HelloUniverse000

On 6/18/2021 at 10:16 AM, ifyouknowmenoyoudont said:

Hello everyone!

 

I hope everybody is having a good day. I have been getting screwed by the psych system since I was 11 years old and I have recently had enough. I am so happy a place like this exists, its so hard to find spaces that won't minimize your experiences. I am currently trying to cope with an ex "therapist" (not even 100% sure she was qualified to provide that lol- her only previous experience was in ABA, and this was her first counselling job - however I was not informed of that at the time) that gaslit me, lied to me and to others about me, and eroded my boundaries. Though I am thankful I am no longer seeing her the wounds are still raw.  I have experienced coerced drugging and overdrugging at the hands of a psychiatrist and several doctors and I'm slightly more healed from that but still sore. Thank you so much for reading

 

Have a great day!

Sorry to hear that. Welcome! The therapist that you speak of does sound limited in her experience. Glad you aren't seeing her anymore, but the damage a professional does can be hard to move on from. 

21 hours ago, Happynow said:

Those three points are for me the definition of good mental health and a stable mind. We had all three before we became disturbed, generally by someone else's irrational behaviour in real life. We still had some common sense left though and sought help from someone who advertised they could help us with our situation. Unfortunately the therapists often don't possess any of those three points and disturb us further until we get to the point where we say 'Shes mad I'm ok' is that how it's supposed to work? A kind of reverse psychology?? 

It's upsetting when I hear clients/consumers of therapy being labeled the "crazy ones", bc it's not always true.  My family member told me "you were so much happier before you got involved with therapists". She's right.  I also get intrusive thoughts about the harmful things professionals have said. 

4 hours ago, Happynow said:

Hi HelloUniverse000,  A really good friend became a therapist and I also worked for a therapist. I like to think that most therapists do it for the right reasons, but I haven't met one who didn't have issues. In fact I  think although they do it to help others they are also searching for their own answers. We seek wisdom from them but sadly most of them don't possess it. I believe that is why their training is rigid and narrow. If it wasn't their emotional immaturity/ arrested development will shine through. I certainly saw that with both the therapists I knew personally. I was lucky to have that insight and it helped me to view the therapists I saw professionally in a more realistic way. I have definitely received more wisdom and stability from friends who weren't therapists, those people who have suffered too and not read a book. Looking back because I have finished therapy now I think therapy has helped me because I was desperate to offload in a weekly way which I couldn't do with friends, but I would advise anyone going into therapy that they (the ones I saw anyway)are not reliable or passionate about what they do. It's a real tricky one. We need to be vulnerable, but not defenceless.

I agree that every therapist that I have met had their own issues. If they're not taking care of their own stuff (like seeing their own therapist or self-reflecting), those issues can spill into their work with clients. We clients notice things about therapists too: like when they're contradicting themselves (saying one thing during the last session and then something totally different in the next session), not remembering important things, making judgmental faces, and having incongruent body language with what they say.  Being friends with therapists did help me look at them in a more realistic way too. 
 

My non-therapist friends helped me more bc they had these things : 1) Common sense 2) A practical approach to solving problems 3) Were grounded consistent and stable (at least to me).  I didn't find those things in some of the therapists in my life. Given my complex trauma, I was craving security and common sense in someone......
 

3 hours ago, Hurt By Therapy said:

That's probably fairly accurate though.

 

I thought about making a topic on thoughts on therapists' intelligence. Personally, I don't see them as being smarter as a whole than the everyday person.  There are clients who are smarter than their therapist. 

4 hours ago, Sandpiper Crossing said:

Therapists are people who weren't creative enough to be novelists or screenwriters and chose to meddle in their clients' lives instead. 

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). 

8 hours ago, zygomaticus said:

Greetings! Welcome to the forum!

Sadly, yes, I have very much had this experience, and the impact it has had on me is massive. I had two psychologists as friends, one an academic psychologist teaching clinical skills and with some clinical experience himself in an agency contracted by local government. The other was a clinical psychologist that careered her way to the top of the NHS pay-grade and oversaw MH services for adults in my city and for children and adolescents for a big chunk of the country. In the end it wasn't friendship at all, in fact, I realised it barely ever was, and my naive trust in them regarding my MH issues and general openness regarding feelings (I like being open about emotional matters and, for me, it is a pillar of a meaningful relationship) was only ever really seen through their clinical lenses. They used my friendship as leverage to try to bend me to their will and mould me into the kind of person that they - and the supposed 'empirical' science - defines as a healthy individual. This included attacking my introversion and trying to convert me into an extrovert, amongst many very intrusive and duplicitous measures, all without consent, all under the radar until I educated myself about their methods. They even screwed with the relationship I had with my first love, trying to reinforce her critical feelings towards me, presumably to weaponise her into a source of punishers (they were and are VERY Skinnerian). Third parties were used against me and my ex at other times. I get the distinct feeling that they felt they had an ethical justification to dip into their 'toolbox' of psychology influence tactics whenever they wanted, but often the notional (and erroneous) idea of furtive tinkering being permissible ethically was just a ruse, I would say, for a pretty pathological need to CONTROL.

I got away. Way too late, but I got away. I am still, on a daily basis, working my way through the trauma of what was akin to something cult-like (given that cults use many of the same tactics!).

I continue to learn more, incrementally, about the methods of clinical psychology. I'm also learning more about the system, as it is, and the frankly dubious claims made regarding the 'evidence-based' nature of what they do, not to mention how policy-makers have been swayed by extremely poor science. If psychologists are good at anything, it's spin, PR and influence, What they have no regard for, is the side effects of systematically subjugating another human being to their will, no matter what 'good intentions' they might claim.

I'm so sorry those friendships turned out to be toxic. I can 100% empathise! There is a cumulative element, I find, with relationships like that. It's not a few dramatic episodes, generally, but a drip-drip-drip of poison over time, death by a thousand cuts, like being the lobster in the boiling water that isn't aware of the heat until it's scalding. By then, the damage can really eat away at you. I know my own recovery from 'friends' like these will take some time. I hope you know you aren't alone, there are others out there. My own 'platinum rule' is basically the old adage of avoiding twots! When I sniff out a manipulator, I'm gone! Don't engage with manipulators, that's my rule. Avoidance is generally pathologised (by the professionals), but it certainly has its place when it comes to protecting yourself.

 

Oh gosh, thank you! I appreciate you sharing. I am so sorry that you went through all of that too. Yes, I was there too when I naively thought that being open about MH issues to therapist friends would be no biggie. 
 

I had similar things happen to me, and can resonate with you. One therapist friend also was preoccupied with what's "healthy" and not "healthy". It was funny when she would lecture me on dating/relationships/how to be, when she would tell me about her dysfunctional romantic relationships.   She was also very nosy, where she would ask questions that most people understand are tactless . What was hypocritical to me is when she wanted me to open up about all of my problems to her (she told me that being private is unhealthy), but then would turn around saying "I don't want to hear people's sh*t. I already do that for work".  Uh...don't ask people nosy questions and push them to open up then? Haha. 

If we want to talk about what's healthy, it's healthy for me to avoid manipulators as well. Not be someone's guinea pig! 
 

6 hours ago, Mary S said:

Yes, this is a real problem. Good intentions do not guarantee that there is no harm. Therapists need much more training in how actin on their good intentions can lead to harming the client.

This is just speculative, but I think that part of the problem may be that many therapists think, "This is how I would like someone to treat me, so I will treat my clients this way."  But this type of thinking fails to take individual differences into account. We can't rationally assume that another person is just like us -- we are all different. I have found, in reading, that some therapists do take this into consideration -- they might phrase it as following "The Platinum Rule" ("Do unto others as they would have you do unto them") rather than "The Golden Rule" ("Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.") 

Totally agree! Projection can be dangerous, bc what works for the therapist may not work for the client.  Services need to be tailored to the individual. Helping someone isn't a one-size-fits all formula. 
 

It is one of my pet peeves as well when someone assumes that I think and feel just like them. I get why some people might think that way about the world, but it's not true. Each client is different. I see a lot of therapists say that they get that each client  is unique, but I don't see them actually following what they say. 

Thank you both! Heh--my friends who are NOT in the helping profession were the ones who helped me the most. Friends who are therapists are like anyone else: Flawed humans who misread you. 
 

What I am struggling with now is when some people justify a therapists' abuse (liking thinking that they had a valid reason to do what they're doing). If something causes harm, I don't see why that is excused. 

Therapists are not always the best judges of character

Hello everyone!

Glad I found this forum. There's not a lot out there to help with this. I get intrusive thoughts over harmful things that professionals have done. 
 

I am wondering if anyone has also had the unique experience of being friends with therapists in their personal lives. I have seen bad therapists for professional help, but I also befriended my coworkers (who were therapists). Some of those friendships did turn out to be toxic. 
 

Looking forward to posting.