Ex T has screwed me over and I'm struggling to get over it

I know that some people here have had bad experiences with Ts and ex Ts and I was wondering if anyone could advise me on how to get over ex T and the damage she has caused.

Through her actions post-therapy (i.e. rejecting me as a returning client on the grounds it wouldn't be ethical after making the offer in the first place, emailing me on behalf of her receptionist then signing off the emails with the receptionist's name, ignoring me on every occasion when I've bumped into her) she has broken my trust, made me feel powerless and insignificant and hurt me more than I can put into words. This rejection of me has made me feel that the therapeutic relationship we had was all based on lies and has undone the good work I did with her. Furthermore, I feel that it's my fault, that I must have done something wrong to be treated this way and in doing all of the above, she has shamed me.

I feel hurt right to the core of my being. It is the inner child she has hurt the most, to whom she represented everything I had never had in a parent-figure.

I need to get over what has happened but for some reason, I just can't let go. I, or rather my inner child, cannot accept that the person I had trusted more than anyone in my life, revealed the most vulnerable parts of my mind to has screwed me over. It feels like the ultimate betrayal.

I am sorry. I had a similar experience with No. 3 (not in the details but in the post-therapy harm, and destruction of trust, and the feeling that it vitiates our entire relationship). You can PM me if you want to talk or vent.

What has helped is getting another therapist - CW - to vent to about the whole thing (it wasn't just 3, she was just the one I had trusted the most) and who lets me set the agenda instead of pushing me to get over it. (And who is either really good at listening to the same stuff over and over or at appearing to listen while she's actually asleep inside.)

What has helped me most is being able to vent here, with some people who understand.

It's also helped me some to try to understand intellectually what got hurt and why. Kohut's theories helped the most. I'll try to explain, if you'd like me to try.

So sorry that happened to you.

I'm confused. Is it: your therapist said she'd see you after you were done together and then said it wouldn't be ethical? Then she wrote e-mails as though they were from the receptionist and which were also signed by the receptionist? How do you know they weren't from the receptionist? And why does it matter? And then you keep bumping into her and she doesn't acknowledge you? Do you live in a little town? I haven't bumped into my therapist once in 15 years, even when I worked near his office.

I hope you have a new therapist. If I were you I would do everything I could to avoid the ex--including avoiding places where you might run into her, if at all possible.

Mine also rejected me as a returning client and refused contact (after promising to keep the door open) on the grounds that it would be unethical. That decision itself was not only unethical but irrational.

I also feel damaged, feel the relationship was largely a manipulation, though I don't think we did any good work. It was just play acting.

I don't feel it is my fault though. I also don't think in terms of inner child.

What helped most was working through it myself, and talking to others on the same path (a little bit here, but mostly other places where I can speak more freely). Have read a lot about the biz and about psychology. I just kept going through the experience over and over, comparing it to others I read about, reading, going through it some more, and listening to my gut. Eventually I saw it clearly enough that I stopped looking for external advice or interpretation or validation.

As one well known psychologist said: "Marshall your arguments and don't put up with any nonsense."

For me part of this path is distancing myself from therapists. I tried a bunch after the mess, and it was not helpful. More manipulation. Seeking their validation ran me into a conflict of interest, and just put me back into the place of deferring to authority and external opinion that got me in trouble. I sometimes think about finding one to talk to, but it's unlikely.

I am still in a bad state, but have a lot more clarity.

When this happens it's impossible to get over it easily. I am 6 years post-traumatic experience in therapy and I can't say I am completely over it though I am more stable and can manage my life much better. Healing from this is a long process and will require your continuous focus and commitment. First thing I'd suggest you to do is to get a clear idea of how exactly getting over it would look like for you. Just imagine you got over it, how would your life be different then and how different would you feel from how you are feeling now. You don't need to answer this question here. It's for you to contemplate on on your own. If you do that, get as specific as possible. Imagine in details what kind of life it'd be if you got over it. I think, regardless of whether it's fully achievable or not, it's important to have a vision just to know where you are heading and what you want to work on.

So, sorry, I can't really advise anything other than just some general way of approaching this because everyone is different and people have different ideas on recovery and what would make them feel better. There is no generic remedy that would help everyone to get over it. It's a long process of self-discovery through trying to answer a basic question "what do i want?". But hey, I may be wrong about even general strategy because I am only talking about what's worked for me. If this doesn't sound like something that might help you then dismiss it by all means. One thing I know for a fact is that no one would be able to give you advice that would help you to get over it just like that. You'd have to talk to many people, read quite a bit on a subject, take your time to reflect on it all, listen to your intuition that would give you cues as far as which direction to go and so on. In other words, you'd have to do a lot of work to figure out your own solution. That's just the way it is like it or not.

I also find asking myself, "what do I need right now?" helps a lot. It helps takes the undeserving focus off of my old t and puts deserving focus onto me. Good, easy self-care strategy, at least for me.

A skilled t with healthy boundaries is also helping me. She validates old t was sickly incompetent. She also shows me that what happened wasn't my fault, and helps me to understand how I got "sucked in" to a toxic relationship with old t (trauma background). Anyway, I hope you find something that helps you, Objectclient. I know how devastating this kind of thing is unfortunately.

It has also helped me to "name the injury", which you did in your post:

I wrote a thread a few days ago "Accepting I've been scammed". That helped some, "admitting" it to the world. Maybe writing this thread may do the same for you? What happened, happened, can't change that. I'm still here, though. Maybe not big significant to someone -- some people, actually -- that I had trusted and felt betrayed by. Not big significant but still here.

(And, in my view, the whole profession still sucks. That opinion helps me. I feel like they said "You suck" by what they did, so rather than accept that anymore, I just turn it around. I'd be happy to change my mind if I had any indication that any of those people could help me and were at all interested in learning about how they screw people over, but so far I haven't come across anything that indicates that to me. So, thank goodness for PC, I don't feel so "needy" anymore of therapists' good opinions of me, which was very "pathological" of me. Still, 50 years for me to "get" that through "insight"? That's absurd, there's got to be a better way. If they had seen it when I couldn't, it would have been kind of them to tell me. And if they didn't see it -- that's their problem of another sort.)

I'm also dealing with a hurtful, painful ending, I stopped seeing the T before Christmas. When the pain was at its greatest I found that choosing to be angry (blame her rather than me) helped. I'm trying to understand what my pain is about. There were moments in my therapy that I loved. I so wish to have more of those moments with her. The reality is that, by the end, there were no moments where I felt a connection took or cared for, or if there were, they were few and far between. Seeing a new therapist has been helpful to me.

Thanks, I did get a new therapist but unfortunately he wasn't the right person for me and so I'm still currently looking. After having been done over in one way or another, by every T I have ever seen, it is becoming increasingly harder to find a T due to my lack of trust and fear of deceit and manipulation. Experience has taught me to go with my gut feeling, something I never did before as I assumed it was just my fear/insecurities talking. I thought I should perhaps try taking notice of it for a while and that is what lead me to terminate with new T.

Yes, I felt a little better today already knowing that there are people that understand what I'm going through.

I have never heard of Kohut's theories and would welcome an explanation if the offer still stands.

Yes

Yes

I know because I couldn't speak to the receptionist over the phone at the time of receiving the email as the receptionist was on holiday. During therapy with the T I'm talking about, we exchanged many emails and I got to know her style of writing, spelling/grammatical errors. They were all there in the email but signed off by the receptionist. It matters because it was deceitful and manipulative. It left me wondering, why is T writing to me in the guise of the receptionist? Why does she not want me to know it is her? Is it because she doesn't want any contact with me? Why is that? Had I done something wrong? Is it unethical? If so, how? Is it personal? What does this say about our previous therapy relationship, that the first person I ever really trusted in my life is now deceiving me? And worse, telling me that I am wrong for pointing out the truth - that she was emailing me pretending to be someone else.

Yes, and I do live in quite a small town.

I don't have a new T as of yet, as I have explained above.

I agree that bumping into T and being ignored is exacerbating my feelings of rejection and so yes, it would be an idea to avoid her where I can, but what makes me mad is the idea of having to change where I shop on which days for example, while ex T can carry on with her life as usual. T's always win, every time !

Thanks for the advice. You sound in a similar situation and frame of mind to myself. A lot of what you say resonates with me but I'm not quite ready to give up looking for a decent T just yet.

I think for me though, there is more of the feeling of the child part of me being abandoned and rejected, let down and silenced, made powerless. The adult part of me can handle this in a rational way but the child part can't come to terms with what happened.

This is great advice, thank you. I think I have a clear idea already of what getting over this would look like for me. It's about breaking out of a pattern in my relationships with those who have power over me, whether it be emotional, physical or mental.

Thank you. So would you say a good therapist would be open to me talking about my experience with ex T and processing the emotions that went along with it? I just can't imagine any therapist I've ever seen being ok with that sort of discussion. The therapy relationship is always something they shy away from, presumably as they're afraid, ill-informed and inexperienced in how to deal with it.

Yes, it has helped putting it into words how I feel and being specific about it, rather than just my usual "I feel bad" explanation about whatever it is that's bothering me.

I agree with your view on therapists. I'm just hoping I can find one that can restore my faith again.

Thanks for this, perhaps I should be blaming her more now that I have put it out there, so to speak. Up until now, I have been blaming myself and I can see now how this has only served to make me feel worse by bottling up the feelings and turning them inward on myself.

"Thank you. So would you say a good therapist would be open to me talking about my experience with ex T and processing the emotions that went along with it? I just can't imagine any therapist I've ever seen being ok with that sort of discussion. The therapy relationship is always something they shy away from, presumably as they're afraid, ill-informed and inexperienced in how to deal with it."

Yes, I would say a good , ethical, experienced therapist is willing to let you talk about your experience and help you process it all. My new t and her colleagues all have years of experience dealing with clients that have been treated unfairly and/or abused by their therapists. My new t has zero tolerance for **** therapists. I realize I lucked out and that these types of therapists aren't readily available everywhere. But there certainly are good ones out there. Could you call around to t's to ask about their experience level and how open they are to helping you through this?

This is where I ran into a basic conflict of interest. I needed to talk at length about my adverse therapy experience, but they mostly wanted to move me off of that, and onto my "issues". Some employed subtle gaslighting and other manipulations.

I also needed to challenge the whole paradigm of purchased caring. In my observation and experience, not many are gonna tolerate that. One guy got aggressive with me, even though I said very little.

OP - someone suggested to me looking for a therapist who specializes in clergy abuse so that they would be familiar at least with the sensation of losing trust in an authority figure. I didn't follow up, but it might be something to consider.

I'm so sorry this happened to you. Don't therapists have any moral compass or conscience whatsoever?

It's disgraceful.

Adding to what Allheart said, yes there are Ts out there who will discuss past relationships with ex-Ts. My T is one of them. She said I could talk about ex-T as many times as I needed to. The only thing that she suggested we don't talk about are the why's. She felt, and she is correct, that it was only making things worse. I'd start blaming myself which didn't help. Working with my T about ex-T has helped tremendously. It's been a little over 2 years since she abandoned me, and I rarely think about her. Sometimes something triggers it or the anniversary is really difficult, but for the most part I'm better.

It's good to know there are actually good Ts out there! Now it's just a matter of finding one. Unfortunately I don't have much choice as to which T I'm placed with but I can keep turning the s*** ones down.

Since my traumatic experiences of terminating with Ts who didn't acknowledge or address my attachment issues when I brought them up, I no longer see therapy as purchased caring. I see no point in getting attached only to get hurt. They are just a means to recovery, not a means to an end as I had first felt when I entered therapy.

In hindsight, I realize how mistaken I was to look to a therapist as the answer to my problems, someone who could finally give me what I needed but it took not the help of a therapist but the abuse by a therapist to make me realize this

If a T was unwilling to help me process the damage ex T has done, I would simply walk away and continue my search for someone who will.

I don't know if such therapists exist over here, certainly there are therapists with more of a religious affiliation but I don't wish religion to cloud my beliefs about myself further so I have avoided such therapists so far.

Thanks. It is validating to hear someone express this opinion.

Thank you, that's good to hear. I understand not questioning the whys as guessing their intentions and motivations would only be speculative but I'm guessing your T allows you to express how ex T has made you feel?

oh gosh reading this thread has me scared, ha. my therapist has promised many times the door is always open to return and he has no plans to leave the area any time soon. yikes. i already have trust issues this has me a bit uneasy now.

i am sorry this happened to you and i can not imagine how you are feeling, i'd be a wreck for sure not be interested in going back to do it again with anyone

i hope somehow you can find some peace. hugs to you

In reply to a comment by BrownOwl

In reply to a comment by Budfox
I can definitely relate to these feelings and realizations.

The rejection and shaming by my last therapist eventually connected to long-disconnected feelings from my childhood, which had no chance of "being" appreciated or understood so they ceased to "be" -- and an authentic "me' with them. In that place was anger/rage, which was also not acceptable to people I loved and also needed to be acceptable to. So it got disconnected turned toward me, too.

It needed an outward outlet, one that is accepted socially somewhere -- such as PsychCentral, by other people who have had similar experiences.

Once fully felt, as they say, then there may be a chance to have it pass and let go, but I doubt there's a guarantee about that. Time is helping me plus meditation but I'm not "well" yet. And, for me, it's not just a matter of recovery. It's development past the point where I got stuck or shut down in childhood. OK, shut myself down and threw away the key. A 3-year-old's best judgment, yes, I can respect that.

Kohut's theories helped me some to make sense of stuff -- there's an article about Self Psychology that I think is pretty good on Wikipedia. But rather than me say how I connected that for myself -- along with bunches of other stuff -- let me just mention it and if you want to check it out, and if it makes some sense to you, great. If not, oh, well. Most like something else will.

Best of luck to you. :-)

Clergy abuse is generally sexual abuse of children. I doubt that any therapist who specializes in that would be pushing a religious point of view.

If think if the arrangement is that the therapist will or will not "allow" the client to talk about betrayal or abuse at the hands of another therapist, then it's an absurd joke. If a therapist tries to put constraints on what the client can talk about, then whose therapy is it?

I needed to take apart the whole thing, therapy itself. I could barely get other therapists to acknowledge that something had gone wrong. The paying client has every right to challenge the system that just injured them, and to do so forcefully. Instead, clients are pushed to be timid and tread lightly for fear of upsetting the therapist or the established order.

Thank you for the support. It's reassuring to hear others would feel the same way.

Thanks. I can definitely relate to what you say about the rejection connecting with distant feelings from my childhood and disconnecting from one's true self. I also missed out on developing as a person due to living as a false self and some trauma that happened during my adolescence.

I have read a little of the article you suggested. Psychology is not a field I am at all familiar with so it's quite hard going but yes, some things definitely apply to me.

I think even without the psychology theories as back-up, I had already built up a picture of what was going on for me by observing a repeating pattern of feelings in each therapeutic relationship from start to end and even beyond therapy, as in this case. Now all I need is a decent T to help me process it all.

Thanks and sorry I misunderstood you the first time!

I agree. The therapist wins every time while the client is forced to tread on eggshells. I am not taking any s*** from potential new T's. I've terminated with one already in a matter of a few weeks as I knew they weren't up to it!

Yesterday, I noticed I had really turned a corner processing this stuff.

I actually felt it wasn't my fault for a change and even thought, I am worthy and I deserve better than the way I was treated by ex T.

However, last night I had a dream?/nightmare? (can't decide which) involving being reunited with ex T in an advice/guidance role. She welcomed me back with a hug which brought back feelings for T that I experience in child mode - powerlessness, love, fear, yearning, merging etc.

Today, the dream has haunted me on and off and I'm back to feeling how I was before - rejected, hurt, self-blaming, etc

Hurray! 1 step forward, .5 step back. Important thing: 1 step forward!!! More can come!!!

Sounds like you've got some sound intuition! But maybe there are some out there who can handle your situation if you still want to go that route and find out! At least you know the danger and the dream-turns-nightmare.

And, at least, you are not rejected here!