I had a really good therapist, I thought he was nearly perfect. But something happened to cause him to terminate me almost out of nowhere, without any clear explanation. Technically speaking, I quit, because he was stonewalling me and he was so cold and removed that it was traumatic to see him and I had no choice. I don't think he violated any guidelines. He was crafty-- he made me leave.

But what he did to me on a personal level is horrible. I came to see him for low self-esteem, self-criticism, shame, a history of being rejected socially when I was of school age. My worries that he did not like me and did not want me as a client came up several times in the course of therapy. I always worried about not being a "good client." I worried he was just pretending to like having me as a client, I worried about being terminated.

To be rejected by him -- and in a really, devastatingly cold way -- it has undone most of the benefit I had gotten from therapy, if not all of it. It makes it all seem like lies and a bag of tricks. To have someone who knows everything about you and is familiar with the "child parts" of you decide they can't stand you -- it is a rejection on a level that is almost impossible in normal relationships. And now I am so deeply ashamed and so terrified of running into him that I am having difficulty leaving my house. The nearest grocery store is not far from him, and I was able to buy groceries this week only by texting constantly with a friend to help me manage my anxiety. On a human level he has hurt me worse than anyone has hurt me since high school. I am exhausting all my social supports. I would go to a therapist but I don't think I can ever, ever do that again for the rest of my life.

But technically he did nothing wrong.

I can't say he was professionally unethical, and in fact I think this disaster in my life was caused because he actually thought he was being ethical. But their ethics are nothing but a bunch of CYA ivory tower philosophizing. Just as medical students' empathy scores fall during their schooling, I think therapists lose touch with being decent human beings. Two weeks before he destroyed me like this, my T actually cited first do no harm. The irony makes me feel like my head will explode. First do no harm? Nobody has hurt me like this in decades.