Therapists I Could Live Without

[anni]

Hi!

Wow. Bad therapists.

One completely insisted on ignoring my PTSD traumas and wanted to 'go back to the beginning'. She absolutely, completely insisted I'd been sexually abused by my father as a child! INSISTED! She said she 'knew what to look for' and I was in denial. WHOA, what?? I told her until I was blue in the face that I at least knew the reason I was so gullible with men is that I trusted them too much because my father was completely dependable, and that my parents had such a good relationship that I assumed all men would treat me well! Nope- she bitched at me for a few sessions about denial and I filed a complaint and quit her stupid practice. Many PTSD suffers were abused as children, but I am not one of them. Geesh!

Another therapist insisted alll men are suspect, and all women are secretly bi-sexual and wouldn't I have better luck in relationships if I accepted 'my' bisexualality' and dated women? I'm not making this up! SHE ended up leaving her husband and children for her teenaged gay lover.Nice for her but I'm also not bisexual.

So by now I'm a sexually abused child who is secretly bisexual? The next therapist gained my confidence by of course condeming the practices of the other 2, then told me I needed more responsibility ( at the time, had 3 small children, worked a full time job and THREE part time jobs....) and should go buy myself a house. Sigh. HE had just gotten his real-estate liscence. That is completely true.

The good therapist did wonderful work with me and I am very grateful. He retired and I just assumed it's my avoidance issues which have been precluding finding another one. After this thread reminded me of the Fruitcakes and Fruitloops I've been to maybe it's plain old distrust!

Someone should compile these into a book to be required reading in every aspiring therapists educational process. Thanks for the thread and take care!

Anni

 

[Diana]

Bad Apples

I'm also glad this thread was started. This is not a subject I've often heard about from others, though clearly just about everyone has had a less than stellar therapist. Anni is right that there ought to be a book, and make it required reading! I'm very grateful that most of my therapists were great, but because we moved around so much with the military I was jumping from one to the next. A few bad apples were inevitable.

One told me I had no hope of recovering if I didn’t get back to church. I can certainly see how church would help a good many, but it was not a good place for me – just like one kind of medicine will work for one person but will make another person sick. I was eight years old when my teacher, a nun, trotted me off to confession after I told her what the neighbor man had been doing to me. Life just kind of went downhill after that.

As an adult I was actually in the hospital on the east coast, suicidal and getting treatment, when the therapist assigned to me starting telling me about her experiences and asking me for advice. The doctor assigned to the group I was a part of at that time told one lady she was depressed because deep down she hated her children. For the sake of argument let’s say she did harbor a hatred for her children: How in the world did she benefit from being told that in front of a group of strangers, and how did the group benefit from hearing that?

Never being one to wait patiently for my turn, I told her it sounded like she hated herself for all the stuff that had happened to her and then for all the unhealthy stuff she’d done to cope, and that this was manifesting itself in the way she treated her children. Even so, she didn’t sound like she “hated” her children so much as she hated herself and was projecting that hate onto others. It seemed to me that if she could find a way to like herself she would then see things about her children she liked and would treat them (and herself) accordingly. The doctor said I’d oversimplified it, but within a few minutes the room was abuzz with stories and sharing, a few people were even laughing, and the doctor was just sitting there with nothing to do.

The best part of that experience for me was that it had me looking at myself in a different way. Here I was telling this woman how it seemed to be while I had no idea what was going on with myself. As soon as I spoke to her I thought, “Wait it minute. That applies to me, too.” In a way it was good the doctor said something stupid because it got everyone started, even if by default, in a new and positive direction. Of course we had to address how we treated others, but that would never change if we didn’t first address how we treated ourselves.

The worst therapist I ever had was on the west coast. He told me I could call him day or night. So I called him on a Thursday night and said I was doing very badly and needed to go to the hospital. He said to wait until Monday when I had an appointment with him. I went to work Friday but barely made it through. By Saturday I couldn’t deal anymore and started looking for someone to take the kids because my husband was deployed. I didn’t find anyone and barely made it to Monday. I went to the clinic to see a doctor first because I had a horrible headache, something I’d not had before. She said it was the anti-depressant I was on and changed it. Then I went to see my therapist.

He was really mad, saying I’d screwed up his schedule for the entire day. I didn’t know what he was talking about until I saw the sheriff who was there to take me to the hospital. They shackled me and took me away in full view of my coworkers (I worked across the street from the counseling office). My kids were held at Social Services while they looked for a foster home.

Needless to say I lost my job because of that, and I lost it needlessly because the doctor at the hospital said I’d be fine once the other medication kicked in, which was true. She released me the same day I was taken in by the sheriff. She also was the only reason I got my kids back that day; otherwise it would’ve been a horrendous and long process. Apparently my therapist had sent one too many patients to the hospital without due cause. The doctor I saw in the hospital filed a complaint against my therapist, and I had a new one by the end of the week. I never saw him again, but I don’t know if he was fired or just sent elsewhere.

In the interest of fairness, the best therapist I ever had once asked me (with reference to why I didn’t speak up when others treated me badly), “What is the payoff?” It took me several weeks to wrap my mind around the question, much less answer it. The answer was that I had so little love in my life I couldn’t risk displeasing anyone and thus losing their “love.” I honestly didn’t know I was being shown disdain, not love. I soon realized I could live without their “love,” thank you very much, and learned to keep company with those who really did love me and treat me well.

 

[hapa_gurl87]

I think I already posted a thread here but I just feel like venting again it makes me feel good and that all that really matters. Well the worst advice I ever got from my therapist was to go back to my high school to share my story to get closure over what happened there over four years ago well she ruined my life doing that and i want to hate on her and blame her for that because I'm still angry and I want peace and joy like I had before I followed through on her idea. They say no one can ruin your life but yourself well I think thats not always true. My therapist may have not ruined my life because I'm still alive and pushing forward but she set me back hella bad and im mad at her because of that and until the day I find peace of mind body and spirit and i can laugh and smile and feel good inside than i might just forgive her but until than i wont i deserve more than to be retraumatized she cant fix that what she did she cant fix and thats her fault because shes a therapist and she was the cause of my trauma so I am pissed!!!!!!!

 

[cragger65]

I've had some shitty experiences, like everyone else it seems. This one happened to one of the women I was in the hospital with though. They offered group therapy one day a week to in-patients, and it was the first time for both me and another woman in at the same time.

She opened up in group and told of how she had been molested by her own father growing up, and now that her daughter was getting about to the age she was when this all began, he was phoning her all the time, trying to get her to bring her over to his place. Sick ****.

She was in tears and shaking, and the asshole running the group makes a freaking JOKE about it. I could have ****ing KILLED him, the look on my face was pretty plain. He just shrugs at me as if to so, "Oh well, I thought it was funny". Piece of shit.

Stupid me, I continued on into out patient group and got torn to shreds by ANOTHER asshole there. The hospital here is a sick mini-culture, run by absolutely inhuman pieces of shit. I lodged complaints, but it all just gets swept under the carpet. That just makes me so mad!!!!

 

[onebravegirl]

A month after an unsuccessful prescription drug overdose (suicide attempt) I wanted to do it again. A family friend took me to an emergency room at a huge Hospital here in the city. They sat me in this quiet little room and I waited. Crying, rocking back and forth scratching my arms raw. This young Intern comes in and I explain how I am wanting to die and I am so afraid and that I knew I needed Real HELP. (I hadn't been diagnosed yet.). I showed him the three bottles of antidepressants full of pills and said I was afraid if I was left alone I would take them all. He walked out and left me there for 1/2 an hour, came back and said "Well, it is Christmas night and we get alot of suicide attempts this time of year, so until you actually overdose, we can't help you".
O

 

[Tinyflame]

Hi onebravegirl,

-So much for 'an ounce of prevention'. :(

Main thing thing is, good thing you're still here, despite that.

 

[onebravegirl]

Hi onebravegirl,

-So much for 'an ounce of prevention'. :(

Main thing thing is, good thing you're still here, despite that.

Ha! Yep, I discovered that being Pissed off can help you live longer!
Maybe it was a shock tactic. Who knows.
O

 

[Tinyflame]

Lol- onebravegirl, you are both funny AND intelligent

Ya, a shock you came out of it so well, despite him.-
Good for you.- :occasion:

 

[raku]

Great topic!

I think that the therapeutic community tends to go through fads and trends, just like any other profession. It's also been my experience that individual therapists like to see themselves as having a specialty, something that they're particularly good at treating and which as a result they tend to look for in all of their clients, even when it isn't there. :-(

My own therapists have been a mixed bag. A couple were pretty good, a few were terrible. Vent!

The first terrible one was the school social worker, Mrs. F, that I had to see when I was 7. She sat me down and told me that my mother was a bad mother because she worked outside the home (this was a few decades ago). I pointed out that Mrs. F herself worked outside the home. Mrs. F said that she wouldn't work if she had children. Then Mrs. F shouted at me to admit that I was angry at my mother: admit it! ADMIT IT! Wow, lady, trying to turn a 7-year-old against her own mommy. Bright move.

The second terrible therapist also came from school. In high school I was so depressed that one of my teachers arranged for me to get counseling with the school psychologist, Mrs. R. Mrs. R was sympathetic with my complaints until the day I told her that my (male) guidance counselor had tried to blackmail me into going out with him (I was 17, a minor). "Stop lying about my colleague," Mrs. R said. I said I wasn't lying. "Yes. You. Are." said Mrs. R.

And after that, every time I told Mrs. R about something nasty my parents had done, Mrs. R accused me of lying. I began skipping sessions. The really silly part? On my last day of schooL, I asked Mrs. R to autograph my yearbook. Without smiling, she refused, turned her back and walked away. I was devastated. I knew I had done something horribly wrong, was a horrible person, because even my therapist hated me. This happened back in the 1970's, back when Freudians claimed that adult sexual predation of minors was only a fantasy.

The last terrible therapist was the most recent, and she's the reason I finally gave up on therapy. Some close friends recommended Mrs. T as the best therapist ever.

Our first session, when I told her that my schizophrenic sister had abused me, Mrs. T launched into a tirade about this third world culture where it was normal for boys to molest their younger sisters, and so everything was relative. Huh?

Our second session, she tried recovered memory therapy through hypnosis. We ended up having a shouting match about whether or not I had had memories about being molested at nursery school. I said "no" while Mrs. T tried to bully me into admitting that I had. When that didn't work, Mrs. T announced that some people just couldn't be properly hypnotized, and I was clearly one of those people. Then she changed the topic.

It just went downhill from there. Mrs. T liked to go out to dinner with her clients. She told me that the prohibition against socializing with clients was meant to protect the therapist from clients who weren't mature enough to deal with it, but it was okay to socialize with clients who could. So of course I wanted to be one who could, right?

Her temper began to frighten me. Mrs. T could go from 1 to 10 awfully fast, and as time went by she had fewer and fewer inhibitions about yelling at me. Eventually, I just wanted to get away from her, but was afraid to quit. Instead I told her that she was such a good therapist that my issues were all resolved and I was ready to taper off therapy.

Our last session, she blocked the room's only exit with her body, and insisted that I promise her all sorts of things about how I would live the next few years of my life. I promised her everything, meaning none of it, and finally she stepped aside and let me out the door. Whew!

It's pretty unpleasant to realize that I hand over my power to such people. I stayed with Mrs. T for 3 years. Kudos to everyone on the forum who did have the guts to say "no" after that first session. Wish I had.

I also wish that all those therapists who did so much harm would admit it and apologize to their victims. But that isn't going to happen.

 

[canucklady]

I was sent to therapist by insurance company, her office was in her home..ok I could handle that. except that she had like 3 cats and am allergic to cats, I told her that and she just said sorry cant help you then...so just turned around and walked out.

 

[cragger65]

onebravegirl,

I can relate to that story as well. After an overdose attempt, I panicked and went to the hospital. The pumped my stomach, fed me charcoal, I passed out for 18 hours. When I woke up, the nurse asked me what happened, I told her I was coming apart at the seams and wanted to die. She nodded, jotted a short note down on her clip-board and sent me home. That was it. Odd that hospitals that are supposed to be about preserving life don't seem to put much value on it.

 

[onebravegirl]

I think that they are too inept to know who is serious and who is not. At the time and looking back years later, they were right in my case. A serious gamble though. But some of us made it through! So happy You did too!:Hug_emoticon:
O