Please just tell me it's not my fault.

My therapist of three years recently walked basically completely out of my life recently with no good excuse. I've wrote about him a good bit on here in the past. But the last month I've been going through a lot so I haven't been around. Not just with my therapist, but in general.

It's a pretty long, complicated story. But I'll try to sum it up quickly and hope I hit everything.

My therapist has always been pretty unprofessional with me and had horrible boundary issues. He would do things like see me everyday and then decide to not see me for weeks on end. And he would promise me that I would get better and always attempt to take care of me and spend a lot of extra time with me. So one day I felt so smothered and I feared so badly that he would walk out of my life completely that I told him that. I worded it weird I guess. I said something like "I think we don't have good boundaries and I have a feeling that in the end you could really end up hurting me."

I meant emotionally, but all the sudden he was dragging me into my psychiatrists office, claiming I accused him of being a sexual predator. I was so mortified that he even thought that I would think that. He got so upset, was yelling at me "WHY WOULD YOU EVEN SAY THAT ABOUT ME. I AM A PERFECTLY PROFESSIONAL THERAPIST". I told him he totally didn't take what I said correctly.

While I was in the hospital (because of a medication error, not him) I had a few people tell me that because he got so defensive that it possible he struggled with thoughts like that.

After I explained that I never said it and he finally believed me and retracted his accusations he agreed to keep doing therapy with me, until I found a new therapist. (which could be months). Then two weeks later we have this session where he's sitting there convincing himself, not ME, that he's not a bad therapist. He says something like "I'm not a bad therapist, things just got mixed up somehow. I'm really not." It was the way he said it, the way he communicated that he was obviously convincing himself of that. I never claimed he was a bad therapist.

In the past he did admit to having transference issues and having a need to rescue me.

Then after that session he fell off the face of the earth. I come into the office to see another staff member and he walks away. He gave no reasoning, no excuse. It just ended. Abruptly.

It made me feel so crappy. Like I did something wrong. Did I? I mean I feel like I am the problem. I just want him to tell me it wasn't my fault. I don't need excuses. I don't need a serious explanation. I just need to hear it wasn't me that drove him away, because he's the first person in YEARS that I let get close to me and I am slowly dying inside thinking that I did anything to make him hate me. I keep running over and over and over, the three years we spent together. What I could have done differently. What I did wrong. Where it all went bad. How I could have prevented it.

He used to spend so much extra time with me. He was very, even overly invested in my care and with a snap of fingers he's gone. What did I do to deserve this? Am I that horrible that people can't even stand to be around me.

I can hear it from 300 different people that it's not my fault and all this other stuff, but I want to hear it from him. I wrote him an email telling him that before he canceled sessions. When all this first started and he first started pushing me away. I was really sick from the med change and I wrote something like.

So please move in or move out. If this isn't my fault, tell me.

But he never did. I don't think he ever will. I'm going to spend my entire life wondering what I did wrong and how I can fix it again. I sometimes wonder, maybe he's not saying it because it really was my fault. I know they say "clients are just vulnerable". But it's different. It just is... I make everybody go away. It's like some magical power of mine. Only it's not so magical.

It is NOT your fault! What you did was allow him to see his flaws in the way that HE was treating you. If anything you did him a favour in allowing him to see what poor judgement HE was using and how HE was crossing boundaries and how HE had what seems to be plenty of HIS own issues. I wish that you would not blame yourself for this. My take on him not replying to what you said is that he is simply embarassed.

Of course it's not your fault. He seems like another example of person which got the license to be a therapist out of his Easter egg. And from all his behaviors with you, he seems to personally need some serious professional help.

You are right, you're never gonna hear this from him... but who cares? You should stop wondering and hearing the bad voices telling that's your fault... it's not, period.

I'm so sorry this happened and that you are left in such pain.

It is not your fault, he is an unprofessional therapist and he did do what you feared: he hurt you. Somewhere along the way, he didn't learn how to properly care for his patient in ways that are therapeutic, which are not the same as caring in a non-therapy relationship. I hope he learns how to do that, so basic to being a therapist. He needs to get help with this before he hurts another patient.

I hope you can find a way to see his defensiveness and his retreating as an indirect way of saying that it is all him, and not at all your fault. He can't bear to see this fault of his and defensiveness and retreating are his ways of avoiding that.

He is perfectly aware that it is not your fault, but if he says that to you, then he has to look in the mirror, and admit it is his fault, and from the sounds of it, that's not something he is able to do.

I hope you have or will soon have another therapist to help you recover from this. Losing a therapist abruptly and through no fault of your own is really hard to deal with!

I think right now you are in the middle of the pain, so you need to hear it as many times as possible, this is not your fault. You may never hear it from him but it may take some time to gain the acceptance that he is the sick one in this instance. He broke a lot of boundaries, and probably showed total disregard for your personal well being.

This is like a break up, like the death of a loved one. Someone you spent a lot of time with, were in a relationship with, healthy or not, is now gone from your kife, so now you have to go through the proper mourning process.

I hope that you can find someone to talk to that makes you feel safe and cared for and will help you work through this.

I have had 2 similar experiences with T's. We will never know what happened... that would mean that they would have to be vulnerable with us just as we had with them for all those years. I wish I could say I have gotten past it. past the pain. past the questions but I haven't. All I know is that now, to feel safe, I have to have a T with boundaries many feel are too strict.
clients don't fail therapy, therapy fails clients.

(((((((((Lydia))))))))))

When I was in high school, my minister crossed (sexual) boundaries with me and then pretty much told me we could never talk to each other again...after he had spent hours and hours and hours talking with me, listening to me, going on outings with me. I *thought* it was a minister/parishioner relationship, or a counselor/client relationship, but that's not how it turned out.

TWENTY YEARS LATER, I contacted him (we both live in different states now) and we exchanged e-mails. My T and the few people who knew about the situation strongly suggested that I stop writing him...I was wanting an apology and they said there was no way I was going to get one (because how can he put in writing this unethical thing that he did?). I realized they were right and I did let it go.

In my experience, an apology, or an admission of guilt, or whatever, from a professional who really crosses boundaries is probably not going to happen. And it sounds like even if your T didn't cross boundaries, he terminated in an unprofessional way because of fear.

It's not your fault. I know how HUGE the desire is to hear from the person who hurt you...I REALLY get it...but it sounds like that is not likely to happen. So, hear it from us, from the people around you, from whatever voices are speaking up to tell you. It's. not. your. fault.

It's not.

Sending many many hugs.

These replies have already said what I was thinking, but I want to say this again... This is not your fault.

One thing i feel sure of is that IT IS NOT YOUR FAULT!!! You were the client, and he was the therapist. He's the one with training regarding boundaries and was responsible to hold those boundaries. It sounds like initially, he really liked you and wanted to help you. But then, over time, maybe he got too emotionally invested (or perhaps developed an attraction to you), she he started crossing boundaries (again, not your fault!).

Then, when you brought it to his attention, he realized how far he'd gotten off the path and felt guilty. Even though you didn't accuse him of wanting to hurt you s*xually, that's how he interpreted it (if he did have an attraction to you, he could have been fighting "those" feelings already). So he may have instantly jumped to the conclusion that you were accusing him of wanting to do that. But really, it's just a guess. The important part is IT IS NOT YOUR FAULT!! Please try to find a way to let yourself off the hook. You did not cause this!

Most likely, his stating over and over "I'm a good therapist!" was his attempt to rationalize what he did so he wouldn't feel so guilty. Most likely he KNOWS it was his fault, but the situation had become so "off" that he just walked away rather than try to fix it. Maybe he felt that things had become too messed up to repair. But the mess up was HIS fault, NOT yours!

I really hope you can find some peace with this and some healing for the pain that this has caused you.

I agree with the others. It is NOT your fault. He acted unprofessionally. I'm so sorry this happened.

It just really hurts, I mean that he's acting like this. It's hard to tell if he's doing it for our own good or if he's doing because he feels vulnerable and doesn't want to confront the issues he has. In other words for selfish reasons. I want so badly to believe that a person I spent three years with in therapy, who PROMISED they would never hurt me or walk away. Who swore I could trust him, wouldn't in the end, think only about himself.

One of the last run ins I had with him, I had just got out of the hospital and he was asking people in the office if he should cut his hair. I wasn't in the conversation and it was actually just a backdrop to what I was doing. He looked over at me writing on the white board and said something like "I mean not that it matters. This probably makes me look really conceited. I'm not".

I wanted to say "If you expect me to tell you that I think you're still a spitting image of perfect and that I don't think this stuff about you, I won't do it". I just met his eyes and looked at him sort of like I had seen a ghost, or I was confused. I wasn't expecting it. Honestly I took him asking about his hair as just that. I didn't think anything deeper of him. Why does he care anyway. I'm just a client. You probably shouldn't let a client influence how you think about yourself.

He turned an entire team against me. for a period of time people wouldn't even come near me, because they worried about liability and me accusing them of similar stuff. And they sided with him. And now I lack trust with them, because I know in the end, if a staff member hurts me, who gets the benefit of the doubt. On another note the one person who was very neutral was my psychiatrist. And I have earned a lot more respect for him since that.

My therapist indirectly told me I was delusional! And then he did the exact thing I feared. I obviously wasn't delusional. It happened. He told me that to save his own butt. He apparently told everyone that. That's not fair. He made me feel really crazy. Especially in a time when I really was dealing with some paranoia issues and I had no idea what reality was. He took complete advantage. Now that I can think clearer and am on the right meds I know what the difference is between what was paranoia and what was truth.

I am so upset. I almost feel like I was convincing myself it was my fault, so that I didn't have another reason to lack trust in human kind. If the average person fails me, it's like whatever. I forget about it, I probably never trusted them to begin with. But i told him a lot of stuff and I was really vulnerable with him. And he wasn't even the right person to tell. In the end he used it against me so he didn't look horrible. He was so convincing that he cared. Parts of me don't even want to attempt another therapist. If anything I did him a favor. He had the potential to really let this get out of hand and I told him what I thought and he used his power as a therapist to turn it around and make me look like the bad person. How could he do that? I trusted him. Enough to even tell him about boundaries in the first place... that takes a lot out of a person. Your worst fear is something like this. I will never look at another therapist the same way.

I always remember him saying. "The last thing I ever want to do it hurt you." Well congratulations. You failed. Does he have any idea what it's like to have him completely ignore me? When I used to be his main interest. When I used to feel special to someone. Anyone. Nobody ever considered me special. I was never special. God it hurts. It hurts so bad.

The only thing I can hope is that he's gradually working on this stuff with a therapist himself and that he'll come across it and understand it himself. Publicly it will never happen.

I am so numb, although I wish I could feel anger and sadness the way I express it. Feeling it and expressing seem to be so far from each other in my body.

I hate it that you are hurt in this way.
It is a shame when things that are supposed to be healing go so badly.
Yes, people are people. It sounds that man made a serious mistake.
You know inside it isn't your fault. But no matter how many times you hear it, you believe it is. That is how abuse works. I am sorry for your pain.

It's not your fault- it really is that simple. No if's, no but's. He was the professional in this situation, and it is not your fault.

I'm so sorry you have been hurt so gravely by someone you trusted. Are the rest of his team still treating you?