Hurt By Therapy

Just finding this forum and the people in it was very helpful. I felt all alone in a world where everyone thinks therapists belongs on pedestals.

Welcome Finley!

Welcome! I know exactly what you mean, it's like an oasis here. This field is so protected it's really hard to look around and find other's in similar situations. Once you realize you're not alone, well, that alone is helpful in the healing.

4 hours ago, Happynow said:

Therapists are The/rapists of our minds.

This is so

Welcome!

On 5/28/2021 at 3:00 PM, Happynow said:

Thank you zygomaticus. It's been amazing so far the opposite of bad therapy. I can feel the guilt flowing from me. How exciting!

That's well put. You've seen in my story that I was devastated, but the more I learned about bad therapists and therapy in general, I began to heal when I realized it wasn't my fault, my therapist failed me.
There's still some hurt obviously, but I've come a long way.

Welcome to the forum Happynow! I'm somewhat new here myself and have found it to be a great source of information and some really understanding people!

Good to see you here!

16 minutes ago, Eve B said:

Therapists are... not real doctors. 

It's true that psychiatry is the least respected career path among medical students. 

"I once met a medical student who had failed his first year exams. 'It’s ok,' he said, as I tried to console him. 'I know I’m not very bright, but I can always be a psychiatrist after medical school.'"  - https://blogs.bmj.com/bmj/2010/06/28/anna-mead-robson-psychiatry-–-a-specialty-for-failures/

Wow....

1 hour ago, HelloUniverse000 said:

This is going to sound really bad, but some therapists are also people who weren't smart enough to be MD's, lawyers, or any other high-paying prestigious profession. So, they got into counseling to feel an easy sense of power and importance.  (I am half-joking here). 

That's probably fairly accurate though.

7 minutes ago, Sandpiper Crossing said:

Thank you! I felt like I had to dig into medical journals to find anything. It is bizarre. When I first started looking into negative side-effects, all I found were newspaper articles that quoted therapists on the issue. Negative side- effects were described as the patient becoming too self-confident and leaving their abusive partner which is obviously nothing but advertisement for therapy concealed as 'self -criticism'. 

Exactly, the hurt and damage they, the therapists, cause is excused and very deeply buried.

Welcome Sandpiper!

Yeah, the damage that therapy causes is well hidden. When I first started researching it I was feeling quite isolated, the few articles I was finding was excusing the therapists in a circular way.

3 hours ago, disequilibrium1 said:

HBT, sorry about your experience and welcome here. My therapist did an outstanding job of rebutting my complaint by making me sound psychotic, incapable of distinguishing him and my parent. I lost the complaint. He ended though by saying he had "compassion" for me. What a performance.

Thank you Disequilibrium1! Yes, I'm not holding my breath on my complaint going anywhere, but I want to put her treatment of a client on record and let her know that there can be consequences for her actions. It's my only real legal option other than lawsuit and I'd rather not go there. (I will though if her BS continues. She may think I'm not capable of defending myself, but she'd be surprised where my limits are when I'm pushed and treated like crap.)

8 hours ago, Mary S said:

I think there's something to this, but I think they also would deny what you have written.

Yes, I think there's a very good chance they would!

Therapist are... in it for themselves, money, self-importance, and a feeling of power/dominance over the patient.

3 minutes ago, Mary S said:

There are some complaints that are so egregious that they would be decided in favor of the client, despite having a procedure that is directed by a biased professional body. For example, if the therapist came to sessions drunk, or became sexually involved with a client, they would almost certainly be sanctioned by the professional body. And then the professional body can use the fact that such cases are sanctioned to say, "See, we sanction therapists who do unethical things like this", while not acknowledging that there are other (less obvious to the public) unethical things that therapists do, but do not get sanctioned for.

That makes a lot of sense, it's not an unknown procedure with many agencies and bureaucracies. "Only see what we want you to see."

On 3/26/2021 at 6:22 AM, zygomaticus said:

If not, and the relationship is irreparable, I would expect that the clinician will attack the client's state of mind, ability to be rational, to perceive accurately, etc, all in a climate of there being third parties to appeal to. It's all too easy, in this scenario, to place the 'irrational' client against the decorated, certificated professional,

Heh heh, did you read my PHI or something? Lol, you nailed it. I'll share what she wrote about me when I'm ready to publish part 2, you are on the money.

I just put the link to my site/blog in my profile under the "about me". Site's only been up for part of this month so far so it still has some growing pains to work out, but I think I have it working well now.

I also linked to The Client's Side forum in my links section and will mention it also in my next blog post.

Thank you!

Thank you Eve, I can see you're right, this will never go away. I've never trusted anyone to this extent before. Part of that may be on me, but I thought I was cautious, I had thought I was a good judge of character and it took about a year to trust her enough to really open up. Unfortunately, as I find out, she's just really good at hiding behind a mask of friendly caring. I believe the cold fish I saw on that last session was the real person.

I agree being around others that can relate help and they can be more caring then a lot of people. I feel the people on the PTSD groups I belong to, (and here), I can talk to and not fear hearing things like "It's no big deal" or "get over it", etc.

Thank you for having me and providing such a forum, I did not know it existed until I came across a link in someone's blog. It'll be nice to be around people that understand.

I was hurt and abandoned by my therapist, which created another and more current trauma than I originally went in for. I have posted the story to my blog/website, but I know it's bad form to join a group and start posting links, so I'll just copy it over here a little later today. Be forewarned, it's long, the trauma made me feel the need to enunciate more than I usually do.

Thanks again!

>Guy