My therapy story in once place

I just need to get all this out in one place. I keep talking about my therapists, working on harm from past therapists, trying to trust my current therapist, and SO MUCH therapeutic relationship stuff. It's a big part of my life right now and is huge progress therapeutically for me to be opening up about this stuff and working on it finally. I don’t really have anywhere else to talk about it, so here's the big picture of all the pieces I keep mentioning.

Skies, your intro to your recent poll made me laugh. Has anyone not been harmed by a therapist? Here, yep, that's what we're left asking.

The poll asked the opposite - have we ever been harmed by a therapist?

Yes, I have.

My story - the negative therapy experiences.

I've had a lot of therapists. (I’ve met with 25 at least once. I consider only 10 of those to have been committed therapists.) Seven have caused lasting damage that permanently affected how I view my world or myself, plus one who was a great therapist but also left some damage.

1.
My first therapist (who I have mentioned a zillion times and probably no one cares to hear about again) told me after a couple months that I was in love with him. I was totally bewildered and had no idea where he got this idea, but he was insistent that I had feelings for him and that we needed to work through it. I didn’t go back after that session.

He left mammoth-sized damage. I was 17, and from that point on, I could never be fully me like I had tried to be with him. I had tried to open up to him like I never had to anyone before, and then look what happened, so I concluded that I had done something wrong, or had shown him something wrong about my soul, that I’d made some mistake that I should never make again, so I never opened up 100% again.

I never told another therapist about him. I was super paranoid about doing anything that could make another therapist think I was too attached, so I never said thank you to a therapist. I kept my emotions smushed down as much as possible, which defeats the process of therapy. Instead, I just talked to therapists about the emotional leakage that I couldn’t keep squashed down. So much – he totally wrecked me and therapeutic relationships.

I’m currently working in therapy on processing that jerk, amidst feeling terrified most of the time in and about therapy because I’m hugely scared my current therapist is going to do the same thing – leave me alone and abandoned fending for myself. I hate my first therapist.

Now that we’re reprocessing it, my current therapist thinks that my first therapist was the problem. I didn’t do anything wrong. He misinterpreted what I was doing – maybe interpreting a normal conversation as flirting or something – or was having transference from something else in his life onto our therapy – like maybe a relationship or relationship issue he was having in his own life – but that I hadn’t done anything wrong.

My first therapist was also a PhD student at the time.

His massive, destructive mistake could have been due to his own baggage/emotional issues, his inexperienced, his cockiness, and who knows what else. I was completely bewildered and scared and confused then – I had no idea what had happened – and I still don’t understand.

He was by far the worst. The rest caused relatively little damage but enough that it left scars in my psyche.

2.
The second harmful therapist was my fourth therapist. He decided that the root cause of my problem was my perfectionism. I told him, no, you don’t understand how much better my perfectionism has gotten, this isn’t my root problem because if it were, then I’d be getting better.

He was sure. He almost yelled because he was so insistent that this was true. The damage here was that I felt violated and de-valued with someone telling me what my deepest problem was and being wrong. I didn’t know if he was right and I was just in denial or if I was right and he was just on a power trip. It was really upsetting to my view of myself for a while.

I think this damage was likely partly because his own issues were skewing how he was seeing me and my issues, so he honestly believed something that was wrong. Then he was inappropriately forceful about it.

3.
The third harmful therapist was my fifth therapist.
I feel badly saying this therapist was damaging because he was also one of the most helpful therapists I’ve ever met with.

But he has been really mixed up in me presently trying to cope with the therapy trauma, along with my first and current therapists.

He was a PhD student. I met with him for a few months. I was starting to reprocess that first therapist. I wrote in my journal so many times, “Maybe fifth therapist really isn’t first therapist. Maybe fifth therapist really does care. Maybe he does value what I think. Maybe he won’t brush away my feelings.” I was trusting and slowly bringing all of me to therapy again.

Then my bipolar got really bad and I was suicidal. My fifth therapist sent me to the hospital, which saved my life. I got out only because I thought he’d be there to help support me, but the clinic he worked at said he couldn’t meet with me anymore because he was a PhD student and I was suicidal. So there I was, devastatingly suicidal for the first time, just released from the psych ward, 20 years old, with no help.

It wrecked me again.

I desperately needed his help, and he abandoned me.

It was like my first therapist again. I’d finally started to get to the deep stuff, to bring all the scary feelings to therapy, to be all of me, and then he was gone.

I knew I couldn’t show anyone the deep feelings anymore. I am too much for anyone. Too much. Always too much.

This real cause of this damage was caused by restrictions at the clinic, but it felt like abandonment.

4.
The fourth damaging therapist worked in the psych ward the first time I went. (8 of the 25 therapists) She was verbally abusive. She aggressively pointed out to me my failures in relationships, issues I wasn’t even sure I had, how much of a failure I was overall…

I was in a really vulnerable place, really suicidal for the first time, sent unwillingly to the psych ward by the therapist I trusted, and then for her to do that – it was pretty horrible. I got out of there as fast as I could, lying on all the assessment questionnaires, just to get away from her.

It was malpractice and cruel.

5.
The fifth damaging therapist was after that (9 of the 25). They had (mis)diagnosed me with BPD in the hospital. As I said, my really great PhD student therapist couldn’t meet with me anymore after the hospital. The first therapist I met with said, “I see you have BPD on your file. With patients with that disorder, I will meet with 10 times.”
I was shocked and said, “I have more issues than I can fix in 10 sessions.”
He said, “This is what I will offer. Take it or leave it.”
So I left it.

Once again, someone who was supposed to help me wouldn’t help me in my darkest time. It reinforced the belief that I would be left alone, without help, if a provider knew everything.

I think this damage was from incompetence. His policy was not best practice. He maybe thought he was helping, but he left me thinking that my diagnosis made me less than. He very clearly showed me the prejudice in the psychiatric community against BPD.

6.
My sixth damaging therapist (14 of the 25) did serious damage.

I got pregnant two months after I started meeting with her. I had stopped my medications to get pregnant, so I was off my meds. Back then we thought I had depression and anxiety, not bipolar, so no one said DO NOT GO OFF YOUR MEDS like they do with bipolar. Anyway, within two months I was so suicidal that I was almost hospitalized again. She didn’t even notice the depression getting worse or that I was getting suicidal again.

She also told me, “If your husband isn’t meeting your needs, then maybe you should leave him.” She had us almost divorcing. I was terribly depressed, so my brain was telling me he was a terrible husband, would be a terrible father, etc. It wasn’t reality, though. He’s wonderful for me and to me and to our son. But the therapist had us almost divorcing.

Major damage. Near death and near divorce.

I think this was because of imcompetence. I’m not sure how else she could have missed my MASSIVE depression. She had a PhD, but I’m starting to think that PhDs are worse at therapy than Master’s, just from my own experience.

7.
My seventh damaging therapist (15 of the 25) left me crying after every session. Several times I ended up at a park sobbing my eyes out for an hour after the session. Thankfully, my husband said to me that it would be better for me to stop going to therapy than to meet with her, so I only met with her for like two months.

Yeah, therapy isn’t supposed to leave you sobbing and miserable after every session. I think it was malpractice to cause suffering instead of alleviate it

8.
My eighth damaging therapist (19 of the 25) essentially thought I was a bad person.

After I found out about the bipolar diagnosis (he didn’t – I did), I took it to him and said, hey, what do you think about this vs. my BPD diagnosis?

He said essentially that he thought I was manipulative and basically a bad person.

I had just gotten out of the hospital again and felt slashed through the chest to hear that from him.

I didn’t go back.


SOOOOOOO now you can see why I keep posting about traumatic therapy and how I’m trying to work through it. It’s taking a LOT of work to get past so many therapists either saying or doing negative things to me. Over and over, therapists told me I was a bad person. They abandoned me in times of deep vulnerability.

I know I haven’t had the worst – I haven’t been sexually abused – but this has still been difficult for me, especially because it has happened so often. The reinforcement has been incredible so left some negative beliefs in ruts in my psyche.

So there’s the whole story that I keep putting in pieces in responses to posts.

I'm sorry you've had a tough time with therapists. Certainly having a bad experience early on can set you up to be hyper vigilant later on. In that fearful state it's a bit harder to get work done. Thanks for sharing your story. Wishing you the best as you go forward.

I had a similar experience as you did with T1. When I was in college, I met my psych stats professor. He was new to the school. He was awesome. I did so well in his class that he made me his tutor for his future classes. I went on to take all of the courses he offered. In the last course I took of his, I witnessed an argument between the professor and a student. There were also 2 other students there who witnessed it. Anyway, I wrote the professor an email stating I saw everything, I would stand up for him if he needed me too, and that I was grateful he was my professor. I show up to class the next week, he pulls me aside, and tells me my email was sexually inappropriate and I was no longer welcome in his class! Mind you, I had no sexual attraction to him. I went to my counselor, showed her the email, she said it was a wonderful email, called in the professor and talked to him privately, he came out and apologized and let me back into his class. But the damage was done. I no longer trusted him. I could barely function in his class. I got a D, but he bumped my grade to a C. I quit tutoring for him after that too. I couldn't be around him.

For your T3, you know he didn't abandon you. I'm sure it was not his choice. I guess the clinic abandoned you. But try not to attribute those feelings directly to the T because it's not his fault.

I'm sorry you went through all these bad experiences with Ts. I've had a few bad experiences other than ex-T abandoning me too. It sucks. I hope you are able to process things now. Remember that not all Ts are bad. They're just like any other group of people. You got some good, some bad.

Thank you. <3

Yes, when the sexual/love accusation comes out of nowhere!!!

I have a good therapist now, but as you know it's tough to recover. Even though I wish neither of us have had that, I'm grateful that you've shared your experiences so I feel less alone.