I found the therapy relationship had little connection to how interacted outside it. As a supplicant seeking some kind of vague enlightenment the therapist seemed to dose in tiny drops, it left me enfeebled, infantilized and adulating. They made the rules, owned the narrative and identified me as the defective in the presence of their powerful omniscience. I disrobed emotionally, they concealed. I thought I needed "something"; they pretended to sell it. They pretended to understand me--but didn't. There was no mutual flow or give and take. Every exchange was within the time-limited framework of an engineered structure. Whatever affection shown stopped when the money did.

My outside relationships were by no means perfect. I had many changes I needed to make. But nothing was as delusional, exploitative and unbalanced as this.