Time.

It has taken me four years to get enough distance on what happened to me, to begin to make sense of it. The importance of this is, now I know from the inside that it is unreasonable to think that victims instantly seek justice, or that they will be able to identify, name or explain what happened to them, straight away. The greater the impact of the emotional disturbance, the greater their bewilderment, shock and desire to just hide away.

And making sense of it?

Sometimes it takes decades.

Sometimes it is never.

It took me years to name the cause of the harm done to me during therapy as epistemic injustice. The inequality of power underlying the withholding of information was a real problem. The therapist and I both suffered because of it. But I was also risking my life. My need for him to see and hear me was so great. I felt threatened each time he became tight lipped. Each time he said 'this isn't working' it was as if acid had been poured over me.

I imagine that he was uncomfortable when he found himself unable to enact therapy as he imagined therapy should be. And I was the cause. I wanted real dialogue. He wanted me gone! And this feeling of wanting me gone would - again this is all in my imagination - he would have felt conflicted; feelings of aversion are not supposed to be in the therapy room.

And the other problem - the real problem, was created by him. The symptom of the 'Hot Potato' was righteous indignation - I imagine that this originated in whatever had happened to him when he was a student. And he in his turn did his best to dump his feelings of injustice, frustration, shame, disgust (?) onto me. The defining characteristic of this dumping process is the clue to its transmission; it is transmitted through the emotional tone of the delivery..it can sound compassionate even. Don't be fooled. If you are being spoken to by a person who is emotionally invested in causing you to feel as if you have done something terrible you will feel their emotions! Hearing 'warning' in their voice, feeling their sincerity and concern. You will feel doubly uncomfortable because the force of their emotional tone is disproportionate. The problem is, it feels as if something very wrong has happened! But no matter how hard you think about it, nothing truly justifies this tone of warning. Nothing has actually happened. What are they imagining, or reacting too? It feels as if the ground under your feet has vanished. Where is all their energy coming from?

And I thought I must be so stupid, I must be missing something, I must be so out of order. He must be right..

That's how it works.

Regardless of how intelligent, or congruent you are, we are hard wired to feel warnings. It doesn't matter that what they say doesn't make sense, or even when you know that you haven't done what they say...It is incredibly difficult to see that this is really all about them and you are just, sorry, just their punch bag. 

I say to myself that if dialogue could have been equal there would have been a chance that the energy of that righteous indignation could have been transformed. Who knows! The danger for me of that unequal situation was that it felt like gaslighting, And as I left therapy in 2022 a second dose of potentially lethal gaslighting had done what gaslighting is supposed to do. 

It had stopped me being able to see what was happening whilst it was happening. 

But after the final session I started transcribing the sessions, noticing themes and listening for the unsaid. Like digging myself out of prison! It took me over a year and a half to do. And at the beginning of 2024 I had a fistful of complaints which really needed addressing. 

I tried.

No answers were forthcoming.

This is normal for a therapist, behaviour.

Silence I mean.

It isn't good. 

Until 2024 I had refused to focus on things he had said that are, in a therapy context, really out of order. The important part of this is, until I could identify the process of what had occurred I was still agreeing subtly that he was right about me. 

2025 marked the beginning of the end of the truce. 

When I sent the words back this was my attempt at showing that whatever he thought about me and my intentions, there was an alternative view. Asynchronous, but I refuse to be silenced. 

And during the sessions I had heard him...

1. Minimising the emotional impact of what had happened to my family.
1. Undermining my interpretation of events.
2. Minimising the distress I felt.
3. Inappropriate laughter.
4. Missing safeguarding issues.
2. Undermining my ability as a student.
1. Questioning my ethics.
3. Failure to seek an understanding of my emotional state.
4. Blindness to the dynamic of our dialogue.
1. Not taking into account the emotional tone of my voice, or the words I used.

And no doubt I've probably done all of the above too. But not with the same client. Nor with any power of moral certitude behind my mistakes. And if I knew about it I would want to apologise. I would really want to know if something had gone so wrong, putting it right is so important. [+]

So, is this inability of the therapist to acknowledge the harm a part of his hot potato thing? I have no idea...

I think silence might only work towards ending a dispute if the complainant hadn't kept any records...silence sends the message that 'your words are nothing' they have 'no impact'. 

An attempt at erasure of the other?

Certainly an attempt to shut everything down.

But I say again, who knows what his thought process was or is.

If his silence is because his supervisor had said ' don't engage'. Then I'd advise the supervisor to clarify their reasoning. 

In my view, if this was the case their supervisee has grounds to question the ethics of that advice. 

And if I had a client who told me that they had suffered a problem with their therapy and they had sent the therapist a 'victim statement' and that therapist hadn't acknowledged it or apologised?

I'd strongly recommend that the client makes a formal complaint to the therapist's ethical body. Yes, everyone says longer than three years is too late. But, I know that it literally can take decades for a victim to find the courage to name and face the true impact of the hurt...and so will they.

When I stood in the centre of the Rollrights and hit send on the victim statement email I felt as if I was lobbing the hot potato back. 

But this sad and sorry tale isn't only about me. So, it isn't done!