
What the hell kind of therapy was this?
I could feel the anger rising in me. I knew what had happened was inappropriate but I’d been so stunned that I couldn’t feel much before that moment. But as I read the text from one of my best friends after I’d recounted the experience to her, my shock turned from numbness to outrage.
My therapist had slut-shamed me.
Let’s rewind.
It had taken me years to enter therapy. I suffered from severe anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder after an abusive relationship and sexual assaults. For various reasons, I thought I could manage it well enough on my own. I was good at asking myself the hard questions, at uncovering the deepest truths at the core of my issues, and at challenging growth within myself.
I knew what therapy was about and I was doing a damn fine job of providing it to myself. Or so I thought.
At some point, it came to my attention that the issues I thought I’d so diligently and thoroughly worked through weren’t resolved. Or they had become unresolved. Or something. My ability to manage had depleted. I started having panic attacks, intense anxiety, and flashbacks.
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Unexpected things would trigger me and I would cry so hard I couldn’t talk or breathe normally. My body was under so much stress that it was affecting my health and my normal life. It became clear that I needed some outside help. At my doctor’s urging, I made an appointment with a therapist.
The first session was nothing unusual. We talked about why I was there, my history, and the things I wanted to work on. She seemed to misunderstand a few things but I figured there’d be plenty of time for clarification. At the end of the hour, I walked away feeling a little raw, but mostly indifferent.
Our next session was a few weeks later. I’d recently stopped seeing someone who had meant a lot to me. That relationship had gotten convoluted and confusing, but there was a lot of good that made walking away especially difficult.
I was reeling and horribly sad. My instinct was not to talk to the therapist about it but I supposed that meant I should definitely talk to her about it. So I did.
Bad move.
As I began to give her the Cliff Notes version of my relationship with this guy, instead of asking me questions, she very quickly started jumping in with incorrect judgments about his character. I had a lot of love for the man and started feeling defensive.
Top Comments
I wonder if this was religiously funded therapy. A lot of churches have now got their fingers in the human services pie, eg NDIS to mention one of many areas. Not to suggest there aren't good counsellors of all faith persuasions but it is disturbing that so many churches have their tentacles in everything as they have an obvious agenda, apart from that, if you look at the Catholic Church in particular, abuse was rife in the institutions they had and yet they have no problem getting their fingers in the human services funding pie. What if your mental health problem was created by church sexual abuse (or other abuse) and yet this the organisation behind the therapy you require because the government doesn't seem to think there is anything wrong with giving money to an organisation that aided and abetted paedophiles! I'm pretty sure if I was a paedophile I wouldn't be able to get a counselling job or work in human services or work with children (in fact individuals have to do the child check), and yet organisations which turned a blind eye or actively participated in child abuse get money thrown at them to provide health and other government funded services.
Ummm I'm not religious but my therapist is. She has been incredible, the most compassionate person I've spoken to so far, and not once has she tried to weave her religion into my therapy. To say that religious people have an agenda is insulting, damaging to their profession and ultimately not true.
There's some dodgy therapists out there. My marriage counsellor accepted payment for three sessions off my now ex and gifted them to me saying an anonymous Angel gave them to me.
It came out in the wash my ex paid for them as he thought I needed them more than him!
Her accepting that payment and lying about it made me mad but she never saw this was his narcissism in full force - he was sane I was not and needed 'help'