General Publics Reaction

Months ago, right after the final session with my ex T, I had posted on Quora (a site to ask anonymous questions where many have talked about therapy and attachment issues). At that time, as you guys probably know, I was very distraught and dealing with a lot of shock and grief. Looking back, I shouldn’t have phrased the question the way I did, saying “my therapists abandoned me.” However, I did ask how I could forgive myself, which I think illustrated my own guilt and responsibility I know I need to own up to. I didn’t look at the responses for awhile, in party because I had forgotten about it. I just came across the question I had posted after looking something else up on quora and the responses were very hard to read, some confirming my deepest fears about myself and my ex T - such as that I’m crazy and must’ve scared the @&$! out of her. I’m not fishing for affirmations from you guys that I’m none of these things, but I was just curious if that is how most therapists feel in such a situation? Because they might understand where the client is coming from, that they mean no harm, do they typically have more empathy for the client and feel less alarmed? I’m scared this wasn’t just a general public’s reaction (who didn’t know my situation or my T), but how most therapists would feel in the same situation. Some seemed pretty understanding/not shocked, but many showed very strong, negative opinions. I’m trying to hold onto my the way my T acted in our last session, crying and showing a lot of empathy, but this was extremely hard for me to read.

If people are so inclined to read it, here is a link:

My therapist abandoned me because I drove by her house. I went from seeing her 2x week to 0. How do I forgive myself? - Quora

I’m really sorry you were upset by what you read.

The responses are typical, I’d say. Some were compassionate, some were moderate, some were harsh. Different people, different opinions. The important response belongs to your therapist and she let you know how she felt by terminating.

Though please remember - the action you are judging yourself so harshly for did not occur in a vacuum. You were in therapy and your therapist was knowingly or unknowingly tweaking all types of feelings and impulses. You were in a very intense, very ambiguous situation and had a lapse in judgment. You weren’t a random person she met at a store. Be gentle on yourself.

I actually came across this by chance on Quora a few days ago. I went through all the responses and I'm noticing they tend to go from one extreme to the other. I don't agree with those who claimed your T didn't "abandon" you because you violated a boundary. In my opinion, she did abandon you by terminating treatment so abruptly. I can't remember if she referred you to someone else, but I seem to recall you not having more than one termination session? At the end of the day, "abandonment" in psychotherapy is just another technical term like transference and countertransference. I think that many of the people who replied took the word at its most literal meaning and didn't consider it from a therapeutic point of view.

I also think you received a lot of replies (especially the particularly harsh ones) from people who didn't seem as familiar with the therapeutic alliance. I recall someone saying that therapists are like dentists or doctors and I think that is very limiting as it doesn't take into account how intimate the relationship can get. Also, a lot of people who treat their therapists the same way as their other physicians probably don't have attachment issues, so it may be hard for them to understand the need to feel closer. I felt that the responses which acknowledged that were far more balanced (and kinder too).

I'd like to think that most competent therapists wouldn't label someone as "crazy" or "threatening" for doing what you did. I'd like to think that they would be more understanding of what drives a person to feel a need for connection. So yes, in essence, I think a good therapist would have more empathy for such a client even if they felt the need to refer them to someone else.

Try not to feel too bad about the responses. Some of them are harsh and unkind for sure, but they lack context. And sometimes people have to go through similar feelings of attachment in order to understand what it's like. I really don't think that the responses are a good indicator of how other therapists would feel in this situation.

And for the record, I have the urge to get closer to my T too. And although I haven't walked past his house, I certainly did a lot of "digging" which goes way beyond what's acceptable. And I feel a lot of shame about it too, but on days when I'm trying to be kinder, I remind myself that I'm not a bad person for needing/seeking connection. I am just trying to make up for what i lacked when I was growing up.

You have two potential outcomes with your issue about forgiving yourself for this: One is you do, and the other is you don't.
In terms of what is best for you and your life, the hands-down answer would appear to be that the end result for you is that you find a path to self-forgiveness. You can either spend the rest of your life believing you are less-than/shameful/undeserving/creepy/non-acceptable, or you can find self-forgiveness and self-compassion and get on with the business of working towards living your best life.

What other people think here (or there) doesn't matter one tiny bit. With regards to your ability to forgive yourself, that is all between you and you. You are the one that has to live with you. You are the one that makes the choices that affect your life and how you feel about yourself.

I would urge you to not go back to that site. I would urge you not to seek others opinions about it anymore. Negative responses only lead you further away from self-forgiveness and self-compassion, and I urge you to make choices that lead you towards it, instead. How other people judge you - a complete stranger to them - can affect you terribly, but their opinions and feelings about it are utterly irrelevant. It is only you that you need to make peace with, and for the sake of your own self it is so important that you do.

You are human, You are fallible. You are forgivable! You are no better or worse than the rest of us.

Well said, I agree with all this

I basically take every response online with a grain of salt and decide what's best for me in the end. They don't know you, they don't know your mind or your heart or your T. All you can do is, what is best for you going forward

I feel odd giving you this information, since I think it's likely to upset you. However, I don't believe in infantilizing people, and when I personally ask people what they think, I want them to be honest. That said, the therapists I worked with at a previous job would not have been of a mindset where empathy for the client would be uppermost in their minds if the client did what you did. The empathy would be for their fellow therapist, whom they would see as a victim. Their own fears of having their privacy violated would be aroused, and compassion and empathy for the client just isn't something I can see even occurring to them. They wouldn't assume you meant no harm, they would assume you were intensely infatuated and that such an obsession could lead to harm. Essentially, they would have felt very threatened and "reacted." I have no idea if the therapists I have known are representative of therapists in general.

Wow. How was your relationship with her otherwise? I don’t know the whole story, but I can honestly say I’m shocked she terminated over this. I’ve driven by my Ts house. He knew, because I texted him and told him, and he just laughed. I’ve also been IN *all* of my Ts houses at some point - first T because that’s where she saw me out of, second T because, well, we had a side relationship, and third (current) T - I went to his house when I was seeing first T because we wanted his opinion on something so we went to his place one morning at 9am (his place was beautiful - not at all what I would have expected for him!!).

Anyway - I would be most disappointed in HER. You can’t force a therapist to see you. If they want to terminate they have that right. BUT - she had an obligation to terminate ethically and appropriately, and it doesn’t sound like that happened. There should have been a referral to one or more other providers who would be a good fit for you. There should have been at least one, if not more, wrap up sessions. The exception would be if you threatened her or she felt endangered in any way. But it doesn’t sound like that’s the case.

I think you can say to yourself “ok lesson learned” and move on. Or dwell on that which you can’t change. She won’t take you back, so trust that it happened for a reason and try to embrace therapy with someone new. Maybe just don’t drive by their house.

Wow, disturbing. Illustrates how thoroughly public consciousness has been molded by the bizarre ideas of the therapist caste.

Everyone now is a f-ing therapist and life expert, mindlessly regurgitating the same trite advice and crappy pop psychology and convoluted therapy dogma.

It's considered socially acceptable to condescend to people like those Quora commenters did. It's social media, and people tend to be meaner and more nuts, but it's also the influence of the presumptuous windbags in the "helper" professions.

Even the responders who were empathetic still failed to question the basic construct, and thus missed the whole point. Look how many people reflexively said... get a new therapist. So much herd mentality and deferring to authority (even if it's fake authority).

I learned the hard way to stop soliciting advice for my therapy probs or any probs.

If it were me, i'd see about having that whole mess wiped clean from Quora.

Thanks everyone for your support. I wish I never asked that question on quora and I know I have to work on my own internal security and not seek out reassurances or judgements from others in order to know how to feel about myself. I suppose I just didn’t want to get lost in the human experience of it all. At the end of the day, “stalkers” are still humans to but that doesn’t discount or invalidate the fear that people have of them. I feel ashamed that the general public would put me in that category, as one of the posts talked about how greatly I disrespect and disregarded my T got over 1k upvotes. Logically, I know I have to stop this. I need to forgive myself, but part of my pattern is to assume/believe the worst possible things about myself (what some others may actually think about me), in order to not be caught by surprise. It may also be an excuse for me to wallow in my shame? I didn’t mean to hurt her, but I was being selfish. As I was driving by her house, it really didn’t occur to me how she might’ve felt about having her personal space invaded. I was on autopilot - acting on impulse because my attachment to her was as overwhelming as a moth to flame.

Sounds like you have some really good insights. I hope you will be able to find a way to turn those to your advantage in moving forward in your healing.

You keep looking for black or white answers for an extremely grey, complicated situation. The answer doesn’t exist. There’s plenty of blame that can be passed around to all involved.

The only truth is that you’re suffering, and need to focus on how to alleviate it. That’s the only thing you can control. By getting well. The therapist can take care of herself... disrespected, intruded, victimized or whatever.

Yep!

Also, the self-righteousness of most social media comments in general is outrageous. No, these people wouldn’t drive by their therapist’s house. 100% guaranteed they’ve all made horrible mistakes and done $%*! bag things in their lives. The only difference is, they haven’t put it out on the internet for a public stoning.

Quora is like Reddit... Filled with a bunch of negativity and strangeness. Don't pay attention to that junk.

I just had a read of some of the responses over there. Honestly, some of those people just sound like obnoxious know-it-alls and very insensitive. They make a lot of assumptions. Some people also really strongly identify with authority and will always leap to the defense of the people making the rules, which says less about your particular situation and more about human nature.

I just skimmed through the responses. The big thing I noticed is that I think only one of them was from a therapist--and she was compassionate and understanding about it. The rest were just random people. So they aren't giving you the sense of how a therapist would respond in the situation. Plus, you only gave a very brief description of what happened. I would try to avoid looking at the answers anymore.

I know it can be very difficult to deal with others' opinions on things you did. I've had a few threads here on PC in the past where some posters were particularly harsh with me. The main one that jumps to mind is from over 3 years ago, when I learned my ex-MC's wife was seriously ill and wanted to figure out how to talk to him about it. I recall someone saying "Leave the poor man alone!" And I felt like an awful, selfish person. I did end up talking to ex-MC about it, and he was accepting and understanding about my concerns/interest. I mentioned some people's reactions, and he said that they don't know him and to not assume he'd react the way they'd say.

I use that example to show that people were piling on me, and I felt guilty and awful, but then it turned out that my ex-MC was fine with it. I know in this case, your ex-T wasn't OK with it. But that doesn't mean that all T's would react the way she did, or even that many of them would.

I'm also very affected by others' opinions of me (always have been). My current T has been encouraging me, with some success, to use what he calls the "LT filter" (well, with my first name, not LT) when other people are giving me opinions. To not be so swayed by them, but to weight their value and consider how I feel about something. I'm not doing a very good job of explaining it, I don't think, but I've found that I've gotten better at doing that. To use PC as an example, I used to post things about my sessions not long after they happened, often before my own opinions had been formed about what happened (I can sometimes take a while to process things). And then I'd see posters saying negative things about something my T said or did, and it would color my opinion of him and the session. I've found now that waiting a couple days to post those details has helped me. By then, I've generally formed my own opinions and processed things, so if people say, "Wow, I can't believe your T said that, he sucks!" it's less likely to affect me, because I'll have already made up my mind about what he said. And some things I choose not to post about at all, because I know they could be misunderstood by someone who, say, wasn't sitting in the room with us or who doesn't know me or my T well.

I'm rambling now...basically, I'd try to focus on what *you* feel rather than on what random people on the Internet are saying--people who only have a bare minimum of the facts of what happened. You've shared more on PC, but we still don't know every detail of your relationship with your T (and I'm not saying we should), so we're going to provide a skewed opinion of what happened, based more on our own experiences and feelings. Try to just focus on how you feel about it (the JustBreathe filter) and...I forget, are you seeing a new T now? If so, talk to the new T about it.

People on Quora don't have any special wisdom. Nobody does. Even if they were all therapists, so what? What would that prove?only that therapists side with their peers rather than with clients who are nothing to them. If I recall correctly, your therapist activated your obsession by showering you with love, attention and passing you "I love you" notes. And then when it got too much for her and she decided that you had "crossed a boundary" by merely driving on her street, she dropped you. Sounds like she's the one who should forgive herself, not you. I'm sorry for what you went through and for all the ****** responses on Quora but these people are no less biased than anybody else.

Screw anonymous sites for questions. It gives assholes all sorts of permission to act in the only way they know how.

Yep - it’s called “love bombing” and it’s one of the ways narcisists and abusers lure and keep victims into addictive, dependent relationships. I was trying not to go there, but glad someone else did. I don’t know this therapist so am trying hard not to label or judge but it makes me sick that the OP was left holding the bag of bad feelings and was obviously damaged by what was done.

This OP’s story pushes all my buttons because I can relate so deeply to being trapped in a similar cluster and forced to work my way out alone.

I must say that I agree with this entire post.

I think it is more important for you to work on finding ways (with a therapist) to avoid this type of behavior from happening again. Otherwise, you may find yourself in legal trouble.

In fact, I would forget about trying to get in contact with the ex-therapist; otherwise, she may feel like you really don't understand the seriousness of your behavior. Also in trying to contact her, it could lead to her feeling like she is being harrassed. Maybe that is why your new therapist doesn't think you should connect with her again.

I am not saying that you are trying to harrass her. I am just stating that your ex-t may take it that way.

I know it must be hard to deal with the loss. I think CBT might help.

I wish you the best of luck.

Mistake. Wrong thread.