I have a number a websites bookmarked on therapy abuse and I've been educating myself on how and why I was feeling the way I was. The entire reason I had gone to therapy in the first place was to get help with agoraphobia, depression, and PTSD. I've come to realize they were actually making me feel worse by stigmatizing attitudes, judgments, and marginalization and then in turn I was internalizing this towards myself. You get that feeling you're "bad" or undesirable and then if I brought these feelings up, instead of validating that or taking responsibility for their part in it, they would see that as "symptoms" of my mental illness. I'm not saying that I don't sometimes deflect my own low self esteem on to others but the abuse I was receiving was blatant.
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- I am male also. After damaging therapy one therapist cautioned me that trying to initiate contact with the prior therapist could cross over into "stalking" behavior. A couple people on this forum insinuated the same. This used to bother me. Now I laugh, because I can deconstruct these pathetic manipulations. I was trying to stand up for myself, which was the only therapeutic part of the whole mess. This is not tolerated. Mustn't ask too many questions or complain too insistently about harm. Compliance is required.
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Because they already have a preconceived notion about you and you form an emotional connection with the person especially if there of the opposite sex and you're very lonely and hurting it's like they see this as dangerous when you're not at all. For me what made it so much worse was I found out she was discussing my issues behind my back and I felt violated my confidentiality. The worst was after the last session when she was with another staff member giggling at me behind my back, it felt horrible. In case anyone gets the wrong idea I never tried to cross boundaries I wasn't supposed to or ever initiated any contact outside of the therapy. I guess since I wanted more as a friend it was seen by her as dangerous or that I was borderline or something like that. I don't run around getting attached to every person I run into but when you've shared alot of personal details about yourself with this person and acts so kind it's hard not develop those feelings when you feel so alone and are hurting, then you find out this person wasn't who you thought they were.
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I think your post here was very well-written. There are other "bad therapy" blogs out there but no one website with links to them all, or any with suggestions about how to change things. I'm still dealing with MH issues, too, which limits my ability to get things done, but PM me if you like, maybe we could do something together?
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That sounds like a good idea. I'll send you a pm soon.
