i always hesitate to say or think i've experienced abuse, but i think i've experienced emotional abuse from therapists in the past, and it still makes me feel really horrible now when i remember being with them. i was in an inpatient program and two of the therapists were like this. they were in a relationship and at times things felt like a game - like, they would compare patients with one another. i can't explain it properly. i am trans, and at that time i wasn't on hormones. they deliberately called me by my old name and by the wrong pronouns, which was supposedly part of therapy to make me more resilient to people in the "real world" doing that. the one therapist made comments about my body - not in a sexual way as in he was looking at me sexually, but in a way like assessing my physical sex - and that still makes me feel ashamed.

other patients said really transphobic things to me, and none of the therapists said or did anything about it. if i spoke up about how it was affecting me, i was told that i was being oversensitive. i was treated as though i should have been able to shrug off any offensive language/insults without having any emotion about it.

at one point i ended up in a more secure psych ward for a few days, and a nurse touched me inappropriately. the psych ward did nothing about it, and when i told a therapist in the program, he asked if i knew the nurse's name - when i didn't, he just said he'd leave it up to me if i wanted to pursue any complaint or not. there was a lot of pressure from the therapists to accept everything rather than question it or fight it.

there's other stuff but my mind is going nowhere right now. i think i was gaslighted but that's also something i always feel hesitant about thinking/saying. these days when i get angry about anything it's like all that old anger comes back and i feel like hurting someone or hurting myself. i had a really, really stressful day and i can't calm down now. when i think of this time i literally feel like destroying myself, but i know i have built up more in my life that i would lose now. so just try to keep that in mind.