Survivors of Unethical Therapy

At some point on this board although I cannot remember when, there was a private group formed for those who had experienced therapist abuse. Or at least there was talk thereof, my memory is that it was not going to be visible to the general population, but I wonder if it does exist and if a moderator might know. Not saying that's the answer, but if there is a resource on PC that would help people immediately connect with each other, that seems like at least a good place to start.

I support completely and fully Anne's suggestion that there be a private place for this, since I know for a fact that therapists and their clients can see this material and if there are details, such as my own previous set of posts, those therapists themselves can find out they are being discussed. This then potentially endangers people to speak out and also removes the supportive aspect of the forum in general.

There are private spaces since I was a moderator on poetry sites. This I think needs to be done to protect people and support them without the sense that what they say will hurt them in any way.

There are groups and individuals with substantial backing who want to move with us and others and even themselves. This means we have to speak out and try become united on a set of topics shifting through our own personal experiences. That can only be done in a safe space.

The private group has become informally dormant after the original moderator and then her successor became inactive on PC. It still exists.

What groups and individuals with backing are there? I haven't seen or found any.

For me, I have vented enough anonymously in the public forum here that I don't feel the need for anything more private. I am very willing to discuss my last T and others in public. I feel confident that I can hold my own -- there may be many who won't agree with me, or dismiss me, but that's OK. At least it may start to get another side of the story out there.

Missbella's list, posted above, provides ample documentation of problems with the therapy profession. But I don't know of any organization that is currently willing or interested in trying to address those issues systematically.

As I said earlier, I don't feel I have the knowledge and skills to take that on, certainly not to provide any sense of direction or leadership, but I will be happy to contribute what I can.

I didn't see anything among the list of private social groups here on PC, maybe I was looking in the wrong place -- but realistically, organizing a social movement is not what PC is about. That's why I thought there really needs to be a website or forum or something, outside of PC. If anyone is interested in that, PM me and maybe we can come up with something?

If we cannot share our traumas in an anonymous forum, why are we here? Our therapists could search our trauma and find many people saying the same thing and not be able to identify us because so many people say the same thing.

Unethical therapy abuse must be talked about and searchable on the internet. Otherwise no one can find support. It is important to have a dialogue openly so others find solace in knowing they are not alone.

i agree....and similar to HT, i personally don't feel the need to keep the discussions hidden behind private groups. let the Ts and potential clients see the things clients who have been harmed by therapy are discussing and sharing. keeping the conversations private only continues to keep the topic silent and in the darkness of denial. it also segregates those who have been harmed to feel like outcasts and failures for not fitting into the societal norm of excelling with the aid of therapy and that it is not safe to share their stories for fear of being shamed or gained up upon. i definitely don't reckon that change is going to occur without the awareness.

I would appreciate a private group. There are things I don’t feel comfortable saying on a public forum.

You can share anything you want on here. If you are worried about repurcussions for sharing your experiences, I completely empathize. Some of us are threatened into silence: I was. But I find that speaking out about this has had a positive impact in that it helps others feel less alone, informs others of potential risks around therapy and acts as a means of advocacy. I am empowered knowing that people hear these stories and believe me, this issue has to be talked about more! It is out of control.

Maybe there are (at least) 2 different things that survivors of unethical therapy need? Maybe like the stages that Judith Herman in her classic Trauma and Recovery outlines?

First, is a safe place to explore the trauma. Then, remembrance and mourning. The last stage is reconnection.

There's not a good, generally accepted description that I know of of the kind of trauma that therapy perpetuated for me. "Narcissistic abuse and exploitation" is maybe the closest. But I have enormous problems with that concept. Part of what I think survivors of therapy which harmed us have to offer is a better picture of what damaged narcissism and sense of self is about.

Maybe, that's just my story.

At this point, for me, wanting to get my story out there could be viewed as part of Stage 3, reconnection with humanity. Because, right now, I still feel very disconnected from society. The disconnection is a trauma, one that was taken advantage of, and made worse, by therapists incompetent to help me with whatever I went into therapy with.

It's truly horrible, as anyone else who has experienced it knows.

Kind of like what happens with sex abuse survivors. First you need a safe place to explore it. Eventually, if you're lucky, you get the strength to talk about it in public and expose it -- no longer ashamed of what happened.

For those who want a private group, if you want, I will be glad to participate even though I don't feel the need for it myself at this point. The anonymity of the forum here has been safe enough for me.

One of the reasons I sought therapy was to explore my feelings about, and experience of, a sexually abusive relationship with a doctor, an experience which had emerged into the foreground again for various reasons.


I find this thread upsetting and it makes me question how safe I ever really am. What if the therapeutic person I look to in order to help me heal is as exploitative as the medical abuser? I have to trust someone.

I am so sorry that you experienced abuse by healthcare professionals. You are not alone. You deserve safety and comfort and help and I am angry for you! And it makes sense that this thread is upsetting to you!! It triggers you because you've experienced it! That anger and fear and feeling of not being able to trust anyone is common for trauma survivors. I feel it everyday. But there are trustworthy people out there - just gotta let them earn your trust.

I also have to trust someone. Not everyone is bad. But there are bad people and we have to keep our guards up even with the people we trust. Certainly boundaries differ in all our relationships but it is important to protect ourselves even against healthcare professionals. They are human too and unfortunately the only thing stopping them from being ethical or not is their choice. I personally don't allow their title to convince me of their ethics, I base it on evidence; have they wronged me, have they given me lots of mixed messages and red flags.

So ask yourself, what is the evidence that they are trustworthy versus not trustworthy. Trust your gut.

Thanks,
Hd7970ghz

Nope. It's just the individual. I was fantastically ****ed over by an LCSW. Actually another piece of why it hurt so bad is cause of exactly what you're saying. It does seem like they should know better b/c of their training

My heart goes out to you Whalen. Thank you for sharing.

How have you managed to move forward through the abuse?

Thanks,
Hd7970ghz

I’m sorry and actually I would think LCSW is more likely to be unethical because they treat vulnerable populations more often and have access to more people to exploit who have much less power

First, the reason to have an open discussion like this and others is precisely for the reasons already stated: support, community, and speaking out about what needs to be aired in a way that is not "keeping secrets" that so many feel nearly "forced" to do for any number of past or current issues.

Second, a private discussion area that allows for details that could possibly be identified and have major effects protects people from serious problems that could hurt them. Many people doing therapy have substantial backing, funds, and legal support that protects them. Most of those they treat do not. The therapeutic communities overlap much more than people might think. Not just local. Because of all the requirements for each kind of therapist from psychiatrist to psychologist to LMFT, LPPC and LSW, they meet in conferences and workshops to maintain licenses. They exchange case studies, papers, and comments at those places without consent and questionable preservation of confidentiality. They also have consultation groups. They can at any time bend the guidelines of HIPPA to share information without consent. I know. It's happened to me in many ways, with other providers including my primary care doctors and urgent care/ER.


Third, it is just for privacy since at the moment at least in America there is too much of a stigma still with anything mental or neurological or behavioral, even if we pretend we have gotten beyond this. We simply haven't and probably won't as long as big pharma and other more economic related reasons basically govern health care. I know because more socialist oriented countries have an entirely different approach and way more success too. Finland has a talk therapy way to completely handle the issue called "psychosis" without medications or harm to the person. Amazing but true. They have found a client centered approach that has nearly eliminated the need for atypical anti-psychotics and had helped people perhaps presenting as what we would call "schizophrenic" to move on and live a regular life without meds and hospitals.


As for the ways out, there are the professional groups and organizations that govern each kind of provider and their licenses. Withing those, there are legal branches that are supposed to be watch dogs for violations and there are some people who see these problems and have a social justice or ethical or even legal stance that makes them want to act for the good.


There are other groups such as NAMI with organizers locally and in Washington and New York, the centers. So called "consumer" groups (I dislike the name because I am not a capitalist) also are moving toward "survivors of psychiatric abuse" or "anti-big pharma" or "self-governance" which does things like oversee various kinds of facilities that people might end up on a hold or housing or self-run groups.

There are more activist movements that take on larger issues including support. There is one called SOS, Success Over Stigma, that has self-run groups and trains people to do public speaking as outreach to others change perceptions of what mental health and its care is about.


There are very well-known and powerful individuals, often diagnosed and misdiagnosed, who write best-selling books and teach at major universities, speak on TV and other places, encourage others to do the same. Kay Jamison is one many know. Another is Elyn Saks, who actually trained to become a therapist after successful treatment for a psychotic disorder, but she decided not to go into the profession because her memoir would probably influence the people she would see. Instead she is a Yale trained lawyer who teaches law and does mental health law in particular.


There are others too, plus people in the media known to us as actors or TV personalities who have been "out" about what they have gone through.


Each part composes a larger picture that no single person or group can manage. It has to develop and have time and support to develop as with any civil rights movement.

Many therapists are employed as social workers or those who work closely with social workers. They are employed at the agencies that deal with vulnerable population and so they have just as much access to vulnerable people as social workers do. When it comes to employment LCSWs and LMFTs are often interchangeable, even though their training is different. At real workplace, when you deal with real people living their real life situations, there is often no differentiation between therapy and social work. The majority of clients in those places struggle with the legal system and economic problems and are in no place to do any meaningful emotional work. Their therapy is, oftentimes, getting a direct advice from whoever talks to them (they really don't care about that person's credentials) and venting about what happened during the week. Therapy in those places is a completely different ball game than a private practice or a counseling center situation. Therapists there mostly offer a sympathetic ear and practical suggestions on how to cope. In those places, clients are, actually, less likely to experience what many people here have experienced as therapy abuse because there is way too much transparency for that to happen. Therapists there often communicate with social workers, probation officers, CPS workers, family members and other third parties, so their work is very visible to many people. This doesn't create an environment for abuse to thrive.

I am just saying it's a mistake to assume that certain credentials safeguard from abuse more or less than others or ensure more or less effective work than others. People make this assumption without knowing the realities of how the system works. One's behavior is their individual choice. Unethical people come from every size, shape and form. Exploitation of the vulnerable is not specific to any particular school of training.

that’s fair, you are right that it’s pointless to make a hierarchy, I was just thinking about how sexual predators typically choose situations that give them access to the most vulnerable people, so saying a LCSW would choose that track because they want to help more (whoever that person was responding to) doesnt make sense, that’s like saying priests are less likely to abuse because their vocation is more altruistic in nature. anyway my therapist is LCSW but in PP and definitely I can see how the lack of oversight would be in many ways preferable to a predator than a health center

Even to this discussion about social work v other kinds of therapy and different settings, I still ask, what happens when you follow the money$$$..?


It is generally true that the actual name of the license can have little to do with what any individual does, but the reality is that economic factors such as who pays, who takes what kind of insurance, who is able to handle what kinds of legalities such as files, notes, and treatment plan, etc, those are completely differentiated by the name of the license.

The title not even pedigree determines who can be treated or not and what kind of treatment they get. And not the kind of agency, setting, situation, person or even training background. I mean at the bedrock foundation.

The social systems that handle people are just as large and transparent as are those of the Catholic Church to abuse.


I can see that it may seem to be more prevalent or possible in private practice and perhaps it is, but it happens all over in the field, in hospitals, residential settings, and so on. In fact there is more of a sense that people are more easy to mess with in such settings since often they will not dare to complain and if they do will be ignored as just making it up, symptomatic and other things.


I'm not sure that it makes a huge difference. Abuse is abuse. I wouldn't say that domestic violence is substantially different if it occurs in a wealthy family or on the streets. Would we say murder is different? Maybe in very rare cases like on a reservation where the oversight is non-existent and FBI so people can be murdered and no one do a thing...I suppose...but this is an example of a place that has lots of supposed oversight and yet really is abusive even in structure and in the everyday existence of people's lives.

I don't believe the description of how social work differs from private practice I think. People always need and look for emotional support. If anything people involved in the "system" need even more humane treatment and seek it out. That is therapeutic, that is the basis of therapy. Saying people engaged in forms of therapy but not in private practice don't have the same needs or get the same sorts of things seems odd to me for some reason. What about kids? They get treatment in schools or through social services but does that mean they get no emotional therapy? I don't understand.

We did have a social group for survivors - I miss it. But my part of why it doesn't exist and I think others is that I go in and out of healing phases. Sometimes I need to talk and then I go for periods of taking time out. I think it is probably really hard for a moderator, who is going through the same phases, to maintain the effort.
One advantage of a private group= there are frequently people on the forum boards who just don't understand, and blame survivors rather than the therapists. It can be really triggering. There were recent posts here which made me want to avoid the general forums, but I've decided to try again. Yes, we need to use the opportunity to help people understand, but sometimes it is just too hard to deal with their comments.

I completely empathise with this. It is true. It is extremely triggering when someone challenges your trauma or has to nit pick the way you write about it. Sometimes I see that readers miss the point of these posts and chose to attack survivors. Their reaction says a lot about who they are and that problem is theirs not yours. Of course we shouldn't have to deal with this on a mental health forum.

I was in the ghetto for survivors of damaging therapy. It's fine if people want a place to talk privately, but partly that group existed because people in the main forum were so aggressively opposed to discussing therapy problems in the open.

It's metaphor for the lack of transparency in the profession.

It also reminds me of a dysfunctional family that never talks about its problems.

Well said!

When someone describes a group as a "ghetto" that kind of implies that they didn't have a good experience there. Especially, since they chose to leave it.

I was in private survivors groups several times, and though I wouldn't describe any of them as ghetto, I didn't have good experience being there. If anyone thinks private groups are safer than this forum, they are not. There was just as much bitterness and hostility there as there is here. Even more so, in my experience.

When a group is relatively small, the phenomena called the "groupthink" quickly develops, which kind of works like a cult. There is only one accepted way of looking at the subject and anyone with a descending opinion gets quickly expelled from the group, just like in cults.

I value my independence and the freedom to express my opinion too much to join any such group. The format of a general forum like this one works much better for me because it gives me freedom and flexibility to select the interactions I want to have and to mingle with different kinds of people as much as I want and whenever I want it without the fear of being "ex-communicated". It's like a party where you come and go freely, as you want, mingle and chat here and there, as you please, without forming attachments and connections. I no longer have the need to be validated or supported, so the judgment of others here doesn't trigger me very much. I just move along and find something interesting for myself.

I agree with what you have said. I think these matters should remain public for many reasons.

What you wrote about cults brought something into my mind.

A lot of the abuse that takes place in healthcare is a result of similar cultural issues found in cults. The question is, how does a group of human beings become a cult?

Given the right environment - Human nature has a very predictable and disturbing path. In regards to the healthcare system, humans are fallible and make an insurmountable number of mistakes. When mistakes are made a choice presents itself: either admit to the mistake and risk professional loss and potentially millions of dollars for lawsuits, or simply cover-up the misdeed. Most corporations cannot risk public exposure for practical reasons, so they cover it up. Many professionals have a difficult time accepting this culture the first time it happens, but eventually they begin to see the benefit after they make hundreds of mistakes. In time, normalization of deviance at the expense of ethics and morals becomes a size-able issue and eventually professionals stop thinking they are doing anything wrong. Without accountability, and with management that rewards cover-ups and fosters a culture of fear and intimidation for anyone that speaks up about said issues, the environment fosters the worst in human nature: corruption, crime, abuse, psychopathy, murder, etc.

And so a cultish workplace culture begins to take form and before long the system is rife with negativity despite the inherent purpose being positive. Absolutely disgusting.

THIS is the problem with healthcare, everyone wants to keep their job so they see the need for such a system to exist. These issues exist in every industry, all around the world. There is only one common denominator: humans. Organizations simply have too much to risk in telling the truth, so in short, they lie. Pretty logical - but also incredibly disturbing insight into human nature.

"The big picture is as disturbing as it is logical."

Sorry for the ramble,
HD7970ghz

All true.

Cults, in general, is a fascinating subject. You are correct in saying that abuse in healthcare, psychotherapy specifically, often (but not always) resembles the dynamics of cults. But the cults phenomena is just an extreme expression of a general human tendency to be susceptible to brainwashing. But that is a huge subject of its own.

And your insight into the fact that abuse in the health industry is nothing unique to that particular industry is also correct. Abuse and misuse of power and the unwillingness to see it for what it is - all of it is part of human nature and, as such, it lives in each and every one of us. That's not to minimize the damage done by abusive actions but simply to describe the phenomena as it is because seeing it realistically helps to address it more effectively. But, again, this topic is also a separate discussion, which is useful to have in order to get the big picture, but, on the practical level, any particular problem can be addressed one step at a time within its specific context. We can have the big picture in mind when we discuss abuse in psychotherapy, but the ways to solve it is to start with the specific psychotherapy context. Otherwise, we will be all over the place discussing the corruption of out entire political system, corporate crimes of Big Pharma and many other global issues that perpetuate all kinds of systemic abuses. While all of it creates the environment for this particular problem to continue, discussing it on a global level won't help raise public awareness about this specific issue.

The place to start, the first step is for people to start going public with their stories under their real names. Until it happens, nothing will change. I know all the reasons why people are afraid to do that and I know that all those reasons are valid. So, I am not telling anyone to do that. All I am saying is that the reality is what it is, and the fact that people have valid reasons not to break their stories into public awareness doesn't change the reality that the public isn't going to care until it happens. No one cares about what Jane Doe says on some forum. No one would take notice. The public would start taking notice when real people with real names start writing their blogs, op-eds in local newspapers, make podcasts and youtube channels, talk about it on social media and so on. No other action will be successful until some degree of awareness emerges into the public consciousness.