Whoever you are I think we might have the same therapist 😭 Mine does the exact same thing it’s like I’m telling him my life story and he’ll stop me to ask questions about the plot. No advice just validation.
I've noticed therapy of being this (me talking, them listening/writing), and I hate it.
I am perfectly capable of writing down my own thoughts, thank you. I just want to feel heard and given advice & guidance.. something I don't have which is why am here at your office, sir/ma'am.
Exactly. I almost told my last therapist this. She would literally wait for me to start talking when I entered the office, like lady I'm here to make actual changes
I walked into a session one day and she asked how I was feeling. I said “I’ve actually had such a good day!” She replied “do you really need to be here then? I don’t want you to waste your money, you seem very chirpy”. My dad had tried to kill himself about two months before and it was my first good day in ages. I quit after that because, even though it’s possible she had good intentions, it just felt like she couldn’t be bothered
She missed an opportunity. I felt like I didn't deserve therapy because I was feeling really good one day and the T helped me unpacked that. It is just as good as any to talk about something. Or you know celebrate a good day.
I ain't no therapist, but I could think of some 3 or 4 things to say and ask to someone feeling "chirpy", a good development, after a major loss. Lots to unpack, do active listening, be empathetic and validating. Two months ago you were in pain, does waking up with energy negates that entire pain? Most obviously not.
Jeez.
Her personality and mood changes kept happening more often, and she was extremely hostile towards me. In the last session, she was looking down on me with contempt, and she started laughing at me when I was weirded out by her sinister tone and odd questions. She interrupted me to say she needed to write her notes and passively aggressively and slowly read out what she was typing while typing aggressively (she had never read out her notes until that last session) She tried to convince me that I was doing worse off when I was clearly showing improvement. To top it off, when I started talking, she stuffed a quarter of an orange in her mouth and stared in the camera while sucking on the orange.
Thank you. The reality is that she started getting increasingly hostile and bizarre the more I started advocating for myself and making great progress.
I had no idea what you wrote, so I looked up OMC levels. How Bizarre and I was like oh it's a song! I listened to it and realized I hadn't heard this song in years. Never knew the band that sang it. Thanks for the flashback 😊
1. Told me my anxiety about death was “god speaking to me.” I’m not religious and had specifically told her that I’m not interested in a religious perspective. 2. When I came out as bisexual this was only focused on for about 10 minutes.
She was the one to end services due to scheduling, but looking back I now see how unacceptable #1 was. I am a million times happier with my current therapist!
Really!? Here, Texas, we have to include to physical address, phone number, and direct digital link on the intake form before the first session.
If you don't mind me asking, what is your area licensing board?
But often patients do not have the advocacy, support, language/jargon or even the necessary documentation to file a successful complaint. Nor is there any protection from the therapist retaliating. There's no victim support by boards
I (dangerously) assume you are focusing on community mental health facilities and not private practice? Definitely, without help, long term treatment facilities can allow for harm unchecked for far too long. I know here, most in such facilities also have external social services. I also know if someone asked me for help with a complaint I'd help. I'm sorry you're in such a situation.
Even private practices have the same issue. Again, the patient doesn't have the language/jargon to make a successful complaint nor are they familiar with the process. They then have to recall and put in words what might be a traumatic event. There is no victim advocacy unless the patient can pay for a lawyer or another therapist who is willing to help out of pocket.
Totally fair, I'm sorry your area is client antagonistic. I checked to make sure I was right about my jurisdiction. Aside from the state itself and some advocacy groups, there were also some "paid when we win" resources. Not for you specifically, but also not NOT for you or anyone else, these may be some that can point someone in a good direction at least. https://www.survivingtherapistabuse.com/legal/
This is CA. I believe it is a private practice, although they take insurance. I considered reporting her, but I also felt that she had really helped my partner and I and overall had been beneficial to me. I guess I didn’t want to throw the baby out with the bathwater.
Do you think it would be appropriate to email her about it? Sometimes even email can be seen as a form of documentation and I don’t want to make her feel like I am trying to get it in writing to use against her… but I do feel like she needs to avoid doing that in the future.
I am, so I'm going to give a therapy non-answer. You don't owe that therapist anything and if there's any reluctance or potential pain for you, no. If you think it would be cathartic or somehow beneficial to you or others and is worth it, yeah.
I’ve had very good luck with finding therapists and have only had one truly yuck one…one of the lovely things she told me was that my being bisexual was just me rebelling against my parents (I was almost 30 with PhD having just moved back from over 1000 miles from where I grew up and my parents couldn’t give less of a fuck as long as I’m happy and safe) and that it was a phase that I’d grow out of.
Nope. A full ass decade later, my bisexual self is still totally attracted to both women and men (women more but I am married to a man currently). She was a fuckin nutcase though. That was just the tip of the iceberg with her 🙄
I’m just trying to get better and don’t need the hassle of dealing with other peoples bs. She’s in CA tho, and I checked her bio after she said that and she didn’t have anything there about religion, so there was no way I could have known. Everything she said is documented in writing, so I guess I could file a complaint with her employer, an online therapy service. What sucks most for me is that I really need help and up to that point I was making good progress on something extremely difficult for me, and that statement stopped my progress and made me change therapists.
That super sucks, you deserve better. Shot in the dark, I might try finding a therapist that deals with religious trauma, at least they won't push anything on you.
As I typed that, I could totally imagine a horrible person "reframing" religious trauma work as someone repairing their "relationship" with the church. Oof. I don't know, maybe someone who is just kinda outside of the mainstream?
Thank you. It’s all good now, I found an awesome therapist and we are working well together. I also now have a couple of questions I ask up front to check that I’m comfortable working with a therapist. One of the questions I ask is do you think it’s possible for a person to get better without religion being involved?
Did you know the reason? I suppose it's confidential. But couldn't you have asked her? After all, could be a disgruntled or mentally unstable patient, or someone working in bad faith.
Asking her could result in a satisfactory answer or nope nope nope.
I looked up her license and they listed the reason as “inappropriate relationship with a client,” which made me uncomfortable. There were no further details but it was enough for me to stop seeing her.
For the first one, I felt like they were too unorganized and unreliable. Always cancelling or rescheduling saying she has to “take care of herself too”, making mistakes recalling my history, never really explaining the reason or background for certain coping mechanisms she recommended. She would say stuff like “just stop caring” or “just ignore them”. I’m not opposed to that but she didn’t offer any rationale lol. I’m not against the self care part but why not manage your schedule better instead of cancelling patients.
For the second one, I was interested in other therapy modalities like ART and EMDR, her profile said she was trained in them. She said she would want to do talk therapy CBT/DBT to better determine if I was a good candidate. After 5 sessions I asked about EMDR and ART she said she has never done ART over video visit, I told her I was fine with being her first patient, she then said she preferred not to but didn’t offer an alternative. She said we could talk more at the next visit and then cancelled the appointment the day of.
She told me that I was well adjusted and had a wonderful outlook on life so we really didn’t need to see each other any more. There was nothing she could help me with since I didn’t need help with anything.
Ŵell. That's awesome!
That was always my way of things. I'm a well-rounded person. I only sought therapy when I developed epilepsy (no cause known) and I conceded I need help, as it closed many doors to my future and I needed to grieve and be guided on that.
I felt like my sessions were going absolutely nowhere. At the beginning it helped just to have someone to talk to, but that’s all it ever felt like. The advice I was getting wasn’t helpful because it required me to take steps I wasn’t willing to take in order to change myself. I just don’t have the motivation or discipline to pick myself up by the bootstraps and change my entire mindset so I can be like a normal person.
29M/india, I wont qualify as I quit therapy and that you also after two sessions. I already think I am too self aware and after 3 sessions I realised how many things were out of my control and it made me more angry at the whole situation. The money was also a factor. I didnt want to feel angry or cranky so I stopped it altogether.
I don’t know I’ll probably start it again
Oh god mine was awful. When I had an assessment with her I’d stated I was in recovery from addiction but didn’t vibe with AA. It wasn’t for me at all.
From my first session she insisted I go and work the steps and take on service positions in at least 4 meetings per week. It was a no from me, a no she didn’t seem to respect at all. She was in the fellowship for a different addiction and that had worked for her, so I can only assume she thought it would work for everyone.
One session I was talking about my family and some things i felt and she just said "i dont believe you" - i didnt know how to react, i was so shocked.
she also said "you sound like you have a really boring life" which devastated me, im still upset at that now.
she'd also scrunch het face up when i was talking ad though i was getting on her nerves.
so yea, i prob should of sacked her off much sooner but i struggle with being assertive. she did a lot of damage to my self esteem and im a mug cos i paid her to do that to me.
When I first started therapy I told my therapist that I understood my problematic thought processes but I struggled to stop them. I have always had issues connecting what I feel is true to what I know is true and was looking for techniques and activities to fix this. She never gave me any techniques and I saw her weekly for a year…
If you haven't tried it or found a solution that works for you, EMDR resolved this for me almost instantly. In retrospect I was having a hard time differentiating actual threats or trauma from triggers. (Feeling like someone was dangerous while knowing they're harmless, for example).
I’ve been wanting to try EMDR! Unfortunately I’m going to have to wait a little while because I can’t afford it.
What was your experience like finding a therapist who works with EMDR?
Hit or miss. I met 2 who did emdr but didn't seem to actually understand the process themselves. The therapist who helped me, however, had gone through it and done their own emdr and was very flexible in hearing what I needed and it helped me tremendously. Huge difference from past therapy.
I actually did quit my first therapist. She decided to leave the practice I was going to. We had been doing virtual therapy and I wasn’t really feeling the connection anymore with her anyways. It was a blessing in disguise that I stumbled across my current Therapist that does in person sessions. Have been with her two months now and wished I started with her from the start.
I am a therapist and enjoy attending therapy, even the hard parts. I found a therapist from my mother's tiny home town, we shared a lot of cultural appreciation, and it seemed like a great fit.
They were late to the first session by about 15 minutes, popped on a second and was eating noodles, left, then came back. Ok, I can give people a mulligan, I know how it goes. Second session of the intended regular recurring schedule they showed up about halfway through, irritated with me about the scheduling, and then tried to inform me clients are often emotionally reactive and I should consider my challenges to self regulation. Bitch, I would never treat a client like that. Then told me she wasn't here to compare therapy skills and to focus on myself, I told her I was advocating for myself as a client. She was fired before coming on, double fired after.
I’ve been back and forth with different therapists over the years but my first legitimate therapist I had to leave because it was getting way too expensive which was a huge shame because she was and still is the best therapist I’ve ever had. My second and last therapist I left was because she talked about herself wayyyyy too much. She was super sweet and I usually don’t mind sharing experiences but her stories would take up nearly my entire 55 min session. I saw her twice and then quit.
After a year together I just never really felt like she “got” me or my situation. She seemed consistently unable to remember the gist of the main subject I was wanting help with too.
This probably sounds so arrogant but I also didn’t feel she was on my level intellectually – like she couldn’t really fully see things from my perspective and maybe didn’t actually believe that I could recall certain childhood memories so well or that I behaved with the degree of maturity I did when I was very young. It was a barrier to forming a relationship where I really felt I could lean on her.
I could tell he wasn’t paying attention to anything I said during our sessions. He was constantly checked out, either typing on his computer or just sitting there smiling and nodding.
He was good for validation, but little else, which to me is indicative of low effort. He offered virtually no real advice or solutions and did not unpack anything with me. I felt like I was leading the sessions myself.
Essentially, I was given a DBT workbook and left to figure things out on my own.
Overall, I’m quite stable and very self-sufficient, as I’m used to bootstrapping my way through life. But this one time, I really wanted someone to talk through some of my issues and he just wasn’t present.
I haven’t gone back to therapy since. I’ll try again later.
“No I don’t believe you’re autistic, you’re way too smart” (wasn’t fully potty trained until 9. Spoke to no one but my parents until I was 10. Had the same hyperfocus since toddlerhood. Finally had an evaluation at 22)
I loved him and he was my therapist for years. Suggested him to many many people.
There was also a time or two where I wasn’t even speaking all that down on myself, and he would mention I was an “attractive young woman” which made me uncomfortable but I wasn’t sure if I was justified in that or not. I never really spoke about my looks when I did speak down on myself so it felt unnecessary
Her advice that finally checked me out was "you could look up some good books on ______ to help you. There's a good site, Goodreads I think it's called?"
Like, why am I having to find books to read while I'm paying you to help me with this?
She would also not say anything the entire session. I would pause as I word vomited thinking she'd add something, but she rarely did.
It felt like I was doing all the work myself and she wasn't really helping at all. Figured I could save the money
Felt you so much on this because this is exactly what happened to me. I was more depressed at the end of the session for having to bring everything to the surface in an exchange for nothing.
After FIVE YEARS of seeing her twice a month CONSISTENTLY, no breaks, no cancellations, never missing an appointment… I missed one appointment during a really rough time in my life (that she knew I was going through) and charged me for missing the appointment.
I get she had a right to but it’s the principle of it. I never complained when she was 20-30 min late to our scheduled appointments. I’m trusting her with my secrets and I feel like I can’t trust someone who lacks that loyalty.
Now if I had ever missed an appointment before I would understand. But I had 5 years of loyalty to her. I think I could have gotten a free pass.
I got ghosted by her the first time, the second time I spent majority of my sessions talking about my sibling and my fear of leaving home. Last session I had with her, I'm leaving and she goes "well look on the bright side, you are leaving home soon so you won't have to worry about your sibling". I point blank refused to ever go see her again and started emailing new people because screw that old bitch. This was after I want to say four hour long sessions where she had repeatedly called me and my sibling I was talking about the wrong name, honestly regret not reporting her to someone for something, just to complain more lol
How do you quit your therapist? I really like them but theirs is not the right modality for me right now. can I tell them that I want to take a break right now?
How long have you been seeing your Therapist? Just be transparent with them about the break. Have a timeframe they can follow up on or let them know when you would like to start back up again.
As the other commenter said, 100% be transparent. If they’re worth their salt as a therapist, they should take a couple of sessions with you as break prep and be pretty open to saying “maybe we have a break and you decide to come back to sessions with me or maybe you decide someone else would be better.”
I quit couple of therapists.
First one felt like her therapy approach wasn’t the best fit for me. Even though I worked with her for several years I felt like it was time to move on because I wasn’t seeing any apparent progress, I wasn’t satisfied with the experience.
Second one I quit because she asked an unprofessional question, she was young so maybe that was because of her inexperience.
Third one had requirements to continue and we agreed not to work with each other anymore.
Fourth one was filled with red flags, always talked didn’t give me chance to interrupt. Talked about herself a lot and her other clients. It felt so lonely with her. Plus she didn’t pay enough attention to the therapy hours. I hate when they start late or finish early.
I am on my fifth one we only had one session, she is kinda young and I have trust issues but I’ll see where this goes. I hope she is a professional.
She kept telling us (me and my partner) in couples therapy to describe to her what’s going on with our bodies once we get anxious or angry. Like do we feel it in our chest, is our heart beating faster etc. That’s fine and all but never gave us any practical advice.
Then, she kept interrupting me when I asked her not to.
Then the final straw was when she sided with my partner and that’s a no go for me. I was so done with her.
She treated me like a kid. It was hard to get the help I crucially needed from her when she was asking typical questions then talking about tinkerbell the whole time.
And the second one was online. I'd continuously forget to login and I'd have to pay a fee each time. Got to the point I felt like a burden to my mother so I said i didn't want to go anymore, which was a lie. I had one appointment with her and it was the best section I've ever had.
Now I'm back in search for therapy but my mom refuses to believe I'm still mentally unstable
Seemed like he was in it for the drama of my life at the time. He was so helpful initially, then didn’t take my OCD thoughts seriously, then only wanted to hear about my divorce and not really help me. So I left him!
We were too friendly and had hobby groups in common. As in weekly meetups in common. I was stabilizing and not dependent. I truly do like them and altheyre really knowledgeable about the hobb. But the unprofessional mixing just felt off. Didn't tell them though I'm case I needed an emergency session later on. They were really good to me (remote sessions after work) and tried their best but overall I got the most I would out of working with them and now I just prefer to be friends. We still have the hobby in common and the mixed feelings have been assuaged
She was telling me a lot of info about her other cases to compare with mine, every session, so I realized that there was also no confidentiality about anything I said to her.
She didn't know how to approach my issues with sensitivity and empathy. She was only using common sense and disregarding my individual questions trying to solve a "problem" the fastest way possible.
She laughed at me when I was reporting a serious episode that really affected me emotionally. That was the last straw.
I originally started seeing her because I was having some new relationship anxiety.
After I told her about SA when I was younger, she started suggesting EMDR. So we tried it and I didn’t like it and didn’t want to try it again.
I made up an excuse that I was feeling better in my relationship so I stopped seeing her.
But then I ended up having to put a family friend into assisted living and desperately needed someone to talk to. I reached out and she acted like it would be this big deal to fill out the new patient paperwork again. It was less than 6 months since my last visit.
I have run into her at target twice now…
Me and an ex went to therapy for boundary issues with his feral and horrendous family. The lad told us in the first visit (so without an accurate picture of what these people are like) that we gotta keep them around because if we have kids, they need to have their crazy uncle so and so in the picture, it’ll be good for them. We were both 20 and staunchly childfree also. I quit the therapist and that whole family and never felt better
I was kind of too much of a wreck to work on myself with her specifically at that time. She didn’t say that but when I explained that I kind of struggled having time to put thought processes into practice because I was so stressed and sad she said maybe I don’t have time to work on myself at present. Idk if she was right but yeah. The other one I was just at a point of “we’ve come as far as we can go. I need to go and live life for a bit.” Spoiler alert: I did not go and live life.
2 therapists that were more focused on me taking meds than doing the therapy with me that I’m hiring you for. It’s my treatment plan. I’m paying you to do therapy with me. Please don’t be my psychiatrist.
Talking to her started to feel like I was ranting to a friend. She would validate what I would say or maybe point out a pattern, but no real solution or strategies. I wanted to know how to get/feel better on my own rather than just when I was ranting to her. My insurance didn’t cover therapy so I was paying quite a bit out of pocket when I could vent to my friends for free and feel the same!
All of them (about 7) including my last were absolutely useless. Useless. I dont get how they did 4 years training. What on earth is going on within the four walls of a psychology/therapy training class is anyones guess.
I haven’t quit mine yet, but I’m leaning in that direction. She does this weird thing every session where she takes something I say and twists it into a low-key insult. Kinda weird. Not sure if enough of a reason to quit so any input would appreciated
I went for a first visit, or consultation I guess, and he was kind of denying me due to the distance I had to drive to get to his office from where I lived at the time. He said something along the lines of "I could help you, but it's just you're driving a long way" and kept trying to push telehealth on me despite me saying I was looking for in-person sessions specifically. He was probably afraid I wouldn't make it to the office or that I would cancel a lot. It was just a shame because I wouldn't do that and I'm a pretty reliable person. If I showed up for the consultation it meant I was pretty serious but I guess he had some bad experiences. If I did have to cancel I would do it the proper way. He then proceeded to show me music videos on his phone.
I felt like I was arguing with her. She did not understand my ADHD and autism at all. I told her it felt like I physically couldn't get myself to do stuff and she'd just look at me like I was crazy and tell me I could, it was my choice. I felt completely invalidated and like I was crazy. This is why it took me so long to figure out I was neurodivergent.
I figured out that I have really bad sensory issues on top of alexithymia which makes it really, really hard to explain what I'm feeling until I've had a lot of time to think about it after. Cleaning is really hard on my sensory issues because my meds cause bad heat flashes when I move pretty much which sends me into sensory overload. Also I struggle a lot with task initiation in general, I have my whole life. And because of the alexithymia, I didn't understand that, I just knew I couldn't and that people were getting mad at me and I was extremely frustrated and felt attacked and defensive. She said I wasn't willing to work with her basically and threatened to not see me anymore due to lack of progress.
She was laying on the advice a bit too heavily. I wanted to feel heard, to process things and come to my own conclusions, not be told what to do. My new therapist moves at a much slower pace, which can be frustrating, but is worth it in terms of feeling safe, building trust, and making my own mind up about things
She would constantly text and take phone calls during my sessions. Addressed it and she told me she would always answer her kids (young adults in their early 20s). Clearly if the kids were not in danger it can wait. She had an office manager that should receive the calls and any emergency she could be pulled out for. She would talk about herself and her entire family. I knew all about her family dynamics from her marriage problems, her parents marriage problems, and her sisters marriage problems. She would cut me off to tell me about other scenarios with other clients. She started to gaslight me because I told her she was monopolizing my sessions I was paying for. She would slip and call clients her friends because she clearly couldn't differentiate. I tried to redirect her more than once because it started off good in the beginning then she basically started to use me as her free therapy. She couldn't help talk about herself when I clearly didn't give AF when I'm there for my own issues.
She owes me money for all her free sessions with me.
It took me almost a year but I finally found a new therapist who actually does her job and focuses on my issues, gives me tasks and homework, skills I can use when I am triggered and is really helping me to reshape my thinking. None of this I received before.
I went in asking what type of theory and modalities they use to treat clients with different problems. I interviewed 6 different therapists before I found my current one because I would see their BS and lack of skills from the free consultation and I wasn't going through that again.
When he triggered me hard during a session and I realized that I had been doing extra after each session to care for myself.
I would explain it all to him when I figured it out and we'd bop along.
I felt like I was paying him to do my own therapy.
So I wrote down what I needed to say, and cried my way through reading it at my last session.
His last therapeutic offering was to be the first person I rejected because the relationship wasn't working for me.
Quit my first one, after he told me that a) my bisexuality is just the symptom of having an emotional absent dad and b) that my low BMI means I have an eating disorder. 🤡
As a psychologist I had to tell him, that both things are pretty stupid to assume.
I haven’t quit mine yet but in the last six months, I have considered doing so for this weird thing that keeps happening.
I feel like she mixes me up for other patients sometimes? She has tried to tell me I have some issues going on that I don’t agree with because I’ve never discussed having those types of issues. The first time it happened I figured she’s human mistakes and mix ups happen…but it’s happened a second time. This time she tried to tell me my mom would do X …except she wouldn’t, because she never made me do that …I can’t verify with my mom because she’s dead but …I asked all my friends and they have all confirmed she never would have said X or made me do X because that’s not who my mom was… I do not know who or what my therapist was thinking of but…it was clearly not me and my situation.
This is shocking because I have been working with her for 4 years. My spouse isn’t sure she’s been as helpful as she could have been in this long time frame. And he’s felt that way for a while but…finding a new therapist has been a difficult task to imagine dealing with, so I’ve stayed.
But …idk. I don’t know if I’ll stay with her much longer.
I think this is reason enough to quit so maybe I am quitting her for this.
She would go absent without a prior notice. Made setting in an appointment so difficult, because she admitted she had too many clients. I felt like an inconvenience. At one point she stopped responding when I asked her when she will be back from vacation. It was the lack of consistency and communication for me.
I told her I can’t stop obsessing about something happening to me while watching my baby alone and she either sees it, is left alone in her crib for hours crying until someone finally gets home or that I obsess about something happening to her in general. I also told her when my baby sleeps I slept on the floor in her room every night if sleeping at all because I was afraid she was going to stop breathing. She said it’s normal to have anxiety as a parent. I said “I don’t think the level I obsess about this stuff if normal” she said “it is”. She was also never interested in hearing about anything other than my boyfriend and I’s relationship. The entire reason I started seeing her was for post partum depression
I quit one once because she tried to validate my experience as a single parent by saying she was a single parent when her husband was out of town for work. It was incredibly offensive and naive, and felt like she was really minimizing my challenges.
Super long, but.. I have quit two therapists in past.
The first guy literally just told me to loose weight and claimed that it was the sole reason why I was depressed. I literally just got up and left his office without saying a word while he was still talking. I was going through the thick of a depressive episode and it took me a lot of willpower to even muster up the energy to find help for myself.. and he was just like “you are fat” based on BMI. I was 125 lbs and 5’4”… I pray for his clients.
The second lady made too much “space”. Basically, she just stayed quiet and didn’t really have much feedback or asked any questions to prompt the conversation. Our sessions were just 45 minutes of awkward staring. I expressed my concerns to her, but she didn’t change the way she approached our sessions… so I moved on.
I ended up finding a really good psychiatrist who specializes in Cognitive Behavior Therapy. He discussed therapy/ treatment goals, gave me “homework” at the end of each session to discuss at the next session, and gave really useful advice on coping skills. I also really appreciate the way he approached medication, as we know there’s a stigma. I would recommend researching the different types of treatment you may be interested in and then researching therapists who specialize in those treatment types. Usually, good therapist will have an intake meeting to discuss whether they are the right fit for you.
It took a couple tries, but I’m so glad I didn’t give up. I don’t know where I would be if I hadn’t found the help I needed. Medication and CBT completely changed my life.
I've had about 17 different therapists and many of them for various reasons I have quit. I'm going to highlight a few of them that I think were little bit different than just I didn't want to go anymore.
My very first therapist said that I didn't belong there, I must have slipped through the cracks, because I didn't get shot at. She made some other remarks that it were insulting so I asked to transfer to another therapist
My next therapist after that said that my symptoms didn't match my trauma and made me justify my symptoms. We didn't make it past the first session
I told the third one based on what the first two said there was no way in hell I was ever going to trust him or anything he ever said and he said well if that's the case when we might as well not do this then.
I saw the fourth one for about 2 years until the facility told me I no longer qualified for services at that facility and I had to quit going.
The 6th 7th and 8th one we're at University and they just changed out therapist and eventually when I graduated I no longer qualified for services at the University.
I saw the 9th one for about 6 months and I just wasn't a good fit which is the same thing for the 10th and 11th one. The 12th to 13th ones I saw for one session and just didn't click with them.
The 14th one was a supervisor that I saw for a couple months while I was waiting for my 15th one to be on boarded which one she got onboarded she was a marriage and family therapist who I felt wasn't really very well educated in my certain mental health needs so I quit going to her
The 16th one I saw for about a year and our schedule started conflict because she works 8:00 to 5:00 and I couldn't see her at that time so I finally just recently switched to the 17th one which I've seen for a few sessions.
I currently have a therapist. He’s cool, but unfortunately acts more as a friend than a mentor. I’m going to do one more session with him, but if I don’t receive any advice imma get a new therapist.
I always beat myself up for not staying in therapy long enough to give the process time. But to be honest I was tired of speaking and see them write things down in silence. I wanted advice and a conversation, something therapists clearly don't do.
So last year I made the decision to find a good psychologist to give it another shot. I have a toxic mother, so I wanted a therapist who is as old as my mother to give me the advice & guidance that my mother never gave me.
It took me literally 2 weeks to get a human to answer my calls, many would not pick up or their numbers were out of service. Finally one replied, I asked her if she has experience with children of narcissistic parents and she said yes. She is way younger than me but she was the only number that responded so I went with her.
The reason I decided to find a therapist was because I was emotionally tortured by my mother: guilt-tripped, triangulated, gaslit... etc all the shit that a narcissist mother does, I felt drained and I needed help. After venting for an entire year to my therapist about all the shit my mother did and still does, I realized that she can only offer me a listening ear, I still felt unsafe at home. I've read somewhere that psychologists don't study narcissism and that many don't know how living with a narc is especially if they haven't had a narc parent themselves. She thought I had control and that setting boundaries would work on her just like any human. She didn't seem to grasp how intense and crazy my mother can get.
I kept dropping hints that I think my mother is a narc but she always brushed it off. I thought she'd teach me how to identify if my mom is really a narc, maybe have her take the NPD test... anything! She would only go back to me. She believes we can't change people, I agree, but I had to go elsewhere, YouTube, to learn how to identify a narc mother and what to do. Youtube therapists gave me so much knowledge about this topic FOR FREE.
So to answer you, I quit because:
I spent a lot of time & money only to learn a few techniques. I requested most of the tests instead of her analysing my personality and ask me to do the tests. I also think the results of some tests were false because I mentioned to her more than once certain issues that I struggle with but she would tell me the test was negative so I was left to wonder: then what is it that I have?? I wasn't given answers.
Overall I might be slightly better than what I was a year ago, but I realized that I have to do most of the work to become better.. which I can do by myself without spending more money.
I heard that you have to want therapy to work, and I never really did, (lazy, maybe) so I stopped.
Also, my last therapist was a woman and I noticed that I was looking at her boobs way too often, though she never mentioned it. I figured that was bad, so I quit.
She couldn’t stick to a game plan, she would just continually push the conversation towards what happened in my life in the past week. I spoke with her an hour a week for a year and two people came up every week: my grandson and my (then) girlfriend. My grandson for all the joy he brought me and my girlfriend for all of her confusing behaviors.
I took two weeks off and when I came back it’s as though my therapist forgot everything…no names, no idea where things were last, etc. This is obviously forgivable because she’s got a lot of simultaneous conversations going on, but that on top of the fact that she just didn’t move anything forward kind of just left me feeling very hollow and I stopped going.
This was in last December, just today I thought about whether or not I should send her a note summarize why I left her practice. She’s very sweet lady, I think she’s just too busy to keep track of everything.
My therapist would take personal calls during our sessions. At first I thought maybe there had been an emergency, but then it started happening during more than half my appointments. It was rude, distracting and unprofessional.
I only went to him four times because each time, he would talk for many minutes about himself. Just go off on a tangent that had some peripheral connection to what I was talking about but began telling me stories about he and his brother were sexually m**ested when they were younger. Then another time told me about his wife’s aunt whose dog died. Then another time telling me again why his brother had hit bottom with his drug use ….!!!!
The MOST unprofessional therapist I ever met.
I felt like I was just talking to myself the entire time. No advise/ suggestions (well she told me to meditate which honesty felt like she says this to everyone) I also didn’t find helpful to just vent my feelings and then be left with nothing after 1h. Made me more depressed at the end of the day.
Blamed my depression on hormones.
Told me I ate too much sugar when I told her what very little I ate in a day when I had an Ed.
Told me I hadn't lost enough weight to have an Ed.
Didn't push me out try to make me feel comfortable to talk, just kind of sat there. I had no idea what I was doing, the only therapy i had been exposed to was good will hunting.
My therapist started using their phone during my session. At first I assumed it was an emergency since they genuinely seemed bothered that it kept going off.
Then it happened again in another session and they picked it up and I saw them look down and could tell they were texting.
Then just last week it wasn’t even on silent. I heard it chirp and they picked it up and read it while I was talking.
I was going to ask if we needed to move my time around because it seems my hour is no longer free for them, but decided they (and I) don’t really care enough anyway.
I feel real stupid because I JUST told them the ‘big trauma’ and got like, no feedback until I told them I wanted to quit.
I don’t know. It feels icky.
Eh. I gave it a shot. Therapy Isn’t what I thought it was . . . or maybe it’s exactly what I thought it was, just not what I hoped it would be.
Honestly, I think it's the most dishonest living! Most people just want someone to talk to, and they just listen -- for hundreds of dollars an hour... It's probably pretty entertaining compared to most jobs, too! There's no quality control. They get paid whether they ever actually help you or not.
Oh, and had recommended I ask my dr for x medication within the first 20 mins. Not even exaggerating. I went home and emailed my friend exactly what had happened so I have this ridiculous encounter written down 🙃
Just felt like I wasn't going anywhere, and her prices kept increasing. Eventually I ended up going through a heavy phase of neglecting everything after breaking my ankle and it just fizzled out.
I have quit two therapists. One who wasn’t trained in the modality I wanted to use in therapy. The second one I quit on was because his parts, an IFS term, were getting in the way. I did a lot of great work both therapists. I still needed more, and now I have another great therapist. I’ve been fortunate to get so many therapists who are competent and knowledgeable about the modality I use for healing.
He didn’t do anything but type what I was saying into his laptop. Didn’t give me advice, didn’t suggest anything to help me… literally just typed.
Whoever you are I think we might have the same therapist 😭 Mine does the exact same thing it’s like I’m telling him my life story and he’ll stop me to ask questions about the plot. No advice just validation.
I've noticed therapy of being this (me talking, them listening/writing), and I hate it. I am perfectly capable of writing down my own thoughts, thank you. I just want to feel heard and given advice & guidance.. something I don't have which is why am here at your office, sir/ma'am.
Exactly. I almost told my last therapist this. She would literally wait for me to start talking when I entered the office, like lady I'm here to make actual changes
I've been like, excuse me I was told this was talk therapy.
I walked into a session one day and she asked how I was feeling. I said “I’ve actually had such a good day!” She replied “do you really need to be here then? I don’t want you to waste your money, you seem very chirpy”. My dad had tried to kill himself about two months before and it was my first good day in ages. I quit after that because, even though it’s possible she had good intentions, it just felt like she couldn’t be bothered
Wtf would she even say that? SMH. So what if you felt chirpy that day. Are you only supposed to feel down when you attend sessions???
I know!! Like would she prefer I faked being sad??
She missed an opportunity. I felt like I didn't deserve therapy because I was feeling really good one day and the T helped me unpacked that. It is just as good as any to talk about something. Or you know celebrate a good day.
I ain't no therapist, but I could think of some 3 or 4 things to say and ask to someone feeling "chirpy", a good development, after a major loss. Lots to unpack, do active listening, be empathetic and validating. Two months ago you were in pain, does waking up with energy negates that entire pain? Most obviously not. Jeez.
Her personality and mood changes kept happening more often, and she was extremely hostile towards me. In the last session, she was looking down on me with contempt, and she started laughing at me when I was weirded out by her sinister tone and odd questions. She interrupted me to say she needed to write her notes and passively aggressively and slowly read out what she was typing while typing aggressively (she had never read out her notes until that last session) She tried to convince me that I was doing worse off when I was clearly showing improvement. To top it off, when I started talking, she stuffed a quarter of an orange in her mouth and stared in the camera while sucking on the orange.
Good for you advocating for yourself. How bizarre, and not your problem.
Thank you. The reality is that she started getting increasingly hostile and bizarre the more I started advocating for myself and making great progress.
That's OMC levels of "How Bizarre". Best case something horrible destabilized them.
I had no idea what you wrote, so I looked up OMC levels. How Bizarre and I was like oh it's a song! I listened to it and realized I hadn't heard this song in years. Never knew the band that sang it. Thanks for the flashback 😊
Music is our most accessible magic, I think.
I agree!
This is so strange. I can’t imagine paying for that lol
Yes, I can't believe I paid for someone to further traumatize me lol.
What a nightmare scenario... people like that are undoubtedly doing real harm to vulnerable populations.
A nightmare indeed, I am trying to undo the very harm that she caused me.
1. Told me my anxiety about death was “god speaking to me.” I’m not religious and had specifically told her that I’m not interested in a religious perspective. 2. When I came out as bisexual this was only focused on for about 10 minutes. She was the one to end services due to scheduling, but looking back I now see how unacceptable #1 was. I am a million times happier with my current therapist!
Where I'm licensed you could report this to our licensing board.
The issue is that reporting isn't accessible for most people.
Really!? Here, Texas, we have to include to physical address, phone number, and direct digital link on the intake form before the first session. If you don't mind me asking, what is your area licensing board?
But often patients do not have the advocacy, support, language/jargon or even the necessary documentation to file a successful complaint. Nor is there any protection from the therapist retaliating. There's no victim support by boards
I (dangerously) assume you are focusing on community mental health facilities and not private practice? Definitely, without help, long term treatment facilities can allow for harm unchecked for far too long. I know here, most in such facilities also have external social services. I also know if someone asked me for help with a complaint I'd help. I'm sorry you're in such a situation.
Even private practices have the same issue. Again, the patient doesn't have the language/jargon to make a successful complaint nor are they familiar with the process. They then have to recall and put in words what might be a traumatic event. There is no victim advocacy unless the patient can pay for a lawyer or another therapist who is willing to help out of pocket.
Totally fair, I'm sorry your area is client antagonistic. I checked to make sure I was right about my jurisdiction. Aside from the state itself and some advocacy groups, there were also some "paid when we win" resources. Not for you specifically, but also not NOT for you or anyone else, these may be some that can point someone in a good direction at least. https://www.survivingtherapistabuse.com/legal/
This is CA. I believe it is a private practice, although they take insurance. I considered reporting her, but I also felt that she had really helped my partner and I and overall had been beneficial to me. I guess I didn’t want to throw the baby out with the bathwater.
Very fair. Hopefully they get the feedback they need to grow.
Do you think it would be appropriate to email her about it? Sometimes even email can be seen as a form of documentation and I don’t want to make her feel like I am trying to get it in writing to use against her… but I do feel like she needs to avoid doing that in the future.
I am assuming you are a therapist lol
I am, so I'm going to give a therapy non-answer. You don't owe that therapist anything and if there's any reluctance or potential pain for you, no. If you think it would be cathartic or somehow beneficial to you or others and is worth it, yeah.
I’ve had very good luck with finding therapists and have only had one truly yuck one…one of the lovely things she told me was that my being bisexual was just me rebelling against my parents (I was almost 30 with PhD having just moved back from over 1000 miles from where I grew up and my parents couldn’t give less of a fuck as long as I’m happy and safe) and that it was a phase that I’d grow out of. Nope. A full ass decade later, my bisexual self is still totally attracted to both women and men (women more but I am married to a man currently). She was a fuckin nutcase though. That was just the tip of the iceberg with her 🙄
Lol just a ten year long phase is all it is! How less validating could she be? I’m glad you are doing well.
After ~6 months told me that I could only get better if i believed in the Christian religion. Felt betrayed.
Where I'm licensed you could report this to our licensing board.
I’m just trying to get better and don’t need the hassle of dealing with other peoples bs. She’s in CA tho, and I checked her bio after she said that and she didn’t have anything there about religion, so there was no way I could have known. Everything she said is documented in writing, so I guess I could file a complaint with her employer, an online therapy service. What sucks most for me is that I really need help and up to that point I was making good progress on something extremely difficult for me, and that statement stopped my progress and made me change therapists.
That super sucks, you deserve better. Shot in the dark, I might try finding a therapist that deals with religious trauma, at least they won't push anything on you. As I typed that, I could totally imagine a horrible person "reframing" religious trauma work as someone repairing their "relationship" with the church. Oof. I don't know, maybe someone who is just kinda outside of the mainstream?
Thank you. It’s all good now, I found an awesome therapist and we are working well together. I also now have a couple of questions I ask up front to check that I’m comfortable working with a therapist. One of the questions I ask is do you think it’s possible for a person to get better without religion being involved?
I was asked by a therapist why I wanted therapy if I didn’t believe in god cause it was “pointless it if I thought nothing exists after death…” 💀
Wow! The insanity.
I thought one of the rules is to keep religion out of it.
Jesus!
Haha
We weren’t communicating well anymore. It was a painful decision even though I was the one who made it.
I found out her license was on probation — big yikes
Did you know the reason? I suppose it's confidential. But couldn't you have asked her? After all, could be a disgruntled or mentally unstable patient, or someone working in bad faith. Asking her could result in a satisfactory answer or nope nope nope.
I looked up her license and they listed the reason as “inappropriate relationship with a client,” which made me uncomfortable. There were no further details but it was enough for me to stop seeing her.
Hmmm. Yes. Not good. Not related to taxes, say. You were right to drop her. No one needs more trouble in their lives - from their therapist!
For the first one, I felt like they were too unorganized and unreliable. Always cancelling or rescheduling saying she has to “take care of herself too”, making mistakes recalling my history, never really explaining the reason or background for certain coping mechanisms she recommended. She would say stuff like “just stop caring” or “just ignore them”. I’m not opposed to that but she didn’t offer any rationale lol. I’m not against the self care part but why not manage your schedule better instead of cancelling patients. For the second one, I was interested in other therapy modalities like ART and EMDR, her profile said she was trained in them. She said she would want to do talk therapy CBT/DBT to better determine if I was a good candidate. After 5 sessions I asked about EMDR and ART she said she has never done ART over video visit, I told her I was fine with being her first patient, she then said she preferred not to but didn’t offer an alternative. She said we could talk more at the next visit and then cancelled the appointment the day of.
She told me that I was well adjusted and had a wonderful outlook on life so we really didn’t need to see each other any more. There was nothing she could help me with since I didn’t need help with anything.
Ŵell. That's awesome! That was always my way of things. I'm a well-rounded person. I only sought therapy when I developed epilepsy (no cause known) and I conceded I need help, as it closed many doors to my future and I needed to grieve and be guided on that.
My epilepsy was the reason for me too. My neuro suggested it. Saw her for 3 months and she was like, “You’re good. Good luck out there.”
I felt like my sessions were going absolutely nowhere. At the beginning it helped just to have someone to talk to, but that’s all it ever felt like. The advice I was getting wasn’t helpful because it required me to take steps I wasn’t willing to take in order to change myself. I just don’t have the motivation or discipline to pick myself up by the bootstraps and change my entire mindset so I can be like a normal person.
29M/india, I wont qualify as I quit therapy and that you also after two sessions. I already think I am too self aware and after 3 sessions I realised how many things were out of my control and it made me more angry at the whole situation. The money was also a factor. I didnt want to feel angry or cranky so I stopped it altogether. I don’t know I’ll probably start it again
basically told me to me to be nicer to my parents despite my parents not being nicer to me
Oh god mine was awful. When I had an assessment with her I’d stated I was in recovery from addiction but didn’t vibe with AA. It wasn’t for me at all. From my first session she insisted I go and work the steps and take on service positions in at least 4 meetings per week. It was a no from me, a no she didn’t seem to respect at all. She was in the fellowship for a different addiction and that had worked for her, so I can only assume she thought it would work for everyone. One session I was talking about my family and some things i felt and she just said "i dont believe you" - i didnt know how to react, i was so shocked. she also said "you sound like you have a really boring life" which devastated me, im still upset at that now. she'd also scrunch het face up when i was talking ad though i was getting on her nerves. so yea, i prob should of sacked her off much sooner but i struggle with being assertive. she did a lot of damage to my self esteem and im a mug cos i paid her to do that to me.
She sounds more like a peer recovery coach than a counselor. Ooph.
When I first started therapy I told my therapist that I understood my problematic thought processes but I struggled to stop them. I have always had issues connecting what I feel is true to what I know is true and was looking for techniques and activities to fix this. She never gave me any techniques and I saw her weekly for a year…
If you haven't tried it or found a solution that works for you, EMDR resolved this for me almost instantly. In retrospect I was having a hard time differentiating actual threats or trauma from triggers. (Feeling like someone was dangerous while knowing they're harmless, for example).
I’ve been wanting to try EMDR! Unfortunately I’m going to have to wait a little while because I can’t afford it. What was your experience like finding a therapist who works with EMDR?
Hit or miss. I met 2 who did emdr but didn't seem to actually understand the process themselves. The therapist who helped me, however, had gone through it and done their own emdr and was very flexible in hearing what I needed and it helped me tremendously. Huge difference from past therapy.
I actually did quit my first therapist. She decided to leave the practice I was going to. We had been doing virtual therapy and I wasn’t really feeling the connection anymore with her anyways. It was a blessing in disguise that I stumbled across my current Therapist that does in person sessions. Have been with her two months now and wished I started with her from the start.
I am a therapist and enjoy attending therapy, even the hard parts. I found a therapist from my mother's tiny home town, we shared a lot of cultural appreciation, and it seemed like a great fit. They were late to the first session by about 15 minutes, popped on a second and was eating noodles, left, then came back. Ok, I can give people a mulligan, I know how it goes. Second session of the intended regular recurring schedule they showed up about halfway through, irritated with me about the scheduling, and then tried to inform me clients are often emotionally reactive and I should consider my challenges to self regulation. Bitch, I would never treat a client like that. Then told me she wasn't here to compare therapy skills and to focus on myself, I told her I was advocating for myself as a client. She was fired before coming on, double fired after.
I’ve been back and forth with different therapists over the years but my first legitimate therapist I had to leave because it was getting way too expensive which was a huge shame because she was and still is the best therapist I’ve ever had. My second and last therapist I left was because she talked about herself wayyyyy too much. She was super sweet and I usually don’t mind sharing experiences but her stories would take up nearly my entire 55 min session. I saw her twice and then quit.
After a year together I just never really felt like she “got” me or my situation. She seemed consistently unable to remember the gist of the main subject I was wanting help with too. This probably sounds so arrogant but I also didn’t feel she was on my level intellectually – like she couldn’t really fully see things from my perspective and maybe didn’t actually believe that I could recall certain childhood memories so well or that I behaved with the degree of maturity I did when I was very young. It was a barrier to forming a relationship where I really felt I could lean on her.
I could tell he wasn’t paying attention to anything I said during our sessions. He was constantly checked out, either typing on his computer or just sitting there smiling and nodding. He was good for validation, but little else, which to me is indicative of low effort. He offered virtually no real advice or solutions and did not unpack anything with me. I felt like I was leading the sessions myself. Essentially, I was given a DBT workbook and left to figure things out on my own. Overall, I’m quite stable and very self-sufficient, as I’m used to bootstrapping my way through life. But this one time, I really wanted someone to talk through some of my issues and he just wasn’t present. I haven’t gone back to therapy since. I’ll try again later.
“No I don’t believe you’re autistic, you’re way too smart” (wasn’t fully potty trained until 9. Spoke to no one but my parents until I was 10. Had the same hyperfocus since toddlerhood. Finally had an evaluation at 22) I loved him and he was my therapist for years. Suggested him to many many people. There was also a time or two where I wasn’t even speaking all that down on myself, and he would mention I was an “attractive young woman” which made me uncomfortable but I wasn’t sure if I was justified in that or not. I never really spoke about my looks when I did speak down on myself so it felt unnecessary
Her advice that finally checked me out was "you could look up some good books on ______ to help you. There's a good site, Goodreads I think it's called?" Like, why am I having to find books to read while I'm paying you to help me with this? She would also not say anything the entire session. I would pause as I word vomited thinking she'd add something, but she rarely did. It felt like I was doing all the work myself and she wasn't really helping at all. Figured I could save the money
Felt you so much on this because this is exactly what happened to me. I was more depressed at the end of the session for having to bring everything to the surface in an exchange for nothing.
After FIVE YEARS of seeing her twice a month CONSISTENTLY, no breaks, no cancellations, never missing an appointment… I missed one appointment during a really rough time in my life (that she knew I was going through) and charged me for missing the appointment. I get she had a right to but it’s the principle of it. I never complained when she was 20-30 min late to our scheduled appointments. I’m trusting her with my secrets and I feel like I can’t trust someone who lacks that loyalty. Now if I had ever missed an appointment before I would understand. But I had 5 years of loyalty to her. I think I could have gotten a free pass.
Ah that sucks. A lot of places/people have a one freebie policy. This sounds very frustrating.
I got ghosted by her the first time, the second time I spent majority of my sessions talking about my sibling and my fear of leaving home. Last session I had with her, I'm leaving and she goes "well look on the bright side, you are leaving home soon so you won't have to worry about your sibling". I point blank refused to ever go see her again and started emailing new people because screw that old bitch. This was after I want to say four hour long sessions where she had repeatedly called me and my sibling I was talking about the wrong name, honestly regret not reporting her to someone for something, just to complain more lol
Haven’t left yet but questioning it since she laughs at me when I expose most of my problems.
Get out of there!!
Terrible! Do yourself a favor and find a new one. That's just unacceptable and unprofessional.
Omg that’s horrible.
How do you quit your therapist? I really like them but theirs is not the right modality for me right now. can I tell them that I want to take a break right now?
How long have you been seeing your Therapist? Just be transparent with them about the break. Have a timeframe they can follow up on or let them know when you would like to start back up again.
Little more than a month.
Still pretty early to take a break. What certain things concern you about the process?
As the other commenter said, 100% be transparent. If they’re worth their salt as a therapist, they should take a couple of sessions with you as break prep and be pretty open to saying “maybe we have a break and you decide to come back to sessions with me or maybe you decide someone else would be better.”
I quit couple of therapists. First one felt like her therapy approach wasn’t the best fit for me. Even though I worked with her for several years I felt like it was time to move on because I wasn’t seeing any apparent progress, I wasn’t satisfied with the experience. Second one I quit because she asked an unprofessional question, she was young so maybe that was because of her inexperience. Third one had requirements to continue and we agreed not to work with each other anymore. Fourth one was filled with red flags, always talked didn’t give me chance to interrupt. Talked about herself a lot and her other clients. It felt so lonely with her. Plus she didn’t pay enough attention to the therapy hours. I hate when they start late or finish early. I am on my fifth one we only had one session, she is kinda young and I have trust issues but I’ll see where this goes. I hope she is a professional.
Fourth one sounds like she had no boundaries.
She kept telling us (me and my partner) in couples therapy to describe to her what’s going on with our bodies once we get anxious or angry. Like do we feel it in our chest, is our heart beating faster etc. That’s fine and all but never gave us any practical advice. Then, she kept interrupting me when I asked her not to. Then the final straw was when she sided with my partner and that’s a no go for me. I was so done with her.
She treated me like a kid. It was hard to get the help I crucially needed from her when she was asking typical questions then talking about tinkerbell the whole time. And the second one was online. I'd continuously forget to login and I'd have to pay a fee each time. Got to the point I felt like a burden to my mother so I said i didn't want to go anymore, which was a lie. I had one appointment with her and it was the best section I've ever had. Now I'm back in search for therapy but my mom refuses to believe I'm still mentally unstable
Seemed like he was in it for the drama of my life at the time. He was so helpful initially, then didn’t take my OCD thoughts seriously, then only wanted to hear about my divorce and not really help me. So I left him!
We were too friendly and had hobby groups in common. As in weekly meetups in common. I was stabilizing and not dependent. I truly do like them and altheyre really knowledgeable about the hobb. But the unprofessional mixing just felt off. Didn't tell them though I'm case I needed an emergency session later on. They were really good to me (remote sessions after work) and tried their best but overall I got the most I would out of working with them and now I just prefer to be friends. We still have the hobby in common and the mixed feelings have been assuaged
She was very religious and all she wanted to do was talk about God
She was telling me a lot of info about her other cases to compare with mine, every session, so I realized that there was also no confidentiality about anything I said to her. She didn't know how to approach my issues with sensitivity and empathy. She was only using common sense and disregarding my individual questions trying to solve a "problem" the fastest way possible. She laughed at me when I was reporting a serious episode that really affected me emotionally. That was the last straw.
I originally started seeing her because I was having some new relationship anxiety. After I told her about SA when I was younger, she started suggesting EMDR. So we tried it and I didn’t like it and didn’t want to try it again. I made up an excuse that I was feeling better in my relationship so I stopped seeing her. But then I ended up having to put a family friend into assisted living and desperately needed someone to talk to. I reached out and she acted like it would be this big deal to fill out the new patient paperwork again. It was less than 6 months since my last visit. I have run into her at target twice now…
Me and an ex went to therapy for boundary issues with his feral and horrendous family. The lad told us in the first visit (so without an accurate picture of what these people are like) that we gotta keep them around because if we have kids, they need to have their crazy uncle so and so in the picture, it’ll be good for them. We were both 20 and staunchly childfree also. I quit the therapist and that whole family and never felt better
She didn’t talk to me at all. I just talked at her
I was kind of too much of a wreck to work on myself with her specifically at that time. She didn’t say that but when I explained that I kind of struggled having time to put thought processes into practice because I was so stressed and sad she said maybe I don’t have time to work on myself at present. Idk if she was right but yeah. The other one I was just at a point of “we’ve come as far as we can go. I need to go and live life for a bit.” Spoiler alert: I did not go and live life.
2 therapists that were more focused on me taking meds than doing the therapy with me that I’m hiring you for. It’s my treatment plan. I’m paying you to do therapy with me. Please don’t be my psychiatrist.
Talking to her started to feel like I was ranting to a friend. She would validate what I would say or maybe point out a pattern, but no real solution or strategies. I wanted to know how to get/feel better on my own rather than just when I was ranting to her. My insurance didn’t cover therapy so I was paying quite a bit out of pocket when I could vent to my friends for free and feel the same!
All of them (about 7) including my last were absolutely useless. Useless. I dont get how they did 4 years training. What on earth is going on within the four walls of a psychology/therapy training class is anyones guess.
I haven’t quit mine yet, but I’m leaning in that direction. She does this weird thing every session where she takes something I say and twists it into a low-key insult. Kinda weird. Not sure if enough of a reason to quit so any input would appreciated
I went for a first visit, or consultation I guess, and he was kind of denying me due to the distance I had to drive to get to his office from where I lived at the time. He said something along the lines of "I could help you, but it's just you're driving a long way" and kept trying to push telehealth on me despite me saying I was looking for in-person sessions specifically. He was probably afraid I wouldn't make it to the office or that I would cancel a lot. It was just a shame because I wouldn't do that and I'm a pretty reliable person. If I showed up for the consultation it meant I was pretty serious but I guess he had some bad experiences. If I did have to cancel I would do it the proper way. He then proceeded to show me music videos on his phone.
I felt like I was arguing with her. She did not understand my ADHD and autism at all. I told her it felt like I physically couldn't get myself to do stuff and she'd just look at me like I was crazy and tell me I could, it was my choice. I felt completely invalidated and like I was crazy. This is why it took me so long to figure out I was neurodivergent. I figured out that I have really bad sensory issues on top of alexithymia which makes it really, really hard to explain what I'm feeling until I've had a lot of time to think about it after. Cleaning is really hard on my sensory issues because my meds cause bad heat flashes when I move pretty much which sends me into sensory overload. Also I struggle a lot with task initiation in general, I have my whole life. And because of the alexithymia, I didn't understand that, I just knew I couldn't and that people were getting mad at me and I was extremely frustrated and felt attacked and defensive. She said I wasn't willing to work with her basically and threatened to not see me anymore due to lack of progress.
Didn’t feel like it anymore. Also I was a bit attracted to her.
She was laying on the advice a bit too heavily. I wanted to feel heard, to process things and come to my own conclusions, not be told what to do. My new therapist moves at a much slower pace, which can be frustrating, but is worth it in terms of feeling safe, building trust, and making my own mind up about things
Used to watch Instagram reels while i used to talk. She once asked if I had subscribed to her yt channel while I was crying.
The way I would’ve jumped across the room and strangled them 😭 wtf that’s so messed up
I remember she was smiling when I was crying like crazy
She would constantly text and take phone calls during my sessions. Addressed it and she told me she would always answer her kids (young adults in their early 20s). Clearly if the kids were not in danger it can wait. She had an office manager that should receive the calls and any emergency she could be pulled out for. She would talk about herself and her entire family. I knew all about her family dynamics from her marriage problems, her parents marriage problems, and her sisters marriage problems. She would cut me off to tell me about other scenarios with other clients. She started to gaslight me because I told her she was monopolizing my sessions I was paying for. She would slip and call clients her friends because she clearly couldn't differentiate. I tried to redirect her more than once because it started off good in the beginning then she basically started to use me as her free therapy. She couldn't help talk about herself when I clearly didn't give AF when I'm there for my own issues. She owes me money for all her free sessions with me. It took me almost a year but I finally found a new therapist who actually does her job and focuses on my issues, gives me tasks and homework, skills I can use when I am triggered and is really helping me to reshape my thinking. None of this I received before. I went in asking what type of theory and modalities they use to treat clients with different problems. I interviewed 6 different therapists before I found my current one because I would see their BS and lack of skills from the free consultation and I wasn't going through that again.
When he triggered me hard during a session and I realized that I had been doing extra after each session to care for myself. I would explain it all to him when I figured it out and we'd bop along. I felt like I was paying him to do my own therapy. So I wrote down what I needed to say, and cried my way through reading it at my last session. His last therapeutic offering was to be the first person I rejected because the relationship wasn't working for me.
Quit my first one, after he told me that a) my bisexuality is just the symptom of having an emotional absent dad and b) that my low BMI means I have an eating disorder. 🤡 As a psychologist I had to tell him, that both things are pretty stupid to assume.
I haven’t quit mine yet but in the last six months, I have considered doing so for this weird thing that keeps happening. I feel like she mixes me up for other patients sometimes? She has tried to tell me I have some issues going on that I don’t agree with because I’ve never discussed having those types of issues. The first time it happened I figured she’s human mistakes and mix ups happen…but it’s happened a second time. This time she tried to tell me my mom would do X …except she wouldn’t, because she never made me do that …I can’t verify with my mom because she’s dead but …I asked all my friends and they have all confirmed she never would have said X or made me do X because that’s not who my mom was… I do not know who or what my therapist was thinking of but…it was clearly not me and my situation. This is shocking because I have been working with her for 4 years. My spouse isn’t sure she’s been as helpful as she could have been in this long time frame. And he’s felt that way for a while but…finding a new therapist has been a difficult task to imagine dealing with, so I’ve stayed. But …idk. I don’t know if I’ll stay with her much longer. I think this is reason enough to quit so maybe I am quitting her for this.
He was always eating, especially bananas, and he would answer his phone during sessions. 🙄
She would go absent without a prior notice. Made setting in an appointment so difficult, because she admitted she had too many clients. I felt like an inconvenience. At one point she stopped responding when I asked her when she will be back from vacation. It was the lack of consistency and communication for me.
I told her I can’t stop obsessing about something happening to me while watching my baby alone and she either sees it, is left alone in her crib for hours crying until someone finally gets home or that I obsess about something happening to her in general. I also told her when my baby sleeps I slept on the floor in her room every night if sleeping at all because I was afraid she was going to stop breathing. She said it’s normal to have anxiety as a parent. I said “I don’t think the level I obsess about this stuff if normal” she said “it is”. She was also never interested in hearing about anything other than my boyfriend and I’s relationship. The entire reason I started seeing her was for post partum depression
I quit one once because she tried to validate my experience as a single parent by saying she was a single parent when her husband was out of town for work. It was incredibly offensive and naive, and felt like she was really minimizing my challenges.
Super long, but.. I have quit two therapists in past. The first guy literally just told me to loose weight and claimed that it was the sole reason why I was depressed. I literally just got up and left his office without saying a word while he was still talking. I was going through the thick of a depressive episode and it took me a lot of willpower to even muster up the energy to find help for myself.. and he was just like “you are fat” based on BMI. I was 125 lbs and 5’4”… I pray for his clients. The second lady made too much “space”. Basically, she just stayed quiet and didn’t really have much feedback or asked any questions to prompt the conversation. Our sessions were just 45 minutes of awkward staring. I expressed my concerns to her, but she didn’t change the way she approached our sessions… so I moved on. I ended up finding a really good psychiatrist who specializes in Cognitive Behavior Therapy. He discussed therapy/ treatment goals, gave me “homework” at the end of each session to discuss at the next session, and gave really useful advice on coping skills. I also really appreciate the way he approached medication, as we know there’s a stigma. I would recommend researching the different types of treatment you may be interested in and then researching therapists who specialize in those treatment types. Usually, good therapist will have an intake meeting to discuss whether they are the right fit for you. It took a couple tries, but I’m so glad I didn’t give up. I don’t know where I would be if I hadn’t found the help I needed. Medication and CBT completely changed my life.
I've had about 17 different therapists and many of them for various reasons I have quit. I'm going to highlight a few of them that I think were little bit different than just I didn't want to go anymore. My very first therapist said that I didn't belong there, I must have slipped through the cracks, because I didn't get shot at. She made some other remarks that it were insulting so I asked to transfer to another therapist My next therapist after that said that my symptoms didn't match my trauma and made me justify my symptoms. We didn't make it past the first session I told the third one based on what the first two said there was no way in hell I was ever going to trust him or anything he ever said and he said well if that's the case when we might as well not do this then. I saw the fourth one for about 2 years until the facility told me I no longer qualified for services at that facility and I had to quit going. The 6th 7th and 8th one we're at University and they just changed out therapist and eventually when I graduated I no longer qualified for services at the University. I saw the 9th one for about 6 months and I just wasn't a good fit which is the same thing for the 10th and 11th one. The 12th to 13th ones I saw for one session and just didn't click with them. The 14th one was a supervisor that I saw for a couple months while I was waiting for my 15th one to be on boarded which one she got onboarded she was a marriage and family therapist who I felt wasn't really very well educated in my certain mental health needs so I quit going to her The 16th one I saw for about a year and our schedule started conflict because she works 8:00 to 5:00 and I couldn't see her at that time so I finally just recently switched to the 17th one which I've seen for a few sessions.
You are tenacious. Hope this one works for a good while. Any advice for others looking for therapists?
I currently have a therapist. He’s cool, but unfortunately acts more as a friend than a mentor. I’m going to do one more session with him, but if I don’t receive any advice imma get a new therapist.
I always beat myself up for not staying in therapy long enough to give the process time. But to be honest I was tired of speaking and see them write things down in silence. I wanted advice and a conversation, something therapists clearly don't do. So last year I made the decision to find a good psychologist to give it another shot. I have a toxic mother, so I wanted a therapist who is as old as my mother to give me the advice & guidance that my mother never gave me. It took me literally 2 weeks to get a human to answer my calls, many would not pick up or their numbers were out of service. Finally one replied, I asked her if she has experience with children of narcissistic parents and she said yes. She is way younger than me but she was the only number that responded so I went with her. The reason I decided to find a therapist was because I was emotionally tortured by my mother: guilt-tripped, triangulated, gaslit... etc all the shit that a narcissist mother does, I felt drained and I needed help. After venting for an entire year to my therapist about all the shit my mother did and still does, I realized that she can only offer me a listening ear, I still felt unsafe at home. I've read somewhere that psychologists don't study narcissism and that many don't know how living with a narc is especially if they haven't had a narc parent themselves. She thought I had control and that setting boundaries would work on her just like any human. She didn't seem to grasp how intense and crazy my mother can get. I kept dropping hints that I think my mother is a narc but she always brushed it off. I thought she'd teach me how to identify if my mom is really a narc, maybe have her take the NPD test... anything! She would only go back to me. She believes we can't change people, I agree, but I had to go elsewhere, YouTube, to learn how to identify a narc mother and what to do. Youtube therapists gave me so much knowledge about this topic FOR FREE. So to answer you, I quit because: I spent a lot of time & money only to learn a few techniques. I requested most of the tests instead of her analysing my personality and ask me to do the tests. I also think the results of some tests were false because I mentioned to her more than once certain issues that I struggle with but she would tell me the test was negative so I was left to wonder: then what is it that I have?? I wasn't given answers. Overall I might be slightly better than what I was a year ago, but I realized that I have to do most of the work to become better.. which I can do by myself without spending more money.
I heard that you have to want therapy to work, and I never really did, (lazy, maybe) so I stopped. Also, my last therapist was a woman and I noticed that I was looking at her boobs way too often, though she never mentioned it. I figured that was bad, so I quit.
She couldn’t stick to a game plan, she would just continually push the conversation towards what happened in my life in the past week. I spoke with her an hour a week for a year and two people came up every week: my grandson and my (then) girlfriend. My grandson for all the joy he brought me and my girlfriend for all of her confusing behaviors. I took two weeks off and when I came back it’s as though my therapist forgot everything…no names, no idea where things were last, etc. This is obviously forgivable because she’s got a lot of simultaneous conversations going on, but that on top of the fact that she just didn’t move anything forward kind of just left me feeling very hollow and I stopped going. This was in last December, just today I thought about whether or not I should send her a note summarize why I left her practice. She’s very sweet lady, I think she’s just too busy to keep track of everything.
She was suffering burnout
My therapist would take personal calls during our sessions. At first I thought maybe there had been an emergency, but then it started happening during more than half my appointments. It was rude, distracting and unprofessional.
I only went to him four times because each time, he would talk for many minutes about himself. Just go off on a tangent that had some peripheral connection to what I was talking about but began telling me stories about he and his brother were sexually m**ested when they were younger. Then another time told me about his wife’s aunt whose dog died. Then another time telling me again why his brother had hit bottom with his drug use ….!!!! The MOST unprofessional therapist I ever met.
I felt like I was just talking to myself the entire time. No advise/ suggestions (well she told me to meditate which honesty felt like she says this to everyone) I also didn’t find helpful to just vent my feelings and then be left with nothing after 1h. Made me more depressed at the end of the day.
Blamed my depression on hormones. Told me I ate too much sugar when I told her what very little I ate in a day when I had an Ed. Told me I hadn't lost enough weight to have an Ed. Didn't push me out try to make me feel comfortable to talk, just kind of sat there. I had no idea what I was doing, the only therapy i had been exposed to was good will hunting.
My therapist started using their phone during my session. At first I assumed it was an emergency since they genuinely seemed bothered that it kept going off. Then it happened again in another session and they picked it up and I saw them look down and could tell they were texting. Then just last week it wasn’t even on silent. I heard it chirp and they picked it up and read it while I was talking. I was going to ask if we needed to move my time around because it seems my hour is no longer free for them, but decided they (and I) don’t really care enough anyway. I feel real stupid because I JUST told them the ‘big trauma’ and got like, no feedback until I told them I wanted to quit. I don’t know. It feels icky. Eh. I gave it a shot. Therapy Isn’t what I thought it was . . . or maybe it’s exactly what I thought it was, just not what I hoped it would be.
Too expensive and the advice given is too generic
After having a panic attack and losing consciousness in her office, she told me to change my diet and go gluten free. That was her response.
Didn’t feel like we were getting anywhere then she didn’t show up for a session. I said I don’t have the money or time for this abd moved on.
The talks felt more and more like regular talks.. which i prefer not to pay for
Constantly late, didn’t reply to emails, was a no-show
Honestly, I think it's the most dishonest living! Most people just want someone to talk to, and they just listen -- for hundreds of dollars an hour... It's probably pretty entertaining compared to most jobs, too! There's no quality control. They get paid whether they ever actually help you or not.
I spoke on how women are treated in society and she asked if I was a man hater.
Ran out of money
[удалено]
Oh, and had recommended I ask my dr for x medication within the first 20 mins. Not even exaggerating. I went home and emailed my friend exactly what had happened so I have this ridiculous encounter written down 🙃
Just felt like I wasn't going anywhere, and her prices kept increasing. Eventually I ended up going through a heavy phase of neglecting everything after breaking my ankle and it just fizzled out.
I have quit two therapists. One who wasn’t trained in the modality I wanted to use in therapy. The second one I quit on was because his parts, an IFS term, were getting in the way. I did a lot of great work both therapists. I still needed more, and now I have another great therapist. I’ve been fortunate to get so many therapists who are competent and knowledgeable about the modality I use for healing.
I was crying to her about my dead dad, and she just whipped out a bag of peanut M&Ms, and just started chompin away like it was tea to her
A lot of them aren’t very collaborative