An Affair with my therapist: The whole story: beginning to end.

BeenThere2, I sent you a private message.

thanks for sharing this, I hope you are continuing to do well.

I was talking to a friend about how a client can fall under the spell of the therapist and then be unable to untangle themselves from the bond. More disturbing is the utter dependence and feelings of need and love, along with the willingness to do just about anything they ask. How does this happen to certain women, who seem emotional independent, are attractive, smart, talented, fair minded, and very trusting?

I was thinking about this after talking to a male friend of mine. I was upset, and as usual I went off on my own to work harder on a project to push down these overwhelming feelings. But then this guy texts me since we had had this arguement that triggered me. But I knew I was overreacting, and told him so. But he has had a bit of IFS training and was being very understanding and helping me get to the root of my overwhelming feelings. As he talked and listened (now by phone call) I had these surging feelings of love for him, I was accessing places that I realized were areas no one else had understood, not even me, and releasing a lot of burdens of exiles. BUT I recgonized that I was having an intense bonding feeling with this friend over this...and it only was one incident over 20 mintues. What if he really knew what he was doing and had done this weekly over 6 months? So I was trying to put this together on an understandable level.

It seemed it was an interesting observation I was connecting with this. So when someone hears your most private, vulnerable stories (that you may not have told anyone or even thought of yourself in years), when it is out there and they know how to make you feel safe a phenomenon occurs: It's not just grateful, but there is this strong attachment and trust that wells up, it comes from somewhere deep and from long ago and it hooks you intensely to this person. IT's like some bond you never had before, it was somehow lacking, but you now recognize you NEED this connection like life itself. It's so intense to connect when you realize that you haven't allowed yourself to really connect before. But this person is nonjudgmental, non shaming, loving and brings more to the front, and keeps listening with genuine warmth and what feels like love.

It's here that something of the T imprints the client, like a duckling who hatches and sees it's mother for the first time. There is such a hole that you don't realize is there, and the T fills it, it forms this emotional attachment that binds you from these intense moments of understanding, and it feels like love, not just romantic love, but paternal/maternal love, brotherly love, ....all of the types of love all rolled into one. It is like a seed that grows inside of you and turns into a sturdy tree in your emotional map. Once the root takes place, that deep, that strong, it is hard to dismiss this bond, and in fact, you can't, it becomes the mainframe of your existance....like magic, in a sense, because it is hard to understand the maginitude of need that is spawned with this technique of empathy and understanding mixed with sex.

So the danger is that when this type of feeling is released and exposed the client is intensely vulnerable. IT is like they are raw and have become unmolded, How the therapist treats the client at the moment is extremely important. I mean, what if a surgeon had you under anaesthesia, was extracting a tumor from your brain, then decided to mess around with all the neuron connections just for some crazy power thing, then put you back together, excised the tumor but was able to connect your neurons in a way that left you thinking he was all powerful and that you were in love with him? Add, that you would have to forever depend on him to decide anything? That would be seen as highly unethical and immoral, wouldn't it? That is easy to see, but when it's done with words and not a surgeons knife and needles, well, it's not so easy to see. Other people would see this weirdly strong dependence as a chosen path, a weakness of will. I see it as a syndrome, no less real than the infamous Stockholm Syndrome.

I think this syndrome warrants a study. And so, since it is so strong, especially with a certain profile of woman, that the utmost care must be taken that a wall of professionalism be maintained between client and therapist.

As I say this, I realize how important it is that these T be brought before an ethics committee, and that they undergo mandated therapy.

I believe they can't see this in a rational, objective way...almost as if they are on the brink of insanity themselves and are pulling us into the insane world with them where up is down, and down is up. That's a little scary to me that I wanted to live fully in his "world". Yikes.

BT2, I agree with what you say about this being like a syndrome. The therapist has as much ability to influence their adult client as a parent has to influence the developing heart and mind of their young child. It would seem that the bond between therapist and client is forged in the same soil as the bond between parent and child. We could possibly liken the process to footprints in concrete, the unmet needs within us are like concrete that hasn't set. The therapist is able to reach into these unset places within us, places that our parents neglected reach, and are therefore able to set their own prints indelibly within us.
As you observed with your friend, its not just the therapist who can do this - it could be anyone who manages to inadvertently tap into these unmet needs and plants their foot there first. But the therapist has a unique advantage, like a master navigator, they know how to get to these unset places, they understand the properties of concrete and they know how best to set them. What an amazing power the therapist has, and an incredible amount of responsibility.

It certainly makes you wonder about the psychological and emotional state of the therapist, because this affects the shape of the imprint they leave on us. We assume they are healthy - but what goes on in the mind of the therapist who abuses this power over their vulnerable clients? The therapist must be driven by needs too - and it would be a very interesting study, possibly already attempted, to explore what drives and motivates the the therapist in this instance.

Paraclete,

You have amazing intellectual insight. And it is interesting that all the women caught up in this seem extraordinarily insightful and highly intelligent, and even able to see it for what it is. But as I explain below, we are all made up of a system of personalities. That is why you, me and other's can seem so rational at times, angry in others, analytical, but sad and troubled and even when we want to find that we are unable to leave. I agree that we assume these therapists are emotionally stable. And they are often quite talented as therapist, but with us, our type brings out this part of them that is very destructive.
I sent this to you in an email, as well as other information, so it's a repeat.

As far as his behaviour, it sounds confusing, but it isn't really. If you think in terms of the the personality as a system, and in that system we are all made up of many parts. Seen that way, then you can see why people can do things that seem opposing. For example, take an example that is extremely, clearly, very wrong: a priest who molests young boys and/or girls. He honestly be, on the one hand, wonderful, gentle, sympathetic, self-sacrificing, loyal and understanding....then, there is this part of him that surfaces and takes over a part of his internal psyche -- like it's a demon that grows stronger the more he tries to push it away -- So this "demon" sexual part (if we could see it) is a young boy who is like, 12 or 14 years old. I think that means that someone is a child molester, that person was also molested, and his sexuality got "turned on" in that weird way, at the age they were molested, now he gets stunted right there because the shame he feels doesn't allow him to see sex in a normal way that he can "grow up" with it and age sexually. Naturally then he can never be sexually intimate in "normal" way, and can't relate to his age group as he ages.

This part is made worse and more extreme, by the horrible shame pressed down by the church and God. The problem is that sexuality is a strong need and instinct, like the need to eat, it doesn't go away because the church told him he should just turn off that part of himself, he can't, you can't, I can't, not and so that is one extreme way that sexuality becomes perverted, stunted at a young age, and becomes like a demon part that can't be squelch. In this example, the priest might hate that part of him that swells up and takes over, But at the moment of his molesting a victim, he well knows what he is doing, and this priest might hate what he does right afterwards, but right behind that action, another part of his personality system takes over and manages the ensuing shame by justifying and minimizing the actions -- feeding himself the belief that what he is doing is truly affectionate, even nice for the victim, just as it happened to him. But then another part arises where he warns himself that no matter how innocuous his actions appear to himself, he KNOWs that the law sees it otherwise, so he convinces himself he will never do that again, and he tries not to do that anymore to stay out of trouble and to try to stop the shame.But the fantasies won't go away, and those fantasies swell up and soon fuel another incident. And round it goes, the incident occurs, and then this one justifying part protects his feelings of shame and guilt by "telling" him(self) that it is NOT really a big problem in action, just with the law (again telling himself it was okay, because the victim wanted it too).

BUT NOTICE: He is still not feeling for or seeing the person, child or victim. This man cannot see the victim's PAIN that he has caused, because he can't accept he causes pain. He will lie to himself, or turn on the victim and blame him. To accept objective reality would be anathema to him, he can't be that bad person, it MUST be the "victims" problem, they must be crazy or lying, or even untrustworthy, a bad person, You see, it can't be the priest's fault, because he doesn't see himself as bad, he's a little boy inside, a victim himself, misunderstood, he's in his own denial of pain and suffering, AND in addition to all that, he tells himself that he can't cause pain, because he's a healer, an instrument of God, a good person, a faithful person...it just does NOT REGISTER, there can be sympathy or empathy when the finger of blame is turned on to him. He can't feel connection when sexuality is involved and mature relationships, because he is stuck back in childhood, and with regard to his sexuality there is no real connection and no valid emotional intimacy>
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So this applies to these healers/therapists. Their problems are deep and these behaviours that swell over them that are inappropriate stem from their own suffering in childhood, BUT IT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH LOVE. Often, I believe, it comes from their deep need to be WANTED by women, IT'S NOT AT ALL ABOUT LOVE. And then they get very turned on by this, and express it sexually. The sexual drives them, and it is a big turn on that you want him. But he doesn't want any drama or difficulty from you. And he can tire of a woman easily since there is no real intimacy of a true committed, romantic relationship. The dramatic up and down helps them reignite the doubt which begins a new chase, and your being a patient is a risk which further excites him, and that's the sexual formula for their frustrating dance. These men don't want a relationship, they just want the excitement and need you to make them feel amazing and wanted. So obviously, it doesn't go both ways. He knows what to say and do to keep you on his line to give himself that rush he needs. It's a game, my dear, his game, and who you really are means very little to him.
When he pulls you in, then backs away, he is doing 3 things, 1) a part of him is acting in a professional self-preservation mode to preserve his job (which is about him)
2) stringing out the chase until he can't help himself (which is about his need)
3) pulling back and then going forward heightens his own sexual excitement at the chase (which is about his desire).

He sees you often and for free becuase he can keep full tabs on what you are thinking, and doing so he can control your actions and loyalty so he can continue to get himself off using you and your emotional responses.

It's like he is a 14 year old boy getting off with a real live barbie doll.

And even armed with all of this knowledge about why a therpist "loves" his patient, we who are caught in this web only have real control over one person, ourselves. If we are in pain and disatisfied, we must each seek better and new therapies to release ourselves from this emotional prison. As difficult as it is that they have trapped us by tapping into the most tender, loneliest, darkest, neediest places in our hearts and minds, for their own needs, we need to help each other, stick together and help lead each other out of this place. We each just have to begin with the seed of even in theory, wanting to have a healthier life, to try to steer toward a life without pain and suffering and obsessive need. Most days, we might fail, but if there is just one day we wish to be free of this, that is the seed that will grow and possibly become full fledged desire and courage to leave this place of pain and entrapment. If I can do it, (and I can tell you I NEVER believed I would ever or could ever want to leave him...ever) you can, too. It like being alive, really and truly when you are free from their spell.

Ah, yes, but would you have been able to give up before you had got any of what it was you had so desired from him? Because you did, in the end; you drank from the fountain for which you thirsted so badly, and despite how unsatisfying and in fact toxic it proved to be you had to get a little of it first to realise all that it really was - and was not. Only then could you start down the path of giving it up. But to give up before you had experienced that? Is this even possible in this situation?
The head is capable of calculating and accepting the wisest course of action beforehand, but the heart - the heart is desperate, driven by needs, pays no attention to the wisdom of the head. It takes it's lessons the hard way, through firsthand experience. How sad and stupid, ironically it can be so blind moving forward, but it's hindsight is 20/20.

You made me think, and you make strong points, Paraclete. But it's like how we feel as parents, going through terrible times as teenagers and wanting so badly, through our stories to save our children from walking through a needless fire. And yet., every generation must walk through that fire to learn that fire, although beatiful, mesmerizing, alluring, warming, and the source of comfort will also burn us to the bone in a way that can put in deep danger when we get too close. How can I warn you when this experience is like the sirens of Greek Mythology, the seductresses...the only way to not be lured in is stay clear. To be lured in is as if your life is taken voluntarily from you, and this is why they, as therapists have a professional duty to not take a woman's heart and soul if the sure end point is nothingness and sorrow for her. It is a professional's duty to steer clear of this problem because that is why he does what he does, TO HEAL, not to take. The onus is on HIM, the therapist, not you, not me, not the client/patient. We see them because we have loneliness, sadness, anger, pain...they are there to lift us, not seduce us and then step on us as if we were nothing more than an old black gum smudge on an August concrete pavement. And that is what you will become to him. It's what happens, sure as the sun comes up each morning.

BeenThere I have to thank you for your story. I read it when you first posted, and it helped me make a lot of smart, careful decisions surrounding me and my therapists relationship.(my therapist was quite like yours was right before he started anything physical) Like you said some therapists are insecure, domineering and lonely and they may seem perfect to us. Luckily I put my foot down after reading this and allowed nothing to happen. I am continuing sessions with him and more firm boundaries, as well as waiting for a spot to open up for another therapist.

I am glad I can help you with my story, and I appreciate your telling me about your near collision with the same story.

I find the following link very interesting, it was on todays psych central home page as one of the stories of the day. It's about psychopath love, and so it is also about their victims or lovers.
http://blogs.psychcentral.com/channe...ychopath-love/

Describes the victims as highly empathetic, kind, emotional, cry easily at sad things....well, doesn't that describe the women who are the therapist's "victims"?

Then watch and read about psychopaths: lack of remorse or empathy
shallow emotions
manipulativeness
lying
egocentricity
glibness
low frustration tolerance
episodic relationships
parasitic lifestyle
persistent violation of social norms

It's just the facts, draw your own conclusions.

Oh my goodness, those traits exactly describe my exT. How could I have not seen all of these things. Not only did I not see them, but I thought he was the most amazing person on this planet. UGH!

Me too. Watch the video I referenced just above in my last note. When you watch it, notice the woman who loves the psychopath, and notice how even confronted with his cold callous assessment of her, she still believes he needs her and doesn't mean it.

I wondered if the psychopaths are so emotionally bereft that they need a highly emotional partner to "feel" for them, like they can feel through a person who is so empathetic and highly charged with feelings. So they use these victims like tools as glasses to see as most humans see feelings. But the victim, who she is, what she wants, needs, feels is meaningless except as a tool for him, so if you leave them, they don't care one way or another, since they can't feel anyway, so they find another tool to feel with.

Just a thought.

Hi,
I haven't been here for 4 years. I wanted to put this all behind me. I wonder now what has happened to you? Did you move on, did you find another therapist? Do you still feel the pain? Did you get divorced?

My therapist? I didn't report him, someone else did...in fact, he was in a lawsuit with 4 women. He was literally run out of the state, lost his treatment center and moved 2,000 miles away....with...his wife. They are featured on YouTube. They played this "game" she never divorced him, but they were separated. He kept his multiple affairs on the down low, then, when he was nearly ruined with 4 lawsuits, she rescued him. No one else wanted him, he was back in her rescuing good graces, she had the upper motherly hand, he was the prodigal son. They ended their war, with a second marriage vow truce...Damn, they sure left a lot of damaged souls in their wake.

As for me? Well, I am still a ticked off. A part of me is glad he got what he deserved. And the tired/child part of me was glad it wasn't me that had to drag him through the court system. He fell from grace, from my grace. I live with my children, my ex-husband...but in my heart I am part of a family, but only as mother, not a wife. My youngest has 2 more years of High School, my dream is to be free of marital bonds with my husband. I believe in staying together for the family, especially when the kids are teenagers. It's only 2 more years. It seems like nothing now. I am in sight of the landing strip, and getting excited.

My husband and I are friends, but I can never call him my love, my lover or my soul mate. Sure, it is history what he did, he makes up for it as a newly good father, I'd even go as far as to call him a good person...now. but what he did to me, and to my oldest? I can't accept that in a man and call him my mate, my love. I can't rest in peace beside him in our graves. I won't signal to my daughters by my example that, "It's okay to live out your life when the children are gone, to a man who finally makes up for terrifying and traumatizing me and one of my children, even if it was in the past and it was now long ago." I can forgive any man if what he did was just to me, but...for my children? If I remain married to unacceptable traumatic past behavior toward the oldest even though now she is 27, they will repeat what I did and stay.

I once asked my youngest daughter, five years ago, when she was 12, "What would you do if, when you were grown, and you found you were dating a man that was horrible to you?"
Her words haunt me: "If the guy I am with is horrid, it's okay, I will ask him to see a therapist. I will just do what you did, and send him to therapist... Therapy changed Daddy, and saved our family." What she doesn't realize is that by and large, most cruel people won't go willingly into therapy, and then the damage they do in the meantime while you are waiting and hoping becomes your fault, too.

I modeled for her acceptance of living with a horrible husband and father, and worse, engendered in her the pattern that it is acceptable to marry a horrible person, because now she thinks it doesn't matter what the starting materials you have in a mate are. She thinks that therapists change anyone, that they can change bad men into good men, no matter what small child is nearly destroyed in the process. I should have modeled this: it's not okay to be with horrible men, ever.

As far as therapists go? Well, they themselves are not band-aids for your wounds. A therapist isn't superman, isn't a knight in shining armour, isn't the love you never had, they can't right all wrongs. Therapists are human, they are guides, they are not LOVE. They are teachers, and as such, they are temporary. A therapist is not primary in your life, they are satellites. If they become your center, if they allow you to see them as your heart, your love, your longing, then they need YOU. They are there to help you PASS through your longings for love, and help you grow into your own strength, to help you have sympathy for yourself and your pain, to help you care for yourself, to help you grow so can attach to people who are healthy, and kind and loving as you are....If they are your one and only, then they might themselves be drowning and needing you as much or more than you need them. They could be using you as a buoy.

If you can, find another therapist just temporarily, just to bounce your concerns off of. Someone who is objective, a third party who is not involved. See someone even if just for a few times, just to ask if you are seeing it objectively, ie, get yourself on dry land, where you can see clearer.

The idea is to find a guide who helps and encourages you to accept yourself and teaches you to ATTACH to OTHERS .... keyword is others. Not him or her, but to others...others. Repeat 10 times: others.

BeenThere2-

I just wanted to thank you for telling your story. I have been through elements of what you described and I have an idea about the pain attached. I haven't been able to return to therapy, however. I attempted to, after the experiences that were similar to yours, but the therapist I was meeting with abandoned me. Since then, I have been unable to try again. I am glad that you found someone to help you-having support is huge in the healing process. I have tried to continue the healing process on my own, hard to do, but I don't know how to trust again, enough, to begin therapy again. Anyway, I appreciate that you wrote out your story-so eloquently, by the way. It helps those of us who have experienced similar situations and who feel alone in our pain and anguish.

I hope you are doing well. I wish you all the best-and the peace and happiness you so deserve.

Thanks to BeenThere2 for posting this remarkable story of love AND for bringing it back for those not here in 2010 (like myself). Many of the feelings you had, I have now. My situation is totally different but you hit the nail on the head when it comes to feelings. I quote from a few of your posts below that are uncomfortably familiar:

Doesn't matter how long ago I stopped seeing him. I'm still feeling the pain.

Thank you for posting your story and for coming back to update it. I'm so glad you were able to find a good therapist who could help you work through what happened.

BeenThere2: I PM'd you.

I cannot fathom this psychopathic personality type. It is beyond me. Thanks for your post.

I never had a relationship with my previous Psychiatrist, but I was psychologically and sexually abused by him for several months in a very manipulative, and drawn out 'grooming' process. I wasn't the only one either, I was lucky in that I had the blindfold well and truly pulled off of my eyes before he had a chance to go all the way with me, but there were plenty of others where things did go all the way (including a number of patients that were raped whilst he had them under twilight sedation). It took me 15 years to agree to see another male Psychiatrist after what had happened and more than 2 years after that to fully trust him. I very gradually revealed my past abuse in therapy to him - he had already figured out from the start that there was something that had happened, because I was so guarded and mistrusting (even if I did think I was doing such a great job at the time hiding all that from him) - and when I finally revealed the guy's name and the full extent of what had occurred I think it was a bit of a light bulb moment for my current Psychiatrist, he finally understood *exactly* why I'd been the way I had in the early days of therapy, and why it had taken so long for any sort of trust, let alone an actual bond, to have formed between us. The Psychiatrist who abused me had a reputation in the field, stretching back decades, as a 'charming psychopath who ruined the lives of far too many patients'. He is very well known as a psychopathic predator and sadist (he treated drug addicts, and got off on putting them into a sudden withdrawal state and then watching them suffer - I saw it myself, it was one of the things that helped take the blinkers off for me), who many wanted to see bought to task for a long time. Trouble was he chose his victims very carefully - typically drug addicts with unstable personalities and a background of childhood trauma or abuse. In that way he could be fairly assured his victims wouldn't speak out, and even if they did...well, who's going to believe a junkie anyway, junkie's are manipulative, junkie's are untrustworthy, junkie's will lie their way out of a paper bag just to get a fix - in short, junkie's don't make very sympathetic witnesses and he knew that. He was eventually stripped of his license, but only temporarily - he ended up having it returned to him with certain stipulations in place, which means for everything he did, and all the lives he ruined, he got off with what amounted to a slap on the wrist.

My current Psychiatrist has been great in helping me work through a lot of residual issues that I'd still been holding onto with what this guy did - including a heap of guilt and self blame. We've gone through Robert Lifton's "8 signs of thought reform" together, so that I could see the sort of tactics this guy used on me; we've spoken about the power differential that exists in the therapeutic relationship which means a patient is unable to truly consent to any sort of sexual contact with the therapist; he's reiterated numerous times that what happened was not my fault, and it was never up to me to ensure I wasn't abused, the onus was entirely on my abuser not to abuse me in the first place. We've also spoken a number of times about the therapeutic bond, especially the sort of bond that develops with longer term therapy, and how completely unique and oftentimes intense it can be, and how because of that the therapist needs to always be mindful of the bond as a sacred trust that should never, ever be violated.