This Is My Story (Harmed By Psychotherapy)

At the suggestion of the user here today, I have decided to sit down and type it all out… my story of being harmed by therapy. This is both for the benefit of myself and for the hope that maybe it will help someone else too. It is long, but I own every word of it. So here we go.

I have had 10 therapists in the last 4 years. The therapist that hurt me was therapist number 8 (T#8). She was (and still is, as far as I know) a doctoral student in a clinical psychology program. I saw her at the university’s training clinic, where the doctoral students in this program deliver therapy using “evidenced-based treatments” after doing an intake and assessment. About a year before I first saw here, I had come home from inpatient/residential/PHP/IOP treatment for anorexia. I had seen another outpatient therapist before T#8 for continued treatment of the eating disorder as I adjusted to living at home again and being “in the real world.” Well, this one left her practice, so I went to the clinic T#8 was at because it was convenient (cheap, because it was a training program, and it was also on the campus of the university that I was attending as an undergrad). They did an intake and assessment, diagnosed me with still having mild anorexia (I was having a bit of a minor relapse at the time), and also with social anxiety disorder and trichotillomania, and then I was assigned to a therapist who was specializing in eating disorders… T#8. My first real session with her, she told me we would be doing 20 weeks of E-CBT, because that’s the recommended treatment protocol for anorexia… This immediately felt very odd to me… I had already been through intensive residential treatment and was away from home for 7 months doing that. I agreed to it though, because I was scared to say that that made me feel like I was put on this timeline for recovery. I didn’t tell her at the time, but after that session I went to the university’s counseling center to see if I could see a therapist there because it’s free to students and the whole 20 weeks of strict E-CBT didn’t seem right to me. They told me they couldn’t provide to me what I was looking for and needing because they are too short-term and can only see students once every 3 weeks or so. So they referred me out to the community. But, I couldn’t afford that at the time, so I decided to just stick with T#8 at the training clinic. I did what was practical at the time (I have to keep telling myself this, because I’ve since beaten myself up for going to this clinic and staying for as long as I did).

So we began the E-CBT treatment. Right off the bat, this was unlike any other therapy I had had. Of course I had done CBT before, but the sessions with T#8 were so rigid and structured. I quickly found out my everyday struggles and concerns that were not related to the eating disorder simply had no place in this therapy. She never yelled at me or anything like that for getting “sidetracked,” but I remember feeling so invalidated by how quickly those issues were brushed aside. One day, early on, I had texted her asking her if at our next session I could read my Life Story to her. This was something that they had us write while in residential treatment, and then we would share it with our therapist and sometimes with a group of people. I wanted to share it with her because I thought it would give her some more background on me and better help her understand where I was coming from. She said yes, we can do that. She didn’t realize that it was very long and would take at least half an hour for me to read it all. So at the beginning of our next session, I reminded her that I had brought in my life story to read to her, and she said, Ok, now is this something that you want to read during our session or that you want me to read on my own time? I told her, again, that I wanted to read it out loud. So I did. It was a hard and vulnerable thing for me to do. I mean after all, this was my whole life story that details all of my hard times growing up and as a young adult. But I wanted to practice being open with her. After about half of the session, I finished. She thanked me for sharing, made a couple comments, and then moved right into talking about the ED. I was so embarrassed. It hit me then that I wasn’t supposed to take up that much time talking about “irrelevant stuff.” I thought she was just being polite by letting me finish. I can look back now and realize that she was just trying to stick to the manual, which is where many of the issues lie in this whole situation… she was inexperienced, and they use treatment manuals at that clinic, so I think she was just desperately trying to keep me “on track” and on progress to be fully recovered after the 20 weeks were up. I now have a very negative opinion on “evidence-based treatments” and treatment manuals, but that’s another story. While I think much of the harm that this therapist inflicted on me can be traced back to the fact that she was so inflexible with the manual, there is more to this story, which I will get to in a bit. The point of this bit about my reading my Life Story is to demonstrate one way in which I felt invalidated during this whole process of “therapy” with T#8. There were just so many times when I felt invalidated and even humiliated by her. Like I said, I’ve done CBT before, but something about the way she implemented it made it seem incredibly invalidating and humiliated. Even during the initial assessment, she asked me what I afraid of… I mentioned hurricanes/storms. She jumped at the chance to throw in some CBT, asking me how likely/rational it actually was that a tree would fall on my house and kill me or my parents or cats. I told her I know it’s not all that likely, but… see!? You have no reason to be this afraid of storms! How humiliating. I was embarrassed to even say I was afraid of storms in the first place, but then she pointed out the irrationality in a way such that I felt so pathetic. What a dumbass. This was how most of the CBT with her went… I can’t quite put words to it, and I don’t remember her exacts words, but I remember the feeling it gave me... and it was always that I was stupid for feeling that way that I felt. CBT had NEVER been so degrading and dehumanizing before. Again, I can’t quite put my finger on it, but something about it had me leaving sessions feelings embarrassed and stupid and pathetic. And this stuck with me… to this day, almost a year after my last session with her and two years after my first, her voice is in my head, telling me… No kiwi215, you’re misinterpreting the situation. I wasn’t saying that you were stupid for thinking that irrational thought! I was just telling you that it’s not quite logical. Yet somehow, with her, it always got translated into “you’re a pathetic dumbass.” And this is an endless circle of thoughts in my head every single day now… You shouldn’t feel this way. Ok, I know, I’m a dumbass for letting myself be hurt by something so silly as that. No, no, I wasn’t saying you were a dumbass! You’re just mindreading and misinterpreting. Ok, so I once again incorrectly interpreted what you were saying… I’m such a dumbass… and let me guess! I’m a dumbass for thinking I’m a dumbass, too! No, no… Just stop, dammit! God I hate this so much. It’s endless. Or when it does end, it ends up with me being a dumbass. I cannot seem to convince myself otherwise. I did not have this problem before T#8… before T#8, I responded well to CBT. I was open to alternative explanations. But for some reason, with T#8, it just wound up creating this core belief that I am stupid and pathetic. Period. Because I’m misinterpreting things. I’m even misinterpreting what it means to misinterpret something! Of course simply misinterpreting something doesn’t make you a dumbass! What a dumbass. It’s like I could tell myself a million times that I’m not a dumbass for feeling the way I feel or thinking irrationally sometimes, but I just don’t believe it. This is circular conversation plays over and over and over again in my head every. single. day. You’re stupid for thinking that! No you’re not! Oh, so I must be stupid for ever thinking I was stupid! No, that’s wrong! You’re right, I’m such a dumbass. I HATE this! Again, I never had these… what do you call them… intrusive thoughts? neurotic thoughts? obsessions? before my therapy with T#8. (And I swear to God… if anyone tries to reframe my thinking around this… just don’t. Please. It’s not going to work now.)

Anyway. After just a couple months of doing this CBT, she realized it “wasn’t working.” (I actually had gained the weight back from that minor relapse very quickly once I realized it had gotten that low, but I still did have some body image issues and whatnot). I guess I was too resistant, which, yeah, I did find myself become more and more resistant to her suggestions. So we switched to doing DBT, which I welcomed. I had been introduced a little bit to DBT in residential treatment and I liked the concept of it and thought it could be a really helpful treatment for me (because I secretly “knew” that I had Borderline Personality Disorder… more on this shortly). T#8 admitted to me that she had only learned DBT shortly before she started teaching me the skills in our sessions. I also joined the DBT group at the clinic (which I do still attend today) at the suggestion of T#8 so that I could have the “full” DBT experience… weekly individual DBT, weekly DBT skills training group, and weekly phone coaching. I did like this better than the strict CBT, but of course, by this point, my relationship with T#8 was strained (although I didn’t show much of it) so I was still being kind of resistant (not consciously… I didn’t even realize it then). But, we persisted. About a month or so into the DBT, I wrote something in the “notes” section of an app that I was using and that she was connected to that I used to log my meals and snacks in and emotions around them, etc. (we weren’t directly focusing on the eating disorder at this point, but she was keeping an eye on my weight and still watching what I logged in this app). What I wrote was that I felt like I wanted to talk about/explore the possibility of my having BPD. (Background: I had suspected I had BPD since at least high school… I, perhaps stupidly, brought it up to the first therapist I ever saw during one of our firsts sessions… to which she brushed it off and said she didn’t see anything pathological going on with me… well, fair enough for it only having been like our second or third session and I was very, very reserved back then and didn’t say a lot… so no, it was not at all apparent… still, having it brushed aside like that really closed me off. I never said anything about it again until I wrote about it in this app to T#8… it was TERRIFYING. I didn’t want to be brushed off again… but that’s why I brought it up in the “notes” section of this app… it was something that I knew she would see, and there was an option to respond, but usually those “notes” were just for, well, noting information…) I honestly expected her to bring it up at our next session. I told her in the notes that I wanted to talk about this concern of mine… that I feel I might have BPD… so I thought she would mention it. But she didn’t. Not a damn thing was said. My clinical concerns were ignored. I was so disappointed and once again, humiliated. I truly thought that I must have been out of line to say such a thing, especially after now having that concern brushed off/ignored TWICE. It was now like this elephant in the room. I thought a clinic that was so diagnosis-focused would tend to that kind of concern, but at that point it felt like this hush hush topic that no one was supposed to talk about, like it was so incredibly stigmatized. If you’re wondering why I myself didn’t ask her if she had seen that note I made in the app or why I just didn’t bring it up in person, it’s because of what I just said above… I was scared of being invalidated, and I thought I was out of line anyway. And YES, she did see it, as I would find out later… more on this in a bit. Anyway, me being the persistent and stubborn ***** that I am, a couple months later, I brought it up to her via text. Here’s how that happened: I had brought up the possibility of BPD to my psychiatrist after T#8 ignored it, knowing that my psychiatrist at the time was pretty much the typical psychiatrist who loves prescribing things and having a reason to prescribe thing… So I (still nervously) said to her one day that I think I have BPD. She asked me why, so I told her my symptoms, and she was like Ok, yep (which I did not consider an “official” diagnosis and I actually don’t agree with that process of just letting a client describe symptoms in less than a minute and assign them the diagnosis and prescribe them meds just based off of that… but at least she listened). So she gave me a prescription for Latuda, typically used for Bipolar, which I don’t have, but she said it could help with the emotion dysregulation that comes with BPD. So I later, via text, told my therapist that I was prescribed Latuda. She asked why, because she knew that was typically for Bipolar and she had assessed me for Bipolar and knew I didn’t have that. This text conversation was also about several other things we were discussing (I can’t remember what… but unrelated). So in response to that question and the other things that I was responding to in that text, I told her that the Latuda was for BPD symptoms. She did not say anything about that. She merely responded to the other things and once again ignored the BPD concern. Now granted, that time I wasn’t really asking for a response or anything, but rather just answering her question. Still, that was it for me. I gave up on voicing my concerns about BPD. What did I make of this? That I was just an annoying attention-***** trying to self-diagnose and was just being over-dramatic. C’mon, your symptoms aren’t that bad… you’re way out of line to think that’s BPD. You’re making it up! So I gave up pursuing that diagnosis. Yes, I did actually still think that I had BPD, but it was made clear to me that what I was concerned about wasn’t serious enough to be even acknowledged to me by my therapist.

So therapy proceeded… with me feeling disappointed, discouraged, invalidated, embarrassed… I left most of the sessions feeling this way, but I kept going back. Why? It’s complicated… I’ll talk more on that in a bit though. Anyway, one day out of nowhere, T#8 called me and asked if I could come in half an hour early to our next appointment because she wanted to “do some assessment like we did at the beginning of therapy.” Right then I knew. I knew this was going to be to assess for BPD. But I didn’t say/ask that. And neither did she… like it was still hush hush. And I knew better than to ask what she was assessing for. But of course I didn’t have to. I don’t know what exactly finally sparked it, but somehow I found myself being assessed for BPD at our next appointment. She of course didn’t specify that’s what we were going to assess for when I got there, but it was confirmed to me when she went through the assessment questions. When we were done, she said, Ok, so you probably know what I was assessing for. Ya think!? So that told me that she had seen my earlier attempts to communicate to her that I wanted to talk about the possibility of my having BPD. And what do you know… I have BPD! My God, it was so relieving to get that diagnosis… It’s a horrible disorder, but for me, to have a name for it is so validating of my experiences. So anyway… now I had the diagnosis of BPD. We of course were already doing DBT, the recommended therapy for it, so not much changed with our sessions because of the diagnosis. But, I felt better knowing that it had finally been recognized. Still, therapy with T#8 was… therapy with T#8. There were still “small” things here and there that invalidated me. I would complain about her to my friend, and I felt like I wasn’t really making any real solid progress, but something about it was addicting. I kept going back. Until I didn’t. It got to a point (after almost a year of seeing her) where I just had to decided I was done. Why was I wasting my money on this? So I talked it over with my good close friend and with my dietitian, whom I was very close to and who had been in contact some with my therapist, and decided I was done. Well, once I wrote her this super long letter about things I was upset about in relation to her. Ha. So I typed out this long letter, stating matter-of-factly how I felt about two things: One was how I felt ignored when I had brought up the possibility of BPD to her before we assessed for it, and the second part was about how I was upset that she didn’t comment or say anything about a video that I made that I let her see (I had made a video that was very, very personal and intimate about my recovery from my ED and my time in treatment, and I gave her the link to watch that, stating that I wanted to show it to her for the sake of practicing being vulnerable. She had texted me back after I sent her the link asking her if she’d like to watch it, saying that she would watch it. Apparently she did, but I never heard anything else about it, which disappointed me). So I wrote this letter, full of emotion and hurt, but I did my best to not make it sound like I was blaming her. I genuinely did not want to hurt her. I was SCARED to give this to her, even though I carefully worded it to not make it sound like I was upset with her (that’s just one of my struggles… admitting to people that I’m unhappy with them). Anyway, I printed it out and gave it to her right as I was about to walk out the door, not saying what it was, but just that this was for her. I walked out, then went on vacation for a week or so, during which time she called me (as agreed upon) for our weekly phone skills coaching session. During this phone call, she did at least acknowledge that she read the letter and said we could discuss it at our next appointment (the one where I had it planned that I would tell her I’m leaving… that I’m done). And that’s what happened. I got back from vacation, went to our session, and we talked about the letter. The thing about the video… she said she wasn’t quite sure why I was angry because she had said she would watch it, and she did. She just didn’t comment on it, even though I guess I had wanted her to. But fair enough… I didn’t ask for her thoughts on it, so I guess I can’t really complain about that one. So whatever. We moved on to the BPD thing. She said that she had seen both times that I mentioned it (first in the app, second in the text), and that she had asked her supervisor what to do about it, who said “not to say anything about it yet.” So I guess she was just doing what her supervisor told her to do. But I still don’t agree with that. For whatever reason, they thought, at the times I brought it up, that it was “too soon” to assess for BPD. But it still hurts me so bad that it wasn’t even acknowledged. Why couldn’t she have said, “Hey, I want you to know that I saw your concern about BPD, but I don’t feel it’s the right time to assess for it.” Why not? I guess I’ll never know. There may be some reason behind that, but at the end of the day, it really, really hurt me that she didn’t say anything in response. ANYWAY. The letter really didn’t solve anything. I don’t remember what I had hoped it would do, but I once again felt unheard, misunderstood, and invalidated in this relationship. But I guess it didn’t matter at that point because I was leaving, right? And that’s what I told her. I told her, look, putting the letter aside, I’ve been thinking on this for a little while, and I think it’s time for me to leave. T#8 was quite taken aback. And I don’t blame her, it was seemingly out of the blue. She tried to stop me a little bit. She said, “I feel like you’re leaving AMA (against medical advice)” and asked if I wanted to at least do one more closing session. But nope. I was done. This wasn’t working for me. So we finished that session and I walked out.

Oh if only this story was over here… but it’s not. The second I walked out the door, I was hit with overwhelming emotions. It’s been a little over a year now since I told her I was leaving, and I’m still trying to put words to what it is I felt after I left and why I felt that way. Here’s what I’ve got: I was angry, hurt, disappointed, enraged, sad, lost, confused, depressed… NEVER in my life had I felt such an array of negative emotions and in such a powerful, overwhelming way. It was the worst feeling I had ever experienced (at least up until that point). I was suicidal. I had been depressed before, but never to the extent that my body was moving so incredibly slowly that day and the day after… I knew “sluggish movements” could be a symptom of depression, but this time I felt so paralyzed. Looking back, I was probably in a dissociative state. I don’t remember much of those two days after I walked out. Incidentally, my parents (I live at home with them) had been out of town for a few days at that exact time, which for me, means that I buy a bunch of beer and get drunk and high and have my own little “party” alone. I was going to drink and smoke anyway, but it turned out to be in an effort to numb the pain. But why did I feel SO BAD after leaving a situation that had been hurting me? My words here don’t even do it justice, what I was feeling… I think the word that I had at that time was “incomplete…” I felt like I didn’t have closure. Like my whole time with T#8, I had been desperately trying to get her to listen to me, believe me, understand me, acknowledge me, VALIDATE me… and most of my efforts failed. Backfired, even. I felt worse after trying to communicate something to her, because most of the time, what I had to say was met with some kind of “polite invalidation.” For example, I would tell her an issue I was having, and she would immediately throw a DBT skill at me. Well when that happens, you need to use Check The Facts, or Opposite Action. I mean, great, thanks for the suggestion, but by jumping right into problem-solving so quickly, she invalidated my experience. Like… here’s a problem… OK LET’S FIX IT. But T#8, can’t you just for once sit with me for a moment and empathize with me? Aren’t I allowed to be upset about this thing that hurt me deeply for at least a moment? Can I just “vent” about it for a few minutes? Can’t you validate me? No, she really couldn’t. It’s as if my discomfort made her so uncomfortable… I felt as if I wasn’t allowed to be upset about things, and instead I was just supposed to quickly fix it with a DBT skill. So anyway, I got a bit sidetracked, but back to the overwhelming feelings that hit me like a ton of bricks when I walked out… I think a big part of it was because things felt incomplete. I had wanted to feel heard/understood/validated/believed, and that letter I gave her was my final attempt… and it didn’t work. So there I was… the most distressed I had ever been in my life. Somehow, through my drunken madness, I decided to text her. I don’t really remember what I said, but it was something about how I was distressed. I didn’t know what else to do! This was around 8pm on a Friday or Saturday night, and she called me right away.

***This is where I left off on September 17, when I started writing this. It’s now November 5, and I’m picking it up again….***

It made me feel instantly better, her call. I don’t even remember half of what was said, but we ended up setting up an appointment for that coming week. The distress was virtually gone if I remember correctly… something about knowing that it wasn’t all over yet after all… something about having a second chance. A second chance to get her to understand and validate me. (I didn’t realize what was making me so upset at the time; this is something I’ve put words to in the year since through a lot of introspection and working with subsequent therapists. I’ll get more into how I consider this a “trauma bond” in a bit). So we had that session. I was nervous and embarrassed, but I told her I wanted to continue with therapy with her. I think we just kind of agreed that the reason it (the “ending” of our therapy) was distressing (I’m certain though that she did not and does not to this day actually fully understand the magnitude of my distress) was just due to the fact that it was sudden and unexpected (on her end) and we didn’t do any “tapering” of therapy. In that session, we agreed to continue therapy together, but with changes made. I don’t remember exactly what we agreed we needed to change… but I had requested something about her being more validating and listening more first before jumping into problem solving so quickly. She admitted this was feedback she had gotten before and seemed open to this change. Well, the next session rolls around the next week and she comes in with proposed changes to how we conduct our therapy sessions. UMMMM. Didn’t we go over this last session? And now you’re proposing completely new changes and ignoring the ones we discussed last week, as if that conversation never happened and I was never a part of the decision?? WTF??? I sat there in silence, listening, but being very confused. To this day I don’t understand what happened there… did she forget that the previous session we had mutually discussed and agreed upon what needed to change? Did she remember but willfully choose to ignore it because she had since had a conversation with her supervisor about what needed to change? I didn’t say anything. I don’t know why. Afraid to speak up I guess. Or maybe I was just used to that feeling and it felt familiar… the feeling of not being heard and being inferior and my voice not really mattering that much. At any rate, I wasn’t about to get up and abandon ship once again out of fear of what happened last time happening again (referring to the distress I felt when I left the first time). So I just went with it. I don’t even remember what her proposed changes were at this point, and honestly it didn’t really matter. None of my proposed changes that she had initially agreed to ended up happening. Therapy with her was… robotic. I mean, it was before, but even more so now (we were still doing DBT). I was even more closed off. I was just going through the motions. At one point, during one session maybe a month or so later, we got on some topic (which I can’t remember what exactly it was) that led her to ask in this low, almost whispered voice, “Then why are you still here..” I remember this clearly… her tone of voice, how it wasn’t even said with the inflection of a question, how it seemed as if some kind of professional demeanor had been set aside for a moment. She sounded… frustrated and disappointed maybe? Or exhausted. I remember having been staring at the floor. I feel as if she may have been too. It was like any kind of connection or engagement that she had tried to maintain in the conversation had just been dropped. The words were just kind of spoken into the air. It was weird. But anyway. I replied very honestly and told her that I was only still there because I was scared to leave again… I was scared of my feelings that engulfed me last time I told her I was leaving therapy with her. I didn’t want that to happen again. But that was the only reason I was still there. I didn’t care or hope or expect to benefit from my time with her. So I told her I was just there to avoid distress of leaving… I don’t remember what happened after that in that session. But sessions continued on. At one point, she said to me, “You haven’t really been vulnerable with me.” This stung, but like usual, I didn’t speak up about it right then and there. I waited until the next session after I had gone home and thought about what I would say to her. So I told her I felt hurt by that statement. I thought it was insensitive… I had read my entire life story to her. I had shared a very intimate and personal video with her. I had shared with her my weekly struggles every session. I had shared with her a plethora of my psychiatric symptoms. Things that only a few people in my life knew about. To me, that is extremely vulnerable. So when she said that I hadn’t been vulnerable with her, that was like a punch in the gut… as if none of that intimate stuff that I had shared meant a damn thing to her. All those times when I had come in with notes written on my phone that I let her read because I was too scared to say them out loud… That was HARD for me. But she couldn’t see it. Her reply when I told her I was offended and hurt by that statement? That I needed to consider that vulnerability means different things to different people (she gave the example of how she’s someone who will go and cry to a stranger about small things and is very open in that sense). Ok, I accept that as true… vulnerability means different things to different people. But why couldn’t I be afforded that same thought before she made this blanket statement of “you haven’t really been vulnerable with me…?!?” Why couldn’t she pause to consider that maybe, just maybe, all that I shared was A LOT for me, and HARD for ME? Maybe HER sharing those things to someone else wouldn’t be a big deal to HER, but still she maintained that I hadn’t been vulnerable with her. Even after I told her that sharing the things that I had shared with her was hard for me and a big deal for me. She never apologized for this, even though I brought it up multiple times. Now, it’s understandable that she would have wanted me to be more, say, emotionally expressive with her. I think that’s what she was going for. But if that’s the case, I believe she should have ASKED me to try to do so and modeled appropriate vulnerability. Instead, she just reinforced that I hadn’t been vulnerable with her… Guess what this did to me? Made me more closed off. And you know what? Looking back, I think it was smart that I wasn’t more open with her. I had a history of feeling constantly and repeatedly invalidated by her, so it made sense to protect myself by shutting down as such. Was it conducive to therapy? No. But I firmly believe that there was nothing anyone could have done to have made that relationship with her work… it just wasn’t meant to be. So, listening to the words of T#9 who came right after her, I feel better in my (somewhat unconscious) decision to share with her (T#8) less and less. It wouldn’t have been fair to me to keep subjecting myself to hurtful invalidation. So therapy went on for a few more sessions, but at this point we were just “spinning our wheels” in her words. Which we were. There had been some mention of how I could go to the counseling center on campus since I was a student at the time and that would’ve been free to me, but I was like, no, it’s fine (knowing, but not having told her, that I had gone to the counseling center shortly after I first start seeing T#8, only to be turned away and referred out because my problems were too complex for them… so I just stuck with T#8 due to financial reasons). Then, on October 27th, 2017, we sat down together for a session. It started off relatively “normal.” She asked me about what had gone on that week, and I said I didn’t feel comfortable sharing. And I guess that was her cue. She told me that we just weren’t getting anywhere (true) and that it would be best if she refers me out to the counseling center. I was both shocked yet also not surprised. I felt it coming, yet I didn’t. I guess it made more sense in hindsight. But I didn’t expect it to happen that session. I just told her okay. I mean, deep down I knew that this was pointless. And like I had told her several sessions back, I was only there to avoid the distress of leaving, which I knew was going to happen sooner or later anyway. But it had become tiresome and I felt too defeated to fight it. Besides, come to find out, she came into that session prepared to drop me right then and there… She asked if I wanted one more session in three weeks just so that thing would end more “smoothly” than they did last time. I said yes, to which she said, “ok, then I’ll hold onto this termination paperwork until next time.” She had literally come into the session with the termination paperwork, ready to let me go that day. That did sting a bit… I felt plotted against… like she and her supervisor at the time had just decided they were done with me, so she came into the session, waited for the perfect cue, and then dropped the bomb. Anyway. I didn’t fight it. I went home and cried for two days. Again, I couldn’t put words as to why I felt the way that I did. But I just cried. It wasn’t as bad as the first time, because I knew I had one more session to get things out to her. As in, it still wasn’t quite over just yet. But I had time to prepare myself. So three weeks later, the last appointment comes. She asked how I felt about it. I told her I went home and cried for two days. She chuckled. She chuckled. (And you ****ing wonder why I hadn’t been more vulnerable with you?!?). I told her I felt as ready as I could be for it, and that I didn’t worry about feeling the way I did last time. This was true. I genuinely thought it would be easier and that I was “ready.” She agreed, saying that last time I left we were just both unprepared for it. Oh, and I had also in been instructed to go to the counseling center to get set up with a therapist there in between our second-to-last session and our last. I did tell her at that point that I had gone before and been referred out, but she told me to go and tell them that I was in DBT group weekly. I did. I got set up with a therapist there, T#9, who at first, I felt I did not connect with at all. Of course, at that point, I was so worn out and defeated and closed off and guarded when it came to therapists. But I just didn’t care. So I had T#9 speak to T#8 on the phone because T#8 had suggested that just for the sake of facilitating the transfer. So they did. (T#9 would later tell me that she understood what I was saying about T#8 and it all made sense to her when she spoke to her on the phone… she just got a certain feeling/vibe from talking to her… so that was very validating). Anyway, after about 40 minutes, there was nothing left to be said (and yet so much on my end… but it just wasn’t gonna happen and there was no point at that point anyway). So that was it. We got up, and she said, “It really has been a pleasure working with you.” Bull f*cking *****!!, I’m thinking to myself. I actually think I just remained silent. I didn’t say anything to that. Just walked out. The second I walked out the door it hit me. Just like I thought WOULDN’T happen, it happened. The distress. I walked back to my car and broke down. I could not contain it. Again, I didn’t exactly know WHY or WHAT I was feeling. But it was once again unbearable. I don’t remember the days after that. I just remember feeling GOD AWFUL. It was a little different than the last time… Last time, it was more of like a deep depression and hopelessness. It wasn’t so much depression this time. It was more just AGONY… I still have trouble describing it today… rage, hurt, resentment, sadness, helplessness, inferiority, patheticness, shame, disgust, fear, failure, and just plain misery. I remember at one point though, a numbness coming over me that felt familiar. Probably dissociation. It didn’t feel like I was okay, per se, but just a state of being that said nothing really mattered. Like, if my emotions served the purpose of driving me to action, to get revenge or do SOMETHING, this numbness told me that it was okay to do nothing. Not that my life was okay or that I was okay, but it just took the emotions away for a bit. I think this happened a couple times for maybe a couple of hours at a time. I don’t really remember. It’s hard to put this all in chronological order.

Nonetheless, life moved on around me. I still had to go to school and work and DBT group and therapy at the counseling center. Interestingly enough, these feelings didn’t stop me from doing all of these things. Staying busy sort of served as a distraction to an extent, from the overwhelming emotions. Even when I was dissociative, I went through the motions. Somehow, I got the things done, but I just hardly remember it. T#9 turned out to be a blessing. I didn’t care for her at first, but after the second or third session, I felt so validated and heard by her. She was able to calm me down so much. I was still having suicidal thoughts though, so she had to see me every week (at the counseling center, you only get 10 sessions because it’s a free service to students, and typically they see you once every three weeks). So my session were being used up quickly. I ended up being referred out after not too long anyway, because after going over two years without self-harming, I finally cracked and self-harmed when something happened that just sent me over the edge. I won’t go into detail here, because this is just so long, but it did have to do with something related to my time with T#8 and what the termination report said about me. I had spoken with her supervisor on the phone about this and also to voice my complaints about my therapy experience with T#8, to which her supervisor yelled at me through my tears, “You should have left!” and “stop playing games with me,” and “we’re a helpful facility and have provided you with helpful treatment.” Really?! Because NOTHING has made me more suicidal and distressed. Anyway, I can’t get into all that now, although it was a huge source of my continued distress. I tried to stand up for myself and voice my concerns about my therapy experience with her supervisor and the director of the clinic, but it was all so dismissed. So invalidated. It just added insult to injury; it reinforced this idea that I shouldn’t feel that way and that it was all my fault. (I also a couple months later found myself wanting to go BACK to the clinic… repetition compulsion maybe? So I put myself on the waiting list, but later got a call from that supervisor, who is also in charge of assigning clients to therapists there. She would not let me back in, saying, and I quote directly, “I couldn’t do that to another therapist.” As in, she couldn’t assign me, the monster, to another therapist.)

You guys, it’s been almost a year now since I had my last session with T#8. It still hurts at times, but I want to share a bit about my recovery from this trauma (I’ve finally gotten to the point where I feel confident calling it trauma… before, I didn’t feel like I was allowed to use that word). So after T#9 had to refer me about because I self-harmed (which I was sad about, but surprisingly okay with), I called a few therapists. One I spoke to on the phone was very validating. When I told her on the phone why I was wanting therapy (which was to process everything that happened with T#8… oh the irony of having to go to therapy to recover from bad therapy!), she said she wasn’t at all surprised that I had the experience that I did at this place. Unfortunately, she couldn’t see me every week, but she said she could set me up with one of her interns. I had once session with her, but she mostly just kept saying to me “that sucks” and it didn’t go anywhere. So I didn’t go back. Then I found a therapist who does EMDR… T#10 (current therapist). I had always been curious about EMDR, but thought it wouldn’t be for me since I didn’t have any acute traumas to work through. But I set up an appointment with her and found out that she could do EMDR with me for this type of trauma. It’s expensive, and I can’t afford to see her every week, but WOW. It took a little while before I realized that it had been helping, but I truly, truly believe now that it has been not just life saving, but life changing. I left therapy with T#8 in such an enormous amount of emotional pain and agony that I cannot put it into words. The best way I can describe it is like knives were stabbing my brain from the inside out. Almost all the time. I would numb myself with substances and put myself to sleep when I could because being awake and lucid was unbearable. Her voice was always in my head, and I was drowning in shame and disgust and frustration and helplessness. It felt like my brain was being poisoned by my distressing emotions. Really, it seemed like I could almost feel something in my brain. I remember lying in bed at night and sometimes my face would scrunch up and cringe from the emotional pain. Anorexia royally sucked, but THIS was the worst experience of my life, and I mean that honestly with every fiber of my being. It took me a while to be able to call this experience trauma, because for a while it just felt so unreal. On one hand, I knew I was experiencing pain like I had never felt before, but on the other hand, I felt like I was making all of this up. Or at least exaggerating it. Like things couldn’t have been that bad… After all, it was therapy. I thought therapy was supposed to help and not hurt. And there really aren’t major, obvious ethical violations that I can point to and say, this is why T#8 was a ***** therapist… It’s not like she physically or sexually abused me. So why should I have felt the way I did? That was probably one of the hardest things to come to term with. I blamed myself for so long. But now, with the help of EMDR, I feel comfortable enough to type all of this out and share it. Yes, I am still a little scared about negative responses to this, but I think I’m ready to put it out there. I am still in EMDR therapy and there is still work and healing to be done, but I am no longer finding myself tortured by my emotions every day. I am no longer down on my knees in the shower crying and clawing at my body. I am no longer using substances to numb myself. My suicidal thoughts have gone WAY down. I am no longer on the verge of tears while sitting in class or at work. I am making plans for my future again. I am no longer whispering under my breath (or screaming), pleading with the universe to just Please let me take it all back. I wish I could take it all back. I wish I had never gone to T#8 in the first place. And while sometimes I do still wish it hadn’t happened, I am now at a place where I can sit in awe of the growth that has come out of the HEALING process of this. No therapy has ever contributed to such MEANINGFUL growth as EMDR has for me. I remember several months back, deliberately thinking to myself I could never, ever be grateful for this trauma. I’m still not grateful for the trauma, but I’m grateful that, given that this did happen, I was given the chance to heal from this in such an amazing way. I am able to think about T#8 and have compassion and understanding for her (not all the time; there is still resentment, but I’m still working on it). I’m not working towards forgiveness of T#8. I do not see forgiveness of her as an end goal or anything necessary. But I can forgive myself for staying with her as long as I did.

This experience has deeply wounded me and changed me. It was essentially the perfect storm… T#8’s inexperience, how she reminded me of my mom, possibly her own countertransference, and the rigidity of T#8 sticking to the damn manual… it really hit the most vulnerable part of me and I didn’t even know it at the time. At times I feel like it “reset” my brain… pushed me to the darkest edge, opened up the childhood wounds that had been neglected for so long, and led me to find EMDR, which took this trauma and integrated it as a part of my life, whereas before the trauma had consumed my entire life. I’m making plans now. For my future. I have hopes for grad school and will be moving across the country soon. This trauma had put all that on hold. But I’m hopeful for continued healing now. I know there are still wounds from my childhood that need tending to; ones that previously I thought were permanent scars. But now that I have experienced the healing power of EMDR (and I’ve been reading The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel Van Der Kolk, too…. AMAZING!!), I believe it is possible for me to fully heal from ALL of the trauma in my life… all the way from the developmental trauma I experienced in childhood to the trauma of T#8. I’m not there yet, but I’ll get there.

***EDIT 7/16/19: I originally wrote this in September through November of 2018, but never got around to sharing it until now. Since then, after having graduating Magna Cum Laude with a BS in Psychology, I have moved across the country to Los Angeles (a dream that I had had for several years) and started a new job as a behavior therapist. I started doing some work with therapist #11 (amazing) in LA for mostly just various everyday issues in my life, but have since (temporarily?) stopped seeing her due to monetary reasons. My life is far from perfect of course, but overall I am doing well without a therapist for the first time in a long time and I have taken back my life from trauma! I have been holding down a challenging (but rewarding) job in a crazy busy city that has pushed me far out of my comfort zone but that has continued to help me grow and evolve and that enthralls me every day. While I wouldn’t wish my trauma on anyone and while it’s NOT OKAY to have happened, I have been able to own this story and use it as a catalyst for my own personal growth. When I think back on it (at my own will – it no longer controls me and invades my life like it once does), I sometimes feel the familiar sadness and hurt, but as I continue to grieve that time in my life, I also feel so incredibly empowered by it all and grateful for all the times it allowed me to truly see and feel the immense amount of love and support and I have been given in my life.
Before I left for LA in February of this year, I emailed a letter to T#8. In that letter, I explained some things – my side of the story, what went wrong according to me, and the healing that happened afterwards. I wanted her to know that my time with her had a lasting impact on me that I would spend a year or more working to heal, because I don’t want this to happen to anyone else ever again (I know that’s not totally in my control, but I wanted to make this known in case she decided she wanted to use this as feedback to help guide her future practice). I also made sure to highlight the healing part. I wanted her to know that while yes, I had been immensely hurt by my experiences with her, I also experiences incredible healing that was so empowering. I did not tell her that I forgive her, because I don’t. I don’t believe forgiveness is helpful if the perpetrator continues to do the harmful action, and I have no way of knowing if T#8 had or has any intent to make positive changes; if I knew that she was truly working to improve her strategies based on what I experienced with her, then I would forgive her). I did, however, tell her that if I ever came across her again in public, I would smile at her and hope she smiles back. I am no longer interested in scowling or holding onto resentment towards her; it wouldn’t help anyone. I have much more understanding and compassion for her, while also maintaining that what happened to me was not okay. I feel I have done my part in voicing my concerns and speaking my truth, and I have healed myself. Time to move on.

So if anyone managed to make it through all of that, here are some things that helped me recover (in no particular order):

- The book "The Body Keeps the Score"
- Website therapyconsumerguide,com (by user Ididitmyway on this forum... thank you!!)
- Therapy-Induced Trauma: What It Is and How It Can Happen
- Emotional Abuse in Psychotherapy | TELL: Therapy Exploitation Link Line
- First, Do No Harm: Abusive Psychotherapists | Psychopaths and Love
- When Therapists Do Harm | The Ferentz Institute
- EMDR therapy
- Neurofeedback
- Love and support from people who genuinely care about me and love and support me

thanks for sharing your inspirational story! i too have found many of the things you listed above to be the most beneficial in my own healing and for helping me to get out of an unhealthy therapeutic relationship and harmful therapy, especially:

- The book "The Body Keeps the Score"
- Website therapyconsumerguide,com (by user Ididitmyway on this forum... thank you!!)
- Emotional Abuse in Psychotherapy | TELL: Therapy Exploitation Link Line
- First, Do No Harm: Abusive Psychotherapists | Psychopaths and Love
- When Therapists Do Harm | The Ferentz Institute
- Neurofeedback
- Love and support from people who genuinely care about me and love and support me

the most helpful of that list being the love and support of my husband and the neurofeedback therapy.

i too have also remained in contact with my ex-T since ending therapy over two years ago and we have had quite a few conversations about my struggles of the therapy with him. he actually acknowledged and apologised to me in person and admitted, knowing what he knows now, he would have done some things quite differently. for me, that moment was priceless because it helped me to finally feel at peace with what had happened. similar to you, i can now view the process i experienced (including my years in therapy and post therapy) from a new perspective. for me, it feels as if it was somewhat a necessary 'process' for me have had that helped propel me forward to finally be able to experience all the new and positive changes in my life. i'm not saying that it in necessary for clients to have a bad experince in therapy to make these type of life changes, but i personally refuse to let the harmful experiences overpower me or my life any further. i'm using it as a means to learn, grow, and further empower myself as i continue on my journey through life.

Thank you for sharing your story! I'm happy to know that you have been able to start healing from such a terrible experience. I think you sharing this is so brave and admirable. By sharing this, some of the feelings you put into words gave me the words I was looking for to explain some of my own feelings and I want to thank you for this. I'm truly happy that things sound much better for you!

Kiwi,
I read your post quickly for the gist, but gathered #8 was a contemptuous bully and seemed to have a fantasy she could browbeat your reactions out of you. If scolding worked, we'd all be thin, healthy multi-lingual Nobel Prize winners.

I had tremendous guilt leaving AMA, feeling like I was truant. I had this irrational self-blame that leaving this scold meant I was walking away from a better life, though intellectually I knew he hadn't helped me in the slightest. (Actually there were bullying co-therapists, but the man was more confrontational and cruel.)

As you describe, I had a cross-country move and big life change not long after. It kept me busy building my life, but I examined and re-examined the harmful episode over the years. Time and distance gave me more insight and perspective. It happens in layers.

The silver lining is this interval helped dissuade me from the concept of gurus and strong men. No one is a mystical healer, and I'm the expert and driver of my own life. Anyone who represents herself as an answer lady or guru is a pretender.

So sorry this happened to you.

Kiwi ,
Please forgive my snark ,"putting training wheels on therapist is a damn hard job ".

A good therapist (or a competent one ) is going to meet you on your level ,wherever that maybe and establish a rapport ,before they go messing around in the brain bucket ,well now that you have experienced discount outlet therapy ,your older and wiser ,and will stay away from the "walmart model of mental health".

The fact that your still standing ,healing and moving on ,is a real testament to your own inner resources .

Therapy should never be dis empowering, and somehow i am left with the feeling that #8 is out there clubing somebody with there own arms ,#8 is clueless .

You cant work a "cookie cutter one size fits all manual" ,without creating a trail of victims,and not everyone is going to have the ability to "heal thy self" ,if they did maybe they would have done that to start with? .

I am happy you have found away to succeed despite a therapy failure ,maybe you found the best outcome from the worst therapy .I will let you decide that for yourself when the time is right ?

I only made it to Cali once in my life ,i had to take my wife out to UC San Diego,for a surgery that never happened ,and I didn't see much outside of trying to get the hospital in order,and the coffee truck outside.i would realy love to do the "culinary tour" eat my way across LA . I don't have an eating disorder ,i do have a metabolic one about every five years my metabolism goes ballistic ,and I have to eat around 6000 calories a day or I lose weight that day ,I can crush some leftovers ,i have no idea why LA is so appealing ,considering I am on the other coast and was raised in an around the 5 borbouroghs but its Ok to dream? I guess what you haven't been exposed to will always have that gravitational pull.i have a friend who lived out there who always reminds me "dude that isn't a hotspot of food ,it's 527 square miles of congested everything , you wouldn't last a week , going across town can take 10 hours". Maybe in my next life .

Kiwi, thanks so much for sharing your story. The clarity and detail in your descriptions of your feelings and the effect that T#8's "treatment" had on you make it clear that invalidation and humiliation by a therapist can have adverse effects in a person way above and beyond anything they went into therapy with.

It's interesting that the neurologically based EMDR was helpful to you like neurofeedback was for koru_kiwi.

And it's sad but maybe significant, too, that the supervisor and director of the clinic were also dismissive and invalidating. "You (as a person) don't count, only us" sounds like their attitude? Seems to me that can destroy a sense of self. Not only does that feel awful, it can also be a very dangerous situation. I wonder if there was anything like that going on when you decided to go back to T#8? She had destroyed or damaged some things in you but then you needed HER to bolster what you then lacked? Maybe not, please forgive my speculation if it doesn't make sense or seems out of line.

So glad you have persisted and made it through!

What a powerful story! I'm glad that you've found healing despite all the harm inflicted.

For me the therapists who preach "evidence-based practice" are an interesting species. It almost feels that it must be a closed circle of people who are unable to understand some very basic things about psychotherapy, like for instance the idea that you cannot prescribe psychotherapy in a similar manner as you can prescribe specific antibiotics in case of a specific bacteria is just nonsense and it will never going to work that way. And also that all the evidence is based on what you measure and if you measure nonsense then your evidence is about nonsense. Also the idea that it is possible to cure pain and suffering by teaching skills. I'm not against skills and in specific situations specific skills can be very appropriate but it seems like for many therapist, especially those practicing evidence-based treatment, the therapy is somehow equal to teaching skills and this kind of understanding is beyond me. Is it so that those people have not experienced suffering themselves or, more probably, they have but they are not in touch with their own pain and suffering. I think you were spot on in writing that the therapist couldn't listen to you because she just couldn't tolerate your pain and what you had to say. She could have learned a lot with you - and help you and herself. But she didn't and I'm glad you were able to move on.

Hugs thank you For sharing it brought tears to my eyes reading this. So many therapist seem to think they know it all and harm clients. There are good therapists out there too. I have experienced some harm from two therapists i finally am with a good therapist. I can relate to the pain it's hard some days to feel worthy and deserving to seek help still for me. Hugs.

Thanks for that. Such a powerful post. Its a skill to be able go phrase it well!

Thank you, and I am sorry that you too have had such an experience... but always glad and inspired to hear that you have been able to be empowered by it!

I should probably clarify that T#8 never did respond back to that email I sent her. I think it would’ve been against the clinic’s policy to do so.... and/or she never opened/read the email in the first place when she realized it was from me. But that’s okay. I wasn’t expecting a response anyway.

Also please allow me to clarify that I never did get a response from T#8 after I sent that email to her. I didn’t think I would. It might be against that clinic’s policy for her to have replied after we terminated therapy. And/or perhaps she didn’t open/read it when she realized it was from me. That’s okay though. It was mostly done for my own healing and the sake of voicing myself, even if I got nothing in return. Maybe it’s for the best that she didn’t reply. I’m not sure that there would have been anything she could’ve said to make things all better. And there was always the possibility that she could’ve said something that actually made me feel worse. Sure, it may have been nice to hear a sincere apology and some words to suggest she was changing her practice, but by the time I sent that email, I had already done most of the healing without her anyway, so I was really okay with her lack of response. I didn’t dwell on it or constantly check my email awaiting a response from her. I just sent it and let it be and moved to LA, haha

Thank you for your kind reply. I am glad to hear that my post has been able to help you put words to some of your own feelings. For a while, trauma took away my ability to adequately put into words my experience, but over time I was able to articulate it better. Still, there are instances where I feel words will never be able to do justice to the way that I felt, but I’m okay with that. With or without words, our feelings are real and valid and deserve attention and care. Sometimes I think it’s actually really beautiful when I feel something so powerful and complex that no words or combination of words exists to adequately reflect that feeling... there are other ways to communicate anyway

Thank you for your words and reading what you could of my story... I know it was quite long!! Interestingly, I don’t see T#8 as a bully or mean or evil person. Truly I think she wanted the best for me, but that got muddled with potentially countertransference and her inexperience in the field. I learned from this experience though that when you are hurt by someone, whether or not they intended it doesn’t change the fact that you were hurt and now are responsible for healing.

I get what you are saying about feeling guilty for leaving AMA. To me it even felt like the practitioners (T#8 and her supervisors) were suggesting that I NEED them in my life to be well... how disempowering and insulting and confusing that felt. But I believe you are right — no one is a mystical healer, and I am my own expert.

Ah yes, I do believe I have found the best outcome from the worst therapy. Thank you for putting it into those words! I quite like that I also like what you said about the “Walmart model” and “cookie cutter manual.” I know now that I deserve better and that there is I’m fact much, much better out there.

I grew up in a relatively small city on the east coast, so getting used to LA and its traffic was an adjustment. But, the excitement of it all makes it worth it for this 20-something year-old

Thank you, here today, for your response and for reading this post. Glad to see you are still active on here!

And yes, if I am understanding accurately what you are saying, then that sounds right to me (what you said about damaging my sense of self). It was a very confusing situation to say the least.. I had felt so hurt by her, but I kept myself with her for so long and there was something addicting about it almost... Most weeks, going to our sessions was the highlight of my week. And then of course it got to the point where I decided I would rather take a break and save money because deep down I knew she wasn’t really helping me. So how strange it was to say goodbye (the first time) and be hit with such a tsunami of negative emotions when I had felt so confident beforehand that this was the right decision. And then how doubly strange to feel so comforted by her phone call after that and by the fact that I knew we were going to see each other again, even though I had previously felt so bitter towards her. It was indeed like I was on a brutal roller coaster that tossed me around and had me changing my mind left and right about how I felt about T#8 and the whole situation. I believe it can be compared to a child who finds herself stuck with parents who tell her they love her, but who are troubled themselves and cannot adequately take care of the child.... The child is hurt by her caretakers, but she is a child and therefore dependent on them and has no choice but to keep running back to them (and their abuse). (Of course, I did have a choice and wasn’t totally helpless, but I was in a very different place mentally than I am now).

Beautiful words — thank you. The evidence-based practice certainly felt very dismissive of my own uniqueness and complexity. It seems to me that these practices and manualized treatments are essentially a cop-out... I suppose it is easier for some to follow instructions from a manual than to take the time to deeply get to a know a client and their story and tailor therapy accordingly. I once saw a quote that said something along the lines of “I am more interested in your story than your diagnosis.” Now, this is what I look for in a therapist... someone who can see past a diagnosis and who cares more about me as a holistic being.

Thank you for sharing, Cheryl. Sad to hear that you, too, have experienced harm by therapists. I wish you nothing but healing! Inspired to hear that you have found a good therapist for you now.

Thank you for that compliment!

this was one of the most difficult aspects of the therapy harm for me to personally come to terms with. my ex-T wasn't being evil or malicious...he actually has quite a big kind heart and means well, but it was mainly his own unresolved/ unknown underlying issues and countertransference sprinkled with a bit of a lack of competency to work with my complex issues that lead to most the harm. it's this conflict, plus the fact that i cared deeply for him, and still do as a person (and he says he cares for me too), that has been the most challenging to understand, except, and to get my head and heart fully around.