General Publics Reaction

All therapists are guilty of love bombing or attention bombing. It's what they do. When the client, predictably, has a strong reaction, it's labeled transference, and used as the basis for recommending years of expensive therapy. Smoke and mirrors.

When the client has a really intense or unsettling reaction, as with OP, therapists can just disown it, blame the client more overtly, and make a quick exit, keeping all the cash. Disgusting beyond words.

BTW i dont see much difference between the responses on Quora and posts I've seen on therapy client forums. On the latter, have seen plenty of bullying and abusive posts in response to people in distress over therapy. As well, lot of people playing armchair therapist and preaching in detail how people should live and how to do therapy right. It's part of the culture. Therapists tend to model victim blaming in my opinion, and that s**t rolls downhill.

Justbreathe, I think it was your post. I know I got it from someone's thread on PC.

Please don't be offended by this: even if you invited her, a therapist isn't supposed to have social contact with clients outside of the office. So by her coming, she may have gotten you confused on what the appropriate boundaries were.

Here is what I think is a good example: Lets pretend that I asked my psychiatrist to lunch. The psychiatrist is supposed to know that that type of behavior is unethical and counterproductive to a therapeutic relationship; therefore, he wouldn't allow it.

The boundaries are there to protect the client. That is why therapeutic relationships are only one way. If my psychiatrist became my friend, his needs in the friendship would have to be met too. Then he would lose all objectivity in trying to treat me. This is why the boundaries are so important to follow.

The boundaries are there to protect the therapist - they just say it is to protect the client.

A therapist can't remain objective in a dual relationship with the client. Hands down. That is why the boundaries are so important.

I agree with this.

Think about this in another way: without boundaries in the therapeutic relationship, it would be hard for HIPAA to exist. If therapists can become friends with you, your friends and relatives, your private information would be hard to protect.

Here is another thing: Imagine that these boundaries don't exist. And now that you are friends with your therapist, you must meet their needs too. After all, a friendship is a two way street unlike a therapeutic one. Then, you finally get to know this person sitting in front of you. You may even find that you can't stand the therapist. Then what? Kinda hard to do therapy like that. The therapist loses objectivity, and the client loses trust in the therapist.

Sorry OP for derailing your thread.

This board is usually pretty reasonable in terms of extreme opinions and the insulting and demeaning that typically goes with them, but the internet is a terrible place to seek support for any kind of real issue in your life. Most famous writers/celebrities/known people do not read anything about themselves on the web, because they have wisely figured out that the "haters" and the negativity doesn't feel good or helpful.

So maybe the question is why do this to yourself? Seems like self harm to post this on that kind of site. But for the record, I think you deserve empathy and above all self compassion, not scorn and dismissal and harsh judgements.

Justbreathe, don't take their responses seriously because they don't know what really happened. Now that you have told us more, I see things differently now. I think she might have confused you.

I honestly don’t know why I did it. I don’t remember posting as a way to intentionally self harm. I think I genuinely wanted answers and insight as to how to forgive myself. It was a bit shocking in a way to read that most people were so caught up by my selfish wording of being “abandoned” than giving me tangible advice on how to forgive myself. Now I know, I suppose. They made their points very clear and I won’t post anything like that again on quora. If only they knew what I was really like and how much shame I already feel, maybe they would have been a little softer? I don’t know if this is even the right approach or makes a difference, but I’d like to think that the type of person I am and the difficult/intense dynamic with T makes a difference in how people view my actions and mistakes. It was very hard to read how confident some of the posters were in their views, absolutely certain I’m crazy and have/had absolute no respect for my T. I don’t know if it’s possible to have respect for someone and hurt them/cross their boundary at the same time, but I genuinely feel bad for what I did.

About the only thing of value I got from therapy was the motivation to stop caring once and for all about the opinions and advice of other people, and to stop asking for it. Conveniently, this (and other factors) made therapy irrelevant.

Advice and opinions are about the giver. It's a way to feel less empty and invisible for a few minutes. Therapists have made a career out of this.

For me progress was when I stopped asking therapists and others what went wrong in my f-d up therapy, and started telling them. I sorted it out thru self-analysis and reading up on the cult of therapy. And I stopped worshipping fake authority and fake gurus.

Now I see the assessments and opinions of the therapists i consulted with as rather pathetic. The therapist who was in the room had a badly distorted almost cartoonish interpretation of events. Many people I solicited feedback from online likewise fed me a lot of insane nonsense.

Sadly, my experience was like yours (and the OP’s).

My therapist inserted herself as an important person in my psyche and then destroyed it. The self-clean-up afterwards is what turned on that light for me. When I could accept the devastation related to my “unimportant status” to my important person, and I could also accept all of her judgment, rejection and hostility, I was freed. The worst had happened. I survived. Nobody else in my everyday life could ever descimate me in such a raw, straight-to-the-core manner - so I had nothing left to be afraid of.

A year later, I view my former therapist as narcissistic, incompetent and broken. And actually, quite monstrous for accepting none of the responsibility for therapy failure and letting me take on all the blame and shame. All the while, accepting upwards of six-figures of cash from me over an 8 year span. In many ways I do feel like someone who escaped a cult, and all the toxic mentality that went with it. I can’t relate at all to the desperate and grasping person I used to be. I’m now someone who refutes “the joys of submitting to the master”. I too no longer crumble at the negative opinions of others - and tell, rather than ask.

I think an experience like mine (ours?) could only come from “therapy gone wrong” - so perhaps it was successful after all.

OP - keep plugging away. You’re doing the work with or without your therapist.

I think one of the hardest parts about grieving ex T, in my experience, is knowing what to feel. During our work together, I wanted to believe she was doing everything right. Of course I got combative and angry at times for things she did, but I always talked myself out of my anger (and she helped) so that I could repair the tension between us. Now, as I’ve talked to others about what happened between us, I hear many mixed opinions - from one extreme to the other. I think it would be so much easier for me to pick a side and simple remember her as either toxic or a saint that I manipulated, tested, and “stalked.” Both extremes feel safer in some way. When I blame her, I feel like my anger pushes her away and she loses power over me. However, the anger is also quite painful because I want to believe there was good in our relationship because I still really value the connection and love her. I want to believe she loved (and still does) me too, like she’d always say. But when I blame myself for everything that went wrong and soak in all the shame, I feel like I’m invalidating my own experience. This was easier to do when I was still seeing her, but now as I’ve told more people about her and us, many say (definitely not all) my shame isn’t warranted and that all relationships are co-created. My current T can very plainly and black and white lay out tangible examples of where my ex T crossed the line, but the thing is, depending on how one describes and/or shares the therapeutic benefits of those things, one can see her actions as therapeutic. For example, perhaps Ex T had really good reasons for coming to my dorm room (perhaps it wasn’t even a big deal) or saying I love you? Perhaps I was crazy and made things up about things she never said?

In an ideal world, we could both say sorry for our part in it and I would feel at peace and like I’ve received the closure I so desperately want. However, if that never happens, I need to figure out a way to hold both of our mistakes at the same time, even if she doesn’t believe she made any.

The reconciliation process has been the most difficult for me as well. I found it nearly impossible to merge both the good and the bad of therapy and my therapist. Both were SO extreme. Initially I thought it was my problem for mentally splitting my therapist and not being able to hold a consistent view of what happened between us. Now, I see it more as a symptom of trauma and having something devastating happen in the last place on earth it’s supposed to happen. How could anyone deal?

One thing that has helped me unpack and process my confusion is accepting that neither my therapist nor myself could even agree between the two of us what was happening and had happened in therapy. We were living two totally different experiences. An outsider has even less insight. Maybe both of us were doing the best we could?

Might it help to frame it as a very special experience with a very horrific ending?

I still love my therapist and probably always will. However I am also cycling through highly justified anger and fury.

For me what had to be reckoned with was that the other person in this "relationship" was not invested in it. She was there to collect income and to get some needs gratified and to further her career. It was a fabricated relationship with no legs. Most of the drama was in my head.

These things can evaporate in an instant, because one person sees the relationship as disposable. And meanwhile, in some cases, the other person has everything riding on it. That kind of asymmetry is usually poisonous. But therapists will tell you it's safe and healing and all the rest of it. And yet everywhere online where therapy is discussed you see the same stories of desperate clients being taken out like the trash.

Not everyone will be so nihilistic about it, but I find comfort in shredding all the BS and dealing with reality.

I can relate so much to what you say here. Apologies if I’m wrong, but what you said here seems a little different than your previous post. I don’t know your story, but you described your T as being narcissistic, incompetent, and broken which may be entirely true. I think I was just confused as to what made you realize that the two of you were in different worlds and your T wasn’t all-evil or all-amazing. Again, I don’t mean to challenge you, I’m just genuinely interested because your two posts seem contradictory to me. I want to believe that T and I were on two totally different wave lengths, but I feel afraid that I’m invalidating or dismissing the mistakes each of us made. At the same time, telling myself that we each did the best we could is comforting... it somehow feels like it’s more caring that way... but then I spiral ask myself “does she really care if she’s not even willing to admit that she has made mistakes?” Not to sound full of myself, but I’m so quick to say that I screwed up in many ways (and I made many more mistakes than her), but even when I admit that to her, she doesn’t take any ownership of her part in it.

I understand that you might feel that way and many Ts might think the relationship is disposable, but I don’t agree that it has to be that way and I don’t believe my T disposed me or the relationship. I think it was a professional relationship and she couldn’t help me when I crossed her boundary as a professional objective therapist. I don’t want to argue, but I feel like I needed to respond to your post because that is a thought/idea/concept that once would have been really triggering (and still is a little, TBH). However, I’m trying really hard to see the gray in the situation and not be so black and white about therapy, the therapeutic relationship, and my termination. She didn’t dispose of me, she said goodbye and it was really hard for her.

You’re asking about the contradiction that still tortures me!

She is absolutely narcissistic, incompetent and broken! If she weren’t more than that, I would have been able to walk away earlier with far fewer scars. I do believe she cared about me in a way I haven’t felt cared about in the past. When things weren’t angry, she listened to me, cried with me and laughed with me. She was exquisite and lovely. Yet, she didn’t know what to do with anger and negativity and couldn’t work ‘in the moment’ or make effective use of transference.

In anger, she’d say things that are inexcusable and damaging. She shattered my sense of self and rejected a piece of me I’m not sure I’ll ever see again. I’ve been validated and empathized with by each of the therapist I’ve consulted with. It’s not much of a consolidation.

To move on, I’ve had to accept all of it. The good, the bad, the ugly. I’ve accepted my part and accepted her part. I accept that I may never see her again. I accept that she’s probably forgotten me or moved on by now, and that when she thinks of me it’s probably in anger. I love her anyway, despite all of this. I hate her too.

About the different wave lengths part - we could never, ever agree on what had happened in past sessions. We interpreted events and situations in totally different ways.

Whenever she tried to infer what was bothering me, she was usually wrong. She’d try to offer insights that had no relevance to me or what I was trying to say. We were two totally different people!

Agree these things are gray, not black and white. And I don't mean to imply anything about your situation.

But speaking generally, exploitation done with caring words is still exploitation. Actions speak louder than words.

All a therapist has to do with is show some emotion, or say they care, thus manipulating the unconscious of the client/victim, and they are off the hook, no consequences.

Therapists answer to no one.

The general public will back therapists because the general public is guided by herd mentality. And the therapy community will bend over backward to give therapists the benefit of the doubt in order to sustain belief.

Driving down the therapist's street might constitute a violation of the therapist's boundaries, but baiting you into emotional dependency/attachment in a context where it is absolutely inappropriate is a much larger violation, and is the one that sets the table for all the problems that follow.

Therapy IS a violation.

Sounds a lot like my dealings with the first woman.