Therapists do more harm than good

Extracting oneself from bad therapy is clouded further if the client is encouraged to surrender her judgment, to "trust" etc. And I've seen PC members here chastised, or chastise themselves for the "pattern" of "running away" which they're then commanded to use therapy to correct.
All that theory and all that metaphor can distort what actually occurs: a relationship between two equals. Rudeness is rudeness, control is control, fostering idolization or destructive dependence is just that.

And so what if the client has some pattern she hopes to break. That doesn't mean the therapist isn't harmful. The two are independently working parts.

Really? So once you step over the threshold of a therapist's office, you become completely unable to manage yourself? To take responsibility for who is in your life, and who you allow in it?

Listen, I said that there are ****** therapists. But who on earth is going to protect you if you can't / won't / don't protect yourself? I mean, in simple terms of practicality nobody can.

A bad therapist is a terrible thing, but if clients keep paying them, then bad therapists stay in business. So what do you seriously, practically suggest can be done, if the client is not responsible?

Being overly attached to a bad therapist is about the closest real life thing I can imagine to the proverbial cage with an open door that a prisoner simply refuses to walk out of.

The problem is, how do you help someone who won't take the available exit?

It's all true. But I don't think I disputed any of that. So I am not sure what is your point here. I didn't dispute that people are encouraged to trust their therapists. But whether they choose to act on that encouragement or not is again their choice.

Didn't quote you to disagree but to add to the discussion.
..There IS a choice to leave a bad therapist. But for some people it takes a major upending to realize it.

I wonder if maybe the whole system just needs to be done away with and therapy needs to be abolished. After all, if people have the insight and wisdom to leave a bad therapist then they don't even really need therapy do they? They should be able to fix themselves with that insight and wisdom. Interesting debate.

Sorry. I was actually being sarcastic. I do think the whole system is flawed in many ways though.

I think they are responsible - they do not make whatever the hell "the process" is supposed to be clear. Or obvious or understandable. I still do mot kneo what that phrase means. They obfuscate, hedge and lie about what they are doing (or not doing as the case may be). They guess and make stabs but present it as if they know what they are doing AND they blame the client when it goes wrong. Their books are full of examples of this.

As I think about it, leaving my therapists was one part defying authority and another part the lonely aftermath. I no longer had allies who never were allies, but I believed they were. How's that for convolution? Bursting illusion is tough.

I think they are responsible - they do not make whatever the hell "the process" is supposed to be clear. Or obvious or understandable. I still do mot kneo what that phrase means. They obfuscate, hedge and lie about what they are doing (or not doing as the case may be). They guess and make stabs but present it as if they know what they are doing AND they blame the client when it goes wrong. Their books are full of examples of this.

I feel such a huge amount of pain and anger coming from your posts when you talk about the difficult process of finding the right therapist and your hurtful feelings following your former therapist terminating you. I truly do feel for you; I can tell that you're confused and totally disillusioned by the entire process. I did want to ask about the water issue. Did you ask for a glass of water and she refused to get you one? That would be really rude and you were smart to leave that one in the dust. If you didn't ask for water though, I'd say that it's important to realize that therapists aren't "hostesses or hosts" that are obligated to offer us food or drink upon entering their "house/office". Sure, some do, but it isn't a given. It's fine to ask and if she refused then she was pretty rude. I do know that some therapists don't encourage eating or drinking during session time (pretty controlling if you ask me ), but they believe that the client and therapist needs to focus on the task at hand and not be distracted. But if you're a therapist sitting and talking all day long, you might need a little water to wet a dry throat so you're not croaking at the client. If you didn't ask and she didn't offer, don't chalk that up to her being rude or stingy. Perhaps there were other things about her interaction with you that turned you off to her style.

The other thing I wanted to mention is that it is a very very rare therapist who will follow up with a phone call or email if a "new" client calls or leaves a message saying they aren't returning. Therapists are trained not to "chase down" clients to see why they aren't returning. It's kind of crass and almost like a lawyer "ambulance chasing" or if they're drumming up business from someone who has indicated they weren't interested. If you request that they call back and they don't, that's not kosher, but it's pretty standard stuff for you not to get a call from a therapist to ask what happened. It is sometimes a little different once you're an established client. If you suddenly call and say you're not returning, many therapists will call to inquire what happened; But that doesn't happen all the time either. Some therapists really put the client in the driver's seat and allow them to lead on the issue of whether or not they want to be in therapy and if there's been a rupture, they give the client space to decide if they want to return and work through it. It can be a painful process if a person takes the therapist's non response as direct feedback as them not giving a hoot for you. It might just be their style and them letting you lead the way. And then of course, there are clients that are so busy and have a waiting list that if we don't return it's no problem for them because they have someone else to fill the spot. The trick is to really try not to take those initial meetings too personally. It does take time to find the right person and to make a solid connection. If you continue to look, I really hope you find someone who is a good match for you. You deserve it!

I hear you. I feel exactly the same way. I cry when I recall how vulnerable I was to the influence of those who were in a position to help me but who harmed me instead. I do hold them responsible for what they did, but I hold the whole system more responsible in harming me than those individual therapists. After all, even when a therapist has best intentions, the system trains them in such a way that they will do harm inadvertently anyway. But then every system is made of individuals and so each person is responsible for how they deal with the system. Will they conform and stay willfully ignorant? Will they fight it from the inside? Will they leave it and raise public awareness about how it operates? I chose the latter. I left it and started raising public awareness of the ways in which it operates.

Hey Meow, I agree with some of what you're saying about client responsibility, being an effective consumer of mental health services, and retaining the "right" therapist. But we are talking about consumers with mental health problems. Some of us have had horrific life experiences. The therapeutic relationship makes us perfectly vulnerable to Ts who have economic interests that diverge from our economic interests. The T might not be consciously conniving or scheming, but unknowingly strings out sessions and fosters dependency to keep their revenue stream. And Lauliza is right about the private practitioner. That person is especially motivated to hold onto clients. Not just for monetary reasons but because of comfort and familiarity.

Harmful psychotherapy, at worse, can be a rigged game because the therapist often is ascribed the power and authority. A client goes to a therapist seeking relief from distress, then follows the therapist down the hatch into a murky abstracted world of jargon and ritual that often is never explained. The client bares her soul while the therapist remains inscrutable. Sometimes the client is encouraged to surrender her judgment. And as we said, she's told she has to feel worse before she feels better.

I'm a functioning professional who provoked an extremely destructive dynamic when I questioned my therapists. I learned the hard way how frail and vain they were. If I was a fool my therapists were far larger ones, and they were the ones with the training.

The profession has a rich tradition of client blaming. Freud and early analysts had laundry lists of nasty things to say about the unfortunate patients with " "negative therapeutic reaction." The fault was everything from client narcissism to their unconscious desire to sabotage their therapists. I didn't find practitioner error even considered in that early arrogant analysis.

I learned many lessons from harmful therapy. However, I respect and don't think "fools" those faced with the task of sorting it out. My therapists were utterly oblivious, defensive and accusatory about the harm they created. They told me, in their most professional postures, that I couldn't discern reality. I half believed them because these "authorities" told me so. It wasn't until much later that I realized they merely were covering their own rears.

When I search for consumer information about harmful therapy, I find it only a sliver of their literature. I find almost nothing on the aftermath and most written by consumers.

I wish well to others who struggled or still struggle with extracting themselves from harmful therapy. Sometimes it's straightforward; sometimes its unprecedented entanglement.

Well said. I have struggled with where to place accountability (not blame). Surely my T is responsible, but yes the system is setup to manufacture victims to some extent and she is partly just an instrument of that system.

When she finally came to terms, a little, with the fact that our work together harmed me, I think she was dumbstruck. Who me? she thought, I have good intentions, it can't be so. But it was, and that frightened her, and she fled the scene.

And she was still in denial in large part, saying she stood by our work together, even knowing I was destroyed. It was too dangerous for her to question the basic nature of the work, so she had to tell herself and me that it was ultimately for my own good. Another wound.