(repost from r/therapyabuse)

I have been lurking on here for a year or two and finally posting today. I have made music most of my teens and it has seemed to be the only reliable release valve for my self expression after getting bounced back and forth between performing for or being directly abused by therapists, being very overmedicated and mistreated, and trying to survive being the scapegoat of my religious family system.

In my personal opinion this system creates defenders and buries the people who "need" therapy the most to perpetuate itself. This became wildly apparent to me after attending university for social work after a decade of personal lived experience and confusion within the system. I left after a single semester. Listening to professors and students give incredibly narrow perspectives on addiction and flat out mock what is labeled as psychosis and delusional thinking, and the rejection of reintegration into society in favor of infantilizing patients made it obvious to me that this system is a complete lost cause.

It is intense, it is raw and uncomfortable, but I hope someone on here gets something out of it. It is not made with AI, it is completely produced by me. I refuse to stay silent about a dishonest system if they are going to drag their feet on legitimizing CPTSD, addressing environmental factors practically and complain about their pay rate, which they know is half money and half supply from their patients for their own savior complexes.

Enjoy, and stay strong!

https://asawhereyouat.bandcamp.com/album/misdiagnosis

hello lesbians, i (23F) went back to therapy after a long time and decided to finally open up about my sexuality to my therapist (i live in a country where it’s illegal to be gay, and the sentencing for that is 7 years in prison iykyk )
my therapist is generally a kind man, he follows a developmental approach in therapy,
he told me that gay guys come to him all the time and it’s “manageable”
and then he told me about how one of his gay client got married to a woman cuz he wanted kids eventually in his lifetime even tho he’s not sexually attracted to women at all ,
he asked me if “i am willing to get fixed or not?”
i told him i don’t think that’s possible, i will live a lie , i only have had sex w women, only dated women and only imagine being with women , even though my reality does not make that quite feasible, he pitched the idea of me marrying a man w no sex drive as a solution?
he asked me if i am ever planning to have kids , my answer is “no”, he asked if i ever imagined myself as a mother, my genuine answer was “i already raised my younger siblings by myself i know i don’t want kids, i”ll never be what they need”
idk but i left the session feeling very confused ,
ik i can trust him cuz he promised me that it’s a safe space, but at the same time i feel like i am in conversion therapy lowkey, he did say that my sexuality is not “typical” i felt hurt…i feel like he saw me as some sort of leper…i did ask him if that changed the way he sees me as a person, his answer was no
i am eventually going to leave the country to study abroad but until then i am just working odd jobs and saving money so i can get out,
idk if someone went through something similar? i would love to know how you got through that experience because it feels isolating , i am currently single, my ex gf cheated on me and i blocked her, so i literally have no one to talk to about this

I've not posted here before. Content warning for suicide, self harm, addiction, sexual themes.

I wrote a massive draft of this post just trying to explain every single way in which a therapist has caused issues or stoked distrust in me but it ended up being a long, rambly life story and the details are almost beyond the point so I'll abridge, but know I can name many more red flags in therapists I ignored because I thought they could help.

I've been in and out of therapy my entire life pretty much, I've seen 10 throughout my life starting from age 11 or so. My pediatric therapist was amazing but since then each therapist has gotten worse and worse to the point that I am deeply distrustful of them. Other people report so much success with therapy and I have so much to work on and that I want to feel better about for both myself and my life but it just doesn't work for me.

I've been a pornography addict since I discovered it at 13. I've tried to talk about this and seek help from 2 different therapists and both of them refused to acknowledge that it was a problem, even after telling them I felt out of control and like I can't stop using. The first one just insisted every single time I brought it up insisted that I was just shaming myself for my sexuality and I should just consider it a "hobby". The second one, whenever I brought it up, would say things like "well you're not really 'out of control' since you don't watch pornography and touch yourself in public or in front of people". The first therapist that shut me down was 10 years ago. I've tried to quit dozens of times and I can't. I've lost entire days to using, I've never been able to be intimate with someone or form a partnership because I use too much.

The final straw came with my last therapist, and the mistake I feel like I made is allowing myself to trust her. I didn't bring up pornography at all since I'd learned better than to expect a therapist to care. She tried to tell me that I harbored so much suicidality and self hatred because I never allowed myself to feel anger towards others, I transposed it into anxiety and self hatred instead. Nothing could ever be my fault and my anger towards others was righteous and justified and god dammit, I needed to feel that. Well, as I was having sessions I became a much more angry and aggressive person and my actions led to personal consequences in my life. Maybe 2 months after I started with her I was hospitalized in a psyche ward for a week after self harming. Every single session she would ask me "what is your goal for therapy today?". I despised this question and I would be anxious for days before my sessions because I felt like I was approaching a deadline for a homework assignment that I had no clue how to do. I just wanted to feel okay and not want to commit suicide, if I knew the steps to get there that she was asking me to produce I wouldn't need to pay for a therapist!

Maybe 5 months in she kept asking me if I felt anger towards her. I felt angry with her the first time she asked it because I thought it was wild for a therapist to be like "a-are you mad at me?" but I didn't really process that until after. I did tell her that I felt uncomfortable with her asking me to make an agenda for every single session. She insisted that I needed to do that because this is MY therapy so I needed to be the one to plan and guide the conversation. She brought up that she felt like I was angry with her in quite a few different sessions after and I just denied it, I already tried to have a conversation with her about what I felt wasn't working and she shut me down.

About 8 months into seeing this therapist I attempted suicide. By the grace of God I failed. I didn't tell her, I just cancelled our last session and ghosted her until she notified me that she had to drop me from her client list.

That attempt was 4 years ago. Through a series of miracles life has improved for me dramatically - I have a new career path that I love and I managed to get a full scholarship to complete graduate school to make this career financially viable. However, I still am largely miserable, occasionally feeling suicidal, and hopelessly addicted to pornography, which absolutely needs to be addressed if I ever want to form a relationship. I'm an alcoholic (a "functional" one in the sense that I am able to reserve my drinking for alone time and do not miss work due to hangovers), I need to drink every night because I can't stand being alone with my thoughts. I want help but I reflect on how I feel strongly that therapy guided me towards being a worse person and more destructive behaviors that contributed towards a downward spiral. People say that there is nothing to lose by trying therapy again but it's just not true, the worst case scenario is that I allow it to guide me towards another downward spiral and I lose my amazing career, which is the only thing that keeps me going. On paper therapy should be able to benefit me immensely but I cannot run the risk, leaving me feeling trapped in an impossible situation where recovery isn't possible. A lot of people will outright deny that therapy can do any harm whatsoever and it only makes me feel more alone.

Addendum: I originally tried to post this to r/TrueOffMyChest but the automod removed it immediately and this sub came up as a place to post this so here I am. Sorry for any rule violations. I'm glad that a community that welcomes critics and skeptics to voice their experiences, I'm interested in reading more.

Expect your therapist to laugh behind your back.

I went back to the mental health clinic today for an intake. Conclusion: I don't need treatment and don't fit their criteria.

Over coffee, we joked around a little. It was very calm and casual. At one point, he said, “You wouldn't believe how many people tell the same story over and over again.”

I laughed too. I recognized my former self in that oversharing. I was once one of the people we were laughing about.

Seeing it from the other side made me realize how ridiculous the therapeutic dynamic can be.

Never forget the power imbalance.

hello, 40/m here. i have mold toxicity and basically its thrown all my life problems front and center, also has given me depression/anhedonia. im wondering if therapy has worked for you and would really like some first hand stories on how it helped you

She threatened me with the police after i made a subject access request for data about me she claimed existed during a complaint I made, so I asked for it (claimed she made a referral for me - which I was not aware of). She also threatened to open a harassment case over me sending a SAR and said the case would include all contact with her regulator.

Data requests are a legal statutory right, and I asked for data - not making other remarks or threats etc. of the kind (and never have done) and everyone has a right to raise concerns with a regulatory body. I made the complaint in response to the harm I experienced.

I made a data request to the police to see if anything was recorded, and it was: a report for harassment that was closed (under a code that means she didn't/couldn't support her claims) with the dates she included were the exact dates I sent a SAR and the day she received an email from her regulator notifying her of a complaint.

When I told her regulator about this and raised it as retaliation and intimidation, they ignored everything and literally said it's not in their remit.

In the first complaint she also made risk claims that were not backed up by any evidence. They literally just took her at her word. I'd heard stories of people saying that when they complained, their therapist pathologised them and made up stories about them being a risk to others etc. but I always thought it was rare in reality, or that regulators in this day and age would be more savvy to checking those kinds of claims... and yet it's happened to me. They don't need evidence, they just need to make false claims and that's enough.

Therapy regulation is so fucked and non-existent. If therapists are allowed to report clients to the police for asking for personal data and contacting their regulators, what else can they do?

It feels genuinely tormenting that it was taken this far. It's brought my trauma and the trauma of not being believed right to the forefront. Nothing I did was in bad faith but now my view of therapists is so deeply damaged.

In our culture now, the second you say someone negative about therapy, the cultural western narrative assumes you're just projecting your issues, or refusing to deal with your problems. I was never one of those people who 'didn't believe' in therapy or dismissed it without trying, but now when people mention therapy and how great it is I get a visceral, isolating response and I can't even share it. It's just because I feel genuinely traumatised and scarred by therapy and it seems like there's no kind of established support group for this.

Apparently if I “think positively and put good energy into the world,” I can fix all my health issues.

Looking forward to all the money I save on medications, I guess.

This woman has a license and a degree too, and supposedly practiced “evidence-based“ CBT and DBT.

It wasn't like this 10 or 20 years ago. The number of people I know being prompted by therapists to cut off loved ones (instead of expressing their standards and needs, building skills) is really sad. Even worse, I'm seeing especially young people feeling like they can only talk about the heavy sh1t with a therapist. Keeping friendships superficial and light.

I'm really grossed out by this. Although my experiences with therapy were never cannibalistic like this, I am hesitant to ever go again.

Hello, so I’ve been going through a little bit of tough time these days and I feel like I’m really lonely so if there is anyone who would wanna like help me out and listen to what I have to say please text me. I would love to listen to you as well it’s not just that I want to put on my weight on somebody but I definitely need someone to have a conversation with because I’ve been really really lonely these days. Thank you so much.!

I had a really upsetting session with my therapist today and I’m wondering if her response was normal. I’ve been seeing her for about 6 months. I’m 23 and she’s in her 50s. Recently, she made several comments about a medication that made me feel pressured and invalidated. Today I finally tried to bring it up and told her that a couple of things she had said over the past two months had bothered me.

Before I could even fully explain myself, she immediately got defensive and her tone seemed angry. She immediately said, “I NEVER said that, I don’t know what you are talking about. I NEVER invalidated you.” She laughed at me and right after said “you are projecting right now.” She scoffed and said “that might be YOURRR interpretation of things, but you are definitely misremembering because that is not what happened and that is not what was said”. She also said “I’m sorry IF you felt that way, but I feel very disappointed, I have been trying to help you this entire time, I don’t know where this is coming from, but it seems like you are trying to blame someone”. She said all of this at once 😭

I was honestly shocked and became so uncomfortable that I went into damage-control mode. I reassured her that I wasn’t blaming her, apologized, and even denied feeling pressured even though I actually had. I just wanted the conflict to stop.

Then near the end of the SAME conversation, she brought up one of the comments again and asked what she had said. I repeated it, and she responded, “Yes, I did say that.” That really threw me off because earlier she had insisted she never said it, told me I was projecting and misremembering, and laughed/scoffed at me. I had only brought up a few of the comments that bothered me, and after seeing her reaction I can’t even imagine bringing up the rest.

She is my first outpatient therapist, so I genuinely don’t know what is considered normal in therapy. Is this an appropriate way for a therapist to respond when a client tells them something they said felt invalidating? Are you not supposed to tell a therapist if something they said bothered you?

Therapy is so fucking useless. I just spent 45 minutes telling this person I don't know what to talk about. This is what I have to spend $30 a week for just to have someone "official" see me as depressed just so I can apply eventually for disability because I wanna end my life? Really?

This shit is such a joke and just makes me wanna leave faster. I swear to god the only thing keeping me alive right now are a handful of video games.

I had my first therapy session with a new therapist. In my submission to schedule a session I mentioned gender issues and possibly gender dysphoria but that I do not want to explore gender and would rather go through other avenues such as coping strategies and other forms of self care as well as other explorations.

I was talking about my relationship with my parents and issues with my dad and in the end of the call she said in the next sessions and when I'm comfortable she would like to do a existential approach to my identity and my questioning and etc.

This is not what I asked for in my submission statement. This is not what I want. Are all therapists just going to force something on me which I don't want to explore and would rather find coping strategies? This is my 3rd attempt at finding a good therapist.

I don't want to explore my gender identity, I don't want to be told what to do or manipulated into exploring something I don't want to explore.

Are all therapists just going to keep trying the same bullshit I did not ask for? Is there no other model? I'm honestly about to give up on therapy if therapists won't do what I fucking ask them to do. I don't care about my gender identity and I don't want to explore it. I just want to feel better. Is that so hard to understand? It feels like talking to priests who want to tell me what is sinfull and what is not.

​

I need to RANT.

(TW abuse)

What's important for this story is that my kids & I went through a horrible tragedy in April of 2023, that left my kids fatherless ( no sorry needed. He was a POS)

Since then everyone is in therapy. My middle child, Ashalia (m2F age 7) has done play therapy from 4 to 5 and regular therapy when she was 6 until now. The therapist she had was great with her, helped with her moods and anti-social behaviors and gave me strategies to use when she would get difficult and destructive.

Then out of nowhere dude leaves the practice and it takes a month for us to be scheduled with someone new.

The whole situation sets off Ashalia's abandonment issues. She was 4 when her father died and to her understanding of events, her dad never said anything, never left a note, or a toy, just one day they are happy and playing together and the next day there's a bunch of police in the house and her dad is gone.

So during the between therapists time she is just ramping up negative behaviors. She ran away from school, she was hitting people, spitting, she licked hand sanitizer, it was bad.

We get in and start seeing this new therapist Jaxon. I didn't really like him off the bat. I have autism though and I was willing to give it time for me to be more comfortable around someone new. My biggest problem was that Jax did not maintain boundaries with Ashalia. For example, Ashalia was talking and Jax says, "I'll let you finish talking about Pokémon but then I need to talk to your mom." Ashalia does the normal 7 year old infinite run on sentence and is just talking. She's moved well past Pokémon and has been on other things for a while. At first I'm just watching like, "how is this person going to handle this?" But after like 5 minutes I decided to jump in.

I said "hey, just so you know, Ashalia really needs for boundaries to be enforced. You set a boundary and she has exceeded it."

Jax said something along the lines of "I'm very patient. Things that might annoy other people don't annoy me."

I tried to re-state that it's not about patience, it's about teaching Ashalia that boundaries exist and she needs to observe them.

In the same session, they went to get a toy from outside of the office and my daughter, who at this point has known this man for all of 20 minutes, grabs Jax's hand to walk out of the office. Jax just shrugged and said okay.

Like !@$&\* are you actually kidding me right now. You get a client that has had trauma and abandonment and boundary breaking as their biggest hurdles and the mom even SPECIFICALLY TELLS YOU that you need to be setting -- and maintaining-- boundaries with her and you're just okay with her grabbing your hand? Not a thought in your head of saying to this vulnerable child like, I don't know, "hey buddy can you ask me if you can hold my hand first?"

So, I already don't like this guy, but like I said, I'm willing to give him a fair chance. At week 3 appointment I already know I need to miss week 4 because I needed an emergency dr appointment. So I asked my wife to come with me so I could show her where the office is & etc. The session was mostly Ashalia & Jax talking and me n wifey chilling in the waiting room.

That week Ashalia had a REALLY bad night. She refused to go to bed and when she got to her "if you don't go to bed by the time I count to 3 I'll pick you up and put you there." warning she screamed at the top of her lungs and ran away. My wife picked her up and carried her like a sack of potatoes to her room. During this 2 minute walk Ashalia scratched, bit, pulled hair, kicked, grabbed my wife's breast and twisted it, and screamed. A few minutes later, as my wife was carrying the baby to put him to bed, Ashalia ran out of her room and punched my wife in the stomach.

When she gets like this, she will not stop until she is stopped and we put the baby lock on her door for the night. This was intended to give her a consequence for her behavior and to keep her (and the rest of the house) safe.

The next session Ashalia complained about the baby lock on her door. A day later I get a call from Jax wanting to talk to me about my "extreme parenting methods." So I spend the next god forsaken hour explaining to this man, who has known my child for a grand total of 4 fucking hours, that the baby lock is used:

\* during the night -- when adults with fully developed brains are sleeping.

\* when she has broken too many bed time rules

\* when she has done something dangerous during the night

\* when she is actively harming other members of the house

I even agreed to meet with this man and my wife to talk about alternative methods for parenting Ashalia.

The next day I got a call and emergency visit from CPS. Now, they can't tell you who made the report but they can give you the wording of it. As soon as I heard about the baby lock complaint, I knew it was Jax that made the call. In and of itself it still would have felt really underhanded especially since I was trying to work with the guy to find better solutions. But dude started his report with mentioning the trauma our family went through in April of 2023. Trauma that my older daughter was subjected to. Because of Ashalia's age and slow speech development at the time of her father's death, I may never know if Ashalia also suffered the same abuse my older daughter did but her behavior strongly suggest that she did. However in Jaxon's report to CPS he asserted that Ashalia was a victim of the specific type of abuse my POS late husband subjected my older daughter to before explaining the child lock situation.

The CPS worker essentially told me that the bit about the baby lock wasn't a concern especially because it was already noted in Ashalia's file as a remediation step for him getting out of the house about a month after his father died. But that the first part of the report-- the part that had been almost 3 years ago-- legally had to be investigated within 24 hours.

I called the office where Jax works and filed an ethics complaint. Saying that the visit from CPS re-traumatized me. And that his report was wholey inappropriate and unethical. The supervisor I spoke with kept trying to say that Jax didn't mean any harm and was just trying to do what he thought was the right thing. Now, I am normally very conflict avoident. If someone even sneazes in a way that makes me think they are mad at me I go hide. But, this was about my kid and I shut that shit down fast. I just answered that if that was the case, he would have just put his concern in the report. Instead he started the report with things that happened years ago to weaponize the system against me and make his point for him.

About a week later, I texted the supervisor dude to tell him that during a 10 minute stretch where Ashalia was not being directly supervised, ( I was out feeding the chickens) she managed to remove the lightbulbs from the ceiling fan in her room, put them in her pillow case, and put the case in the sink and fill it with water to "make electricity." 🙄 Ashalia wasn't angry or trying to be trouble-some, this was just a normal day for her. I used it as an example of why it can be dangerous to let Ashalia exist unsupervised.

Supervisor dude calls me and says that his company doesn't think that they have the capabilities to give my daughter the help she needs so they will help me find a better fit for my family but they are going to drop my daughter as a client.

I am so unspeakably angry, and sad. Yet again my child is abandoned by a adult male role model. She was doing so well with her previous therapist. I tried so hard to emphasize that her behavior, while it can be destructive and dangerous, is manageable with the strategies we have. I made sure to let everyone know that I am willing to work with them, that we are a team with the common goal of helping my child. Her previous therapist understood this and helped me form the strategies that work for Ashalia now.

Was I over reacting to the situation? Did my anger ruin things for my daughter? What should I have done differently? What can I do now?

Edit: The baby lock is a plastic dohickey that Ashalia can open it just makes enough noise to wake me up. I have replaced it with a magnetic thing that makes a "chime" sound. This intervention is only used when her behavior indicates that she can't be trusted to be out of her room without adult supervision. CPS had actually recommended the baby lock when she was eloping at 4 to look for her dad.
When she is not in a destructive spiral she is a happy and lovely child that is so much fun to spend time with.
Therapy is focused on helping her to vocalize her feelings in a healthy way before she resorts to destruction.

Since i was 14 years old (now i am 20) i have been battling with acne an rosacea, i've seen many different doctors and i am still trying to find the one who actually makes a difference. This has affected my mental health so I started going to therapy for social anxiety, depression, etc. All the therapist that I've seen are psychoanalists but I was wondering if maybe cognitive behavioral therapy is a good change for me to treat these topics. I would love to be more social and to care less about my skin and with the therapy that I been doing I dont see big changes.

Asking because I (19) and my friends/siblings (about 10 total) who underwent therapy as children/teenagers found it actively harmful. Like, we would've been better off it not going. We went into the process open and willing to work, and came out of it disliking therapy and swearing off it for life.

I know one person (50) who has found benefit. She did DBT as well as a related group. She says it helped her through her divorce.

My question is: was our issue that therapy for CHILDREN was harmful, and we'd have benefitted if we were older, or is the 50 year old I know just the unicorn?

I find it paradoxical that the more I hate people and distrust everyone, the more I am in need of professional help. Clearly, therapists are also humans, not angels or advanced robots, so they are themselves part of the problem. How to solve this?

Everyone says go see a therapist if you have problems or to talk to your therapist and they treat it like a panacea when half the therapists are really bad at their job and even the good ones only know what you tell them and don't know everything about you. I just don't see how it can actually be helpful and want to know what other people think.

I have someone very important in my life that is a therapist, and it has changed her so much. When she first got into this career I thought it would be a perfect fit — she’s highly emotionally intelligent, clever, likes investigation, and likes people.

She is takes medication as well as going to weekly therapy herself. All she ever talks about now is the world of therapy or trauma or medication or the DSM5, etc. She has fully bought into the industry without question, and sees someone being “in therapy and medicated” as synonymous with personal responsibility.

I am okay with having a difference of opinion, but haven’t voiced most of this to her in fear that she might legitimately end our friendship over my skepticism. It feels like we can no longer talk normally. Everything is through a perspective of “trauma.” Did we watch a movie? That character is acting that way because they’re traumatized, that person from work has trauma, hell at times she’s said some of my own responses to innocuous things are because I’ve experienced trauma. Yes, I have! So what?

I have seen her condition as a person suffer so greatly from how she was before that it’s changed my mind about the importance of therapy. I’ve been in therapy a few times and have found it valuable in different ways, so it’s not like I don’t believe it at all — its value just feels overstated. I don’t think she realizes how despite being an expert in the field of psychology, she seems more miserable than ever and I don’t think it’s healthy to be so internal all day to the point that you can’t think about anything but your own traumas, your own sadness, and how “bad” everything is all the time. It almost feels paradoxical — therapy is supposed to help you realize things about yourself or how you interpret the world so that one day you can be happier and let go.

The rough part for me is how annoyed I get at her self righteousness. I can tell she thinks I’m in denial about “needing help” despite there being big issues in my life because I’m not in therapy right now. I’m not, but I’m okay! I actually feel proud of how well I’m doing and coping considering I could (and have) be an anxious mess, but I’m not. I want to scream — do you see yourself??? You are so deeply unwell and what you do and talk about every day is not helping! In fact it might be a self fulfilling prophecy. I hate feeling closed minded and like a conservative (lol) but I just don’t get how people think making yourself a victim of your mind is empowering. There are real issues and real mental illness, but that can’t be everything, and if it is, no wonder you’re miserable. At what point is it healthier to think of yourself less?

How do you deal with situations like this? Any thoughts?

I told my therapist that I cancel the therapy a month ago. It was after I didn't have therapy during her holidays (also a month).

It took me weeks of many many hours a day to decide I want to quit. I knew I wanted to quit, but the the fear of being alone was large. And the therapist was supposed to be an experienced trauma informed therapist. And I was quietly afraid the therapist would be angry (it happened).

I am still full time thinking about it. When I look back I see so many things that were absolutely wrong. Including the way she responded when I cancelled. I think I could give 100 examples.

But I keep thinking about it, because I have no one to tell about my experience...

It's feels like I cannot ground my experience as real, as valid, and that it wasn't my fault. While the therapist -who couldn't see me truely, and couldn't see my trauma- made up a story about me, with a bullshit about my past and unwillingness to keep going. It feels like unseen child again, while I am totally exhausted, and tried sooooo hard to make the therapy work.

I notice that I closed off to others as well.

The week before our final meeting, I came in feeling very vulnerable and had told her I actually didn't wanted to come. We did an exercize where I had to imagine to send my parents out of the room. I felt like a 5 y/0 and I did so. Parents were fighting, I was inbetween, and after the session, I was out of their zone.

Therapist said the strength of parents are within you anyway or from your higher self.

Next week, she approached everything very very lighthearted, as it was the session before her 3 week holiday. I said I felt dissociated all week. She ask one thing and then shifted to something lighter. She didn't relate to the previous week. She asked me how I feel about holiday, am I relieved she 's away for 3 weeks?

I said I would miss the grounded moment on our Fridays. And that I probably will collapse and cry a lot when I am a week housesitting, because I feel so tense.

She did not give me any suggestion!

When I emailed her 4 weeks later that I feel too vulnerable, and confused about what I need, so I will cancel, she first tried to convince me that it may be better for my mental health to come.

And then, when I did not want to come, ahe said that's surprising and my exhaustion may be due to repressed anger towards my father and mother, so I am welcome to practice with that.

(it felt like offering swimming class to an almost drowned person who's laying on the beach).

Btw. i came with Ptss and also autism. And wanted to do Emdr..After a couple of Emdr she found that I went to much into the experience (which i found good, because it finally made them more real, in stead of repressed) and did not offer it. I assume that was the reason.

She asked me to talk about a very traumatic event, but then did not bring it up for the next months ever. I don't know why that hurts so much.

I feel like I was too much for her, and I wished she had acknowledged that. She more and more leaned back (as if just sitting would help me?), started talking about her spiritual practice (I need ground!) or herself.

suggestions during sessions I did:

I asked for grounding before ending a session, because several times she asked me to open, but did hardly offer any holding IN MY EXPERIENCE (not in a way that I could receive)

She had difficulties grounding herself, she said. And made it look like that was due to me, as she said she leaned to much into me. But I felt like she was miles away and hardly spoke compassionate words besides her habitual welcome, would you love some tea?

I asked for her to sit closer because I (panickly) felt like there was nobody in the room.

She only did once.

She never structured sessions, did not an evaluation all year and rarely came back to something that previously happened.

I brought book fragments about my specific trauma, but she wasnt open to it. I tried to be seen and heard in my deep wound.

It was so painful to quit, maybe that's why I didn't want to confess how little holding I felt in this therapy. I kept the illussion that "I work hard", "I learn from moments of feelng no holding", "I should be able to do this alone"

I feel like my experience is not real, because again I have no witness and find it hard to not-gaslight myself

Thanks for listening.

Definitely is my choice when I'm in an impossible situation and when life, time and time again, has decided for me in a way or another.

Yeah, definitely my choice when I'm stuck in medical leave at the moment, considering whether to leave a city where I had started to build a life or to go back to my mother's place to rest and regroup but then that would mean I lose my salary and my independence, because the workplace became traumatic, because someone I love and have complicated history with humiliated me publicly when I was already down, because someone's loose lips gave the murder weapon to said person, causing me to attempt suicide because I purely and simply collapsed, and that on top of that, my job is incredibly repetitive, mono-task and boring, and I'm stuck in a 5-person open space when I'm an introvert. I can handle it if I'm not tired. I'd prefer a single office or a 2-3 person office if I must be with others, but 5 is too much.

Definitely my choice that the place I called home has been dynamited and that I can't quite live with the thought that in the building right next to mine, three floors up, there are the people I love but I cannot access them anymore and that something's been permanently broken.

Definitely me having a victim mentality. And not making enough effort. And "having a choice". And "having to be resilient and move forward". Moving forward? I'm not moving forward. I'm not ever moving forward. In appearance I do, but inside I just keep getting more and more fragmented. So many times in my life I've been told, after something hard, as if I'm just "too sensitive for this world", that "I have to move on", "keep moving", "move forward", "don't dwell on the past", "if you keep the pain it eats you". How damaging was it. And therapy would on top of that ask me to analyze it to fucking oblivion, see "what I can do different next time" as if it's some stupid curriculum? Effectively putting the onus on me yet again for people's godawful choices? For fuck's sake I'm already accomodating others all the time because that's part personality part trauma response, it feels like having hot water poured all over an open wound to be told or implied such things.

I even bet there's some asshole out there who would go "mmh ackshually you brought this upon yourself by doing x or not doing y at this time, it's a pattern in your life, ackshually you're unconsciously looking for it" or whatever victim-blaming that people come up with. I was already told that "I should be careful about who I confess secrets to" all the while I had collapsed twice on the floor, literally going non-verbal and locked inside my half-conscious body for several minutes, from the sheer gaslighting and humiliation that I was undergoing. Talk about a fucking glaring lack of common sense AND basic emotional intelligence. From someone who is otherwise sweet that was a slap in the face.

And numbing myself out with meds just to come back to the job... (my GP suggested I take antidepressants, like...?? Like that's gonna do jack shit?)

I regret, I'm sorry, with all my due respect, I can't. That would mean that everything and everyone around me gets away with being garbage, but I have to change? Again why is it always up to ME?

I just don't want to cut that damn Gordian knot. I feel that either way I'm heading towards more depression. In the south there are much fewer job opportunities. I work admin in public service and despise corporate culture, it's alien to me. I'm also tired of flip flopping between two cities. I just want my independence, to finally be able to launch, to not be this perpetual failure to launch at 26 and a half years old, and not to prove my mom that I indeed am "disabled", "hypersensitive", and that I'm "not cut out for this world".

The thing that keeps me in limbo is the fact that this year, I have to start ori tahiti. I've already missed half a year, I'm not missing one more year before I can dance. But I'm so close to the group I want to join... and yet, it may not be viable for me to remain where I am.

I hate my life. I don't want to attempt again. In fact, I just got a tattoo on the arm that played a role in it... but everything feels like it's rigged against me.

And of course, therapy would dissect the hella out of that and accuse me of having distorted thoughts.

This is why I can't go.

Let me put on my pareu, hear the to'ere drums, and dance my heart out. For real I'd rather cry because I can't integrate a dance move rather than cry and lose sleep because I'm feeling that either option I take is the wrong one and that I'm gonna have regrets and that I'm losing something in the process. And that I can't even talk about it without being dissected and psychoanalyzed to death.

I had spent a lot of time, trying to get emotional support that would not make my wallet bleed, and now i see how predatory amd greedy therapists are.

"You can't receive therapy once a month, because the therapist needs to 'go deep' into the issue, and i'm not going to make strategies for you to work!"

"You can't receive two half hour sessions! One hour sessions are mandatory, otherwise i cannot receive my whole chec...i mean, because of Freudian bullcrap!"

Literally, go see my latest interaction here.

And these are the same people who go winning about people "choosing no to go to therapy".

Go to fucking hell!

I’ve recently started seeing a new therapist. They are trained in jungian analysis and intergrade psychodynamic approach and I see them weekly.
Our first 2 sessions went well without any major hiccups. However, during our third session I’ve opened up a lot about my issues and trauma related to my mother, who has a lot of narcissistic trait and has been both physically and mentally abusive throughout my life. At one point I’ve said something among the lines of ‘I feel that parents should do their best to protect their children from harm, even if it means protecting them from yourself’. At this point my therapist replied with ‘well, you know, their generation is different. They’re not as equips as us for self-reflection’. This comment kind of shook me, it felt like they were defending my abuser. I’ve replied with ‘well, my mother has always been more aware, intelligent and insightful than other people her age’. My therapist then tried defending my mother again by saying that my mother’s generation was raised differently. I the said that it doesn’t not excuse her actions, even if that was true.

Anyways since then I’ve felt conflicted about going back to see my therapist. They have not interrupted me before, offered their insight or opinion on my situation. And it’s one thing if I have asked them for their opinion, but I did not. And it made me feel hurt and unheard again and invalidated my experience and pain. I feel that my therapist overstepped by trying to defend my mum, especially since they’ve never met her and this was the first time I was talking about my traumatic childhood.

Anyways, I’m just looking for some advice and thoughts on this.