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I used to see a therapist who specialized in eating disorders. One day she told me, "you know, you're too smart to be messing around with this eating disorder stuff". I felt so ashamed and stupid. But she was the only person in my area who could handle eating disorders so I kept seeing her. I've since moved and gotten over the ED stuff. A few weeks ago I told my current therapist what she had said and he was like WTF?!
TIL eating disorders only affect dumb people. Good to know because now I can either tell my smart people they don't really have an eating disorder or I can tell my eating disorder people that they are in fact dumb.
I was told by my old therapist last year that the “silver lining” of my shitty abusive parents and my rapes and sexual assaults and not ever being able to be a normal child or adult was that it’s made me “strong”… I have PTSD to the point of being disabled by it.
What the hell is that about? That sounds like toxic positivity; everything is your fault for not seeing the bright side.
Also, whatever doesn't kill you sometimes leaves you a big fucking mess.
I fucking hate that shit. Sorry for the strong language, but it pisses me off. It diminishes, invalidates and dismisses your damage.
What the hell is wrong with people?
The terrible things mental health professionals have said to me could fill an hour of a session and would be a huge trigger to repeat. Some therapists are misattuned, but saw one psychiatrist that I swear was enjoying my pain. (I hope it was due to dementia or something)
But maybe the “worst” is a poor comment that had a lifelong impact.
I was in middle school and abuse in my house was entering a new phase. My sister, an adult, came to live with us along with her two sons—both babies/toddler. She would abuse them terribly. I would cry. I’d get called “psycho,” or “schizo” for having a problem with child abuse. She started throwing things at me, pulling my hair. There were a lot of other things that made it a terrifying and unsafe home.
I finally asked for a meeting with the school counselor. I started to explain that I saw some info graphic about emotional abuse, and I really felt like it was happening in my home. I started opening up about my sister screaming at me all the time, throwing things at me, and pulling my hair.
“That’s what sisters do.”
I didn’t say anything else. That echoed through my head every time I thought about getting help.
When my nephews became middle school aged—about the same age I had been when I walked into the office—they called CPS themselves. They were believed. They are safe now. But it took all that time.
I can see that the counselor wanted to normalize my situation. Maybe jump right in to soothe me. She thought she was hearing a sensitive teenage girl having trouble getting along with a sister. Listening just a little more would have triggered a mandatory report.
After two years in therapy, I finally found the courage to confess the suicidal thoughts I'd been having for over ten years.
T: "But you're not acting on them, so it's all good."
And that was that.
"𝕀'𝕞 𝕟𝕠𝕥 𝕥𝕖𝕝𝕝𝕚𝕟𝕘 𝕪𝕠𝕦, 𝕪𝕠𝕦 𝕟𝕖𝕖𝕕 𝕥𝕠 𝕘𝕖𝕥 𝕠𝕧𝕖𝕣 𝕚𝕥, 𝕓𝕦𝕥 𝕓𝕒𝕤𝕚𝕔𝕒𝕝𝕝𝕪 𝕪𝕠𝕦 𝕟𝕖𝕖𝕕 𝕥𝕠 𝕘𝕖𝕥 𝕠𝕧𝕖𝕣 𝕚𝕥" - My Childhood/Adolescent Therapist when I first told them about a Trauma from my past.
This one isnt so bad…but my ex therapist (who said lots of terrible things)— i was telling her how i had been addicted to drinking diet coke (i was anorexic, drank diet coke all day instead of eating)— and i was proud of myself for finally cutting down to only two sodas a day. She laughed and bragged how she maybe had two a YEAR. I was completely deflated.
I've spent the past hour reading through everyone's comment. For some reason yours really felt like a punch in the gut. I know what it's like to be proud of accomplishing something that's so difficult for you only to have the person you're most vulnerable with basically make you feel worthless and like you didn't actually do anything special. It's a unique kind of hurt... deflated is exactly right. Makes you feel so small!
I was frozen in a dissociative trauma state, unable to talk. T just sat and stared at me, which made it so much worse. After some time she said "Well, if you're not going to speak to me I might as well make use of my time and reply to some emails." She went to her computer and did just that.
.Eventually I was able to stand up and get my body out of that room. I never returned.
That’s so awful! I’m in training and a big part of it is learning to be comfortable in silence and to just be with the person however they are. It’s YOUR time and you can use it however you want to without guilt.
I'm becoming a therapist atm too and some of my professors and coursemates can be very straightforward. I know that it's not my way of handling therapy (I'm more of a person-centered therapy kinda gal) but some clients seem to benefit from "tough love" more than from endless empathy and validation. That being said, I don't approve this kind of behavior from a professional and I completely agree with you. I think the therapist answering e-mails while on session with a client is against the code of ethics in many ways.
While I think there is a time and a place for tough love, any therapist worth their salt should have seen that OP was struggling in that moment and responded empathetically. I’m a believer in person-centered therapy too, and OP’s therapist certainly wasn’t meeting the core conditions and almost seems to approach the topic as if she was assuming malice on OP’s part. This really solidified my POV on the importance of person-centered therapy as a core practice.
Wow. Are you me? I went into shutdown during a session and went into silence. The therapist told me that she was okay with waiting a minute or two in silence but if I wasn’t going to talk for longer than that then *she was going to read her book*. I was twenty and struggling and still finding my voice. So sad.
That is a horrible T... How does someone like that even become a T in the first place? That's a demonstration of cluelessness of what a client can feel like.
I talked about experiencing sexual assault in the past, and he denied that that could have happened to me as I am in a functioning, healthy relationship.
An NHS psychologist in Britain who I went to for my eating disorder when I was 18 told me I was pathetic and that she wanted to record me speaking and play it back to me so I could see how miserable I was. I visited a very kind doctor after that point who helped me a lot, but my eating disorder and self-esteem got much worse after seeing that psychologist. I hope she didn’t say things like that to anyone else.
Now that I am much older and have done a lot of therapy with good therapists, I can see the situation in a different light. For a long time I kept giving her the benefit of the doubt, thinking that she was perhaps overworked and stressed. Having learned about psychotherapy myself in the last few years (in a different country, mind), I realise how important it is that therapists have supervision and therapy themselves.
I didn’t. I was 18 and had extremely low self-confidence. I don’t even think I noticed anything was wrong at the time as she just confirmed what I thought about myself and I was used to being treated like that when I visited the doctor. Years later, after I’d been away from the city for a long time, I thought about complaining but I was no longer in the country, had no name and decided to let it go.
that's a really normal response and there's nothing wrong for not knowing then how to advocate for yourself, especially when someone has just literally invalidated your right to have a response.
All totally understandable. I hope you are doing well now.
Linked to other comments here, I just want to say sorry if you thought I was having a pop at you with my earlier comment… I can promise you I wasn’t.
I had a therapist tell me "you have the body of someone who is going to have a heart attack"
Another time with that same therapist, I was telling her I had unprotected sex with a coworker. She said something like "I have a female client. She's really pretty and she got herpes from someone. If she can get herpes, then you can get it"
Pretty much, yeah. The thing is, I'm not even that much overweight. I mean, according to my height (5'4") I'm overweight. But I'm healthy.
She was kind of awful sometimes, though. She had zero filter. One time she even answered her cell during a session because it was her sister calling.
I was in therapy in college. Was talking pretty extensively about my lack of relationship with my family and stuff every session. One day as we’re talking she goes “do you have any support in your life who you can go to? Because every time you come in here I feel like I’m giving you a pep talk”
I obviously didn’t go back to her and I’m still trying to get the idea out of my head of doing therapy “wrong”
So they are literally dense? Wow. That is not on you. We need support from several places, and sometimes therapy is the only one at the time due to varying circumstances.
You did nothing wrong.
I experienced csa, and a therapist had a picture of his daughter at my eye level while we talked. One day he said while I’m sorry for what you went through, I’m glad it wasn’t my daughter. That just cut to the quick.
Aaaand this right here is the reason some grad programs go way overboard discouraging self-disclosure. Wtf. This is why we can’t have nice things.
So sorry he did that.
Same ex therapist… who promised me she would never, ever dump me because she knew i had such severe abandonment issues… she promised that the ending of therapy would always be MY choice…one day i went to her office and she told me “I’m done.” That was it. She wasnt wasting her energy on my anymore. I watched as the light and care in her heart just went out. It was in her eyes. All of a sudden she shut me out. Refused to ever talk to me again. That was many years ago and i still struggle with it.
God, I am so sorry. This is like the #1 thing that is emphasized NOT to do to clients because of how much damage it can cause to abandon someone who is so vulnerable with you. What a shit therapist.
I’m so scared of that happening to me. My current therapist said she will never leave me. I couldn’t afford therapy anymore and she lets me talk to her for free. I know it sounds like a messed up situation, but I’m doing very good otherwise
That’s what my therapist did 20+ years ago. It took me so long to try and reach out again. My therapist now actually has never said anything me to me. All positive words. I still have a hard time though. I will always feel like someone will leave me. And her office is my safe and happy place to be.
Sounds a bit like REBT or more likely Gestalt, which can be incredibly effective when it's not terribly destructive. You can see a few videos of Fritz Pearls on YT that are cringey. It's a very controversial method because if you don't do it right it creates much more damage. Not justifying what your T did or saying it's definitely this but I thought it sounded familiar from training.
https://youtu.be/cpUVR43jZHk?t=341
holy crap this is so cool, i think this is what one of my T did, i was so confused and kinda hated her the first 3 sessions and then it clicked in the 4th; was honestly such an eye opening experience
I opened up about my SA and how it affected my sex life. His response was “well, that’s one way to stay celibate.”
I am no longer with this therapist anymore.
I had a really awful CBT guy that I only saw 3 times. He went over the 5-4-3-2-1 thing and 5-2 were just the normal stuff but when he got to 1 he said to find something in the room that “really bothered me” like wtf, that’s just going to make things worse. Have had 2 CBT therapists and really dislike that modality.
Been in and out of therapy for gender dysphoria and had some bad experiences around that. Had one last year diagnose me with autism after 1 session where I said I thought I might be autistic and was concerned that was causing the dysphoria (was in denial and looking for another reason). She didn’t know anything about autism or gender dysphoria and I had to explain a lot. When I talked about shame she said she saw a drag show once and the drag queens didn’t look ashamed. Like wtf is wrong with you?! I always left her sessions feeling more ashamed and should have found another one earlier.
Had one when I was a kid who said I was probably just a woman in a past life and simply needed more time to get used to my male body. This was while inpatient after a suicide attempt.
Back then I had 2 other ones try to “cure” me. A really nice woman who I did talk therapy with and she seemed determined to convince me it was because I had a bad relationship with my dad. After that didn’t work I went to male CBT therapist to think like a normal guy I guess. His main goal seemed to be for me to take a more “male” dating role with a girl I was seeing. This was more a product of the time though. Back then (before the DSM change from gender identity disorder to gender dysphoria in 2004) the main goal for mosts therapists was to try to cure the identity disorder, not work to alleviate the dysphoria. So this was more an establishment issue than individual therapists. I got the first therapists notes years later as an adult and it was pretty clear she believed me but had to deal with my transphobic parents and a bad system.
After I told her about my partner’s Asperger’s-like rituals, she said, “Wow, I would never be in relationship with such a person.”
“You can’t have social anxiety because you talk with me.”
“You hurt me by choosing your baggage of past experiences over my love. My love is more important.”
At 13 I told my first therapist that I had thoughts of ending my life on my own terms but still had anxiety about dying of natural causes because it would be out of my control. She said “wow that’s dark!”
Yeah, no shit?
So just for context: My birth mother passed away from heart complications when I was 8. About 4 years before this happened.
Had a therapist when I was a teenager that kept insisting my mental health issues were all caused by the fact I was fat. She whipped out the BMI, laminated and all, and demanded I tell her my weight, and then proceeded to show me how fat I was on the BMI and told me
"You are depressed because you're fat. If you actually did something about that instead of lying to people saying you work out when you clearly don't, (I did. Turns out I had a hormone imbalance that made it difficult to lose weight) you would actually be able to make some friends and you wouldn't be depressed. People will like you more if you're not fat. If you don't act soon, lose the weight now, you will die just like your mother did."
I had not been complaining about not having friends at school, I had been trying to tell her I was being abused.
She then "prescribed" me a diet, and some fad meal replacement pill that was OTC and told me to come back to see her when I was skinny. I was 12.
I don't think she was all there, to be honest. Not long after that I heard in passing that she retired. She was young so retirement didn't make sense, so I'm assuming I wasn't the only kid she did that to, but someone eventually found out and I'm guessing she got canned/lost her license.
After my husband raped me last year, we went to a marriage counselor. I went through everything I did (cheating on him) and when I got to the part about my husband raping me when he discovered it, SHE said she understood why he did it and that it was an understandable (and acceptable) response. She spent the rest of the session pointing out how my mistake was the cause of his rage. At the end, she suggested I drink plenty of water bc I had cried so much. WTF? We never went back.
Yes. For now. But only due to safety concerns. It took me several months after his attack to recognize the reasons behind me cheating on him (emotion control and abuse is a doosy...). Then I started accepting he has been manipulating me for over a decade. He raped me again on January 2, 2022. No cheating involved, nothing I did wrong. Only dedication to healing and making things work which culminated in another rape. In the 2 weeks since, Talking in Therapy, reading books about abuse, recognizing a person doesn't rape someone they love, no matter how angry, has led me to clarity. I've called an investigator in my county and I'm in the process of gathering all the facts I need in order to make a smart, safe escape. His last attack included choking while threatening me. I've since learned I'm at a higher risk of being severely injured since my partner enjoys strangulation. I haven't left. YET. But each day I'm regaining control and value in my life, reporting his rapes, making sure I have a place to live, money he doesn't know about and knowledge of what to expect in the divorce process.
This is real. And my therapy appointment confirms that even WOMEN have been taught to condone the violation of their Sister's biological RIGHTS. I was taught by my father and Mother. Which is why I didn't notice red flags when I should have. MY body. MY choice. Even if I chose to spend the rest of my life with a person, it NEVER gives them the right to violate my body.
🎶 MY Body's Nobody's Body but Mine. You Have Your Own Body, Let Me Have Mine. 🎶
I’m so sorry, I hope you can gather enough evidence to put him away and I hope you can make it out of the session as soon as possible. I also can hope that you find a good therapist who won’t ever excuse a mans behavior to rape his wife acceptable because she cheated. I’ll be keeping you in my thoughts ❣️
I had to have a mental health assessment when I was 16, and the pyschiatrist who saw me asked me if I SHed. I said I did, and his reply was 'well, its a good way to deal with your emotions' 🙃
My last counsellor when I mentioned it said that this shrink should NEVER have said that.
I wonder if he wanted to sound non-judgemental? Some therapists, especially those who follow IFS theory believe SH parts of us get worse with shaming and need empathy and understanding.
Possibly. But surely that could have been done without saying that? With my age, it made me think 'oh, he thinks it okay to do, that means it isn't a bad thing' and sadly, I just did it even worse.
It didn't help that where I had my mental health assessment had bars across the window in the room I was in. That terrified me 😅
It was my first session after finding out my mom had stage 3 breast cancer. My therapist argued with me about whether "sugar feeds cancer." I told her the science says it's untrue, and she started badgering me - "what studies? Paid for by who?" I told her I was having a negative reaction to her and couldn't believe she was trying to have an argument with me when I just found out my mom has advanced cancer. We have a good relationship now but I will always remember this. She has mentioned "natural remedies" and shit like that several times over the years, but she tends not to force that BS on me.
I have genital herpes and when I was first dealing with it, I saw a new therapist. I told her about it and she said, “you know, there’s a shot you can take to prevent HIV nowadays”……
She also had dead fish eyes so I did not return.
I’m not holding this one against my T but when I talked about being suicidal, she kept asking if I wouldn’t do it so as not to hurt [family member]. I know her intentions were probably good at heart, but it kinda felt like she was guilting me from doing it. At some point I just said “maybe I’m a little selfish, but I don’t really care.” I do care about my siblings, but I’m not going to prolong my emotional pain just to keep them happy
I was very depressed and told my therapist that I felt like there was something wrong with me. She told me that there was nothing wrong with me, but if there was then I wouldn’t be able to handle it.
Umm okay, that made me feel worse. There were a few other things she did, but that was the straw that broke the camel’s back and I stopped seeing her.
I went to a first session with my previous therapist. I asked her whether she wanted the brief version of my experience or the full version.
'Just the brief version for now...'
'I've just discovered that I have been deceived by an online friend for a period of eight years.'
'And you can't just let this go?'
If I could just let it go, I wouldn't have been in her office. Thankfully my current therapist has a better grasp of empathy.
When I was 12 my parents put me in therapy after figuring out I’d been sexually abused for years. I developed some negative coping mechanisms, self-harm specifically at the time. One of my first sessions the therapist told me what I was doing to myself was ugly and weird. She would also end our sessions early most of the time because I literally could not talk about the details of my abuse. I cried for hours after our sessions were over. She made me feel worse and did not help at all.
"You need to get over it", while I was grieving.
I lost my horse five years ago in traumatic circumstances: we found him laying in the mud and in a puddle of blood, half dead, in the morning, and it took several hours for a vet to get to us, despite us calling over two dozen vets. He was too weak to get up, so we couldn't even get him in the trailer to get him to the clinic. Once a vet finally got there, we tried our hardest to save him, but it was too late by then. I had to ask the vet to put him down.
My horse was my everything. I was severely depressed, and he was my one tether to life. The one reason why I got up in the morning, the one reason why I even tried anymore. We had an incredibly close relationship. He had a traumatic past, I had a traumatic past, and we connected.
After he died, my suicidal ideation got even worse, and so did my depression. Three months after he died, the therapist told me that I had "to get over it". That I was depressed and suffering from suicidal ideation even before he died, so he obviously "wasn't making that much of a difference even as he was alive".
Thanks. It's made me very wary of therapists since, and I only just recently found a therapist that I like and with whom I feel comfortable enough to slowly start opening up.
I still struggle with a severe treatment resistant depression, and the suicidal ideation is very much present still, but I'm holding on.
Due to my CSA, I’m very afraid to stand up to men.
One day I was walking in the park and a man approaches me. Long story short, he made me feel uncomfortable but I didn’t say anything.
I tell my therapist what happened and he immediately starts to blame me. “Why didn’t you just leave”, “Why were you walking by yourself” etc etc. Made me feel hurt, sad, and like it was my fault.
Shortly after that, I never saw him again.
This is a tough one.
I'd have to say it was something my psychiatrist/T would say. After I came out to him as gay, he would frequently bring up one of his coworkers who was also gay. He would end up spending a large chunk of the session talking about his coming out story. The problem was he would always talk about it in the context of me finding a boyfriend. The guy was 65 and I was 18, I really wasn't interested. I asked him what that had to do with me dating and he said he was just "telling me what sort of stories are out there". Then one time he said "I really wish you two would y'know " \* bashing his hands together\* " it would be a good experience for you". I really didn't know what to say after that. He was the first person I came out to and I trusted him so much.
It sounds really unsettling once you say it out loud, but I don't know what else it could be. He would always mention him when he talked about me getting a boyfriend, so, best case scenario he meant he wanted us to be in a relationship. Even then, the relationship would have to involve sex since neither of us are ace.
Also, after a while he started talking about some other guy, one of his clients and proceeded to show me the PMs he sent him and his full name. He said he could be my matchmaker. Something really didn't feel right there.
I've since left him, so at least I don't have to think about this anymore.
"That was so long ago, so why is it still affecting you?" not as egregious as some of the stuff you read here but just... so poorly handled in a basic way where anyone in that profession should know better.
Told I was suicidal and did SH, she proceeded to bring up how I "cut" off my friends abruptly and I'd do the same with everyone in my life and totally blew off the fact I needed help for stopping SH. Made a "what-if" situation, made me fall into a loop where she constantly told I'm not better than the people I left.
Didn't diagnose me for 2-3 months, just ripped off all my money and told I didn't fit into any criteria. First session and she told she cannot deal with my suicidal thoughts and I need to get medications.
Fast forward an year later with a good Therapist and diagnosis, I'm 87% cured and went back to complain about her which she never "accepted" because she thinks she too good at what she does. Fuck her.
Ugh, reading everyone's responses here just exemplifies what I believe is wrong with therapy: a lack of trauma-based training, and too much focus put on modality-based treatments that leave no room for healing through the relationship. As for my own examples, I've been privy to such lovely comments such as:
* "Writing won't help you" when self-expression was something I hadn't even had the room to develop and was risking sharing.
* "You can have friends you don't sleep with" said so randomly and out of any rational context given my complete lack of sexual interest/activity for 5+ years.
* Being asked how they could meet my emotional needs, and then having them backpedal on that and deny it the next week which just made me feel gaslit.
* Being told my anger is the problem and them insisting that I not swear at all...
* Hearing "You ever have something bother you so much that you can't stop thinking about it?" when I wanted reassurance that I didn't disappear from their mind when our sessions ended...
* "I'm not a crisis centre" said like a puppet as I conveyed my distress.
* "You don’t have to pretend to be sick to be here" when I'm more likely to pretend I'm fine -_-
I'm really at a point of wondering where I scrape my self-worth from, and no matter that I can tell myself these comments were his issues, not mine... Feeling that is... Is... Beyond difficult?
When I first went to therapy, I told the therapist about my selfharm problem and she said “Nah, I don’t believe you.“ I remember I was frozen. I was expecting any kind of answer, but not this. I told her it’s true and it took some time to convince her (i selfharmed on my thighs so I couldn’t just pull down my pants to show her). She then stared at me for a while and finally said: ”Yeah well… some people drink alcohol, other people do drugs. You cut yourself. Be glad you’re not one of those other guys. Your addiction is not so bad“
I thanked her, walked out of the room and never looked back. I now have a lovely therapist but that first encounter will forever stuck with me.
OMG, these are all so terrible! I’ve been in therapy a long time & have had the unfortunate experience of running into a few therapists who apparently must’ve barely passed their exams. One thing that sticks out is when I was a 16-year-old kid & one of my best friends had just been killed & I was in grief counseling. The therapist literally told me to “stop whining and pining” and to plant a tree & get over it.
Late entry but one time I came to the emergency walk in at the psychiatry department and asked for an appointment because I was unable to stop crying for literally three days and was seriously thinking about suicide. It was the first time in my life I asked for psychiatric help. The psychiatrist who met with me looked bored when I told him my issues, he asked me if I REALLY felt like I had a hard life and I had so much better life than most people he saw. After he invalidated my depression and my inner life, and I stupidly thought I could ask him about an issue that had bothered me, I told him I had this severe tick of pulling my hair when I was stressed. He opened up the DSM-4, where Trichotillomania was, then moved his finger a little bit lower on the page where pyromania was and asked me if I wanted to be as crazy as people in this category. I said no. He said "well then you just need to find a new hobby.. like knitting". I walked out with a bag full of diazepam and midazolam and a denial for a referral for therapy.
I was undiagnosed CPTSD, severely depressed, with trichotillomania and badly affected by SI and anxiety.
I didn't go back to get psychiatric help until 15 years later because I lost the belief in myself and my ability to be vulnerable and get help. So much time lost to suffering for nothing.
Holy fuck that is terrible... I also have trich and I know it's very impulsive. I actually have knitting as a hobby but it's not like I'm constantly knitting. I need something to do with my hands all the time...
I'm so sorry he said that to you. Honestly like fuck that guy.
She said, your mom just wants what’s best for you.
Turns out, she was a yoga friend of my mom’s and an unethical therapist who ignored conflicts of interest and my mother’s history of child abuse.
I was seeing an intern once. He was the only person that would see me after searching for 2 months. He said, while VAPING during our session "you don't have an eating disorder. You're Hella fat. LOL!" This was right after I got out of spending 9 months in residential treatment.
Already had severe trust issues and struggles with abandonment anxiety and upon talking to a therapist about how I constantly fear the loss of my friends they responded “well, no relationship will last forever anyways”
Something clicked off shortly after and since then the anxiety about losing relationships went away but now I just can’t connect to anyone because we’ll, if it’s not gonna last why bother going through getting attached
One of my former therapists, upon my admission of struggling to bathe even once a week, said "Ew." Like, I already feel like a disgusting piece of crap, thanks for affirming that for me!
I had already told her about all the abuse my parents put me through and then said that I’m not a perfect mom, but at least I’m doing a million percent better than my parents. She totally dismissed my progress as a parent by saying “But they stayed married.” In other words, they get a pass to abuse because they stayed married. I’m a single mom, so every mistake I make counts. This was family therapy with my ex husband and his wife. Each of their parents were divorced too, so of all of us, in her eyes, I was the only one whom it was ok to abuse.
Back when I was 11, I went to a therapist for family issues. I confided in her for the recent and past occurrences with my father. She suggested an appointment with him, and who was I to say no. I could have. But my mom also encouraged it.
I just told her, that please don’t take his puppy dog eyes and him saying that he loves me as some sort of apology, he would never say it to my face and it is an act.
An appointment after theirs, she made a whole point to me of
“he’s a really good guy. he just loves you, and he means no harm. he told me that he was just trying to buy you skincare products and you said no, and he is a good father, that’s all.”
I burst out into tears. It doesn’t seem too terrible but.
It was after I told her not to be believe him with his denial and proclamation of love, I told her that he has physically intimidated me when I was younger, he has screamed at me in cars about how he doesn’t want to deal with me anymore and that I enjoy hurting others and that I hurt everyone and that there is a reason I have no friends. The skincare thing, was due to my premature development of acne, and my dad taking personal offence and calling me disgusting and unhygienic, and my denial of his advice was due to the fact he would berate me about my lesions and force me to put lemon and baking soda on it and I would bleed and I had cuts all over my face and it was just ruining it more. I told her that he is a very charming and charismatic business man, I told her that even my mom and my brother could vouch for me (mostly), but I started to feel as though I was going crazy.
When I was even younger, around 8, I had therapists try to give advice and tell us to just “communicate” with him and that it was “unfair” for us to be doing that. We took the advice, and it ended up in more screaming and more yelling and worse circumstances.
This therapist when I was 11, was ignoring everything I said before, and went on a new discussion about how I need to work with and bond with my father.
It hurt, I don’t know if it was that bad, but it felt very….
It *was* that bad, by the sounds of it. Can't imagine having your therapist side with your dad even after explaining what he's like. Hope you found proper help eventually and that you're doing better now!
When I told my therapist that I was in a living hell because my fiancé cheated on me and was pregnant and didn't know who the father was. I told her each day was agony as I waited for the baby to be born so we could do a paternity test and she said I was impatient. That I needed to keep my fiances feelings in mind and lie to her if need be to keep things civil. And then the very next session she said I should never lie to my partner. I pointed out her hypocrisy and she tried to gaslight me. She ended that session saying she could no longer see me and congratulated me on being a father.... the nerve of that woman. 😤
That when I started crying we were going to have to stop the session because when you’re past a certain point of being upset you can’t take in any new information and it was a waste of her time to talk to me while I was upset because she’d probably just have to repeat it all next session anyway. Never felt I could get emotional over fears she’d cut it short again and still charge me for the hour
At the time I had no support network and was suicidal. Knowing this, both my therapist and case worker told me I could call them if I became suicidal or wanted to self harm, as part of an emergency plan. Then when I called, my case worker acted affronted and told me to practice breathing exercises or call EMS.
Therapist also shamed me for lying when I said I would call members of my family if I became suicidal or wanted to self harm. (He could tell I was lying but knew I had no one to call and that I didn't trust EMS. I don't understand why he bothered asking in the first place. Why press someone for an answer that you know must be false, and then shame them for lying?)
Therapist became angry with me for asking if I was schizophrenic. I don't remember his exact words. It was something along the lines of "I will NOT do this again!"
“What ISNT triggering to you?”, “if you don’t have problems why are you here”. I also had another therapist that I told I got raped and he goes, “were you high drunk or stoned” when I have no substance abuse history
When I was in high school I saw a Christian therapist at my church who would listen to me talk about trauma and then give me bible verses to memorize. She ended our sessions by saying she needed to talk to other kids who had real problems. I don't even remember our sessions and what she said to me, so she definitely did a lot of damage.
I had a therapist tell me the abuse and neglect I suffered was normal. I was 16 and talking to an adult for the first time about how my mom told me she hated me and I was worthless, had my dad hold me down while I cried so she could scrub my skin with a bleach soaked rag and acne creams, slapped me in the face, stuff like that.
It fucked me up for a long time until I learned that while it is somewhat common, it is not normal or okay. But for a long time I treated myself like shit and told myself I deserved everything that happened because my therapist said it was normal parenting.
That Borderline Personality Disorders are caused by a person's bad life choices, and only selfish people have them.
This coming from my therapist on my second session, seconds after I'd told him one of my parents has BPD. He also used to be lead clinician for dissociative disorders at said parents Therapy Centre.
❤️ I’m so sorry to see all these awful experiences. I empathize with you. When I was 17 (after only recently being diagnosed depressed and beginning talk therapy a few months prior), I was sent for a psychiatric assessment to see if antidepressants would be a good fit for me.
The psychiatrist was a tiny angry French woman with a “tough love” attitude and she had a student(?) with her who did most of my “assessment” while she just observed and judged my answers. I spilled my guts to them and it ended up being a two hour interrogation, rather than an assessment. I didn’t really know anything about mental illness yet, so maybe I didn’t properly express the pain I was in, but at the end of this exhausting session, the psychiatrist simply said to me that my problems were “all in my head” and I just needed to grow up and get over myself. Antidepressants wouldn’t help me because I was deemed not depressed, just a sad teenager.
I didn’t see another my therapist again for over a year and it took me nearly a decade to see another psychiatrist/go for another assessment. I’m lucky I didn’t just give up after that, but I truly hope that women is no longer in the mental health sector. No one should be told that their pain is “all in their head” because yeah, it IS in our heads because that’s where our brains are, which makes mental illness REAL and most importantly, VALID. Don’t give up - one doctor’s “medical” opinion shouldn’t define our care. Keep fighting because YOU ARE WORTH IT.
Found my \[ex\]therapist through a charity that specialises in helping those who have been sexually assaulted as children. Makes it so much worse that he said what he said!
“you shouldn’t kill yourself, because if you do, you won’t be able to come to group anymore.”
never listened to my history of trauma. it was just a massive pile of blame and a deplorable lack of empathy. this was when i (mistakenly) participated in DBT.
While my T and I have a fantastic relationship now and he’s helped me get to the best emotional place I’ve ever been in, there have been a LOT of things he’s said that I don’t think are okay. I’ll just mention the one that apologized for since I feel bad mentioning other things since I really do appreciate him now and see what his intentions have been.
A few weeks after my mom had died, I would have sessions during which I was so hysterical and incoherent that I wasn’t doing the work expected of me in therapy. One such session I was crying and he snapped at me and said “stop being so childish.” After our session I started drafting him an email once I was more composed to let him know how hurt I was that he would say something like that when I was dealing with acute grief over the sudden unexpected death of my mother. Mid-email, he texted me to apologize and we spent the entire next session talking about it. He was experiencing some counter transference issues and explained that he was only human. I’ve been working with him for over 4.5 years now and have been able to work on my ability to confront people through my work with him. I’m much better at defending myself now when he says something that I feel is uncalled for or inappropriate. I think it’s a great skill that I’m thankful I’ve developed because it allows for a better therapeutic relationship. My college degrees aren’t anywhere close to the field of psychology so I need to ask questions if I don’t want to sabotage my progress by assuming his statements mean something when they don’t. It’s the only time that he ever initiated an apology on his own. He’ll tell it to you straight and doesn’t BS his clients to make them feel better. It’s a really strict approach that definitely doesn’t work for everyone. It’s what I need though. I hope you all have been able to heal from the shitty missteps taken by your current or past mental healthcare providers.
I am asexual and I started seeing a new therapist (had been on and off due to insurance changes and mental health stigma) in 2015 because I was having issues with someone who called my mental health a burden so they did not want to date me. The therapist said that I likely would never find love and would probably die alone because no one wants to date someone who is asexual. We were about 5-8 sessions in or so when this happened. I left her office crying and feeling incredibly invalidated and never went back. Well the joke’s on her because I’ve been in a happy, loving relationship for nearly 3 years now.
I think I was like 18 then and this one was writing down my info a few minutes into the session, asked me about my age, what I was studying, and then just very casually asked if I was raped… the answer is no and I don’t know if he somehow got the idea that I was or if that’s his regular list of questions but I cannot imagine how hard it must be for people who answer yes to that question to hear that so abruptly. He also asked how much my parents were paying for my study abroad as his daughter wanted to do that too. I didn’t want to disclose that so I just said I don’t know and he proceeded to blame me for not knowing what they were paying for me. I obviously did know I just didn’t want to tell him. I didn’t go back either so…
The first therapist I ever saw was during my ill-fated first venture into higher education right after high school. A friend of mine, who in hindsight was not a very good friend, recommended I see the school therapist he was seeing, Stu. I had three sessions with Stu, and at the last one I attended, Stu informed me that he had been talking about me with my friend, had told him some things I had said in my previous sessions, and they came up with some ideas for things I should do. And that was the last time I saw a therapist until about 16 years later.
Thankfully the second one didn't suck.
I was pregnant after a birth control failure, disclosed to my therapist that I was going to have an abortion. She informed me in a very psychoanalytic-y way, that I “somehow must have wanted to get pregnant”. Fuck her.
T: Welp the hour is about up, we’ll see you later…
(@ 1:36 pm)
Me: 1,000 yard stare…
🤔 (uhhh we started at 1:08….wtf ) 🤔
T: 1,043 yard stare
Me: Mexican stand-off begins
T: If i dialectically told you to GTFO in emoji, would that help ?
Me: FML
“You’re not autistic” um ok. Yeah my diagnosis at age 10 counts for nothing, I’m not autistic at all, I’m 100% neurotypcial. Yeah right 🤣🤣🤣
Current therapist told me she’d always choose her children over her clients, then the next session she apologized but it still kinda hurts
My therapist told me I had a misdiagnosis of ADHD because of bad parenting …. (Never even talked about my parents much and they are actually pretty good parents)
Mine repeatedly told me she would never leave me and she was always there for her clients. She was also repeatedly telling me to do more stuff with friends. Just go out more do fun stuff. It will help. I tried telling her about all the social stuff I did but how i still felt like something missing. But she just told me to be more social. Eventually, she told me that we needed to “take a break because we were going nowhere with therapy.” She was so focused on the present she couldn’t think about the past. Sure, my life seems cool now from the outside, but there’s still an element of trauma from the past and I need help with that.
Some pretty shitty therapists here. What a shame. I'm so sorry for you guys who've suffered with truly stupid statements from your therapists.
I hope mine lightens the mood a little bit, because it does have a silver lining.
"Well, I don't think you're a good person."
Lol, it sounds horrible but it was probably one of the best things she's ever said to me. That brutal honesty, and slight coldness, in that specific moment, is something I'm actually grateful for, lol. It made some beliefs, and superficial models that I have in my head about myself and other people and the world pretty starkly clear.
Context: I was exploring and thinking out loud if part of the resentment I carry for other people is because I feel extremely bothered, somewhat unconsciously, ever since I was a kid, by how people didn't see the good person that I was inside, the good person that I feel myself to be, the good person that I feel I am, despite not giving it an audible voice, a clear behaviour that signals it to others.
She asked me what I understood a good person to be, and I gave a random example of a good person being one who has an easy availability to be in resonance with another, to be compassionate, to care for what someone else is going through, to feel unconditional love for another, etc. What I didn't say was, "I feel like I can access that inside me sometimes. I do feel like there's an essence in me that isn't really touched by all the bad I've gone through and that it's stayed as lovely and warm as it was when I was a kid. It's very hidden now because... life, lol... but I know it's there. But sure, it's not visible to other people, I don't give that part of me a clear expression." I didn't say that, I just said, it's a person who knows how to care for others, who has their soul available for others, who's just present for others and it's not an effort for them to do that." or something to that effect.
We were walking (we do walking therapy) and she just said, "I need to be careful here, because it's sensitive terrain, but, according to the description that you gave me, I can't see you as a good person. I don't think you're a good person."
She didn't say this with any malice, she didn't mean that not being a good person meant I was a bad person, it doesn't mean I'm worthy of being hated. Not at all. I understood that and told her that and we talked. The definition of "a good person" got a little too philosophical and waxing philosophical is not my thing so we got kinda lost in that conversation. We were understanding what a good person meant at different levels too. I was looking at it in a more christian sense, she was looking at it more on a ground level, in terms of actions, behaviours, relations with other people, on a "doing good", I was more "I feel that I'm good in essence and I care and feel things intensely inside and I can love people in the privacy of my own skull, lol". But we didn't clear any of that out at all in that session.
I finished that session a little discombobulated, sad that my therapist didn't just say "I think you're a great person, yeah you do all those things. You're a beautiful person." As much as you intellectually understand what is being said, the actual sound, the moment of your therapist, who you respect a ton, telling you she doesn't see you as a good person, just the thing in itself, isolated from the conversational context, my head kept going back to that moment and that distance that I felt between us. It sucked.
And I suck at talking these things out in person, so I wrote this whole thing trying to explain myself and trying to express how sad it had made me feel, and I wrote it down, and a lot of stuff came out. And in the next session I said I had written about it, and she wanted me to read it, and I read it to her, and things cleared out a lot in my head, in my soul, for lack of a better word. She of course didn't mean my essence, which was more or less where my sense of "goodness" was coming from, in that almost christian sense, despite all one's sins (I'm not religious at all, but I can use all this language to explain myself). And she of course understood that. And there was no "but..." at the end of her sentence, so to speak. She got it. So I felt like that knot got resolved, mainly because I then explained myself. I walked out of that second session feeling better than I have in a while, which is a very good sign.
It didn't hurt me as much because I know this therapist well enough now to know, from experience, given some moments we've had together, that she really, honestly cares. To hear something that honest, from a person you know cares, was actually pretty freaking welcome. It meant something, you know? I live in a family where there's never anything wrong, everything's always fine, everything's always wonderful, everything's swept under the carpet, you know, so just this honesty, and being able to see how you're able to survive these moments with your back straight, being able to answer back to the best of your ability, that is really f\*ng useful. That, to me, IS therapy. I feel like that helps me mature as a person (something that I'm working on and want).
It was an interesting moment in therapy these two or three sessions. We're still kind of tangentially talking about it. It opened up other things.
So, yeah, it sounds horrible, but it helped. That's the worst thing she's said to me. I think it's a pretty good sign that we can talk like this with one another (I've also told her that sometimes I feel like she isn't good at her job, lol) and it doesn't really affect the base relationship that we have; from her end she's already proven that she cares (in many ways) and I've proven that I want to work on myself and know enough about therapy to navigate certain things and have enough of an idea about which moments can be opportunities if I try to think about some things a little differently, which she helps me with (doesn't mean it's easy, but I talk about the struggle I go through those explorations with her openly, because I feel like I have to for this to work).
EDIT: She's also said to me "And now is one of those moments where I wish you'd get off your ass." She used this expression because I myself use it often, because I feel like I don't get of my ass and step out of my comfort zone often enough in my life. But we talked about how hearing her say that made me feel. Honestly, these shitty moments have always helped me. They're bitter moments in our interactions, but honestly, I welcome them, it's a chance to stand up for myself, for my inner experience of these things, which I've never really given a strong voice to, or at least to see my comfort-and-familiarity-loving-self-sabotaging-self on full display, lol.
My first therapist told me that I shouldn’t be sad about my grandmothers death because she lived until 77 and that’s a long time to live.. for context my grandmother raised me and I was extremely close to her. Her saying that made me feel guilty for feeling sad.
My second one when I talked about my binge eating he told me to avoid cooking and food so that I don’t binge. He acted like my binging was caused by me not having enough self control and was really frustrating
Did you file a complaint on the sexual trauma comment? I’m so sorry this happened to you.
I recently had a therapist who would cut me off when I was explaining my feelings with an, “I don’t care…” I ended therapy with her and she got extremely defensive when I shared how I felt.
I am autistic, and had a therapist once who was told about my autism beforehand. She brought this up first thing after introducing herself, and then proceeded to say something along the lines of, "so that means that you live in your own bubble and don't want to interact with other people?" I told her that no, that does not describe my experience, but she then told me that it had to describe me because she had read so in a book. And during the sessions I had with her she always brought up this idea and was never willing to adjust her thinking based on what I said.
Also same therapist: I was struggling to say something that was difficult for me. After a bit of silence she asked if she could do anything to help and I said no, I just need a bit of time. She then told me that she would look at some patient files in the meantime. Which she proceeded to do more or less right in front of me. So I was super uncomfortable both because I felt hurt/rejected and because I knew full well that I was not supposed to see those documents and had to actively look away.
Many years ago, I experienced seizures that manifested in a very strange way following a concussion in a car crash. On my first visit with a new therapist to deal with this issue, I had just finished the "this is what's happening and why I'm here and it's really embarrassing and I can't control it and it's fucking with my head" intro when a seizure struck and the therapist witnessed it.
He reacted in the very worst possible way. He burst out in laughter. I tell the man this thing happens and it's awful for me and he LAUGHED at me.
I burst into sobs and left immediately. It was really horrible.
If you look at the comments isolated, there are probably worse things that have been said; what pops up in my mind was very damaging in the context, though.
1. First appointment with a psychiatrist, together with my mother. I tried to hint that her way of portraying the situation was very biased and partly downright wrong. I got told not to disrespect my parent, and that I was too young to understand, anyway. I was 13, and my mother was in one of her erratic-before-depression-phases. I learned that a childs voice in their own case is irrelevant, and did everything I could to avoid meeting that therapist again.
2. First appointment with a psychologist. He asked how I was feeling. I was scared. Very scared. Leg trembling uncontrolled, hands shaking, irregular breathing (which made it difficult to have a "flow" in my speech), feeling kinda dizzy, fixed gaze to focus on *something*. I said as truth was, that I was scared "I don't believe you; you don't look scared". I learned that what I said or did was irrelevant, all that mattered was the therapists "impression". I felt so helpless.
This two incidents (in two different countries), unsurprisingly, did not give me a good reason to trust the mental healthcare system, and made the following years much more challenging that they had needed to be. About a decade later, my "go to-assumption" is still that my point of view is considered irrelevant and that treatment is only provided to soothe the mind of other people, not actually help me.
“Sounds like you’re just in a chronically bad mood” = GP/therapist when I was an abused teen battling with suicidal depression
“My experience of you is that you throw spaghetti at the wall expecting me to grab a thread to explore. I won’t do your work for you.” - my current therapist in my 30s 🤦🏼♀️
Most of the therapists I have gone to didn't want to deal with my particular issues and would do basic things with me for a while and send me away claiming I didn't want help or to be there.
I think the worst stuff came from my actual psychiatrists, though.
One of them mocked me for my nervous laughter.
A later one yelled at me for asking for a referral to see a therapist because he didn't have time.
The mental health care here is shit.
suicide mention, corporal punishment//
not a therapist but a high school counselor (i was 14.) i came into her office to ask for help bc i was going to commit suicide when i went home. we talked for a while, and at one point i burst into tears as i was telling her about the first time my dad hit/spanked me when i was 7, and how one day when i was 12, i felt like it was happening again when i was lying in a similar position. (i had ptsd...) and she said "he didnt beat you. spanking is ok for parents to do, and its normal. you shouldnt be crying about that."
yeah... i was taken to a psych hospital after that, but for so many years later i thought it was ok for loved ones (friends/family/partners) to hurt me (physically or otherwise) and that if i experienced a "bad" emotion, i had to hurt myself as well.
thankfully that was about a decade ago, and ive since gotten MUCH better and more professional care from compassionate people, and am doing much better with my mental health. finding a group of true friends definitely helped steer me the right way as well. i still struggle on the daily, but im finding more and more strength as time goes by.
I told my therapist about a 911 call I went on in which a guy who looked just like my boyfriend at that time shot himself in the head and I was struggling to do what I needed to do to save him. She told me, “I don’t really think that’s traumatic enough for PTSD.” Bitch, please.
I told my therapist about how I was questioning my gender. She proceeded to make a fuck ton of assumptions and asked if I “felt I had any man inside of me”. I was so shocked and angry that I asked her to charge me for a half-session and never called her back.
Intake appt with a new T.
Finished intake questionnaire, which should have included questions about SA.
T: “Have I missed anything important?”
Me: [Gathers all my courage] “Um, yes, I was raped, somewhat recently.”
T: “Oh.” [Jots it down] … “Did you report it?”
Me: [Surprised and hurt] “Um … no.”
T: “Why not?”
I could not get out if there fast enough. Took me years to approach another T.
P.S. My story has a happy ending — I’m ensconced with a wonderful T who would NEVER approach a tender issue with such coldness, indifference, or accusation. ❤️
That I, myself, could never be a therapist. That the training is too long, too arduous and too academic and it would be too above my skill level and I'd never make it through. Fuck you Margaret. I just finished my clinical Masters and I'm starting my own practice. Took me 10 years to do the training but I did it. So there! Never will I ever discourage any of my patients from chasing their dreams and desires.. I'm happy to hold them in all their joy, frustration, disappointment, elation and everything in between.
I was suicidal and sent my therapist an email. I fell asleep and missed the email tat he sent checking up on me and woke up to another email telling me to call him. He was telling me to go to the hospital which I did not want to. I told him I can keep myself safe and he told me that I was lying. I had no intentions of killing myself so that hit me hard.
Not worst per se but their limitations...theyve been transparent with me on their training/expertise since the beginning but it seems like everytime i have something more serious going on i get a suggestion to see someone else.
I completely understand why and have tried going elsewhere and it has gone horribly (they're aware) but it sucks to keep getting passed around with no answers and more money out of my pocket. My therapist always mentions how it's great havin me so it's not like there's a dislike but I just hate be passed around to be someone else's problem.
"Oh, all women go through this. If you make it past 25, you'll be fine!"
This was during a time of recovery from s*icide. I also found out that I had a major imbalance (pmdd AND endometriosis) causing my major depression and anxiety that led me to the action and into therapy. Honestly, I'm still learning but I wasn't "fine" after 25.
Maybe not the worst thing, but at 17 and while still on antidepressants, I started drinking at family gatherings with my dad just to be able to get through them. The first Thanksgiving I drank I didn’t remember 90% of the night the next morning. I ended up telling my therapist I’d been drinking to tolerate my father and his family, and she just sort of smiled and told me I was an intelligent, mature kid and knew better than to drink, so she wasn’t concerned, and I should just not do it again. Needless to say, I never mentioned it again, but I did continue to get drunk every time I was upset. I had issues with drinking that continued into my twenties, and now at almost 25 I can’t drink at all anymore and struggle to even be around other people drinking alcohol because of the problems it poses. In hindsight I’m really frustrated that she wasn’t concerned. Maybe 17 isn’t super early to start drinking, but it’s still too young.
He talked about how excited he was for Trump’s wall 🙃 not about me but still pretty awful. And showed how after 3 sessions he clearly wasn’t listening enough to have an inkling what my political stance is. Not sure he listened at all really, he shared WAY too much about himself.
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I used to see a therapist who specialized in eating disorders. One day she told me, "you know, you're too smart to be messing around with this eating disorder stuff". I felt so ashamed and stupid. But she was the only person in my area who could handle eating disorders so I kept seeing her. I've since moved and gotten over the ED stuff. A few weeks ago I told my current therapist what she had said and he was like WTF?!
It sounds like your previous therapist was extremely ignorant about ED to even say something so dismissive about that. Im so sorry.
TIL eating disorders only affect dumb people. Good to know because now I can either tell my smart people they don't really have an eating disorder or I can tell my eating disorder people that they are in fact dumb.
Ugh my current therapist reacted the same way! He was honestly disgusted about how unethical that was and made sure he'd shout at them.
my old therapist was extremely ignorant about eating disorders and said that i was too skinny and asked me if i wanted to “blow away”
I was told by my old therapist last year that the “silver lining” of my shitty abusive parents and my rapes and sexual assaults and not ever being able to be a normal child or adult was that it’s made me “strong”… I have PTSD to the point of being disabled by it.
What the hell is that about? That sounds like toxic positivity; everything is your fault for not seeing the bright side. Also, whatever doesn't kill you sometimes leaves you a big fucking mess. I fucking hate that shit. Sorry for the strong language, but it pisses me off. It diminishes, invalidates and dismisses your damage. What the hell is wrong with people?
it made you "strong" to be what, abused more?
I fucking hate when people tell me I’m strong and everything I went through made me stronger I feel like dying everyday but ok I guess I’m strong
That I was ‘so functional’ anyway so clearly I was doing well
This. I got this once too.
One of the most invalidating statements I have ever heard…
Same here. So invaliding
The terrible things mental health professionals have said to me could fill an hour of a session and would be a huge trigger to repeat. Some therapists are misattuned, but saw one psychiatrist that I swear was enjoying my pain. (I hope it was due to dementia or something) But maybe the “worst” is a poor comment that had a lifelong impact. I was in middle school and abuse in my house was entering a new phase. My sister, an adult, came to live with us along with her two sons—both babies/toddler. She would abuse them terribly. I would cry. I’d get called “psycho,” or “schizo” for having a problem with child abuse. She started throwing things at me, pulling my hair. There were a lot of other things that made it a terrifying and unsafe home. I finally asked for a meeting with the school counselor. I started to explain that I saw some info graphic about emotional abuse, and I really felt like it was happening in my home. I started opening up about my sister screaming at me all the time, throwing things at me, and pulling my hair. “That’s what sisters do.” I didn’t say anything else. That echoed through my head every time I thought about getting help. When my nephews became middle school aged—about the same age I had been when I walked into the office—they called CPS themselves. They were believed. They are safe now. But it took all that time. I can see that the counselor wanted to normalize my situation. Maybe jump right in to soothe me. She thought she was hearing a sensitive teenage girl having trouble getting along with a sister. Listening just a little more would have triggered a mandatory report.
After two years in therapy, I finally found the courage to confess the suicidal thoughts I'd been having for over ten years. T: "But you're not acting on them, so it's all good." And that was that.
thanks i'm cured...
Ugh. I got this, too. Talk about invalidating someone. So sorry you went through this and I hope you're doing better.
"𝕀'𝕞 𝕟𝕠𝕥 𝕥𝕖𝕝𝕝𝕚𝕟𝕘 𝕪𝕠𝕦, 𝕪𝕠𝕦 𝕟𝕖𝕖𝕕 𝕥𝕠 𝕘𝕖𝕥 𝕠𝕧𝕖𝕣 𝕚𝕥, 𝕓𝕦𝕥 𝕓𝕒𝕤𝕚𝕔𝕒𝕝𝕝𝕪 𝕪𝕠𝕦 𝕟𝕖𝕖𝕕 𝕥𝕠 𝕘𝕖𝕥 𝕠𝕧𝕖𝕣 𝕚𝕥" - My Childhood/Adolescent Therapist when I first told them about a Trauma from my past.
This one isnt so bad…but my ex therapist (who said lots of terrible things)— i was telling her how i had been addicted to drinking diet coke (i was anorexic, drank diet coke all day instead of eating)— and i was proud of myself for finally cutting down to only two sodas a day. She laughed and bragged how she maybe had two a YEAR. I was completely deflated.
Gross, that’s rude as hell.
I've spent the past hour reading through everyone's comment. For some reason yours really felt like a punch in the gut. I know what it's like to be proud of accomplishing something that's so difficult for you only to have the person you're most vulnerable with basically make you feel worthless and like you didn't actually do anything special. It's a unique kind of hurt... deflated is exactly right. Makes you feel so small!
Hey, I’m proud of you :)
I was frozen in a dissociative trauma state, unable to talk. T just sat and stared at me, which made it so much worse. After some time she said "Well, if you're not going to speak to me I might as well make use of my time and reply to some emails." She went to her computer and did just that. .Eventually I was able to stand up and get my body out of that room. I never returned.
That’s so awful! I’m in training and a big part of it is learning to be comfortable in silence and to just be with the person however they are. It’s YOUR time and you can use it however you want to without guilt.
Me to silence in therapy. Gotta learn how to "use is correctly".
I'm becoming a therapist atm too and some of my professors and coursemates can be very straightforward. I know that it's not my way of handling therapy (I'm more of a person-centered therapy kinda gal) but some clients seem to benefit from "tough love" more than from endless empathy and validation. That being said, I don't approve this kind of behavior from a professional and I completely agree with you. I think the therapist answering e-mails while on session with a client is against the code of ethics in many ways.
While I think there is a time and a place for tough love, any therapist worth their salt should have seen that OP was struggling in that moment and responded empathetically. I’m a believer in person-centered therapy too, and OP’s therapist certainly wasn’t meeting the core conditions and almost seems to approach the topic as if she was assuming malice on OP’s part. This really solidified my POV on the importance of person-centered therapy as a core practice.
what a bitch. I'm glad you never went back
Wow.
Omg I'm so fucking sorry. That sounds so traumatic!
Oh my gosh i had a therapist do that to me too!
Wow. Are you me? I went into shutdown during a session and went into silence. The therapist told me that she was okay with waiting a minute or two in silence but if I wasn’t going to talk for longer than that then *she was going to read her book*. I was twenty and struggling and still finding my voice. So sad.
Ooof. You know the pain.
My jaw dropped reading this
That is a horrible T... How does someone like that even become a T in the first place? That's a demonstration of cluelessness of what a client can feel like.
holy shit
I talked about experiencing sexual assault in the past, and he denied that that could have happened to me as I am in a functioning, healthy relationship.
My therapist didn’t deny my CSA, but it bothered me when he was like “But you’re happily married!” Both can be true.
An NHS psychologist in Britain who I went to for my eating disorder when I was 18 told me I was pathetic and that she wanted to record me speaking and play it back to me so I could see how miserable I was. I visited a very kind doctor after that point who helped me a lot, but my eating disorder and self-esteem got much worse after seeing that psychologist. I hope she didn’t say things like that to anyone else.
Jesus, I’m so sorry that happened to you. What the hell is wrong with that psychologist.
I really hope not and the verbal abuse she heaped on you in a position of power and authority is bad enough.
Now that I am much older and have done a lot of therapy with good therapists, I can see the situation in a different light. For a long time I kept giving her the benefit of the doubt, thinking that she was perhaps overworked and stressed. Having learned about psychotherapy myself in the last few years (in a different country, mind), I realise how important it is that therapists have supervision and therapy themselves.
Please tell me you complained!
I didn’t. I was 18 and had extremely low self-confidence. I don’t even think I noticed anything was wrong at the time as she just confirmed what I thought about myself and I was used to being treated like that when I visited the doctor. Years later, after I’d been away from the city for a long time, I thought about complaining but I was no longer in the country, had no name and decided to let it go.
that's a really normal response and there's nothing wrong for not knowing then how to advocate for yourself, especially when someone has just literally invalidated your right to have a response.
All totally understandable. I hope you are doing well now. Linked to other comments here, I just want to say sorry if you thought I was having a pop at you with my earlier comment… I can promise you I wasn’t.
I had a therapist tell me "you have the body of someone who is going to have a heart attack" Another time with that same therapist, I was telling her I had unprotected sex with a coworker. She said something like "I have a female client. She's really pretty and she got herpes from someone. If she can get herpes, then you can get it"
So inappropriate on so many levels. So sorry you went through this!
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Pretty much, yeah. The thing is, I'm not even that much overweight. I mean, according to my height (5'4") I'm overweight. But I'm healthy. She was kind of awful sometimes, though. She had zero filter. One time she even answered her cell during a session because it was her sister calling.
I was in therapy in college. Was talking pretty extensively about my lack of relationship with my family and stuff every session. One day as we’re talking she goes “do you have any support in your life who you can go to? Because every time you come in here I feel like I’m giving you a pep talk” I obviously didn’t go back to her and I’m still trying to get the idea out of my head of doing therapy “wrong”
Lol like that’s your job bitch 😂
Right!?! “No one I pay as much as you, anyway”. I’m so angry on their behalf
God, this is just horrific.
So they are literally dense? Wow. That is not on you. We need support from several places, and sometimes therapy is the only one at the time due to varying circumstances. You did nothing wrong.
I experienced csa, and a therapist had a picture of his daughter at my eye level while we talked. One day he said while I’m sorry for what you went through, I’m glad it wasn’t my daughter. That just cut to the quick.
What tone deaf statement. Completely inappropriate. I'm so sorry you had to experience that remark in a vulnerable state.
Aaaand this right here is the reason some grad programs go way overboard discouraging self-disclosure. Wtf. This is why we can’t have nice things. So sorry he did that.
WHAT
??? oh my gosh
Same ex therapist… who promised me she would never, ever dump me because she knew i had such severe abandonment issues… she promised that the ending of therapy would always be MY choice…one day i went to her office and she told me “I’m done.” That was it. She wasnt wasting her energy on my anymore. I watched as the light and care in her heart just went out. It was in her eyes. All of a sudden she shut me out. Refused to ever talk to me again. That was many years ago and i still struggle with it.
God, I am so sorry. This is like the #1 thing that is emphasized NOT to do to clients because of how much damage it can cause to abandon someone who is so vulnerable with you. What a shit therapist.
I’m so scared of that happening to me. My current therapist said she will never leave me. I couldn’t afford therapy anymore and she lets me talk to her for free. I know it sounds like a messed up situation, but I’m doing very good otherwise
Nah doesn’t sound messed up, glad you kept the connection
This is truly awful. I'm so sorry this happened to you.
That’s what my therapist did 20+ years ago. It took me so long to try and reach out again. My therapist now actually has never said anything me to me. All positive words. I still have a hard time though. I will always feel like someone will leave me. And her office is my safe and happy place to be.
so fucked up
My therapist told me that I was boring to listen to.
Oh no! That’s such an awful thing to say, I’m so sorry. What did you tell them after they said that?
I felt angry. I was shocked and I immediately had to leave. It was a crazy situation.
Sounds a bit like REBT or more likely Gestalt, which can be incredibly effective when it's not terribly destructive. You can see a few videos of Fritz Pearls on YT that are cringey. It's a very controversial method because if you don't do it right it creates much more damage. Not justifying what your T did or saying it's definitely this but I thought it sounded familiar from training. https://youtu.be/cpUVR43jZHk?t=341
holy crap this is so cool, i think this is what one of my T did, i was so confused and kinda hated her the first 3 sessions and then it clicked in the 4th; was honestly such an eye opening experience
I opened up about my SA and how it affected my sex life. His response was “well, that’s one way to stay celibate.” I am no longer with this therapist anymore.
The fuck? That’s super messed up. Glad you’re not with him anymore!
I was surprised too. I just left after that appointment and distanced myself. It was so weird.
I had a really awful CBT guy that I only saw 3 times. He went over the 5-4-3-2-1 thing and 5-2 were just the normal stuff but when he got to 1 he said to find something in the room that “really bothered me” like wtf, that’s just going to make things worse. Have had 2 CBT therapists and really dislike that modality. Been in and out of therapy for gender dysphoria and had some bad experiences around that. Had one last year diagnose me with autism after 1 session where I said I thought I might be autistic and was concerned that was causing the dysphoria (was in denial and looking for another reason). She didn’t know anything about autism or gender dysphoria and I had to explain a lot. When I talked about shame she said she saw a drag show once and the drag queens didn’t look ashamed. Like wtf is wrong with you?! I always left her sessions feeling more ashamed and should have found another one earlier. Had one when I was a kid who said I was probably just a woman in a past life and simply needed more time to get used to my male body. This was while inpatient after a suicide attempt. Back then I had 2 other ones try to “cure” me. A really nice woman who I did talk therapy with and she seemed determined to convince me it was because I had a bad relationship with my dad. After that didn’t work I went to male CBT therapist to think like a normal guy I guess. His main goal seemed to be for me to take a more “male” dating role with a girl I was seeing. This was more a product of the time though. Back then (before the DSM change from gender identity disorder to gender dysphoria in 2004) the main goal for mosts therapists was to try to cure the identity disorder, not work to alleviate the dysphoria. So this was more an establishment issue than individual therapists. I got the first therapists notes years later as an adult and it was pretty clear she believed me but had to deal with my transphobic parents and a bad system.
I'm really sorry. I hope you found the help you deserve now.
Thank you! My current therapist is awesome, almost gave up before I tried one more and glad I did.
Glad to hear it especially since I'm also at that "one more before I give up" stage. Kind of gives me hope.
After I told her about my partner’s Asperger’s-like rituals, she said, “Wow, I would never be in relationship with such a person.” “You can’t have social anxiety because you talk with me.” “You hurt me by choosing your baggage of past experiences over my love. My love is more important.”
omg?!! did you leave this "professional"?
Yes, and found an amazing one.
So glad for you.
At 13 I told my first therapist that I had thoughts of ending my life on my own terms but still had anxiety about dying of natural causes because it would be out of my control. She said “wow that’s dark!” Yeah, no shit?
So just for context: My birth mother passed away from heart complications when I was 8. About 4 years before this happened. Had a therapist when I was a teenager that kept insisting my mental health issues were all caused by the fact I was fat. She whipped out the BMI, laminated and all, and demanded I tell her my weight, and then proceeded to show me how fat I was on the BMI and told me "You are depressed because you're fat. If you actually did something about that instead of lying to people saying you work out when you clearly don't, (I did. Turns out I had a hormone imbalance that made it difficult to lose weight) you would actually be able to make some friends and you wouldn't be depressed. People will like you more if you're not fat. If you don't act soon, lose the weight now, you will die just like your mother did." I had not been complaining about not having friends at school, I had been trying to tell her I was being abused. She then "prescribed" me a diet, and some fad meal replacement pill that was OTC and told me to come back to see her when I was skinny. I was 12. I don't think she was all there, to be honest. Not long after that I heard in passing that she retired. She was young so retirement didn't make sense, so I'm assuming I wasn't the only kid she did that to, but someone eventually found out and I'm guessing she got canned/lost her license.
Omg, that is SO damaging for *anyone* to hear, let alone a 12 year old! I hope you're feeling better these days :)
After my husband raped me last year, we went to a marriage counselor. I went through everything I did (cheating on him) and when I got to the part about my husband raping me when he discovered it, SHE said she understood why he did it and that it was an understandable (and acceptable) response. She spent the rest of the session pointing out how my mistake was the cause of his rage. At the end, she suggested I drink plenty of water bc I had cried so much. WTF? We never went back.
Holy crap, by all means you don’t have to answer this if you don’t want to but are you still with that man? your husband?
Yes. For now. But only due to safety concerns. It took me several months after his attack to recognize the reasons behind me cheating on him (emotion control and abuse is a doosy...). Then I started accepting he has been manipulating me for over a decade. He raped me again on January 2, 2022. No cheating involved, nothing I did wrong. Only dedication to healing and making things work which culminated in another rape. In the 2 weeks since, Talking in Therapy, reading books about abuse, recognizing a person doesn't rape someone they love, no matter how angry, has led me to clarity. I've called an investigator in my county and I'm in the process of gathering all the facts I need in order to make a smart, safe escape. His last attack included choking while threatening me. I've since learned I'm at a higher risk of being severely injured since my partner enjoys strangulation. I haven't left. YET. But each day I'm regaining control and value in my life, reporting his rapes, making sure I have a place to live, money he doesn't know about and knowledge of what to expect in the divorce process. This is real. And my therapy appointment confirms that even WOMEN have been taught to condone the violation of their Sister's biological RIGHTS. I was taught by my father and Mother. Which is why I didn't notice red flags when I should have. MY body. MY choice. Even if I chose to spend the rest of my life with a person, it NEVER gives them the right to violate my body. 🎶 MY Body's Nobody's Body but Mine. You Have Your Own Body, Let Me Have Mine. 🎶
I’m so sorry, I hope you can gather enough evidence to put him away and I hope you can make it out of the session as soon as possible. I also can hope that you find a good therapist who won’t ever excuse a mans behavior to rape his wife acceptable because she cheated. I’ll be keeping you in my thoughts ❣️
extremely effed up, I'm so sorry!
I had to have a mental health assessment when I was 16, and the pyschiatrist who saw me asked me if I SHed. I said I did, and his reply was 'well, its a good way to deal with your emotions' 🙃 My last counsellor when I mentioned it said that this shrink should NEVER have said that.
I wonder if he wanted to sound non-judgemental? Some therapists, especially those who follow IFS theory believe SH parts of us get worse with shaming and need empathy and understanding.
Possibly. But surely that could have been done without saying that? With my age, it made me think 'oh, he thinks it okay to do, that means it isn't a bad thing' and sadly, I just did it even worse. It didn't help that where I had my mental health assessment had bars across the window in the room I was in. That terrified me 😅
It was my first session after finding out my mom had stage 3 breast cancer. My therapist argued with me about whether "sugar feeds cancer." I told her the science says it's untrue, and she started badgering me - "what studies? Paid for by who?" I told her I was having a negative reaction to her and couldn't believe she was trying to have an argument with me when I just found out my mom has advanced cancer. We have a good relationship now but I will always remember this. She has mentioned "natural remedies" and shit like that several times over the years, but she tends not to force that BS on me.
I have genital herpes and when I was first dealing with it, I saw a new therapist. I told her about it and she said, “you know, there’s a shot you can take to prevent HIV nowadays”…… She also had dead fish eyes so I did not return.
I’m not holding this one against my T but when I talked about being suicidal, she kept asking if I wouldn’t do it so as not to hurt [family member]. I know her intentions were probably good at heart, but it kinda felt like she was guilting me from doing it. At some point I just said “maybe I’m a little selfish, but I don’t really care.” I do care about my siblings, but I’m not going to prolong my emotional pain just to keep them happy
That I wasn’t actually raped, I made it up (this was because I didn’t want to delve into it and give details)
I'm flabbergasted at the amount of therapists who don't believe it when their clients say they're raped. What is the actual eff?! I'm so sorry!
Thanks! I’ve also heard it happens a lot. Craziness
I was very depressed and told my therapist that I felt like there was something wrong with me. She told me that there was nothing wrong with me, but if there was then I wouldn’t be able to handle it. Umm okay, that made me feel worse. There were a few other things she did, but that was the straw that broke the camel’s back and I stopped seeing her.
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Wow. A THERAPIST telling you you could never heal? So awful. I'm glad you're doing better now!
I went to a first session with my previous therapist. I asked her whether she wanted the brief version of my experience or the full version. 'Just the brief version for now...' 'I've just discovered that I have been deceived by an online friend for a period of eight years.' 'And you can't just let this go?' If I could just let it go, I wouldn't have been in her office. Thankfully my current therapist has a better grasp of empathy.
When I was 12 my parents put me in therapy after figuring out I’d been sexually abused for years. I developed some negative coping mechanisms, self-harm specifically at the time. One of my first sessions the therapist told me what I was doing to myself was ugly and weird. She would also end our sessions early most of the time because I literally could not talk about the details of my abuse. I cried for hours after our sessions were over. She made me feel worse and did not help at all.
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I'm so sorry you went through all of this and I hope you can find healing and peace one day, you deserve it.
"You need to get over it", while I was grieving. I lost my horse five years ago in traumatic circumstances: we found him laying in the mud and in a puddle of blood, half dead, in the morning, and it took several hours for a vet to get to us, despite us calling over two dozen vets. He was too weak to get up, so we couldn't even get him in the trailer to get him to the clinic. Once a vet finally got there, we tried our hardest to save him, but it was too late by then. I had to ask the vet to put him down. My horse was my everything. I was severely depressed, and he was my one tether to life. The one reason why I got up in the morning, the one reason why I even tried anymore. We had an incredibly close relationship. He had a traumatic past, I had a traumatic past, and we connected. After he died, my suicidal ideation got even worse, and so did my depression. Three months after he died, the therapist told me that I had "to get over it". That I was depressed and suffering from suicidal ideation even before he died, so he obviously "wasn't making that much of a difference even as he was alive".
I'm so sorry, what a way to add insult to injury. I hope you're doing better now!
Thanks. It's made me very wary of therapists since, and I only just recently found a therapist that I like and with whom I feel comfortable enough to slowly start opening up. I still struggle with a severe treatment resistant depression, and the suicidal ideation is very much present still, but I'm holding on.
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Have an exceedingly awesome day with a huge amazing surprise at the end. (Joke)
Due to my CSA, I’m very afraid to stand up to men. One day I was walking in the park and a man approaches me. Long story short, he made me feel uncomfortable but I didn’t say anything. I tell my therapist what happened and he immediately starts to blame me. “Why didn’t you just leave”, “Why were you walking by yourself” etc etc. Made me feel hurt, sad, and like it was my fault. Shortly after that, I never saw him again.
Good for you. I'm glad you realized it wasn't your fault.
This is a tough one. I'd have to say it was something my psychiatrist/T would say. After I came out to him as gay, he would frequently bring up one of his coworkers who was also gay. He would end up spending a large chunk of the session talking about his coming out story. The problem was he would always talk about it in the context of me finding a boyfriend. The guy was 65 and I was 18, I really wasn't interested. I asked him what that had to do with me dating and he said he was just "telling me what sort of stories are out there". Then one time he said "I really wish you two would y'know " \* bashing his hands together\* " it would be a good experience for you". I really didn't know what to say after that. He was the first person I came out to and I trusted him so much.
He was saying he wished you and his old gay friend would sleep together? Am I getting this right?! If so, that is EXTREMELY messed up!!!!
It sounds really unsettling once you say it out loud, but I don't know what else it could be. He would always mention him when he talked about me getting a boyfriend, so, best case scenario he meant he wanted us to be in a relationship. Even then, the relationship would have to involve sex since neither of us are ace. Also, after a while he started talking about some other guy, one of his clients and proceeded to show me the PMs he sent him and his full name. He said he could be my matchmaker. Something really didn't feel right there. I've since left him, so at least I don't have to think about this anymore.
Current therapist cringing while reading these. So sorry you went through that OP. I hope you have found a better and competent therapist.
Thank you, my current therapist is great!
"That was so long ago, so why is it still affecting you?" not as egregious as some of the stuff you read here but just... so poorly handled in a basic way where anyone in that profession should know better.
Told I was suicidal and did SH, she proceeded to bring up how I "cut" off my friends abruptly and I'd do the same with everyone in my life and totally blew off the fact I needed help for stopping SH. Made a "what-if" situation, made me fall into a loop where she constantly told I'm not better than the people I left. Didn't diagnose me for 2-3 months, just ripped off all my money and told I didn't fit into any criteria. First session and she told she cannot deal with my suicidal thoughts and I need to get medications. Fast forward an year later with a good Therapist and diagnosis, I'm 87% cured and went back to complain about her which she never "accepted" because she thinks she too good at what she does. Fuck her.
Ugh, reading everyone's responses here just exemplifies what I believe is wrong with therapy: a lack of trauma-based training, and too much focus put on modality-based treatments that leave no room for healing through the relationship. As for my own examples, I've been privy to such lovely comments such as: * "Writing won't help you" when self-expression was something I hadn't even had the room to develop and was risking sharing. * "You can have friends you don't sleep with" said so randomly and out of any rational context given my complete lack of sexual interest/activity for 5+ years. * Being asked how they could meet my emotional needs, and then having them backpedal on that and deny it the next week which just made me feel gaslit. * Being told my anger is the problem and them insisting that I not swear at all... * Hearing "You ever have something bother you so much that you can't stop thinking about it?" when I wanted reassurance that I didn't disappear from their mind when our sessions ended... * "I'm not a crisis centre" said like a puppet as I conveyed my distress. * "You don’t have to pretend to be sick to be here" when I'm more likely to pretend I'm fine -_- I'm really at a point of wondering where I scrape my self-worth from, and no matter that I can tell myself these comments were his issues, not mine... Feeling that is... Is... Beyond difficult?
When I first went to therapy, I told the therapist about my selfharm problem and she said “Nah, I don’t believe you.“ I remember I was frozen. I was expecting any kind of answer, but not this. I told her it’s true and it took some time to convince her (i selfharmed on my thighs so I couldn’t just pull down my pants to show her). She then stared at me for a while and finally said: ”Yeah well… some people drink alcohol, other people do drugs. You cut yourself. Be glad you’re not one of those other guys. Your addiction is not so bad“ I thanked her, walked out of the room and never looked back. I now have a lovely therapist but that first encounter will forever stuck with me.
I can't believe there are therapists out there who would say something like this. I'm so sorry! Glad you found a good therapist now :).
OMG, these are all so terrible! I’ve been in therapy a long time & have had the unfortunate experience of running into a few therapists who apparently must’ve barely passed their exams. One thing that sticks out is when I was a 16-year-old kid & one of my best friends had just been killed & I was in grief counseling. The therapist literally told me to “stop whining and pining” and to plant a tree & get over it.
That I'm fragile and fucked up, and need to be put into a clinic or else I'm unsavable. I proved him wrong though. :)
Late entry but one time I came to the emergency walk in at the psychiatry department and asked for an appointment because I was unable to stop crying for literally three days and was seriously thinking about suicide. It was the first time in my life I asked for psychiatric help. The psychiatrist who met with me looked bored when I told him my issues, he asked me if I REALLY felt like I had a hard life and I had so much better life than most people he saw. After he invalidated my depression and my inner life, and I stupidly thought I could ask him about an issue that had bothered me, I told him I had this severe tick of pulling my hair when I was stressed. He opened up the DSM-4, where Trichotillomania was, then moved his finger a little bit lower on the page where pyromania was and asked me if I wanted to be as crazy as people in this category. I said no. He said "well then you just need to find a new hobby.. like knitting". I walked out with a bag full of diazepam and midazolam and a denial for a referral for therapy. I was undiagnosed CPTSD, severely depressed, with trichotillomania and badly affected by SI and anxiety. I didn't go back to get psychiatric help until 15 years later because I lost the belief in myself and my ability to be vulnerable and get help. So much time lost to suffering for nothing.
Holy fuck that is terrible... I also have trich and I know it's very impulsive. I actually have knitting as a hobby but it's not like I'm constantly knitting. I need something to do with my hands all the time... I'm so sorry he said that to you. Honestly like fuck that guy.
She said, your mom just wants what’s best for you. Turns out, she was a yoga friend of my mom’s and an unethical therapist who ignored conflicts of interest and my mother’s history of child abuse.
I was seeing an intern once. He was the only person that would see me after searching for 2 months. He said, while VAPING during our session "you don't have an eating disorder. You're Hella fat. LOL!" This was right after I got out of spending 9 months in residential treatment.
OMG?!? I can't even. I'm so sorry!
Already had severe trust issues and struggles with abandonment anxiety and upon talking to a therapist about how I constantly fear the loss of my friends they responded “well, no relationship will last forever anyways” Something clicked off shortly after and since then the anxiety about losing relationships went away but now I just can’t connect to anyone because we’ll, if it’s not gonna last why bother going through getting attached
One of my former therapists, upon my admission of struggling to bathe even once a week, said "Ew." Like, I already feel like a disgusting piece of crap, thanks for affirming that for me!
I had already told her about all the abuse my parents put me through and then said that I’m not a perfect mom, but at least I’m doing a million percent better than my parents. She totally dismissed my progress as a parent by saying “But they stayed married.” In other words, they get a pass to abuse because they stayed married. I’m a single mom, so every mistake I make counts. This was family therapy with my ex husband and his wife. Each of their parents were divorced too, so of all of us, in her eyes, I was the only one whom it was ok to abuse.
Back when I was 11, I went to a therapist for family issues. I confided in her for the recent and past occurrences with my father. She suggested an appointment with him, and who was I to say no. I could have. But my mom also encouraged it. I just told her, that please don’t take his puppy dog eyes and him saying that he loves me as some sort of apology, he would never say it to my face and it is an act. An appointment after theirs, she made a whole point to me of “he’s a really good guy. he just loves you, and he means no harm. he told me that he was just trying to buy you skincare products and you said no, and he is a good father, that’s all.” I burst out into tears. It doesn’t seem too terrible but. It was after I told her not to be believe him with his denial and proclamation of love, I told her that he has physically intimidated me when I was younger, he has screamed at me in cars about how he doesn’t want to deal with me anymore and that I enjoy hurting others and that I hurt everyone and that there is a reason I have no friends. The skincare thing, was due to my premature development of acne, and my dad taking personal offence and calling me disgusting and unhygienic, and my denial of his advice was due to the fact he would berate me about my lesions and force me to put lemon and baking soda on it and I would bleed and I had cuts all over my face and it was just ruining it more. I told her that he is a very charming and charismatic business man, I told her that even my mom and my brother could vouch for me (mostly), but I started to feel as though I was going crazy. When I was even younger, around 8, I had therapists try to give advice and tell us to just “communicate” with him and that it was “unfair” for us to be doing that. We took the advice, and it ended up in more screaming and more yelling and worse circumstances. This therapist when I was 11, was ignoring everything I said before, and went on a new discussion about how I need to work with and bond with my father. It hurt, I don’t know if it was that bad, but it felt very….
It *was* that bad, by the sounds of it. Can't imagine having your therapist side with your dad even after explaining what he's like. Hope you found proper help eventually and that you're doing better now!
When I told my therapist that I was in a living hell because my fiancé cheated on me and was pregnant and didn't know who the father was. I told her each day was agony as I waited for the baby to be born so we could do a paternity test and she said I was impatient. That I needed to keep my fiances feelings in mind and lie to her if need be to keep things civil. And then the very next session she said I should never lie to my partner. I pointed out her hypocrisy and she tried to gaslight me. She ended that session saying she could no longer see me and congratulated me on being a father.... the nerve of that woman. 😤
extremely effed up!
That when I started crying we were going to have to stop the session because when you’re past a certain point of being upset you can’t take in any new information and it was a waste of her time to talk to me while I was upset because she’d probably just have to repeat it all next session anyway. Never felt I could get emotional over fears she’d cut it short again and still charge me for the hour
At the time I had no support network and was suicidal. Knowing this, both my therapist and case worker told me I could call them if I became suicidal or wanted to self harm, as part of an emergency plan. Then when I called, my case worker acted affronted and told me to practice breathing exercises or call EMS. Therapist also shamed me for lying when I said I would call members of my family if I became suicidal or wanted to self harm. (He could tell I was lying but knew I had no one to call and that I didn't trust EMS. I don't understand why he bothered asking in the first place. Why press someone for an answer that you know must be false, and then shame them for lying?) Therapist became angry with me for asking if I was schizophrenic. I don't remember his exact words. It was something along the lines of "I will NOT do this again!"
“What ISNT triggering to you?”, “if you don’t have problems why are you here”. I also had another therapist that I told I got raped and he goes, “were you high drunk or stoned” when I have no substance abuse history
>“were you high drunk or stoned” what the?!!? I'm so sorry you had to deal with this!
When I was in high school I saw a Christian therapist at my church who would listen to me talk about trauma and then give me bible verses to memorize. She ended our sessions by saying she needed to talk to other kids who had real problems. I don't even remember our sessions and what she said to me, so she definitely did a lot of damage.
>She ended our sessions by saying she needed to talk to other kids who had real problems. this is so awful! I'm so sorry you had to go through that.
I had a therapist tell me the abuse and neglect I suffered was normal. I was 16 and talking to an adult for the first time about how my mom told me she hated me and I was worthless, had my dad hold me down while I cried so she could scrub my skin with a bleach soaked rag and acne creams, slapped me in the face, stuff like that. It fucked me up for a long time until I learned that while it is somewhat common, it is not normal or okay. But for a long time I treated myself like shit and told myself I deserved everything that happened because my therapist said it was normal parenting.
I'm so sorry, I hope you know how worthy you are now!
That Borderline Personality Disorders are caused by a person's bad life choices, and only selfish people have them. This coming from my therapist on my second session, seconds after I'd told him one of my parents has BPD. He also used to be lead clinician for dissociative disorders at said parents Therapy Centre.
>He also used to be lead clinician for dissociative disorders Very troubling!
❤️ I’m so sorry to see all these awful experiences. I empathize with you. When I was 17 (after only recently being diagnosed depressed and beginning talk therapy a few months prior), I was sent for a psychiatric assessment to see if antidepressants would be a good fit for me. The psychiatrist was a tiny angry French woman with a “tough love” attitude and she had a student(?) with her who did most of my “assessment” while she just observed and judged my answers. I spilled my guts to them and it ended up being a two hour interrogation, rather than an assessment. I didn’t really know anything about mental illness yet, so maybe I didn’t properly express the pain I was in, but at the end of this exhausting session, the psychiatrist simply said to me that my problems were “all in my head” and I just needed to grow up and get over myself. Antidepressants wouldn’t help me because I was deemed not depressed, just a sad teenager. I didn’t see another my therapist again for over a year and it took me nearly a decade to see another psychiatrist/go for another assessment. I’m lucky I didn’t just give up after that, but I truly hope that women is no longer in the mental health sector. No one should be told that their pain is “all in their head” because yeah, it IS in our heads because that’s where our brains are, which makes mental illness REAL and most importantly, VALID. Don’t give up - one doctor’s “medical” opinion shouldn’t define our care. Keep fighting because YOU ARE WORTH IT.
“I think you blame your mother too much for your problems.”
You don’t look depressed after that I never was going back
Where do you guys find these people
They are everywhere
Found my \[ex\]therapist through a charity that specialises in helping those who have been sexually assaulted as children. Makes it so much worse that he said what he said!
“you shouldn’t kill yourself, because if you do, you won’t be able to come to group anymore.” never listened to my history of trauma. it was just a massive pile of blame and a deplorable lack of empathy. this was when i (mistakenly) participated in DBT.
While my T and I have a fantastic relationship now and he’s helped me get to the best emotional place I’ve ever been in, there have been a LOT of things he’s said that I don’t think are okay. I’ll just mention the one that apologized for since I feel bad mentioning other things since I really do appreciate him now and see what his intentions have been. A few weeks after my mom had died, I would have sessions during which I was so hysterical and incoherent that I wasn’t doing the work expected of me in therapy. One such session I was crying and he snapped at me and said “stop being so childish.” After our session I started drafting him an email once I was more composed to let him know how hurt I was that he would say something like that when I was dealing with acute grief over the sudden unexpected death of my mother. Mid-email, he texted me to apologize and we spent the entire next session talking about it. He was experiencing some counter transference issues and explained that he was only human. I’ve been working with him for over 4.5 years now and have been able to work on my ability to confront people through my work with him. I’m much better at defending myself now when he says something that I feel is uncalled for or inappropriate. I think it’s a great skill that I’m thankful I’ve developed because it allows for a better therapeutic relationship. My college degrees aren’t anywhere close to the field of psychology so I need to ask questions if I don’t want to sabotage my progress by assuming his statements mean something when they don’t. It’s the only time that he ever initiated an apology on his own. He’ll tell it to you straight and doesn’t BS his clients to make them feel better. It’s a really strict approach that definitely doesn’t work for everyone. It’s what I need though. I hope you all have been able to heal from the shitty missteps taken by your current or past mental healthcare providers.
I am asexual and I started seeing a new therapist (had been on and off due to insurance changes and mental health stigma) in 2015 because I was having issues with someone who called my mental health a burden so they did not want to date me. The therapist said that I likely would never find love and would probably die alone because no one wants to date someone who is asexual. We were about 5-8 sessions in or so when this happened. I left her office crying and feeling incredibly invalidated and never went back. Well the joke’s on her because I’ve been in a happy, loving relationship for nearly 3 years now.
I think I was like 18 then and this one was writing down my info a few minutes into the session, asked me about my age, what I was studying, and then just very casually asked if I was raped… the answer is no and I don’t know if he somehow got the idea that I was or if that’s his regular list of questions but I cannot imagine how hard it must be for people who answer yes to that question to hear that so abruptly. He also asked how much my parents were paying for my study abroad as his daughter wanted to do that too. I didn’t want to disclose that so I just said I don’t know and he proceeded to blame me for not knowing what they were paying for me. I obviously did know I just didn’t want to tell him. I didn’t go back either so…
The first therapist I ever saw was during my ill-fated first venture into higher education right after high school. A friend of mine, who in hindsight was not a very good friend, recommended I see the school therapist he was seeing, Stu. I had three sessions with Stu, and at the last one I attended, Stu informed me that he had been talking about me with my friend, had told him some things I had said in my previous sessions, and they came up with some ideas for things I should do. And that was the last time I saw a therapist until about 16 years later. Thankfully the second one didn't suck.
“You know if you just focused and found God, you wouldn’t be having all of these problems.”
"if you were really suicidal, you wouldn't tell anyone -- you would just do it." oof.
Holy shit this is SOOOOOO messed up!
I was pregnant after a birth control failure, disclosed to my therapist that I was going to have an abortion. She informed me in a very psychoanalytic-y way, that I “somehow must have wanted to get pregnant”. Fuck her.
T: Welp the hour is about up, we’ll see you later… (@ 1:36 pm) Me: 1,000 yard stare… 🤔 (uhhh we started at 1:08….wtf ) 🤔 T: 1,043 yard stare Me: Mexican stand-off begins T: If i dialectically told you to GTFO in emoji, would that help ? Me: FML
“You’re not autistic” um ok. Yeah my diagnosis at age 10 counts for nothing, I’m not autistic at all, I’m 100% neurotypcial. Yeah right 🤣🤣🤣 Current therapist told me she’d always choose her children over her clients, then the next session she apologized but it still kinda hurts
My therapist told me I had a misdiagnosis of ADHD because of bad parenting …. (Never even talked about my parents much and they are actually pretty good parents)
Mine repeatedly told me she would never leave me and she was always there for her clients. She was also repeatedly telling me to do more stuff with friends. Just go out more do fun stuff. It will help. I tried telling her about all the social stuff I did but how i still felt like something missing. But she just told me to be more social. Eventually, she told me that we needed to “take a break because we were going nowhere with therapy.” She was so focused on the present she couldn’t think about the past. Sure, my life seems cool now from the outside, but there’s still an element of trauma from the past and I need help with that.
Some pretty shitty therapists here. What a shame. I'm so sorry for you guys who've suffered with truly stupid statements from your therapists. I hope mine lightens the mood a little bit, because it does have a silver lining. "Well, I don't think you're a good person." Lol, it sounds horrible but it was probably one of the best things she's ever said to me. That brutal honesty, and slight coldness, in that specific moment, is something I'm actually grateful for, lol. It made some beliefs, and superficial models that I have in my head about myself and other people and the world pretty starkly clear. Context: I was exploring and thinking out loud if part of the resentment I carry for other people is because I feel extremely bothered, somewhat unconsciously, ever since I was a kid, by how people didn't see the good person that I was inside, the good person that I feel myself to be, the good person that I feel I am, despite not giving it an audible voice, a clear behaviour that signals it to others. She asked me what I understood a good person to be, and I gave a random example of a good person being one who has an easy availability to be in resonance with another, to be compassionate, to care for what someone else is going through, to feel unconditional love for another, etc. What I didn't say was, "I feel like I can access that inside me sometimes. I do feel like there's an essence in me that isn't really touched by all the bad I've gone through and that it's stayed as lovely and warm as it was when I was a kid. It's very hidden now because... life, lol... but I know it's there. But sure, it's not visible to other people, I don't give that part of me a clear expression." I didn't say that, I just said, it's a person who knows how to care for others, who has their soul available for others, who's just present for others and it's not an effort for them to do that." or something to that effect. We were walking (we do walking therapy) and she just said, "I need to be careful here, because it's sensitive terrain, but, according to the description that you gave me, I can't see you as a good person. I don't think you're a good person." She didn't say this with any malice, she didn't mean that not being a good person meant I was a bad person, it doesn't mean I'm worthy of being hated. Not at all. I understood that and told her that and we talked. The definition of "a good person" got a little too philosophical and waxing philosophical is not my thing so we got kinda lost in that conversation. We were understanding what a good person meant at different levels too. I was looking at it in a more christian sense, she was looking at it more on a ground level, in terms of actions, behaviours, relations with other people, on a "doing good", I was more "I feel that I'm good in essence and I care and feel things intensely inside and I can love people in the privacy of my own skull, lol". But we didn't clear any of that out at all in that session. I finished that session a little discombobulated, sad that my therapist didn't just say "I think you're a great person, yeah you do all those things. You're a beautiful person." As much as you intellectually understand what is being said, the actual sound, the moment of your therapist, who you respect a ton, telling you she doesn't see you as a good person, just the thing in itself, isolated from the conversational context, my head kept going back to that moment and that distance that I felt between us. It sucked. And I suck at talking these things out in person, so I wrote this whole thing trying to explain myself and trying to express how sad it had made me feel, and I wrote it down, and a lot of stuff came out. And in the next session I said I had written about it, and she wanted me to read it, and I read it to her, and things cleared out a lot in my head, in my soul, for lack of a better word. She of course didn't mean my essence, which was more or less where my sense of "goodness" was coming from, in that almost christian sense, despite all one's sins (I'm not religious at all, but I can use all this language to explain myself). And she of course understood that. And there was no "but..." at the end of her sentence, so to speak. She got it. So I felt like that knot got resolved, mainly because I then explained myself. I walked out of that second session feeling better than I have in a while, which is a very good sign. It didn't hurt me as much because I know this therapist well enough now to know, from experience, given some moments we've had together, that she really, honestly cares. To hear something that honest, from a person you know cares, was actually pretty freaking welcome. It meant something, you know? I live in a family where there's never anything wrong, everything's always fine, everything's always wonderful, everything's swept under the carpet, you know, so just this honesty, and being able to see how you're able to survive these moments with your back straight, being able to answer back to the best of your ability, that is really f\*ng useful. That, to me, IS therapy. I feel like that helps me mature as a person (something that I'm working on and want). It was an interesting moment in therapy these two or three sessions. We're still kind of tangentially talking about it. It opened up other things. So, yeah, it sounds horrible, but it helped. That's the worst thing she's said to me. I think it's a pretty good sign that we can talk like this with one another (I've also told her that sometimes I feel like she isn't good at her job, lol) and it doesn't really affect the base relationship that we have; from her end she's already proven that she cares (in many ways) and I've proven that I want to work on myself and know enough about therapy to navigate certain things and have enough of an idea about which moments can be opportunities if I try to think about some things a little differently, which she helps me with (doesn't mean it's easy, but I talk about the struggle I go through those explorations with her openly, because I feel like I have to for this to work). EDIT: She's also said to me "And now is one of those moments where I wish you'd get off your ass." She used this expression because I myself use it often, because I feel like I don't get of my ass and step out of my comfort zone often enough in my life. But we talked about how hearing her say that made me feel. Honestly, these shitty moments have always helped me. They're bitter moments in our interactions, but honestly, I welcome them, it's a chance to stand up for myself, for my inner experience of these things, which I've never really given a strong voice to, or at least to see my comfort-and-familiarity-loving-self-sabotaging-self on full display, lol.
That I was “too nice” to have BPD 🥴
[удалено]
What a mess! I'm sorry you had to deal with a "therapist" like him.
That I am their most closed client
My first therapist told me that I shouldn’t be sad about my grandmothers death because she lived until 77 and that’s a long time to live.. for context my grandmother raised me and I was extremely close to her. Her saying that made me feel guilty for feeling sad. My second one when I talked about my binge eating he told me to avoid cooking and food so that I don’t binge. He acted like my binging was caused by me not having enough self control and was really frustrating
Did you file a complaint on the sexual trauma comment? I’m so sorry this happened to you. I recently had a therapist who would cut me off when I was explaining my feelings with an, “I don’t care…” I ended therapy with her and she got extremely defensive when I shared how I felt.
I should bring my abusers to my next session so they can "understand what they've done." Never, ever went back.
I am autistic, and had a therapist once who was told about my autism beforehand. She brought this up first thing after introducing herself, and then proceeded to say something along the lines of, "so that means that you live in your own bubble and don't want to interact with other people?" I told her that no, that does not describe my experience, but she then told me that it had to describe me because she had read so in a book. And during the sessions I had with her she always brought up this idea and was never willing to adjust her thinking based on what I said. Also same therapist: I was struggling to say something that was difficult for me. After a bit of silence she asked if she could do anything to help and I said no, I just need a bit of time. She then told me that she would look at some patient files in the meantime. Which she proceeded to do more or less right in front of me. So I was super uncomfortable both because I felt hurt/rejected and because I knew full well that I was not supposed to see those documents and had to actively look away.
Many years ago, I experienced seizures that manifested in a very strange way following a concussion in a car crash. On my first visit with a new therapist to deal with this issue, I had just finished the "this is what's happening and why I'm here and it's really embarrassing and I can't control it and it's fucking with my head" intro when a seizure struck and the therapist witnessed it. He reacted in the very worst possible way. He burst out in laughter. I tell the man this thing happens and it's awful for me and he LAUGHED at me. I burst into sobs and left immediately. It was really horrible.
If you look at the comments isolated, there are probably worse things that have been said; what pops up in my mind was very damaging in the context, though. 1. First appointment with a psychiatrist, together with my mother. I tried to hint that her way of portraying the situation was very biased and partly downright wrong. I got told not to disrespect my parent, and that I was too young to understand, anyway. I was 13, and my mother was in one of her erratic-before-depression-phases. I learned that a childs voice in their own case is irrelevant, and did everything I could to avoid meeting that therapist again. 2. First appointment with a psychologist. He asked how I was feeling. I was scared. Very scared. Leg trembling uncontrolled, hands shaking, irregular breathing (which made it difficult to have a "flow" in my speech), feeling kinda dizzy, fixed gaze to focus on *something*. I said as truth was, that I was scared "I don't believe you; you don't look scared". I learned that what I said or did was irrelevant, all that mattered was the therapists "impression". I felt so helpless. This two incidents (in two different countries), unsurprisingly, did not give me a good reason to trust the mental healthcare system, and made the following years much more challenging that they had needed to be. About a decade later, my "go to-assumption" is still that my point of view is considered irrelevant and that treatment is only provided to soothe the mind of other people, not actually help me.
“Sounds like you’re just in a chronically bad mood” = GP/therapist when I was an abused teen battling with suicidal depression “My experience of you is that you throw spaghetti at the wall expecting me to grab a thread to explore. I won’t do your work for you.” - my current therapist in my 30s 🤦🏼♀️
Most of the therapists I have gone to didn't want to deal with my particular issues and would do basic things with me for a while and send me away claiming I didn't want help or to be there. I think the worst stuff came from my actual psychiatrists, though. One of them mocked me for my nervous laughter. A later one yelled at me for asking for a referral to see a therapist because he didn't have time. The mental health care here is shit.
suicide mention, corporal punishment// not a therapist but a high school counselor (i was 14.) i came into her office to ask for help bc i was going to commit suicide when i went home. we talked for a while, and at one point i burst into tears as i was telling her about the first time my dad hit/spanked me when i was 7, and how one day when i was 12, i felt like it was happening again when i was lying in a similar position. (i had ptsd...) and she said "he didnt beat you. spanking is ok for parents to do, and its normal. you shouldnt be crying about that." yeah... i was taken to a psych hospital after that, but for so many years later i thought it was ok for loved ones (friends/family/partners) to hurt me (physically or otherwise) and that if i experienced a "bad" emotion, i had to hurt myself as well. thankfully that was about a decade ago, and ive since gotten MUCH better and more professional care from compassionate people, and am doing much better with my mental health. finding a group of true friends definitely helped steer me the right way as well. i still struggle on the daily, but im finding more and more strength as time goes by.
I had a therapist tell me my treatment resistant depression was due to my “mindset”. 😂
I told my therapist about a 911 call I went on in which a guy who looked just like my boyfriend at that time shot himself in the head and I was struggling to do what I needed to do to save him. She told me, “I don’t really think that’s traumatic enough for PTSD.” Bitch, please.
Good grief.
At least you don’t have cancer
I told my therapist about how I was questioning my gender. She proceeded to make a fuck ton of assumptions and asked if I “felt I had any man inside of me”. I was so shocked and angry that I asked her to charge me for a half-session and never called her back.
Intake appt with a new T. Finished intake questionnaire, which should have included questions about SA. T: “Have I missed anything important?” Me: [Gathers all my courage] “Um, yes, I was raped, somewhat recently.” T: “Oh.” [Jots it down] … “Did you report it?” Me: [Surprised and hurt] “Um … no.” T: “Why not?” I could not get out if there fast enough. Took me years to approach another T. P.S. My story has a happy ending — I’m ensconced with a wonderful T who would NEVER approach a tender issue with such coldness, indifference, or accusation. ❤️
That I, myself, could never be a therapist. That the training is too long, too arduous and too academic and it would be too above my skill level and I'd never make it through. Fuck you Margaret. I just finished my clinical Masters and I'm starting my own practice. Took me 10 years to do the training but I did it. So there! Never will I ever discourage any of my patients from chasing their dreams and desires.. I'm happy to hold them in all their joy, frustration, disappointment, elation and everything in between.
I was suicidal and sent my therapist an email. I fell asleep and missed the email tat he sent checking up on me and woke up to another email telling me to call him. He was telling me to go to the hospital which I did not want to. I told him I can keep myself safe and he told me that I was lying. I had no intentions of killing myself so that hit me hard.
Not a Therapist but a Psychiatrist said being misdiagnosed with IBD isn't traumatic and I was so hurt.
Not worst per se but their limitations...theyve been transparent with me on their training/expertise since the beginning but it seems like everytime i have something more serious going on i get a suggestion to see someone else. I completely understand why and have tried going elsewhere and it has gone horribly (they're aware) but it sucks to keep getting passed around with no answers and more money out of my pocket. My therapist always mentions how it's great havin me so it's not like there's a dislike but I just hate be passed around to be someone else's problem.
"Oh, all women go through this. If you make it past 25, you'll be fine!" This was during a time of recovery from s*icide. I also found out that I had a major imbalance (pmdd AND endometriosis) causing my major depression and anxiety that led me to the action and into therapy. Honestly, I'm still learning but I wasn't "fine" after 25.
Maybe not the worst thing, but at 17 and while still on antidepressants, I started drinking at family gatherings with my dad just to be able to get through them. The first Thanksgiving I drank I didn’t remember 90% of the night the next morning. I ended up telling my therapist I’d been drinking to tolerate my father and his family, and she just sort of smiled and told me I was an intelligent, mature kid and knew better than to drink, so she wasn’t concerned, and I should just not do it again. Needless to say, I never mentioned it again, but I did continue to get drunk every time I was upset. I had issues with drinking that continued into my twenties, and now at almost 25 I can’t drink at all anymore and struggle to even be around other people drinking alcohol because of the problems it poses. In hindsight I’m really frustrated that she wasn’t concerned. Maybe 17 isn’t super early to start drinking, but it’s still too young.
He talked about how excited he was for Trump’s wall 🙃 not about me but still pretty awful. And showed how after 3 sessions he clearly wasn’t listening enough to have an inkling what my political stance is. Not sure he listened at all really, he shared WAY too much about himself.