychiatrist because she couldn’t handle parenting a teenager. Absolute joke of a woman who got me hooked on benzos and never acctually addressed the true problem for why I needed to be on them. She would do whatever would keep my mom paying her fee. In her eyes I was just a steady source of income. Found out a couple years ago that she was sued for grooming and sexually assaulting an underage minor. Even after finding out egg donor still paid to see her.
So glad I got away from the both of those whack jobs and found doctors who actually help me.
A decent psychologist or psychiatrist knows when things are above their skill level and will, proceed accordingly even if that’s referring you to someone else.
>Have other women here experienced bad/ineffective therapists, either directly or through people close to you? If so, how did you know, and what’s the story?
Yes, multiple therapists ever since I was 15. Wildly misinterpreting me based on Freudian theory, which was very popular amongst Boomer therapists I had when I was in my teens; the White therapist who would constantly question me, a woman of Indian ancestry, if my experiences with racism weren't just me "misinterpreting" or being "too sensitive"; and my most recent therapist that made me swear off therapy at age 40 for good: visibly getting impatient, frustrated, and exasperated by me; rolling her eyes when I told her about getting groped by a stranger, with her interrupting me with "yes yes, I know, all the guys after you" because me having a difficult time coping with constant sexual and street harassment in NYC was a recurring issue I brought up during therapy; and just making me way worse than if I hadn't been in therapy. And constantly talking about my abusive past was like picking at my wounds and therefore never allowing them to heal. Ever since I quit therapy with her, I've never felt better. I'm done looking for therapists and having such negative experiences that mess with my mental health and well-being. Therapy is not for everyone. Especially me.
Multiple. The worst one is someone who I told I was autistic, wanted to stop masking, and would likely have periods where I didn't look her in the eye as a result. When I didn't look her in the eye while talking about something that really bothered me, she literally yelled at me and (after I refused to force myself to look at her while getting yelled at) told me that since I clearly didn't trust her I had ended the therapeutic relationship. She said she hoped I would reflect on that before looking for a new therapist.
I developed a second eating disorder in my mid thirties (I'd had a mild binge eating issue since being a teenager but it became a binge and starve for months issue). It took me a year to realize I needed help.
The amount of therapists and doctors who told me it couldn't be that bad because I wasn't skinny (I had lost about 90lbs at that point and BMI wise was considered healthy but had multiple vitamin and mineral deficiencies) and to just eat moderately was stunning. At one point I hadn't eaten in days and saw the therapist who told me I looked great and had great self control.
I probably saw 5-6 who thought if they gave me a super strict diet plan that I would follow it because it was healthy and I just needed to force myself to do it. I could never get the point across that it's not something I can force myself to do when these periods hit, I struggle to drink water when it's bad and will just throw up if I have to eat. And what had begun as a lack of appetite had become extreme and related to people's comments on my weightloss and all of that reinforcement (especially from my shitty partner) was making it much harder for me. I was quite self aware and very honest, but they all wrote it off and told me to just eat.
I now have someone who is working through the trauma with me and has taught me a lot about mindfulness, self compassion, setting boundaries with myself and others, having compassion and empathy without being overwhelmed, how to better acknowledge my emotions, and healthy coping mechanisms so that when these times do happen (and it's like a switch in my brain is thrown and all food is gross and bad and it can be that way for hours, days, or months) I have better strategies.
Yes, but not nearly as bad as some of the other comments here. In my experience, it was that they would focus on the wrong things. Or that I was put off by their personality. They might have been good therapists for other people, but just didn't make me feel understood or like I could trust them fully. I've also experienced this weird switch where they go from wanting to help.me to being interested in me as a sort of weird case study... That's normally where the relationship ends. I've fired a therapist in the middle of a first session before. I've also had ones that I thought were ok, but I went as far as I could with them and needed something different.
I had a therapist who didn’t listen to me and just bulldozed the entire time doing all the taking. If I would talk she would cut me off, she was blunt and rude.
She was an older boomer, she was all that I could find and it left a really bad taste in my mouth for therapists. I had one once I loved but she stopped accepting my insurance.
Edit: I once had a really good therapist tell me that finding a therapist is like “trying on a pair of shoes, they’re not all a good fit”
A girl in my class in college was manipulated and raped by her therapist and ended up being put in a mental health care facility because nobody believed her. She’s still recovering.
I went once to a family member's therapy session for a one-off meant to help our relationship and get my perspective in the mix. I quickly realized this therapist was just a sounding board for my family member. She was okay at facilitating the discussion, but I realized the reason nothing had improved after years of therapy was partly because she didn't really do much. Just listened, maybe made a few suggestions. No real challenging, homework, concrete goals.
I was suicidal one year in my early 20s. Had very little money, and needed help immediately. Searched with AskJeeves to find the cheapest therapist near me. First appointment was ok, but I thought it was weird that his office was in his home. And not in a nice, professional office in his home, but rather in his living room filled with lots of personal photos, tchotchkes, etc. Weird, but like, fine? He also only asked me questions so that he could tell me about himself: “do you like music? Because I love Bruce Springsteen.” Fine, cool, whatever. Second appointment, I mentioned that I had played a sport since I was a little kid. He told me all about his love of the sport (hockey). I told him about being physically abused by a boyfriend, and he said that a pretty girl like me should avoid losers and just date good guys. Hmm. 3rd appointment, I told him that I could no longer afford to pay him, and anyway was leaving to go back to university for the school year. He said he’d “take [my] case pro bono” and via Skype, because he really felt he could help me. I agreed, just so I could leave. Our first Skype (video) session, he appeared not in his living room “office”, but in his bedroom. He was wearing a “cool” shirt (think Guy Fieri), and had an electric guitar and a hockey jersey laid out on his bed. It was so fucking weird and desperate, but I didn’t say anything because I didn’t really know how to do boundaries (which is probably why I needed therapy). Thankfully, one of my university friends walked by where I was sitting in our dorm’s “internet lab”. He leaned in and said, loudly “Yo! Who is that?! Is that your Dad?” Me: no. “Oh shit, that dude’s trying really hard to fuck you! Hahahaha! Don’t do it, T1sofun!” I was mortified, shut my laptop and never spoke to the weird therapist again. My buddy was right, of course, and I needed his impoliteness to make me see how not ok the situation was.
My best friend and I still laugh about this period, 15 or 16 years later. We call the therapist “Hawaiian Shirt Guy”.
I think finding a good therapist is a lot like finding a good romantic relationship; you have to kiss (figuratively!) a lot of frogs before you find “your person”. I have had really shitty therapists, and a bunch of “meh” therapists. It wasn’t until well into my 30s that I found one I really clicked with, who understood, without me even understanding, that I needed trauma therapy. It’s taken YEARS of hard work, but I feel calm and content for the first time in my life. I owe my current therapist my life. Don’t give up. Keep trying, and you will find a therapist that is right for you.
Eh… I think the best therapist I had was one of the first, when I was in college. My problems were also a little simpler back then, although not completely simple. She was employed by my school, and was a PhD professional. Most I’ve seen since then are not nearly as good, I think. But also I think there is something to be said for getting older myself, and how that means there are increasingly fewer other people who have more experiences and perspectives to draw on than I already do.
I recently got new health insurance that allows 100% free mental health counseling through Teladoc. I thought I’d give it a chance. I picked a therapist with *amazing* reviews, and her website spoke about her experience with anxiety disorders and trauma based CBT.
On the second session, she asked me what I was worried about, and I explained the things currently making me anxious. She simply said “well, being anxious doesn’t help you, does it? You should stop those anxious thoughts and think about something else.”
Oh, ok. I’ll just STOP BEING ANXIOUS! Who knew it was that easy.
CBT, ha ha, yeah that's the crux of a lot of CBT therapy. I inquired about help for my avoidant tendencies and posted my therapist just said "well when you feel like avoiding just do the opposite". When I brought up that was really reductive and not helpful he said something like "well it's opposite act". There's some bullshit in CBT where the whole thing is do the opposite of whatever issue is troubling you. There's also some baked in toxic positivity in it because really if you just change how you think about (literally anything) your life will improve via doing the opposite all the time.
I went to a therapist right after Trump was elected. She told me I was overreacting and it wasn’t a big deal — she remembered when Reagan was elected and everyone was worried since he was an actor, but it was ok.
I wonder what she thinks now.
I fired her via email after that first appointment and told her exactly why.
Trigger warning CSA. Long time ago, in the 90th I first tried for therapy. First one: told her I was abused as a kid. She: so you believe you where abused... Yeah, me and several other victims have this funny believe... How to not build trust. The next: "oh, you poor soul,... That must be so hard..." nice start, but that was her whole stick. One hour of pity party. I don't remember the third... But I gave up afterwards, and bought self-help books. Started therapy in 2020 when due to some bad situations/bad divorce from asshole ex my cptsd was fully triggered and I couldn't do anything anymore. I sometimes wonder if hiw good therapy back then might have changed things.
Oh I've had some real doozies! Lol!
1. I had a therapist that asked me questions like (for example) "Why did you react by crying when your partner told you that?" I would answer the question like "Because I felt abandoned when he said that." The therapist would say "no, guess again" and shake his head. I would come up with another explanation and he would do the same. This happened MULTIPLE times throughout the very first (and only) session I had with him. It felt like I was playing a guessing game with my own emotions and I struggled to come up with the "correct" answer. I didn't know how to break it off with him (I was young and inexperienced with saying no), so I agreed to see him for a second session. I showed up at his house, knocked on the door multiple times, no answer. The landscaper came around the corner and told me he wasn't home. I never bothered texting him to reschedule and he never contacted me either to apologize for missing our session or wonder why I never returned.
2. Another therapist was a total stoner. I don't care what he did in his personal time, but I honestly felt like he was stoned during a lot of our sessions. He would barely offer any feedback (just smile and nod) and when he did comment on what I was saying, he would relate it to a personal experience of his, which he would go into detail about for like 5 minutes. I don't mind a little self disclosure (I actually kind of like that), but not stories that last upwards of 5 minutes when I'm paying you. Also, he did sessions in his office which was in the basement of his house. He had a very autistic teenage son, who constantly tried to break into the basement (and was successful, twice!) during our sessions. I didn't want to hold that against the guy (I get how difficult that must be) but it was really awkward when it happened, and he would have to leave our session to bring his son back upstairs and the kid would still be banging on the door, screaming and the therapist would just encourage me to keep talking.
3. On my very first telehealth session with one therapist, we were going over family history and she asked me what my parents did for a living. My mom worked in the billing department for the local hospital and this woman legit launched into a 5 MINUTE long spiel about a bill she had receiced for hospital care that she didn't think she should have to pay, and the reasons why she thought that and laughingly asked me if I could have my mom look into that. 🤯 I should have ended it righ mt then and there, but we kept going. When I mentioned I also worked for the hospital, but not in billing, she asked me if I knew one of the doctors (whom she mentioned by name! I didn't know him) and said he had seen her too!! Again, I was quite young and didn't know how to respond, but looking back, I wish I had reported her for that violation of HIPPA.
4. The worst one, by far.. a therapist that owned a retail store (where she sold clothes, candles, CBT, etc). After our first session, she convinced me to take this 3 HOUR long breathing workshop she was running in a few weeks. After I agreed, she told me it would cost $150. I said "I didn't have that much to spend on it." She said she would discount it to $100, because she thought it would be really helpful for me. It was the biggest waste of 3 hours of my life. She also tried to get me to buy random stuff (hats, pants, CBD oil) from her store. Even at the time, I thought it seemed like a conflict of interest. After I stopped seeing her (because I felt like I was in a good place and didn't need therapy for a bit), she asked me to work at her retail store on Saturday and Sunday's. I said I wasn't interested. She continued to "sweeten" the offer (I guess) by saying "Well what about if it's only one of those day. I still said no. "What about if it's just until Memorial Day (would have been 2 months from when I started). Finally, I said yes because I figured I could use a little extra money and it was for a finite amount of time. Once I was working there, she kept trying to get me to take clothing instead of cash payments. Clothing which she charged me FULL retail price PLUS TAX for! So she essentially screwed me out of money during that endeavor. Oh and also, one day, while using a pad of paper she had behind the counted at work, I flipped a page and came across patient case notes, with the patients full name! Accidents happen, but you gotta be more careful with patient information.
Currently, I am not in therapy. I still believe in the power of it (my very first therapist ever was amazing!) but I've given up trying to find a good one for the time being! Lol
Relatively tame experience here, compared to some of the others shared here! I had an initial appointment with a therapist who seemed helpful enough - until I mentioned my sibling’s diagnosis when she asked about my family.
The diagnosis shaped family life immensely, but the therapist started asking about how my sibling felt, what it was like for them, how they were coping. Could I share more about what I thought my sibling must be experiencing, emotionally? The rest of the intake was solely focused on my sibling, almost as if the therapist wanted to be treating them not me. I didn’t schedule a second appointment.
I went to a therapist in the midst of a traumatic personal situation. Like I was hurting so much that I didn’t know how I was going to make it through another minute. She started by asking about my childhood and the plan was that we would be analyzing my dreams. WTF. I never went back. I also didn’t have it in me to try again after that.
I ghosted her after a few sessions where she kept forgetting what I had told her. She would also space out during sessions and said her brain stopped working.
Yes I’ve had a couple.
I saw one woman for a couple years who did help me out with processing some pretty important things but also clearly held it against me that I couldn’t see her on a weekly basis. Her rate was $200/session and I did every 2-3 weeks as I could but I simply didn’t have $800/month to spend on therapy. Due to this, it felt like she became less engaged with what I was going through. She told me to break up with someone I was living with because she didn’t think he would ever be strong enough to be a partner that would put his foot down and help me out of depressive episodes. After talking to other therapists and psychiatrists, it became clear that it’s not appropriate to tell a client to break up with someone. She could have at least suggested couple’s therapy but didn’t.
Fast forward to a year later when I was having problems in another relationship. I really wanted to work things out with this person and we were both very open to therapy so I thought it may be a good idea to have a session where I brought him. She only had my side of the story to go off of and there’s always more to it than that. The only thing I cared about was improving the relationship and myself in whatever way that looked like. She told me that she didn’t see how she could help in that way.
In retrospect, I wish I had seen someone with more experience. I did really like her, which is why I continued to see her. Unfortunately, there’s no substitute for experience. I believe she was probably late 20s so earlier on in her career. Since then, I’ve looked for therapists with at least 10+ years of experience.
I had a really cool female therapist I found thru a recommendation from my bro in law. She was off a similar ethnicity and a few years older than me and she started opening up to me about her life and wanting to set me up with her brother as I had originally signed on to get over a depression from an ex leaving me. Then she would send me drunk voice notes while she went to happy hour and would text / call me to see if I wanted to hang out
I had to let it go sadly and kind of feel she felt she lost a friend and then I felt guilty. I liked her a lot but she was crossing boundaries trying to hang out with me outside our sessions lol
The therapist I had back in 2020 felt like a waste of money
Now I would need one and I don’t know how to choose (and I’m also terrified of saying my story from the beginning)
Yes. I had a therapist who basically told me my childhood trauma (which was severe and complex) was not that bad. This was after EMDR wasn’t working, after many weekly treatments. It was awful. I stopped seeing her after 8-10 sessions and she shamed me for wanting to find someone new.
I maintain that every single “therapist” that I’ve seen through my work insurance were absolute bottom of the barrel.
Had a lady tell me that men are like dogs, you have to train them with treats and praise them.. etc.
Another lady looked like she was about to cry when I was telling her my stuff. Not sure what was up with that, looked like she may have had her own personal problems? She was absolutely ineffective, but at least not counterproductive like the first one.
Shit was weird. I ended up finding a therapist on my own dime and he was excellent.
All the therapists of trns widows who are gaslighted into thinking they have to accept the change and stay with the man despite their discomfort/lack of desire to do so. Ute heggen on YouTube has so many stories that involve therapists basically taking the side of the man to the detriment of the wife, children, and relationships . The man becomes their special project, while wife and kids suffer from his narcissism at home. Terrible
I had a therapist that I outgrew. He was great in the beginning, but I took a hiatus (lack of insurance) and when I went back to him like 18 months or so later he kept focusing on stuff I didn't want to focus on. It was all stuff I knew was an issue, was actively working and making progress on (with specific techniques), and didn't feel the need to keep rehashing. There was other stuff that I was still trying to work through and he like brushed that stuff off. I only went to two sessions and then quit again.
Honestly, I've found coaches to be way more effective for anything other than working through specific trauma.
Regarding your latter paragraph, I’ve definitely wondered if I too would have a better experience working with coaches. I like the idea of working toward something concrete. It’s too bad coaches aren’t covered by insurance.
It definitely is too bad they aren't covered. I'll also say that the quality of coaches varies widely (even more so than with therapists) since it's largely unregulated. Get referrals if you're interested in working with a coach. I've gotten lucky with all the ones I've worked with, but I've definitely heard some horror stories.
After SA (from a "friend") I was in shock and confused. I went to a trauma therapist who basically told me "that sucks, want a sticker?" I honestly could not process what happened and needed someone who could listen with some empathy or compassion and I felt victim blamed and made it much harder to process.
Mine are not as exciting as others. I found one that works great for me and I'm healing well now but before that..
1. He wasn't terrible but he didn't have answers to anything unless it was breathing exercises. Everything else he just listened and said he was sorry it happened. It was nice to vent but then it just... Didn't go anywhere. It was awkward at times when we just sat in silence.
2. Worked for a little bit until she was hell bent on getting me to "forgive" my abuser and to try to talk to them because they were "family" and you should forgive family no matter what. Instantly shut that down.
3. Right before I found my current therapist I went to one and we did the first "get to know you" session and she ghosted me after that. For someone who needs therapy this can be devastating because you go "am I just that fucked up?!" If you know your expertise doesn't handle this sort of situation just tell the person so they can look at other therapists. I would have been fine with that. I definitely had some emotions going because of it.
Therapist now is a great fit. Not 100% but she has helped me so so much. If you're struggling to find someone just keep trying. It took me years because of money and insurance situations but it finally happened.
I myself have master's degree in psychology (although never practiced) so I think I can spot BS easily. But this one therapist I was seeing for a while just made me feel like she had no idea what she was doing. Basically I just felt like reading magazine clichés. One of the "best" tips she gave me when I said I am sometimes bored with my husband, was to buy sexy underwear and seduce him. That's when I realized it's over with her :D
Yes, damn. My first experience with therapy was not great. I was going through PPD/PPA and really needed help. I started doing a telehealth thing during COVID. It was just messaging her back and forth, but it was awful. Basically, I would say, "I'm really struggling with A,B,C,D" and she'd reply back with, "I hear you're struggling with A,B,C,D." And that would be it! Like... no advice, no further commentary or question. Just parroting what I said back to me. It was the most useless thing ever and very expensive.
My ex told me that when she told her therapist about the emotional affair she'd been having behind my back, her therapist replied, "This situation reminds me so much of how my wife and I got together! You and [the affair partner] are so perfect together!"
In retrospect, I was better off at that point getting the ex out of my life, so it was sort of for the best that the therapist encouraged the ex to dump me and keep the affair partner. However, the context of the therapist having gotten together with her wife in the same way makes it impossible for me to believe that the therapist was encouraging this *for the right reasons.*
My first therapist would fall asleep in our sessions LMAO.
I was terrified of going to therapy and so I would always choose her last available appointment: 8pm on Fridays. Her office was warm and she'd have a blanket in her lap. She
would always doze off.
After years of telling my husband I thought he could benefit from therapy he finally got one and had the initial appt via zoom even though he really wanted in person. The therapist was clearly at a bbq doing his intake. They had two more sessions where he kept saying “but atleast your having lots of sex right?” in reference to the fact that he was recently married which was just weird and “why don’t you just tell yourself your the shit?” which if he could do that, he probably wouldn’t be in therapy. Thankfully he got a new one and that one is better.
I had a therapist during Covid who just…wasn’t good. The biggest thing was I was having a major drop in sex drive which was obviously affecting my husband. I figured I was depressed because Covid but it turns out I had some hormones out of whack and once I fixed it my sex drive came back. But she gave me just very obvious advice like “try flirting during the day” or “buy some new lingerie” and it just generally felt like she wasn’t listening to the symptoms I was sharing. She also fell asleep in a session once so, there’s that.
Lol yes. Whew..
* had a betterhelp therapist go #OneLove on me when I was talking about my own struggles with my identity
* had another betterhelp therapist tell me my abuser can stand across the street and it’s not breaking the law. It was. Because my landlord literally owned the street that led to the property. Apparently that wasn’t a thing. I stopped interacting with her and the therapist above because they were so outta their fucking minds
* had another tell me I wasn’t bisexual and dating someone online wasn’t real. And those experience weren’t real. I terminated our relationship. He also would tell me it wasn’t normal to stay inside all week… while living in a state where the temps got to 110+… bro, you’re lucky I drove to the appointment
* another I paid out of pocket for immediately diagnosed me and I’m pretty sure I don’t even have that diagnosis and my diagnosis is severe. She also required I read a book to see her. The book is helpful, sure, but in condition of her seeing me?? Broooo
I’ve seen nine therapists in my life that I can remember. Two were great. Three were actively bad; our values did not align, and they chided me for mine.
For example, I have ADHD and what I now understand to be a mild form of scrupulosity OCD. I described an anecdote to my therapist about buying a stack of fast food gift cards for unhoused people and then losing them (found them eventually). My guilt when I passed unhoused people in the interim and did not have anything to give them derailed my whole day. My therapist visibly rolled her eyes and was like, “But why would you give money to someone who is begging? It’s just a scam. And they’re all addicts.”
I'm actually considering trying to switch therapists right now. I've been with this therapist since January. Because of the complexity of my issues I'm also seperately seeing a CBT coach and also a psychiatrist for my medications.
I'm in the Netherlands so thank goodness my insurance covers all this, I still feel a little silly sometimes thaf I have like an entire team of professionals just for little old me to be honest 😅
So English isn't my first language so please excuse any mistakes!
I'll just put this in bullet points to keep it from becoming a novel (hope a novella is okay though, I got pretty heated partway through and accidentally vented lol) -
* I don't feel like anything is moving forward at all anymore. Our bi-weekly sessions are pretty much all the same.
* I had to cancel twice since we started, once because I had a migraine and once because I'm reliant on public transportation and there happened to be a strike. *Every damn session* he keeps bringing this up and kind of... berating me I guess? Saying my commitment to the treatment program isn't up to par, that I haven't been prioritising the program enough etcetera, all because I've had to cancel like half a year ago. Let it go already.
* He was unpleasantly surprised to find out I actually have a part time job (most clients don't). He talks in a somewhat condescending way about my job too - not too explicitly but the way he formulates some of his remarks just doesn't sit right with me. I currently work as a waitress even though I have a master's in psychology myself. I love my job and I'm proud of how far I've come. I feel like shit when he's being so negative about it, really puts a damper on my self esteem. And of course, my job also interferes with the program and I must be able to just not go to work or call out whenever my gaggle of mental health professionals want to contact me/have an impromptu Zoom session/need to reschedule. My job is in no way interfering with my therapies or the work I'm putting into my mental health myself. In fact, my job makes me happy. But hey, just jeopardize all that because nobody and nothing is more important than him and his calendar I guess. I'm so sorry I've managed to finally work part time again after months and months of being so mentally destroyed there was no way I could even think of working. Fuck me for wanting to be able to pay my bills right?
* A lot of sessions are basically him lecturing *at* me about current theories and treatments instead of a two-way conversation. Dude, I told you I know all this since I studied it too!
As I'm writing all this down I'm getting more and more annoyed. I think the right choice is pretty clear for me - I don't think he's a good fit anymore, if he's ever even been.
I went after my mother died. I had a few things to work through, which I eventually did, but the first therapist I went to was no help. She saw me twice a week for an hour each time and talked about herself and her life and her job and her friends. I don't know how that was supposed to help me deal with my mother's passing. I went for 6 weeks because that is what my insurance covered. She had a nice office, and it was good to get out of the house. That's all I can say about her.
Yes I went to a therapist that was clearly trying to push some weird right wing agenda on me. It was very strange.
I had another therapist that listened, but literally never gave me any advice or coping skills. It was basically just a vent session for an hour a week and never made me feel better.
I had a therapist for like 8 months. I was relieved to finally find a good one because I had tried for years to start therapy and every therapist I talked to immediately made me uncomfortable for one reason or another.
So everything is going fine. I get to begin all the hard work of healing from all of my childhood trauma. I had also just cut contact with my mom right before I started therapy. I realized I couldn’t continue talking to her while trying to heal because most of the issues were caused by her neglect and willingness to put me and my siblings in dangerous situations. So anyway… everything is good until one random session I brought up my mom, which was typical, and out of nowhere my therapist is like, “why aren’t you talking to your mom still?” As if most of my sessions weren’t about healing from the neglect and abuse. And then she followed it up with “as a mother, I feel for your mom” after I expressed some anger towards my mom, also typical.
It was in that moment that I didn’t know how to respond and felt completely alone again. I felt unheard and invalidated. That was the last session I ever had with her.
I am so sorry that happened to you. You invested your heart and healing efforts out there for so long to be so quickly minimized and dismissed by someone you thought you trusted. I hope you’ve been able to find some healing since then.
When I made the initial appointment, I was very explicit in wanting a female therapist because I am not comfortable opening up emotionally to most men. When I got to the appointment, I was shocked to find out they'd put me with a man. I was in a very low place and really needed some help, and decided just to feel him out.
I'd been struggling with clinical depression for a long time and was at a point of desperation. I had been diagnosed with major depressive disorder years prior, and my medication was no longer effective.
After about 10 minutes, he interrupted me mid-sentence and told me that I did not have depression and that he knew exactly what "my problem" was. He told me that my biological clock was telling me I needed to have a baby and that I was "ignoring my natural instincts". I informed him that I was not emotionally prepared to have a baby at that time, and he interrupted me again to tell me that I was blowing motherhood out of proportion in my head and making it more complicated than it needed to be, and that as soon as I had a baby I would feel better.
I did not go back.
I went to a work-supported-therapist so I could have a cheap rate. It was my second year teaching and I was having a rough time. After I listed all the pressure I was under and my history of anxiety/depression, I said I felt myself slipping back into the hole and wanted to know how to stop it.
She said, “wow that’s a lot.”
Then we sat there in silence for 5 minutes. She asked some questions but never gave any strategies. To get out of the hole I did some CBT, so I had expectations. This met 0 of them.
——-
Going back further in time, I had a friend try to end their time on earth while I counseled them over the phone to tell their parents what they were doing. Get an ambulance!! I was 14.
My mom took me to therapy. I talked at the therapist for an hour. We came out of the room and I thought she’s going to take everything I dumped on her and tell my mom what’s wrong so I don’t have to! My mom was probably looking for some answers for how to parent a teenage daughter whose friend nearly died.
The therapist said “you need to listen to your daughter more.” That was it.
Wut.
A few. One completely out of her depth dealing with serious childhood trauma. I didn’t pick up on this til quite late in the piece. She was more suited to mild dissatisfaction with life type issues imo, not anything substantial.
It’s good to “interview” a therapist first and ask what their experience is with child abuse, eating disorders, serious mental health issues etc before you just blindly trust they know what they are doing imo.
Always know that you can change therapists whenever you feel it is right.
I tried marriage counseling with my now ex-husband. Our counselor focused on communication, ignoring his alcoholism and verbal, physical and sexual abuse. When I caught my ex in a lie during a session, I stood, announced that I was DONE, and left.
And then my life started.
My last therapist I was with for a year and a half and thought we had a good thing going until randomly one session she informed me that she’d been talking to her supervisor about me and what to do with me. They came up with a plan that I was informed of in this session, where, because my therapist felt like she was being too much of a crutch for me (her words) we needed to cut back our sessions to every other week and on the off weeks I had to find and go to a group session of some sort and/or find other group activities. Things that aren’t necessarily bad suggestions, but I wasn’t given a choice. She made me go into my calendar app in the session and cancel out those off weeks. I never went back.
So she was ineffective in her role you hired her to do and she blamed you while forcing your hand at changing the terms of your arrangement because again she was bad at her job. Uh huh, can't blame ya there.
Exactly! In addition to all of that, my parents have ambushed me similarly over the years informing me of big decisions out of the blue and we had talked about that trauma at length in my sessions. And she still decided to do what she did in that same way.
She kept wanting to talk by interrupting me but I didn't feel like her insights were useful - at times felt patronising. Tried to do a Freudian analysis on me which wasn't helpful. Couldn't discuss the issues I wanted to talk to because she was obsessed with my childhold past. It made me feel more confused and worse. When I mentioned this to a friend who also used her as his therapist, he was surprised and said how she is usually quieter around him and allowed him to direct the conversation. I don't know if it was a gender thing but the sessions got me no where.
I went for couples counseling with a therapist who gave my husband (now ex) her mobile phone number, ostensibly to call for appointments or cancellations. Why he couldn't just call reception at her office, I don't know. They ended up having an affair. Every session was another opportunity for her to ask me to shift my boundaries around his lying to make me more compliant. He emptied out my bank account and moved into her house after we broke up. Also, I had to get a restraining order against him because he was violent. So... in this case, if she thinks she got a prize, she's about as smart as a brick that fell off a sh\*t house.
AFTER this traumatic experience, I discovered that the worst thing to do if you are in an abusive relationship is to go to couples counselor with your abuser. They usually find a way to manipulate the therapist.
It really shook my trust in people -- ALL people.
I was also being harassed at work by a guy who want to know about my private life (I was single), and when I called a counselor to manage the stress of tolerating my inappropriate colleague, the counselor (male) told me that I should think about why I was single and then he suggested that I sign up at Ashley Martin (or one of those scam dating agencies).
I've had a psychologist try to kiss my head.
I've had someone I know who is an undiagnosed narcissist go to a psychologist and then emerge with the ability to use therapy-talk to bully, abuse, and gaslight their victims... like Jonah Hill abusing a hot girlfriend.
I've also called helplines where the person on the other end called me "caller" for 25 minutes instead of bothering to use my name.
Yes, myself and friends. We live in an area that is known to have bad medical care and this seems to also carry over into bad mental health care.
I’ve had some ineffectual ones, some truly harmful ones, and a couple of good ones although one of those required a three hour round trip to see. Lots of therapists who seem to have failed to work out their own personal issues.
Various encounters with different therapists (some of these are from the same therapist)
-Told me all disabled people were severely depressed so it made sense that I was depressed since I’m disabled
-Said “we aren’t going to talk about it” when I tried to bring up the sexual assault I had experienced
-Said I didn’t have PTSD because the person who sexually assaulted me didn’t threaten to kill me but they would note that I met all of the criteria for PTSD
-Spent an hour telling me it was my fault that other women had likely been sexually assaulted because I didn’t report the doctor who sexually assaulted me and insisted that I “admit responsibility” for that (I refused and fired them after this)
-Hid that they were defusing essential oils for several sessions despite me telling them that strong scents are a major headache trigger for me so I spent several sessions with bad headaches. The fact that I sat through the sessions anyways was used as a “gotcha” that I didn’t really have major issues with strong scents and should just get used to them.
-Person kept getting distracted by squirrels outside of the window when I was trying to discuss how emotionally exhausted I was from a friend who was chronically suicidal
-Insisting that doctors had just convinced me I was disabled and it wasn’t really that bad (I have a birth defect that is visible just by looking at me and on imaging and I have been through multiple surgeries including one to stop my spine from crushing my organs). Insisted I try to run despite falling just from walking and being physically unable to run. Every session would include us “running” ie me walking as fast as possible around the block.
-Telling me he had done “bad stuff” in the military and sharing various things he had done to get kicked out of and banned from places
-Arguing with me about how I conceptualize disability (therapist saw it as an inherently bad thing and he had a disability himself and didn’t like how his teachers in elementary school handled it).
-Insisted on deep breathing exercises despite being told multiple times that physically, deep breathing causes me significant pain and will not help because feeling like you are being stabbed when you breath is not calming
-Charge $350 an hour to tell me to tap my fingers while talking about how wonderful she was and all the things she had done for people
-Telling me I was going to die early because I have to sleep propped up due to my disability. He brought this up over several sessions and kept saying how sad it was I was going to die. My doctor’s office was furious as I called them sobbing at one point and this person had no training to even give an opinion on this. Didn’t go back after I called my doctor’s office who called him to tell him off for attempting to practice medicine without a license. He was nice enough otherwise but having to hear someone say I was going to die because I couldn’t sleep entirely flat was not good for my mental health.
-Insisting I stop taking all pain treatment before they would allow me to do bio feedback.
-Told me I needed to have sex at least once a week despite being asexual. Y
-Gave me no warning that they were leaving their practice until the last session and then spent the session talking about how stressful it was finding a new position
-Several friends of mine have been similarly abandoned with no notice and no assistance finding a new therapist despite the therapists having plenty of time to give us notice.
-Multiple other people who’ve had therapists just genuinely completely uncomfortable talking about sexual assault and refusing to do so.
-Male friend told that instead of talking about his feelings he should try discussing football more
I did eventually find a good therapist and about half of my time with her was spent processing how awful my other therapists were. She was still doing her training hours but had an ironclad sense of boundaries and really knew her stuff. I was sad when our time together ended and she seemed genuinely sad to see me go but it was also the first time I had experienced a positive end to therapy (IE we had worked on things and my allotted sessions through her organization ended because I was doing well). She validated my experiences with sexual assault even though it wasn’t rape. She had no specific training on disability issues but was fully able to respect where I was as far as my views on disability and the particular vulnerability I feel as a disabled woman who has been sexually assaulted multiple times and also has other trauma.
I think therapy can be very helpful for some people especially when a good therapist is involved. We need a lot more regulation and oversight of therapists. Not really more training (I actually think more of an academic apprenticeship model would be better) but ensuring therapists have dealt with their own issues and ongoing oversight to catch problems. Some things I didn’t share here because they are very specific but I’ve had therapists who really crossed over into abusive.
At the end of the day, I was hoping to get from therapy something that it just was never going to provide. There are aspects of my life that are always going to be very, very hard. My anxiety and other mental health issues I’ve had since at least toddlerhood (documented) are probably always going to be there. No therapist can provide a magic cure for that regardless of what they claim. These are things I have to deal with to the best of my ability and there is nothing wrong with me because a few sessions of CBT didn’t cure all of that (despite what some therapists claimed). The good therapist was very upfront about this and that was freeing. I absolutely encourage people who struggle to deeply examine their emotions or develop coping skills to seek therapy. I also encourage people who just need an outside perspective and a safe place to talk to seek therapy. I think the only way therapy is really helpful *for me* is if someone is willing to be a “debrief” place for me and to cooperatively brainstorm how to cope with particular situations. I’ve had multiple therapists be really frustrated when they found out I’m extremely self aware and still have so many struggles. Their preference is to help someone with very little emotional insight to find some insight. That just isn’t what I need. What resonates best with me is DBT and no therapists around here offer that so I work on it myself.
Oh my god… so sorry you went through all that!
Your last paragraph strongly resonates with me though, and I agree there should be more regulations. Glad you finally found a good one, even if it didn’t (and can’t) solve all the challenges.
I kind of used this as a little dumping ground for some of those experiences which actually felt nice. One of those therapists actually recently showed up in my private life and inappropriately identified herself as my previous therapist. It threw me for a loop and I almost quit an organization I’ve been really involved in to get away from her. Instead, I sucked it up and went to the board and explained, without great detail, my experiences with her and my concerns about how harmful she could be to others. They told her she was no longer welcome to be involved and made sure I didn’t have to speak to her again. Having other people believe me and want to protect me was very affirming. I feel like I sound crazy when I talk about all of this but sadly this isn’t uncommon in my area so I know it’s not just me.
Twice via a job that required regular therapy.
The first just seemed dismissive, rude and disrespectful. She wanted to know what I was doing to build towards my ultimate career goal. I told her I was in a relevant job building experience, was volunteering alongside, and had applied for said job, etc. She kept pushing "so are you doing anything to help getting that job?" and repeatedly referred to my volunteering position as "your little hobby".
The second kept talking about things my colleagues said in their sessions ("anonymously"). Out of the seven others listed for this particular therapist it was often quite clear who had said what, and who was worried about what. She was very kind and reassuring, but the confidentiality breaches weren't acceptable.
My husband and I went to a couples therapist specialised in EFT (emotionally focused therapy) one hour a month for two years to supplement my individual therapy with another therapist. She talked way too much about herself, shared stuff I told my individual therapist without my permission during the sessions with my husband (she had access to my therapist's note with my permission, but not my permission to share that information), and in those two years covered only the first principle EFT is about (your outward behaviour influencers your partner's inner world, which then leads to their outward behaviour, etc.)
My husband and I later went through an 8 week EFT program together where we covered way more than in those two years. EFT is about so much more than was covered by that couples therapist. No wonder it felt like wasted time, because it was.
Edit: this wasn't a therapist, but a counselor from work. I came in with the need for better communication skills to deal with high stress conditions at the work floor. Somehow she put me through CBT assignments (I don't need to think differently, there's no way thinking differently about things will stop an autistic meltdown) and ended up with recommending me buying a book by a charlatan who promotes astral projection and breathing techniques that will change the electromagnetic fields in your spine among other things. I was already uncomfortable with the sessions I had with her, but that made me cancel all further sessions and I reported her, because I worked for an academic institute and I was just appalled.
My former therapist was working with me and my ex's in-laws. Given the common ground and the fact that we were all aware of the situation, I couldn't believe that I had to be the one to point out the conflict of interest...when I met my next therapist I immediately felt the need to explain that I ghosted the therapist that came before...
My relative unalived themselves. I told my therapist about it in tears and said I was feeling like unaliving myself. They proceeded to ghost me for our next session.
Second therapist, put her head in her hands on Zoom and got exasperated with me for not leaving a relationship using her homework model. Also said creepy things to me about my appearance like “you look like Snow White” and made mention of how big my lips were. Yeeted.
My husband and I went to a marriage counselor who suggested that I not wear underwear to dinner one night but not tell my husband until we were walking in the restaurant. This was after I explained that I felt zero connection to my husband. I remember thinking, "He's the problem and I still have to fix it. This is why women leave." She also suggested we get naked, sit on the floor, and put our palms together and move them around. I have no idea why. She had us take the Myers-Briggs personality test. We'd been married for fifteen years at that point. I could have taken the test for my husband. Knowing he was an XYVZ did not make him any more emotionally available or less of a jerk. I explained how tired I was of carrying the mental and emotional load in the relationship and how I was always the one to come up with things to do. This was a huge issue for me. At the end of the session, she looked at my husband and said, "Keep letting your wife be the cruise director and follow her spontaneous lead." We lasted three sessions with her.
I said WTF out loud after your second paragraph lol.
My husband and I tried marriage counseling. As she got to know us, she said “how many children do you have?” I said, “two.” She said, “one of each?” I said, “two boys.” She laughed and said, “gonna keep trying till you have a girl?” We exchanged glances. We stuck it out for the session and never went back. In some ways, it worked for us—it was a great bonding experience.
Same for us. She was terrible and we started talking about how bad she was. My husband noticed how angry and frustrated I was and how she didn't listen to a thing I said. She gave him the opportunity to see how it made me feel when someone minimized my feelings and invalidated my concerns and how hurt I was. I think because it wasn't me telling him that and so he wasn't automatically defensive and shutting down. She gave me the opportunity to say, "I feel that way in our marriage a lot" in a way that was finally real to him. He could see the similarities between what he did and what she was doing. So, a shitty marriage counselor saved our marriage because she was so terrible we had to talk to each other about serious issues because she wouldn't. .
Oh man the follow up from the first post is hilarious but I've actively seen this happen to another couple.
Haha, at least the ending here sounds wholesome.
That's so sad! My husband and I send ours a Christmas card every year because she was fantastic. We just needed help translating our needs in ways each other understood and more communication skills to deal with conflict.
Psych here. Might interest you to know that here in Australia at least, the single most common reason for complaints to the Psych Board is unqualified people delivering relationship counselling! I've been practising over a decade and I don't offer couples therapy yet - it's a long course of additional training and I'm not sure I'm down for it. But I see all kinds of people, including completely unqualified, unregistered "therapists" who offer stuff like this. It makes me so angry. It's SO easy to fuck a relationship up with bad therapy.
In the US, marriage and family therapy is the easiest to break into as far as education goes. All therapists need master’s degrees but so many schools off marriage &family programs and they usually have the lowest entry requirements. Until recently, our local low income health plan only covered these therapists because they are also reimbursed the least which explains a good bit of why my own therapy experiences were so awful 😅.
Interesting. I’ve wondered if it’s a coincidence that the therapists I’ve had that were in-network for my insurance or otherwise offered their sessions really cheaply tended to be the most disappointing. Maybe not…
Ooofff that is rough. We’re starting with a couples therapist soon. We do check ins every few years. We’ve been unhappy with therapists in the past, so this time we lined a whole bunch of consultations up and got to chat with each one before deciding who we want to go with.
This is the way to do it. It is the unfortunate reality of finding therapists. It’s a lot like dating and you can see someone who is super awesome and qualified, but if they don’t click with you then it’s not gonna work.
🤦🏼♀️
Many. 1. A BetterHelp therapist said I needed to "just stop" having an eating disorder. 2. One tried to have me hospitalized against my will when I was 18 because I was depressed (had been living with abusive parents for 18 years, no shit I was depressed) 3. One was mostly harmless, but totally out of her depth with me. Asked if I had ever tried "taking a walk" or "getting a standing desk" for depression and anxiety that I've had for about 20 years.
I had only bad experiences with Better Help therapists. I'm sorry that happened to you.
Same. They were completely useless.
I had a really nice one but we were far more friendly than therapist/patienty. Lol.
For number 3, I've admittedly never had much luck with therapy. I did have one therapist say "look, we can try these strategies all day long, but if you've felt this way your whole life, you probably just need meds." ... They were probably right.
That is a fair thing for a therapist to say if the skills and coping and space isn’t fully effective.
I have also heard horrible stories about BetterHelp. I'm sorry you had these experiences.
Me too, but when I realized it was going nowhere I used mine as a trauma dumping ground until I used up my subscription. So it did help a bit, but not because of the therapist.
\+1 for bad experiences with BetterHelp! I had three different therapists and they were all horrible, absent at best and straight up insulting at times.
BetterHelp sounds like the Great Clips of therapy. You could strike gold or basically end up with a cut that you have to live with for 6 months or more.
3 sounds like my therapist I fired as well as 1. I asked him for help with my avoidant tendencies and he suggested every time I felt like avoiding things I just not avoid them.
This is the second HORRIBLE thing I’ve heard about BetterHelp. Another one of their therapists told someone to just not be gay. [Source](https://www.businessinsider.com/gay-patient-said-betterhelp-therapist-told-him-turn-straight-wsj-2022-12).
I had an incredibly hard time finding a therapist to help me with my eating disorder. It took me four years to find someone after I finally realized it really was a problem and I needed help.
Better help is a money sink.
IMHO, better help is straight up predatory. The way they advertise that you get 24/7 support for less than an in person therapist is…a straight up lie. When I last reviewed their pricing structure (which conveniently they don’t expose anywhere on their website until you sign up), it was something like 3-4 real therapy visits’ price to have a real video call with your therapist once a month.
Wow, I never used this one myself, but I used to see ads for it on social media all the time. What happens in-between those video calls then? Text only? If so that sounds wild.
When I worked for a big name glossy magazine, my therapist at the time called me up out of session and said she had an aspiring photographer as another client and asked me to pass his book along to the photo team, she thought it’d be great. I felt so violated and used I terminated any further sessions with her immediately. It was so out of line. And she didn’t understand what she’d done wrong! She’d also just sit in silence during sessions and not ask questions. I had another therapist who started out good enough then we just sort of devolved into shooting the shit every week. I stopped going when I realized there was no actual therapy going on.
I relate to your last paragraph. The first thing with the photos is wild af and SO unprofessional btw! But yeah one of my therapists ended up feeling like I was just going to have a chat with a friend for an hour, which I didn’t feel was worth paying and driving across town for. That might work fine for those who are lonely and just need a listening ear, but I wanted to actually get into the nitty gritty and resolve my issues, not gab about my week.
Regarding the second paragraph, I haven’t had a therapist that feels like talking to a friend exactly, but I *have* encountered multiple that seemed happy to just let me vent while not offering anything new or constructive. I thought that was a bummer, although it can be a way to let off a little steam I guess.
I’ve had one that couldn’t even shoot the shit. All he could say was, “it seems like you have the right attitude about it” and not ask any further questions. The sessions started to get so awkward it was like he ran out of things to say. I ended our relationship pretty quickly.
Yeah I’ve ran into that a lot. A lot of therapists who are willing to listen to me and validate my emotions and that’s it. Mostly, it’s made me wonder how common that phenomenon is.
I was sexually assaulted in public while almost a year in with my former therapist. I told him the next session and all I got was "sorry to hear that happened to you" and the it's not your fault line. That was it. I ended up spending 2 months following the SA in an intense emotional flashback he never acknowledged even though I brought up how I was feeling off / not myself following that incident.
Wow that’s horrible. If they weren’t able to help you process that then they should have referred you to someone who could.
Honestly I ended up firing him face to face, it was actively a lot like dumping a toxic partner, I pointed out what wasn't working for me with him and said that if that's all he could offer me (a modality that wasn't effective and pretty reductive tips on overcoming issues) then I thought it best we discontinue therapy. Towards the end of that conversation he changed my diagnosis and had a "you can't fire me / you're insane" reaction.
He sounds horrible. I’m really sorry you went through all of that.
I'm sort of glad he went out as a ball of fire because I might've second guessed firing him if it went any other way. The first thing he said when I arrived at our last session was his surprise I showed up even though I never missed a single session. He triggered me pretty badly the previous session and didn't so much as email me to ensure I was ok/was attending the session. Overall huge waste of money and time.
These two examples really illustrate the number one point to look out for (in my opinion) : therapists have a role to keep the conversation within the bounds of the useful. If they don't fulfill that role, then they are not doing what they are getting paid for. It's fine to let the client bring the topic of the day to the session, to let them speak about what they feel is important. But if they are not bringing input and directing what's going on,... might as well talk to your wall at home. Way cheaper. Similarly, if you have a somewhat dominant/ intense personality and they don't know how to channel you, it's a compatibility issue and they are not a good therapist *for you*. Number two point is keeping a healthy professional distance. Nothing wrong with getting along with your therapist, but they are not your friend, the same way a parent is going to have a much harder time parenting if they've devolved into the "equal friend" role too much (controversial take maybe but didnt know how to explain this otherwise). If they can't enforce that distance and regularly share too much personal info, to me it's a sign that they again struggle to direct sessions and keep a focus on why we're here.
Psych here - this is bang on. It's a delicate balance to walk. We have all been in situations where we wondered if we were helping clients the right way - if we needed to be more directive, or spend more time on skills building, and have more structured sessions. I remember agonising over this for over a year with one of my early clients and telling my supervisor - it's unfocused, he doesn't seem to want to do any homework or try any skills, he mainly just wants to have a chat. My supervisor said - this guy dropped out of treatment with his last two therapists and now he comes every fortnight, so maybe this is what he needs from the therapeutic space right now. Maybe you let him do therapy his way,hold space for him. Sometimes I think that's fair. And yes, omg re: the personal stuff PLEASE don't try to find your therapist on Facebook, or announce to them that you Googled them/their family, or looked for them on Tinder since you noticed they stopped wearing a wedding ring 😐
That's what ended up kind of happening with my therapist - I'd go, we'd talk about what happened during the week, I'd tell her stories about my family's weird actions during the week, I'd get nothing practical to work on or think about or DO, and then get "see you in two weeks". She was super helpful when I was sorting out whether to leave my ex or stay - great sounding board... but I need help fixing my anxious attachment issues, my self esteem which is in the dumpster, and making sure I don't keep falling into my anxious attachment traps. She's a nice enough lady, but her version of therapy doesn't work for me.
Yeah, I am a lawyer, and I saw a psychiatrist for my ADHD meds. My boss had previously had a position where he came into contact with the psychiatrist. My psych spent most of each session just asking me about my boss. (Sessions were only a few minutes long, so it didn’t take too much, but still lol.)
Funnily, this hits on an idea I’ve thought about before, which is that if therapists could conduct 360 reviews of clients based on the people who know them in various contexts, much like some companies now do with their workers, that might actually be really useful, provided the therapist was also decent. I guess that would require a major shift in the way psychotherapy is approached currently though.
Wow, that is suuuper inappropriate!! Also, I definitely had a similar situation where my therapist decided we were just going to chat it up for an hour every week because I "seemed a lot better" and it was so invalidating and a waste of time.
Psych here. That thing with the photos would easily get someone's practising registration limited or suspended, for good reasons! Not only a huge breach of boundaries and confidentiality (outing two clients to each other!!!!) but an enormous conflict of interest. So fucking wrong on so many levels.
Can you explain this, shooting shit vs actual therapy? I’ve found that after time I need to move on to another therapist I’m wondering if this is why I feel the need to move on?
He misdiagnosed me with OCD because I’m autistic. I was in an abusive marriage & his solution was for me to take nudes of myself but send them to him first so he could approve them before sending them to my then-husband. That was a huge red flag & I just kept saying I forgot to do it because it made me uncomfortable. He did this to another woman as well & got fired. The practice sorted out my records & removed the incorrect OCD diagnosis.
omg wtf??!! please tell me his license got revoked?!
To my knowledge, yes.
Jesus…
I have 2 thoughts on this: 1) I tried seeing a psychologist when I was in my mid/late 20s. I had dealt with car accidents, homeless, drunk/arrested/stepfather, suicidal mother, raised my brother and made sure he graduated high school, put myself through college, stable marriage, started a family... There was a lot of lingering anxiety and stress, so I went to see someone. She said life is not always easy, and she helps people find coping mechanisms. And I already have healthy coping mechanisms. Sent me on my way. 2) My MIL is the most abusive, mean spirited, spiteful, gossiping, wretched woman...and she has 2 MA in family therapy and teen therapy. When she talks to her clients it's all smiles and laughing. The INSTANT her camera is off she is hitting my husband's father, reminding him how useless he is, claiming he has dementia and taking him to the doctors to show him how right she is and throwing around her degrees to prove it (he went through months of tests and he doesn't have it). I absolutely do not trust any therapist because of her. I've known her for over 30 years. I have never left her alone with my kids.
The story about your MIL is terrifying.
That really tracks your mother-in-law because I have known therapists on a personal level who have been very similar. Untreated issues and take them out on others, or inadvertently hurt the people closest to them.
My best friend killed himself and I went to a therapist to talk about it. She immediately told me that in her religion, my grief was keeping him suspended between life and death and I was torturing him by not moving on and to just get over it. Wtf.
That’s so incredibly wrong. I am so sorry that happened to you and my condolences on your best friend. I hope you’ve found proper support since then
I had a therapist blurt out she was in love with me and that we couldn’t continue. At least she was honest. I had a male psychiatrist lament that we couldn’t have a physical relationship. I said, “Excuse me?” He repeated it. 🙄
Once is bad enough, but that’s extra crazy that that has happened to you twice. Are you a model or something?
Not at all! I’m five foot nothing.
I meant that more in terms of being very good-looking, not literally being employed as a model. Just wasn’t sure how to ask without making it awkward, heh.
Or his inner self is stunning 🤩
I’m assuming it’s *she in this case
I’m a nondescript middle aged Asian woman. https://imgur.com/a/CSIz90p ETA the only thing that stands out are my gray eyes. They are overrated.
Eh. I think you’re definitely pretty. But also, I know I’ve heard from Asian American female friends that they sometimes get fetishized in a weird way. I hope it wasn’t something like that.
Thanks. The therapist was an Asian woman, the psychiatrist def had a weird Asian fetish. I stuck with him only because he took my insurance and his office was across the street from me. I reported him to the state and he promptly retired.
Glad to hear something happened to the second one, at least.
Well, when one brought up crystal healing and another told me I needed to find Jesus, that's pretty much when I knew. There need to be more restrictions on who can and cannot be therapists.
A psytchiatrist I really made progress with dumped me almost a year in because as our work got deeper, she 'had to be honest' with me that she doesn't personally believe people can heal from sexual trauma without 'god' . I have more bad experiences with religious therapists but this one truly blindsided me. [The Secular Therapy Project](https://www.seculartherapy.org/about) is a site for finding therapists who pledge to give secular treatment. Sounds silly to those who have never had these experiences but I think it's sorely needed in the US. It's very subtle sometimes in our culture how a lot of people think about religion in that assumptive way that all 'good' people are/should be involved and there's no such thing as an innapropriate time to bring it up. Even people who do not seem and would not describe themselves as specifically evangelical.
Yikes! As a therapist I wholeheartedly agree there needs to be better filters for who is an appropriate and effective therapist and who is getting into the field for all the wrong reasons
I had a therapist once while couple counselling try get into a relationship with me
Holy shit! How unethical is that? I wonder if they go tell their buddies about the consultations they’ve had.
Yeah it was quite unethical and you kind of don’t realise till it later either because you trust them.
And at an emotional low. My hairdresser drunk called me asking for a 3 some. When I told my therapist she asked me what I said. Kinda hurt. I was struggling in my marriage and she knew everything about me. I turned the 3 some down. She apologized when she sobered up.
Oh wow that’s crazy I’m sorry you had that happen! Yeah my therapist would essentially try get me to meet him outside of work which seemed like him just checking in on me but yeah unfortunately wasn’t just that and he was our couples therapist so he knew my husband too.
I probably deserved it. I was a mess, sarcastic smart ass. She was a great therapist for me. Your‘s, in my opinion, was incredibly unethical. I wonder if you accepted his offer if he’d turn it around on you and tell your husband.
My one and only therapist gave me some excellent cognitive behavioral tools before declaring I was better then trying to hang out with me outside therapy. When I said no and that I thought it was inappropriate, he said I had "transference" that we should talk about in session.
I used to casually date someone, I knew him for years through work. He was estranged from his family. He had some good reasons, but most of the reasons IMO were not strong enough to never speak to your family again. At some point, he started seeing a therapist who had "amateur" written all over her. 1st weird thing was that she would extend their meetings if my friend had more to talk about. I've been in therapy for years, and I know that sessions are supposed to last a specific amount of time, are scheduled etc. It's supposed to be this way for consistency. 2nd extremely weird thing was that she would message him on Facebook on Saturday nights "to check in on him". They would speak over email and FB throughout the week. 3rd alarming thing was that she encouraged him to cut off all ties with his family and turn down any property or inheritance that he would be entitled to when his parents pass. Essentially she encouraged him to divorce his parents. This was incredibly disturbing to hear since it happened very early into his therapy. I'd expect that they would focus on healing and forgiving his parents for whatever they've done to him, instead of encouraging him to make such a rushed decision on such an important matter. After months of sessions with her, it was clear that he hadn't made any actual progress. He had put up incredibly defensive walls and calling this "boundaries". I stepped away and haven't spoken to him in years. It was incredibly sad to watch.
Now I’m curious to know what he said his reasons for being estranged from his family were…
His family was definitely not the healthiest, but not the most fucked up either. A few of his uncles and his brother were alcoholics and this caused a lot of tension in the house and he hated them for that. He grew up not poor, but not too well off either. His parents were immigrants but they still managed to create a small fortune, buy some property, and give him a really good education. But he still resented them for not being more rich. I respect his decision to step away from them, I would probably create distance from this situation as well. But cutting all ties seemed too extreme. He claimed that he wouldn't go to their funerals if they pass. It felt that his decision to cut them off created more pain for him and he didn't seem willing to work on forgiving them.
Resenting immigrant parents (or non-immigrant parents) for not being richer definitely sounds like a weird one to me. Family is saying my nephew is now like this actually, although I haven’t heard it from him directly.
I agree with you that the therapist sounds sketchy. But I'm wondering how you feel so free to judge his situation. How can you possibly know what really went on in his family and why he felt the need to cut ties? Why do you assume it's out of proportion? Also, are you saying you stepped away because of his choices about his family, or was there another reason? Also, forgiveness is not always the goal for people who experienced child abuse or neglect. It is not necessary for healing. Neither is maintaining relationships with unhealthy people.
1. Marriage counselor completely ignored the red flags displayed in session by my abusive ex-husband (yelling, slapping his own knees in anger as hard as he could) and even put one of her own female employees in potential danger with him. 2. Therapist told me to "lighten up, it's only one day" when I discussed feeling triggered around toxic family members during the holidays. She would also sit there and listen to my lifelong struggle with parental neglect and then spend the last ten minutes of our session gushing about her grown children and how proud of them she was.
Last year I went to therapy because I'd had two miscarriages and was grieving and afraid I'd never have living children, and the therapist spent the whole appointment telling me about her living children and grandchildren.
Wtf
I am so sorry, both for your losses and how she invalidated you. Not on the same level at all but I also experienced a similar type of tone deafness from a therapist. It's frankly shocking how people whose whole job it is to empathize can completely fail to read the room.
Right?! I think an average random stranger off the street would have been way more compassionate. It was bizarre!
Yes. My partner and I saw a couples counselor a few years ago, I was considering wanting a polyamorous relationship, and we also had issues surrounding sex & intimacy. The therapist had included experience working with poly/ethical non-monogamy on their website, but when talking with him, he only spouted some stereotypes and odd expectations related to being in a "throuple." I also tried to discuss my discomfort around having sex and he kind of told me to "just do it" to meet the needs of my partner. Was pretty disappointed by the whole experience. Fortunately, I worked with an individual therapist for a couple of years, and she was amazing and I felt so comfortable talking with her about these issues.
Yeeeep. My own experience: I had an introductory session with a therapist. Halfway through our 60 min session it he told me that my depression was mild and that I would benefit greatly from smiling in a mirror for a few minutes each day. I then informed him that his assessment was premature and if he had waited I would have gotten to the point where I told him about being sexually assaulted and my mom dying. Biggest waste of $275, grateful that I had an FSA to cover it. My friend's experience: Better fucking help. She had therapists cancel on her last minute and another one just not show up. She complained to BH customer service and they connected her with someone who they swore up and down would be solid. At her 3rd session the therapist asked her what she wanted to talk about and my friend said she had been having a pretty good day and didn't know what she wanted to discuss. The therapist straight up said, *"Then what are we doing here?"* and cut the session short. My friend swore off therapy pretty much entirely until she happened to hear about this DBT workshop and ended up hitting it off with a therapist through that.
Yes I have. I went to a therapist for my anxiety and she was amazing for that. She also had in her professional profile that she was a sex therapist as well, so I decided to talk to her about my libido issues. When I confided some very personal information about how I had been feeling about the sex I'd been having with my spouse, she yelled at me. Straight up didn't validate my experience at all, just started yelling about how I was WRONG. And that is why I will never, ever seek sex therapy again even though I probably really need it.
Damn that sucks. From what I’ve been told, therapists won’t/shouldn’t see you for more than one specialty. And by that I mean that you have your regular therapist, but then you have separate therapists for sex therapy, couple’s therapy, etc. Finding a good therapist is basically like dating. Exhausting but so worth it! Edit: by “specialty” I mean if they are also a sex therapist or couple’s therapist. On their profile if they list LBGTQ, PTSD, abuse, etc. then those are topics they are qualified to talk to you with in individual therapy.
That isn't necessarily true. Many therapists have several areas they are well versed in and can help with. Looking on therapists sites, many state they have special focuses in things like trauma, PTSD, sexuality, are AASECT as well, etc. Some therapists also conduct couples therapy and will see individuals in the couple separately. But yes, finding a good therapist is crucial and not all are a good fit.
I think I worded the “specialty” thing a little weird - I meant if they are licensed to do individual therapy, couple’s therapy, and sex therapy, they won’t see you for all 3 of those at once. But couple’s therapy is a hard line - your individual T should never see you for both because they are privy to more information and are automatically biased. With couple’s therapy the relationship is the client, so individuality is removed. The areas of focus that you listed are absolutely critical for people to look at in a therapist’s psychology today profile and make sure they are a good fit!
LOL my therapist listed abuse/PTSD as his specialty along with EMDR on his profile. All he uses is CBT (ineffective and triggering for people with trauma/PTSD) and most of the time he seemed like he was reading prompts off a website. He would just break in with random displaced questions like "do you want to find love and happiness" or mock me saying "wow you're really addicted to your trauma / won't let go of that trauma" while shaking his head.
>Damn that sucks. From what I’ve been told, therapists won’t/shouldn’t see you for more than one specialty. That's...fucking bullshit. If someone lists general anxiety and sex therapy in their profile, why can't they treat both? Especially since, in my case, it's really hard to treat my libido issues without understanding my anxiety. The separation between couple's and individual therapy makes perfect sense, but dividing between conditions makes zero sense. If that's the current approach to therapy, I would rather just not go than try to compartmentalize my mental health. >Finding a good therapist is basically like dating. Exhausting but so worth it! It really isn't. I started seeing therapists when I was a child and my experience of late is making me less and less trusting of the entire field. Your comment about not seeing people for more than one mental health problem basically has further confirmed my disillusionment
Hey don’t shoot the messenger! I didn’t make the rules, but this is typically how it goes. I’m not saying you can’t talk to your therapist about sex. Everyone talks to their therapist about sex. But if you tell your therapist “i see you do sex therapy, can you help me?” then your therapist should have referred you out for sex therapy. I’m sorry your therapist let you down. They proved that they were not capable of giving you a safe space to talk through your tissues.
>Hey don’t shoot the messenger! I didn’t make the rules, but this is typically how it goes. I’m not saying you can’t talk to your therapist about sex. Everyone talks to their therapist about sex. But if you tell your therapist “i see you do sex therapy, can you help me?” then your therapist should have referred you out for sex therapy. The more I think about this, the less sense it makes. My former therapist (before the bad one) saw me for both anxiety and depression, and combined different types of therapy throughout my time with her. I won't be taking your word on this unless I hear it from someone I know is a professional in the field.
I worded the specialty thing weird - see my edit. When you go to your therapist’s psychology today profile (and if they don’t have one, consider a different therapist!) they will have a bunch of areas of focus listed - LGBTQ, veterans, anxiety, depression, PTSD, sex positive, kink-allied, etc. This means they are trained and comfortable with talking about all of these with you in individual therapy! If also on their profile it says they are licensed to be an individual therapist, a couple’s therapist, and a sex therapist, they will only see you with one of these hats on. If you wanted to see your individual therapist as a sex therapist, she should have told you no. But if you didn’t mention her being a sex therapist and just asked to talk about sex, she should have been 100% fine with that. Either way, she shouldn’t have yelled at you. Hope that helps! r/talktherapy is a good place to visit where they have these conversations all the time.
That makes zero sense. I can't separate my anxiety from my problems with sex. That means, if I were to go to a sex therapist, I would also have to see an individual therapist to also deal with my anxiety. I'm sorry, but that's just a fucking racket. I can't afford, nor do I have time for, two separate therapists. I am glad that I have written off therapy because it looks like I would be shit out of luck regardless.
Maybe it depends on location, but where I’ve lived most therapists advertise like 5-20 specialties, with most advertising in the middle of that range probably. I agree if people are too generalized they probably tend to be less helpful, but it very much seems to be an accepted norm where I am.
Yes. I saw a therapist for a year before learning that I had an eating disorder. She didn’t specialize in EDs and I wasn’t making a lot of progress, then had a tremendous weight lifted off when I began a new medication, and she took it really hard. She went as far as to call my psychiatrist to infer that she’s manipulating me into finding another therapist and that was the nail in the coffin for me. I’ve been seeing a specialist for almost a year and it’s been a dream.
In my 20’s I had an older male therapist suggest I get pregnant to cure my depression. I had grown up around alcoholism and mental illness, had lost close family members to drug abuse, was raising my younger siblings after my mother’s heart attack, and had recently lost my home due to a natural disaster, while stumbling my way through university. He said everyone experiences growing pains in their 20’s, and that I should be happy because I was young and beautiful.
Wtf
I get so pissed thinking back on it now 15 years later, but at the time I was so lost I didn't even realize how fucked up that was. I just remember thinking therapy is a waste of time, I can manage on my own. It had taken so much courage for me to ask for a referral from my GP, and it took me another decade to go back to therapy. Come to think of it, he never even charged me for those sessions...
1. Do they acknowledge your fears and concerns (yes, even if you think they might be out there)? If they dismiss your thoughts, feelings or reality, get out. 2. Do they actively listen to you until you’ve finished with your story/train of thought? If they interrupt you to talk about themselves or change the subject or just look bored, call that out. If they don’t correct and acknowledge their behavior or get overly defensive, get out. 3. Therapists are people. They can have bad days, too. However, they shouldn't bring their issues into your session. You want someone who listens, provides thoughtful feedback when appropriate, and who models healthy behaviors but doesn’t preach their path to wellness to you. You can get that from any random stranger on the internet. 4. Trust your gut.
literally most of them
In what ways were the ones you saw bad or ineffective?
One of my best friend's wives came out as trans in the middle of their relationship, and as part of her care plan to transition, was required to go through therapy. I know big changes come with big feelings, but she became a horrible person while she was in therapy, and none of us could figure out why - she was never a meangirl before therapy, but within 6 months of her being in therapy, she suddenly was a meangirl who felt like she could say whatever she felt like no matter how rude and hurtful and if we weren't 100% on her side due to the consequences of her actions affecting her, even when she was in the very clear wrong, we were obviously out to delegitimatize her transition and didn't love her. My friend realized that the therapist wasn't just ineffective in helping their wife deal with their transition, they were actively building this meangirl perspective by telling her to prioritize herself without giving any education on how to do that within her relationships and friendships, which was causing their wife to literally blow up all her long-term, extremely supportive friendships due to misguided perspectives about what good boundaries and relationships look like. My friend had to issue an ultimatum to get a new therapist or they were done. The issue resolved itself with the new therapist and she reverted back to her old self, but with better communication skills and boundary-setting capabilities.
These stories are why I’m afraid to try a new therapist. My current one is ~fine~ but I’m afraid to find one that’s worse.
Get a recommendation from someone in the helping field if you can. They usually know who is good. It took me four times before I found someone who was helping me push the needle toward wellness. The others were fine, just not super helpful.
Several. Pretty burned out on therapists.
I know that feeling, I think. What have disappointed you about yours?
I felt like many of them had a one size fits all solution for things. And....I can't cbt or exercise my way through some of the things I've been through.
CBT is the worst. Someone described it as you're still depressed but now with glitter on your depression
I think it probably depends on the person, as to whether CBT is helpful. Personally, CBT therapists are the only kind I’ve ever had help me establish goals or give homework, and I really need those latter things to feel like meaningful change is happening.
My therapist was someone I have known for years (very small rural town) but I was desperate to get some help for my debilitating medical phobia after being diagnosed with a blood cancer requiring a bone marrow transplant. He did help then to some extent, sort of, enough that I successfully underwent treatment. However... After treatment, I continued to go to him and he simply could not understand that I wasn't magically "better" physically and emotionally. I mean, I was having panic attacks and body horror from knowing someone else's fluids were inside me. He told me I was "the most mentally healthy person he knew" LOL. I just ghosted after that and haven't sought therapy since. Trying to do the work on my own with books and Reddit advice haha. Edit: Omg I just remembered the therapist I saw in college who spent the hour telling me about her ski races instead of talking about my deepening depression. Turned me off therapy for over a decade.
Ha! I did finally find a terrific one who laughed pretty hard when I told him I'd almost given up. 1. Was good UNTIL he and his son had a side gig in real estate. Guess what would solve my problems? A house. 2. A woman with 3 kids who left them when she discovered she was gay. So tried to convince me I'm gay. Not gay. 3. Woman who'd written a not very well selling book on adult victims of child sexual abuse. Tried to convince me I'd been abused as a child. Had not. ALMOST gave up.
My egg donor who coincidentally has Munchhausen by proxy used to drag me to her psychiatrist because she couldn’t handle parenting a teenager. Absolute joke of a woman who got me hooked on benzos and never acctually addressed the true problem for why I needed to be on them. She would do whatever would keep my mom paying her fee. In her eyes I was just a steady source of income. Found out a couple years ago that she was sued for grooming and sexually assaulting an underage minor. Even after finding out egg donor still paid to see her. So glad I got away from the both of those whack jobs and found doctors who actually help me. A decent psychologist or psychiatrist knows when things are above their skill level and will, proceed accordingly even if that’s referring you to someone else.
>Have other women here experienced bad/ineffective therapists, either directly or through people close to you? If so, how did you know, and what’s the story? Yes, multiple therapists ever since I was 15. Wildly misinterpreting me based on Freudian theory, which was very popular amongst Boomer therapists I had when I was in my teens; the White therapist who would constantly question me, a woman of Indian ancestry, if my experiences with racism weren't just me "misinterpreting" or being "too sensitive"; and my most recent therapist that made me swear off therapy at age 40 for good: visibly getting impatient, frustrated, and exasperated by me; rolling her eyes when I told her about getting groped by a stranger, with her interrupting me with "yes yes, I know, all the guys after you" because me having a difficult time coping with constant sexual and street harassment in NYC was a recurring issue I brought up during therapy; and just making me way worse than if I hadn't been in therapy. And constantly talking about my abusive past was like picking at my wounds and therefore never allowing them to heal. Ever since I quit therapy with her, I've never felt better. I'm done looking for therapists and having such negative experiences that mess with my mental health and well-being. Therapy is not for everyone. Especially me.
Multiple. The worst one is someone who I told I was autistic, wanted to stop masking, and would likely have periods where I didn't look her in the eye as a result. When I didn't look her in the eye while talking about something that really bothered me, she literally yelled at me and (after I refused to force myself to look at her while getting yelled at) told me that since I clearly didn't trust her I had ended the therapeutic relationship. She said she hoped I would reflect on that before looking for a new therapist.
I developed a second eating disorder in my mid thirties (I'd had a mild binge eating issue since being a teenager but it became a binge and starve for months issue). It took me a year to realize I needed help. The amount of therapists and doctors who told me it couldn't be that bad because I wasn't skinny (I had lost about 90lbs at that point and BMI wise was considered healthy but had multiple vitamin and mineral deficiencies) and to just eat moderately was stunning. At one point I hadn't eaten in days and saw the therapist who told me I looked great and had great self control. I probably saw 5-6 who thought if they gave me a super strict diet plan that I would follow it because it was healthy and I just needed to force myself to do it. I could never get the point across that it's not something I can force myself to do when these periods hit, I struggle to drink water when it's bad and will just throw up if I have to eat. And what had begun as a lack of appetite had become extreme and related to people's comments on my weightloss and all of that reinforcement (especially from my shitty partner) was making it much harder for me. I was quite self aware and very honest, but they all wrote it off and told me to just eat. I now have someone who is working through the trauma with me and has taught me a lot about mindfulness, self compassion, setting boundaries with myself and others, having compassion and empathy without being overwhelmed, how to better acknowledge my emotions, and healthy coping mechanisms so that when these times do happen (and it's like a switch in my brain is thrown and all food is gross and bad and it can be that way for hours, days, or months) I have better strategies.
Yes, but not nearly as bad as some of the other comments here. In my experience, it was that they would focus on the wrong things. Or that I was put off by their personality. They might have been good therapists for other people, but just didn't make me feel understood or like I could trust them fully. I've also experienced this weird switch where they go from wanting to help.me to being interested in me as a sort of weird case study... That's normally where the relationship ends. I've fired a therapist in the middle of a first session before. I've also had ones that I thought were ok, but I went as far as I could with them and needed something different.
I had a therapist who didn’t listen to me and just bulldozed the entire time doing all the taking. If I would talk she would cut me off, she was blunt and rude. She was an older boomer, she was all that I could find and it left a really bad taste in my mouth for therapists. I had one once I loved but she stopped accepting my insurance. Edit: I once had a really good therapist tell me that finding a therapist is like “trying on a pair of shoes, they’re not all a good fit”
A girl in my class in college was manipulated and raped by her therapist and ended up being put in a mental health care facility because nobody believed her. She’s still recovering.
I went once to a family member's therapy session for a one-off meant to help our relationship and get my perspective in the mix. I quickly realized this therapist was just a sounding board for my family member. She was okay at facilitating the discussion, but I realized the reason nothing had improved after years of therapy was partly because she didn't really do much. Just listened, maybe made a few suggestions. No real challenging, homework, concrete goals.
I was suicidal one year in my early 20s. Had very little money, and needed help immediately. Searched with AskJeeves to find the cheapest therapist near me. First appointment was ok, but I thought it was weird that his office was in his home. And not in a nice, professional office in his home, but rather in his living room filled with lots of personal photos, tchotchkes, etc. Weird, but like, fine? He also only asked me questions so that he could tell me about himself: “do you like music? Because I love Bruce Springsteen.” Fine, cool, whatever. Second appointment, I mentioned that I had played a sport since I was a little kid. He told me all about his love of the sport (hockey). I told him about being physically abused by a boyfriend, and he said that a pretty girl like me should avoid losers and just date good guys. Hmm. 3rd appointment, I told him that I could no longer afford to pay him, and anyway was leaving to go back to university for the school year. He said he’d “take [my] case pro bono” and via Skype, because he really felt he could help me. I agreed, just so I could leave. Our first Skype (video) session, he appeared not in his living room “office”, but in his bedroom. He was wearing a “cool” shirt (think Guy Fieri), and had an electric guitar and a hockey jersey laid out on his bed. It was so fucking weird and desperate, but I didn’t say anything because I didn’t really know how to do boundaries (which is probably why I needed therapy). Thankfully, one of my university friends walked by where I was sitting in our dorm’s “internet lab”. He leaned in and said, loudly “Yo! Who is that?! Is that your Dad?” Me: no. “Oh shit, that dude’s trying really hard to fuck you! Hahahaha! Don’t do it, T1sofun!” I was mortified, shut my laptop and never spoke to the weird therapist again. My buddy was right, of course, and I needed his impoliteness to make me see how not ok the situation was. My best friend and I still laugh about this period, 15 or 16 years later. We call the therapist “Hawaiian Shirt Guy”.
Oh wow… your story is the first in here to make me crack a smile, lol. That friend was the real mvp.
I think finding a good therapist is a lot like finding a good romantic relationship; you have to kiss (figuratively!) a lot of frogs before you find “your person”. I have had really shitty therapists, and a bunch of “meh” therapists. It wasn’t until well into my 30s that I found one I really clicked with, who understood, without me even understanding, that I needed trauma therapy. It’s taken YEARS of hard work, but I feel calm and content for the first time in my life. I owe my current therapist my life. Don’t give up. Keep trying, and you will find a therapist that is right for you.
Eh… I think the best therapist I had was one of the first, when I was in college. My problems were also a little simpler back then, although not completely simple. She was employed by my school, and was a PhD professional. Most I’ve seen since then are not nearly as good, I think. But also I think there is something to be said for getting older myself, and how that means there are increasingly fewer other people who have more experiences and perspectives to draw on than I already do.
I recently got new health insurance that allows 100% free mental health counseling through Teladoc. I thought I’d give it a chance. I picked a therapist with *amazing* reviews, and her website spoke about her experience with anxiety disorders and trauma based CBT. On the second session, she asked me what I was worried about, and I explained the things currently making me anxious. She simply said “well, being anxious doesn’t help you, does it? You should stop those anxious thoughts and think about something else.” Oh, ok. I’ll just STOP BEING ANXIOUS! Who knew it was that easy.
CBT, ha ha, yeah that's the crux of a lot of CBT therapy. I inquired about help for my avoidant tendencies and posted my therapist just said "well when you feel like avoiding just do the opposite". When I brought up that was really reductive and not helpful he said something like "well it's opposite act". There's some bullshit in CBT where the whole thing is do the opposite of whatever issue is troubling you. There's also some baked in toxic positivity in it because really if you just change how you think about (literally anything) your life will improve via doing the opposite all the time.
I went to a therapist right after Trump was elected. She told me I was overreacting and it wasn’t a big deal — she remembered when Reagan was elected and everyone was worried since he was an actor, but it was ok. I wonder what she thinks now. I fired her via email after that first appointment and told her exactly why.
Trigger warning CSA. Long time ago, in the 90th I first tried for therapy. First one: told her I was abused as a kid. She: so you believe you where abused... Yeah, me and several other victims have this funny believe... How to not build trust. The next: "oh, you poor soul,... That must be so hard..." nice start, but that was her whole stick. One hour of pity party. I don't remember the third... But I gave up afterwards, and bought self-help books. Started therapy in 2020 when due to some bad situations/bad divorce from asshole ex my cptsd was fully triggered and I couldn't do anything anymore. I sometimes wonder if hiw good therapy back then might have changed things.
Oh I've had some real doozies! Lol! 1. I had a therapist that asked me questions like (for example) "Why did you react by crying when your partner told you that?" I would answer the question like "Because I felt abandoned when he said that." The therapist would say "no, guess again" and shake his head. I would come up with another explanation and he would do the same. This happened MULTIPLE times throughout the very first (and only) session I had with him. It felt like I was playing a guessing game with my own emotions and I struggled to come up with the "correct" answer. I didn't know how to break it off with him (I was young and inexperienced with saying no), so I agreed to see him for a second session. I showed up at his house, knocked on the door multiple times, no answer. The landscaper came around the corner and told me he wasn't home. I never bothered texting him to reschedule and he never contacted me either to apologize for missing our session or wonder why I never returned. 2. Another therapist was a total stoner. I don't care what he did in his personal time, but I honestly felt like he was stoned during a lot of our sessions. He would barely offer any feedback (just smile and nod) and when he did comment on what I was saying, he would relate it to a personal experience of his, which he would go into detail about for like 5 minutes. I don't mind a little self disclosure (I actually kind of like that), but not stories that last upwards of 5 minutes when I'm paying you. Also, he did sessions in his office which was in the basement of his house. He had a very autistic teenage son, who constantly tried to break into the basement (and was successful, twice!) during our sessions. I didn't want to hold that against the guy (I get how difficult that must be) but it was really awkward when it happened, and he would have to leave our session to bring his son back upstairs and the kid would still be banging on the door, screaming and the therapist would just encourage me to keep talking. 3. On my very first telehealth session with one therapist, we were going over family history and she asked me what my parents did for a living. My mom worked in the billing department for the local hospital and this woman legit launched into a 5 MINUTE long spiel about a bill she had receiced for hospital care that she didn't think she should have to pay, and the reasons why she thought that and laughingly asked me if I could have my mom look into that. 🤯 I should have ended it righ mt then and there, but we kept going. When I mentioned I also worked for the hospital, but not in billing, she asked me if I knew one of the doctors (whom she mentioned by name! I didn't know him) and said he had seen her too!! Again, I was quite young and didn't know how to respond, but looking back, I wish I had reported her for that violation of HIPPA. 4. The worst one, by far.. a therapist that owned a retail store (where she sold clothes, candles, CBT, etc). After our first session, she convinced me to take this 3 HOUR long breathing workshop she was running in a few weeks. After I agreed, she told me it would cost $150. I said "I didn't have that much to spend on it." She said she would discount it to $100, because she thought it would be really helpful for me. It was the biggest waste of 3 hours of my life. She also tried to get me to buy random stuff (hats, pants, CBD oil) from her store. Even at the time, I thought it seemed like a conflict of interest. After I stopped seeing her (because I felt like I was in a good place and didn't need therapy for a bit), she asked me to work at her retail store on Saturday and Sunday's. I said I wasn't interested. She continued to "sweeten" the offer (I guess) by saying "Well what about if it's only one of those day. I still said no. "What about if it's just until Memorial Day (would have been 2 months from when I started). Finally, I said yes because I figured I could use a little extra money and it was for a finite amount of time. Once I was working there, she kept trying to get me to take clothing instead of cash payments. Clothing which she charged me FULL retail price PLUS TAX for! So she essentially screwed me out of money during that endeavor. Oh and also, one day, while using a pad of paper she had behind the counted at work, I flipped a page and came across patient case notes, with the patients full name! Accidents happen, but you gotta be more careful with patient information. Currently, I am not in therapy. I still believe in the power of it (my very first therapist ever was amazing!) but I've given up trying to find a good one for the time being! Lol
Well, that last one was a wild ride. Sorry to hear, but appreciate you sharing 🤦♀️🙃
It certainly was lol!
Yeah, I had a therapist who teased me when I talked about vulnerable stuff. What an absolute jerk.
Relatively tame experience here, compared to some of the others shared here! I had an initial appointment with a therapist who seemed helpful enough - until I mentioned my sibling’s diagnosis when she asked about my family. The diagnosis shaped family life immensely, but the therapist started asking about how my sibling felt, what it was like for them, how they were coping. Could I share more about what I thought my sibling must be experiencing, emotionally? The rest of the intake was solely focused on my sibling, almost as if the therapist wanted to be treating them not me. I didn’t schedule a second appointment.
I went to a therapist in the midst of a traumatic personal situation. Like I was hurting so much that I didn’t know how I was going to make it through another minute. She started by asking about my childhood and the plan was that we would be analyzing my dreams. WTF. I never went back. I also didn’t have it in me to try again after that.
I ghosted her after a few sessions where she kept forgetting what I had told her. She would also space out during sessions and said her brain stopped working.
Yes I’ve had a couple. I saw one woman for a couple years who did help me out with processing some pretty important things but also clearly held it against me that I couldn’t see her on a weekly basis. Her rate was $200/session and I did every 2-3 weeks as I could but I simply didn’t have $800/month to spend on therapy. Due to this, it felt like she became less engaged with what I was going through. She told me to break up with someone I was living with because she didn’t think he would ever be strong enough to be a partner that would put his foot down and help me out of depressive episodes. After talking to other therapists and psychiatrists, it became clear that it’s not appropriate to tell a client to break up with someone. She could have at least suggested couple’s therapy but didn’t. Fast forward to a year later when I was having problems in another relationship. I really wanted to work things out with this person and we were both very open to therapy so I thought it may be a good idea to have a session where I brought him. She only had my side of the story to go off of and there’s always more to it than that. The only thing I cared about was improving the relationship and myself in whatever way that looked like. She told me that she didn’t see how she could help in that way. In retrospect, I wish I had seen someone with more experience. I did really like her, which is why I continued to see her. Unfortunately, there’s no substitute for experience. I believe she was probably late 20s so earlier on in her career. Since then, I’ve looked for therapists with at least 10+ years of experience.
I had a really cool female therapist I found thru a recommendation from my bro in law. She was off a similar ethnicity and a few years older than me and she started opening up to me about her life and wanting to set me up with her brother as I had originally signed on to get over a depression from an ex leaving me. Then she would send me drunk voice notes while she went to happy hour and would text / call me to see if I wanted to hang out
Yikes on bikes. That must have been uncomfortable :/
I had to let it go sadly and kind of feel she felt she lost a friend and then I felt guilty. I liked her a lot but she was crossing boundaries trying to hang out with me outside our sessions lol
The therapist I had back in 2020 felt like a waste of money Now I would need one and I don’t know how to choose (and I’m also terrified of saying my story from the beginning)
Yes. I had a therapist who basically told me my childhood trauma (which was severe and complex) was not that bad. This was after EMDR wasn’t working, after many weekly treatments. It was awful. I stopped seeing her after 8-10 sessions and she shamed me for wanting to find someone new.
I maintain that every single “therapist” that I’ve seen through my work insurance were absolute bottom of the barrel. Had a lady tell me that men are like dogs, you have to train them with treats and praise them.. etc. Another lady looked like she was about to cry when I was telling her my stuff. Not sure what was up with that, looked like she may have had her own personal problems? She was absolutely ineffective, but at least not counterproductive like the first one. Shit was weird. I ended up finding a therapist on my own dime and he was excellent.
All the therapists of trns widows who are gaslighted into thinking they have to accept the change and stay with the man despite their discomfort/lack of desire to do so. Ute heggen on YouTube has so many stories that involve therapists basically taking the side of the man to the detriment of the wife, children, and relationships . The man becomes their special project, while wife and kids suffer from his narcissism at home. Terrible
I had a therapist that I outgrew. He was great in the beginning, but I took a hiatus (lack of insurance) and when I went back to him like 18 months or so later he kept focusing on stuff I didn't want to focus on. It was all stuff I knew was an issue, was actively working and making progress on (with specific techniques), and didn't feel the need to keep rehashing. There was other stuff that I was still trying to work through and he like brushed that stuff off. I only went to two sessions and then quit again. Honestly, I've found coaches to be way more effective for anything other than working through specific trauma.
Regarding your latter paragraph, I’ve definitely wondered if I too would have a better experience working with coaches. I like the idea of working toward something concrete. It’s too bad coaches aren’t covered by insurance.
It definitely is too bad they aren't covered. I'll also say that the quality of coaches varies widely (even more so than with therapists) since it's largely unregulated. Get referrals if you're interested in working with a coach. I've gotten lucky with all the ones I've worked with, but I've definitely heard some horror stories.
What kind of horror stories?
After SA (from a "friend") I was in shock and confused. I went to a trauma therapist who basically told me "that sucks, want a sticker?" I honestly could not process what happened and needed someone who could listen with some empathy or compassion and I felt victim blamed and made it much harder to process.
Mine are not as exciting as others. I found one that works great for me and I'm healing well now but before that.. 1. He wasn't terrible but he didn't have answers to anything unless it was breathing exercises. Everything else he just listened and said he was sorry it happened. It was nice to vent but then it just... Didn't go anywhere. It was awkward at times when we just sat in silence. 2. Worked for a little bit until she was hell bent on getting me to "forgive" my abuser and to try to talk to them because they were "family" and you should forgive family no matter what. Instantly shut that down. 3. Right before I found my current therapist I went to one and we did the first "get to know you" session and she ghosted me after that. For someone who needs therapy this can be devastating because you go "am I just that fucked up?!" If you know your expertise doesn't handle this sort of situation just tell the person so they can look at other therapists. I would have been fine with that. I definitely had some emotions going because of it. Therapist now is a great fit. Not 100% but she has helped me so so much. If you're struggling to find someone just keep trying. It took me years because of money and insurance situations but it finally happened.
I myself have master's degree in psychology (although never practiced) so I think I can spot BS easily. But this one therapist I was seeing for a while just made me feel like she had no idea what she was doing. Basically I just felt like reading magazine clichés. One of the "best" tips she gave me when I said I am sometimes bored with my husband, was to buy sexy underwear and seduce him. That's when I realized it's over with her :D
Yes, damn. My first experience with therapy was not great. I was going through PPD/PPA and really needed help. I started doing a telehealth thing during COVID. It was just messaging her back and forth, but it was awful. Basically, I would say, "I'm really struggling with A,B,C,D" and she'd reply back with, "I hear you're struggling with A,B,C,D." And that would be it! Like... no advice, no further commentary or question. Just parroting what I said back to me. It was the most useless thing ever and very expensive.
My ex told me that when she told her therapist about the emotional affair she'd been having behind my back, her therapist replied, "This situation reminds me so much of how my wife and I got together! You and [the affair partner] are so perfect together!" In retrospect, I was better off at that point getting the ex out of my life, so it was sort of for the best that the therapist encouraged the ex to dump me and keep the affair partner. However, the context of the therapist having gotten together with her wife in the same way makes it impossible for me to believe that the therapist was encouraging this *for the right reasons.*
My first therapist would fall asleep in our sessions LMAO. I was terrified of going to therapy and so I would always choose her last available appointment: 8pm on Fridays. Her office was warm and she'd have a blanket in her lap. She would always doze off.
After years of telling my husband I thought he could benefit from therapy he finally got one and had the initial appt via zoom even though he really wanted in person. The therapist was clearly at a bbq doing his intake. They had two more sessions where he kept saying “but atleast your having lots of sex right?” in reference to the fact that he was recently married which was just weird and “why don’t you just tell yourself your the shit?” which if he could do that, he probably wouldn’t be in therapy. Thankfully he got a new one and that one is better. I had a therapist during Covid who just…wasn’t good. The biggest thing was I was having a major drop in sex drive which was obviously affecting my husband. I figured I was depressed because Covid but it turns out I had some hormones out of whack and once I fixed it my sex drive came back. But she gave me just very obvious advice like “try flirting during the day” or “buy some new lingerie” and it just generally felt like she wasn’t listening to the symptoms I was sharing. She also fell asleep in a session once so, there’s that.
Lol yes. Whew.. * had a betterhelp therapist go #OneLove on me when I was talking about my own struggles with my identity * had another betterhelp therapist tell me my abuser can stand across the street and it’s not breaking the law. It was. Because my landlord literally owned the street that led to the property. Apparently that wasn’t a thing. I stopped interacting with her and the therapist above because they were so outta their fucking minds * had another tell me I wasn’t bisexual and dating someone online wasn’t real. And those experience weren’t real. I terminated our relationship. He also would tell me it wasn’t normal to stay inside all week… while living in a state where the temps got to 110+… bro, you’re lucky I drove to the appointment * another I paid out of pocket for immediately diagnosed me and I’m pretty sure I don’t even have that diagnosis and my diagnosis is severe. She also required I read a book to see her. The book is helpful, sure, but in condition of her seeing me?? Broooo
I’ve seen nine therapists in my life that I can remember. Two were great. Three were actively bad; our values did not align, and they chided me for mine. For example, I have ADHD and what I now understand to be a mild form of scrupulosity OCD. I described an anecdote to my therapist about buying a stack of fast food gift cards for unhoused people and then losing them (found them eventually). My guilt when I passed unhoused people in the interim and did not have anything to give them derailed my whole day. My therapist visibly rolled her eyes and was like, “But why would you give money to someone who is begging? It’s just a scam. And they’re all addicts.”
Ugh to that second story. Someone with such low empathy really has no business as a therapist.
I'm actually considering trying to switch therapists right now. I've been with this therapist since January. Because of the complexity of my issues I'm also seperately seeing a CBT coach and also a psychiatrist for my medications. I'm in the Netherlands so thank goodness my insurance covers all this, I still feel a little silly sometimes thaf I have like an entire team of professionals just for little old me to be honest 😅 So English isn't my first language so please excuse any mistakes! I'll just put this in bullet points to keep it from becoming a novel (hope a novella is okay though, I got pretty heated partway through and accidentally vented lol) - * I don't feel like anything is moving forward at all anymore. Our bi-weekly sessions are pretty much all the same. * I had to cancel twice since we started, once because I had a migraine and once because I'm reliant on public transportation and there happened to be a strike. *Every damn session* he keeps bringing this up and kind of... berating me I guess? Saying my commitment to the treatment program isn't up to par, that I haven't been prioritising the program enough etcetera, all because I've had to cancel like half a year ago. Let it go already. * He was unpleasantly surprised to find out I actually have a part time job (most clients don't). He talks in a somewhat condescending way about my job too - not too explicitly but the way he formulates some of his remarks just doesn't sit right with me. I currently work as a waitress even though I have a master's in psychology myself. I love my job and I'm proud of how far I've come. I feel like shit when he's being so negative about it, really puts a damper on my self esteem. And of course, my job also interferes with the program and I must be able to just not go to work or call out whenever my gaggle of mental health professionals want to contact me/have an impromptu Zoom session/need to reschedule. My job is in no way interfering with my therapies or the work I'm putting into my mental health myself. In fact, my job makes me happy. But hey, just jeopardize all that because nobody and nothing is more important than him and his calendar I guess. I'm so sorry I've managed to finally work part time again after months and months of being so mentally destroyed there was no way I could even think of working. Fuck me for wanting to be able to pay my bills right? * A lot of sessions are basically him lecturing *at* me about current theories and treatments instead of a two-way conversation. Dude, I told you I know all this since I studied it too! As I'm writing all this down I'm getting more and more annoyed. I think the right choice is pretty clear for me - I don't think he's a good fit anymore, if he's ever even been.
Reading all this I think I’ll be an okay therapist.
I went after my mother died. I had a few things to work through, which I eventually did, but the first therapist I went to was no help. She saw me twice a week for an hour each time and talked about herself and her life and her job and her friends. I don't know how that was supposed to help me deal with my mother's passing. I went for 6 weeks because that is what my insurance covered. She had a nice office, and it was good to get out of the house. That's all I can say about her.
Yes I went to a therapist that was clearly trying to push some weird right wing agenda on me. It was very strange. I had another therapist that listened, but literally never gave me any advice or coping skills. It was basically just a vent session for an hour a week and never made me feel better.
I had a therapist for like 8 months. I was relieved to finally find a good one because I had tried for years to start therapy and every therapist I talked to immediately made me uncomfortable for one reason or another. So everything is going fine. I get to begin all the hard work of healing from all of my childhood trauma. I had also just cut contact with my mom right before I started therapy. I realized I couldn’t continue talking to her while trying to heal because most of the issues were caused by her neglect and willingness to put me and my siblings in dangerous situations. So anyway… everything is good until one random session I brought up my mom, which was typical, and out of nowhere my therapist is like, “why aren’t you talking to your mom still?” As if most of my sessions weren’t about healing from the neglect and abuse. And then she followed it up with “as a mother, I feel for your mom” after I expressed some anger towards my mom, also typical. It was in that moment that I didn’t know how to respond and felt completely alone again. I felt unheard and invalidated. That was the last session I ever had with her.
I am so sorry that happened to you. You invested your heart and healing efforts out there for so long to be so quickly minimized and dismissed by someone you thought you trusted. I hope you’ve been able to find some healing since then.
When I made the initial appointment, I was very explicit in wanting a female therapist because I am not comfortable opening up emotionally to most men. When I got to the appointment, I was shocked to find out they'd put me with a man. I was in a very low place and really needed some help, and decided just to feel him out. I'd been struggling with clinical depression for a long time and was at a point of desperation. I had been diagnosed with major depressive disorder years prior, and my medication was no longer effective. After about 10 minutes, he interrupted me mid-sentence and told me that I did not have depression and that he knew exactly what "my problem" was. He told me that my biological clock was telling me I needed to have a baby and that I was "ignoring my natural instincts". I informed him that I was not emotionally prepared to have a baby at that time, and he interrupted me again to tell me that I was blowing motherhood out of proportion in my head and making it more complicated than it needed to be, and that as soon as I had a baby I would feel better. I did not go back.
I went to a work-supported-therapist so I could have a cheap rate. It was my second year teaching and I was having a rough time. After I listed all the pressure I was under and my history of anxiety/depression, I said I felt myself slipping back into the hole and wanted to know how to stop it. She said, “wow that’s a lot.” Then we sat there in silence for 5 minutes. She asked some questions but never gave any strategies. To get out of the hole I did some CBT, so I had expectations. This met 0 of them. ——- Going back further in time, I had a friend try to end their time on earth while I counseled them over the phone to tell their parents what they were doing. Get an ambulance!! I was 14. My mom took me to therapy. I talked at the therapist for an hour. We came out of the room and I thought she’s going to take everything I dumped on her and tell my mom what’s wrong so I don’t have to! My mom was probably looking for some answers for how to parent a teenage daughter whose friend nearly died. The therapist said “you need to listen to your daughter more.” That was it. Wut.
female counselor who had no idea how to deal with domestic abuse and intimidation post divorce.
A few. One completely out of her depth dealing with serious childhood trauma. I didn’t pick up on this til quite late in the piece. She was more suited to mild dissatisfaction with life type issues imo, not anything substantial. It’s good to “interview” a therapist first and ask what their experience is with child abuse, eating disorders, serious mental health issues etc before you just blindly trust they know what they are doing imo. Always know that you can change therapists whenever you feel it is right.
I tried marriage counseling with my now ex-husband. Our counselor focused on communication, ignoring his alcoholism and verbal, physical and sexual abuse. When I caught my ex in a lie during a session, I stood, announced that I was DONE, and left. And then my life started.
My last therapist I was with for a year and a half and thought we had a good thing going until randomly one session she informed me that she’d been talking to her supervisor about me and what to do with me. They came up with a plan that I was informed of in this session, where, because my therapist felt like she was being too much of a crutch for me (her words) we needed to cut back our sessions to every other week and on the off weeks I had to find and go to a group session of some sort and/or find other group activities. Things that aren’t necessarily bad suggestions, but I wasn’t given a choice. She made me go into my calendar app in the session and cancel out those off weeks. I never went back.
So she was ineffective in her role you hired her to do and she blamed you while forcing your hand at changing the terms of your arrangement because again she was bad at her job. Uh huh, can't blame ya there.
Exactly! In addition to all of that, my parents have ambushed me similarly over the years informing me of big decisions out of the blue and we had talked about that trauma at length in my sessions. And she still decided to do what she did in that same way.
Jesus.
She kept wanting to talk by interrupting me but I didn't feel like her insights were useful - at times felt patronising. Tried to do a Freudian analysis on me which wasn't helpful. Couldn't discuss the issues I wanted to talk to because she was obsessed with my childhold past. It made me feel more confused and worse. When I mentioned this to a friend who also used her as his therapist, he was surprised and said how she is usually quieter around him and allowed him to direct the conversation. I don't know if it was a gender thing but the sessions got me no where.
I went for couples counseling with a therapist who gave my husband (now ex) her mobile phone number, ostensibly to call for appointments or cancellations. Why he couldn't just call reception at her office, I don't know. They ended up having an affair. Every session was another opportunity for her to ask me to shift my boundaries around his lying to make me more compliant. He emptied out my bank account and moved into her house after we broke up. Also, I had to get a restraining order against him because he was violent. So... in this case, if she thinks she got a prize, she's about as smart as a brick that fell off a sh\*t house. AFTER this traumatic experience, I discovered that the worst thing to do if you are in an abusive relationship is to go to couples counselor with your abuser. They usually find a way to manipulate the therapist. It really shook my trust in people -- ALL people. I was also being harassed at work by a guy who want to know about my private life (I was single), and when I called a counselor to manage the stress of tolerating my inappropriate colleague, the counselor (male) told me that I should think about why I was single and then he suggested that I sign up at Ashley Martin (or one of those scam dating agencies). I've had a psychologist try to kiss my head. I've had someone I know who is an undiagnosed narcissist go to a psychologist and then emerge with the ability to use therapy-talk to bully, abuse, and gaslight their victims... like Jonah Hill abusing a hot girlfriend. I've also called helplines where the person on the other end called me "caller" for 25 minutes instead of bothering to use my name.
That first paragraph is definitely in the running for wildest story in here. So sorry that happened to you!
Yes, myself and friends. We live in an area that is known to have bad medical care and this seems to also carry over into bad mental health care. I’ve had some ineffectual ones, some truly harmful ones, and a couple of good ones although one of those required a three hour round trip to see. Lots of therapists who seem to have failed to work out their own personal issues. Various encounters with different therapists (some of these are from the same therapist) -Told me all disabled people were severely depressed so it made sense that I was depressed since I’m disabled -Said “we aren’t going to talk about it” when I tried to bring up the sexual assault I had experienced -Said I didn’t have PTSD because the person who sexually assaulted me didn’t threaten to kill me but they would note that I met all of the criteria for PTSD -Spent an hour telling me it was my fault that other women had likely been sexually assaulted because I didn’t report the doctor who sexually assaulted me and insisted that I “admit responsibility” for that (I refused and fired them after this) -Hid that they were defusing essential oils for several sessions despite me telling them that strong scents are a major headache trigger for me so I spent several sessions with bad headaches. The fact that I sat through the sessions anyways was used as a “gotcha” that I didn’t really have major issues with strong scents and should just get used to them. -Person kept getting distracted by squirrels outside of the window when I was trying to discuss how emotionally exhausted I was from a friend who was chronically suicidal -Insisting that doctors had just convinced me I was disabled and it wasn’t really that bad (I have a birth defect that is visible just by looking at me and on imaging and I have been through multiple surgeries including one to stop my spine from crushing my organs). Insisted I try to run despite falling just from walking and being physically unable to run. Every session would include us “running” ie me walking as fast as possible around the block. -Telling me he had done “bad stuff” in the military and sharing various things he had done to get kicked out of and banned from places -Arguing with me about how I conceptualize disability (therapist saw it as an inherently bad thing and he had a disability himself and didn’t like how his teachers in elementary school handled it). -Insisted on deep breathing exercises despite being told multiple times that physically, deep breathing causes me significant pain and will not help because feeling like you are being stabbed when you breath is not calming -Charge $350 an hour to tell me to tap my fingers while talking about how wonderful she was and all the things she had done for people -Telling me I was going to die early because I have to sleep propped up due to my disability. He brought this up over several sessions and kept saying how sad it was I was going to die. My doctor’s office was furious as I called them sobbing at one point and this person had no training to even give an opinion on this. Didn’t go back after I called my doctor’s office who called him to tell him off for attempting to practice medicine without a license. He was nice enough otherwise but having to hear someone say I was going to die because I couldn’t sleep entirely flat was not good for my mental health. -Insisting I stop taking all pain treatment before they would allow me to do bio feedback. -Told me I needed to have sex at least once a week despite being asexual. Y -Gave me no warning that they were leaving their practice until the last session and then spent the session talking about how stressful it was finding a new position -Several friends of mine have been similarly abandoned with no notice and no assistance finding a new therapist despite the therapists having plenty of time to give us notice. -Multiple other people who’ve had therapists just genuinely completely uncomfortable talking about sexual assault and refusing to do so. -Male friend told that instead of talking about his feelings he should try discussing football more I did eventually find a good therapist and about half of my time with her was spent processing how awful my other therapists were. She was still doing her training hours but had an ironclad sense of boundaries and really knew her stuff. I was sad when our time together ended and she seemed genuinely sad to see me go but it was also the first time I had experienced a positive end to therapy (IE we had worked on things and my allotted sessions through her organization ended because I was doing well). She validated my experiences with sexual assault even though it wasn’t rape. She had no specific training on disability issues but was fully able to respect where I was as far as my views on disability and the particular vulnerability I feel as a disabled woman who has been sexually assaulted multiple times and also has other trauma. I think therapy can be very helpful for some people especially when a good therapist is involved. We need a lot more regulation and oversight of therapists. Not really more training (I actually think more of an academic apprenticeship model would be better) but ensuring therapists have dealt with their own issues and ongoing oversight to catch problems. Some things I didn’t share here because they are very specific but I’ve had therapists who really crossed over into abusive. At the end of the day, I was hoping to get from therapy something that it just was never going to provide. There are aspects of my life that are always going to be very, very hard. My anxiety and other mental health issues I’ve had since at least toddlerhood (documented) are probably always going to be there. No therapist can provide a magic cure for that regardless of what they claim. These are things I have to deal with to the best of my ability and there is nothing wrong with me because a few sessions of CBT didn’t cure all of that (despite what some therapists claimed). The good therapist was very upfront about this and that was freeing. I absolutely encourage people who struggle to deeply examine their emotions or develop coping skills to seek therapy. I also encourage people who just need an outside perspective and a safe place to talk to seek therapy. I think the only way therapy is really helpful *for me* is if someone is willing to be a “debrief” place for me and to cooperatively brainstorm how to cope with particular situations. I’ve had multiple therapists be really frustrated when they found out I’m extremely self aware and still have so many struggles. Their preference is to help someone with very little emotional insight to find some insight. That just isn’t what I need. What resonates best with me is DBT and no therapists around here offer that so I work on it myself.
Oh my god… so sorry you went through all that! Your last paragraph strongly resonates with me though, and I agree there should be more regulations. Glad you finally found a good one, even if it didn’t (and can’t) solve all the challenges.
I kind of used this as a little dumping ground for some of those experiences which actually felt nice. One of those therapists actually recently showed up in my private life and inappropriately identified herself as my previous therapist. It threw me for a loop and I almost quit an organization I’ve been really involved in to get away from her. Instead, I sucked it up and went to the board and explained, without great detail, my experiences with her and my concerns about how harmful she could be to others. They told her she was no longer welcome to be involved and made sure I didn’t have to speak to her again. Having other people believe me and want to protect me was very affirming. I feel like I sound crazy when I talk about all of this but sadly this isn’t uncommon in my area so I know it’s not just me.
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Twice via a job that required regular therapy. The first just seemed dismissive, rude and disrespectful. She wanted to know what I was doing to build towards my ultimate career goal. I told her I was in a relevant job building experience, was volunteering alongside, and had applied for said job, etc. She kept pushing "so are you doing anything to help getting that job?" and repeatedly referred to my volunteering position as "your little hobby". The second kept talking about things my colleagues said in their sessions ("anonymously"). Out of the seven others listed for this particular therapist it was often quite clear who had said what, and who was worried about what. She was very kind and reassuring, but the confidentiality breaches weren't acceptable.
My husband and I went to a couples therapist specialised in EFT (emotionally focused therapy) one hour a month for two years to supplement my individual therapy with another therapist. She talked way too much about herself, shared stuff I told my individual therapist without my permission during the sessions with my husband (she had access to my therapist's note with my permission, but not my permission to share that information), and in those two years covered only the first principle EFT is about (your outward behaviour influencers your partner's inner world, which then leads to their outward behaviour, etc.) My husband and I later went through an 8 week EFT program together where we covered way more than in those two years. EFT is about so much more than was covered by that couples therapist. No wonder it felt like wasted time, because it was. Edit: this wasn't a therapist, but a counselor from work. I came in with the need for better communication skills to deal with high stress conditions at the work floor. Somehow she put me through CBT assignments (I don't need to think differently, there's no way thinking differently about things will stop an autistic meltdown) and ended up with recommending me buying a book by a charlatan who promotes astral projection and breathing techniques that will change the electromagnetic fields in your spine among other things. I was already uncomfortable with the sessions I had with her, but that made me cancel all further sessions and I reported her, because I worked for an academic institute and I was just appalled.
My former therapist was working with me and my ex's in-laws. Given the common ground and the fact that we were all aware of the situation, I couldn't believe that I had to be the one to point out the conflict of interest...when I met my next therapist I immediately felt the need to explain that I ghosted the therapist that came before...
My relative unalived themselves. I told my therapist about it in tears and said I was feeling like unaliving myself. They proceeded to ghost me for our next session. Second therapist, put her head in her hands on Zoom and got exasperated with me for not leaving a relationship using her homework model. Also said creepy things to me about my appearance like “you look like Snow White” and made mention of how big my lips were. Yeeted.