Continuing...

It has been three years since I recorded the mp3 and survived how my requests for open and honest dialogue were ignored. I'm still thinking about some of his inappropriate responses to the emotions I felt when I spoke with him; such as how he laughed as I spoke about being paralysed by horror and fear. [+] 

If you are reading this blog, you know that my answer to his refusal to agree to any kind of resolution or mediation process has been to publish my therapy sessions, using transcripts. This hasn't been an easy decision to make. A part of me remains uneasy about it. There was an alternative, I had seriously considered making an official and formal complaint and perhaps that would have been better? 

Now, in October 2024 we are about eight months away from it being too late as there is a three year window. Actually I'm not sure, I may have more time? And yet the reasons why I don't see complaint as the right thing, remains exactly the same. I think the outcome of an official complaint would be that I write an impact statement, and hopefully I would receive a thousand word apology from him, but I really don't know? Do I want or need that? What I do know is, if my complaint is not upheld I would feel silenced and unsupported. For all sorts of reasons I can't take that. I think what happened here matters. I think speaking up matters to me more than changing his behaviour if I'm honest! There was shame in his reply, and I don't like the way shame makes people hide and lie. 

The reason I haven't made an official complaint is primarily my belief that the process of the professional body seeking information could upset him to the point of total dysfunction and rage. 

And that would impact his clients. 

So?

So...what is next?

By writing this post I know I'm covering old ground, but I think this is a mapping of the terrain before I seek the next direction.

This blog is about how mandatory therapy went so wrong for me! Curiously the situation I found myself in closely resembles 'spiritual abuse'. I see similar themes of power, and the dread of speaking out; there is a feeling of threat and fear which reminds me of accounts from people who have left  spiritual systems  feeling that they have been cursed. 

So, being as I'm not going to keep quiet, and being as I am not going to hide anything - what are the grounds of my complaint?

I believe that to define our conversations as doing therapy is his fantasy. I paid him £40.0 a week for a conversation. It is a fantasy to say that whilst in the room he was only ever a therapist, and it was certainly a fantasy to define me as a client -  'because I pay for sessions'. I didn't talk to him as if he was a therapist. I tried to talk to the man. A therapy dialogue follows certain rules - clients don't ask me about me because they have come to talk about themselves, and in that way they perform the role of client. I wasn't in his room to talk about me. I just wanted to talk, to have a dialogue about anything really. I found him interesting - I loved his mind actually, because I couldn't predict what he'd say next at all!

The reasons I didn't end therapy were complicated. 

I needed to hear emotional truth from him or else I'd stay stuck in the half-light, gaslight sensations and playback. I needed to hear emotional truth from him because if I'd known for sure that he didn't feel any attraction for me, I'd simply let go! It is really easy to disentangle from someone when you know that you have been mistaken! Because I didn't hear the emotional truth I so needed, I wouldn't let go, because I hoped to change his mind about speaking openly to me each and every session.

Certainly I'd started as a client but after perhaps four sessions I stopped being a client, I became someone who genuinely found him extremely attractive and I wasn't sure if it was mutual or not. I tried to ignore that for a year. When I finally stated the truth the way he responded; with self-defence, was so like my husband, I felt myself shifting back towards the cliff edge of suicide. 

Do I think now that he could and should have predicted this from what had happened to me in the preceding four years? On one hand, from how he spoke to me in our last session, I see no evidence that he had paid any attention whatsoever to the facts. 

But I am certain that the basics had been clear; that I'd suffered gaslighting, that I'd asked my husband for the truth - his emotional truth - numerous times and received either hollow assurances, or defensive victim blaming style replies, I'm certain that Kit knew this! And so in the light of that? I judge his responses to my request for emotional truth as very off kilter. And if he wasn't aware, then his responses were negligent.

He is a psychotherapist.

OK, so I have fear.

When my clients have fear I ask them to trust that exploration is important and possibly the only way to get out and through, and I ask - what is the worst that could happen if we look at it and ask some questions? 

And so I ask myself again, am I writing to get revenge? 

And what is the worst thing that could happen?

So to begin:

1. Is what I've written here in the public interest? 
2. In other words, will my writing help other therapists to do better.
3. Will it help other clients to think through their own experiences? 
4. Do my words have the potential to prevent harm to others? 
5. Or is this blog about my own personal grievance?

And then the process itself:

1. Identify the Issue. 
2. What is occurring and how do you know it?
3. Document the Facts.
4. Who Needs to Know.
5. Make a Decision about Confidentiality. 
6. Make the Call or Submit Your Disclosure.

(2. What is occurring?) My complaint is:

1. His response to my request for open and honest dialogue constituted a danger to my mental health, and safety. 
1. Unwittingly he repeated my husband's process of belittling my choice of training to be a therapist.
2. He triggered the sensations I experienced when my husband was lying to me. 
2. If I frame the problem in psychodynamic language, I think I experienced his transference, and my countertransference.
1. I was prevented from exploring the process of my countertransference, because of the power dynamic. 
2. This was framed as 'you have dismissed any such dialogue'.
3. I am also responsible for the power dynamic
1. But I did my best to talk about it. 
2. I don't think that he tried to help me explore it at all.

I informed him of my concerns.

1. I did not tell him that I would record our sessions.
1. I exploited a loop hole in his contract.
1. My rationale for recording the sessions was to check my own sanity! 
2. To actually know what had been said:
3.  to avoid my imagination creating things  
4. or my memory losing information.

(1. The issue) My rationale for sharing my sessions online is:

1. Other people may experience similar in therapy, 
2. An exploration of the subject could lead to clients being able to name and think about what is happening to them
3. And to therapists taking a more compassionate approach to clients who fall in love with them.

The problem of knowledge:

1. The person responsible believes that his approach was correct?
2. I believe that his surprise when I communicated my feelings about him indicated a lack of awareness. 
3. I had reason to raise the possibility of a similar underlying dynamic in other sessions with other clients. 
4. And I believe that unless his awareness is increased, a similar situation will happen in the future.
5. I asked for a process of resolution and told him if none was forthcoming I'd put all the information out as 'freeware' because:
1. I'm not the only person to have fallen in love with their therapist - 
2. Eros, has the potential to kill. 
3. This makes it a legitimate subject to share - to increase knowledge.
4. Legitimate only if stripped of personal identifiers.

His reply: [+]

1. "Your letter read like a threat: do as I say or else ... 
1. Or else what? 
2. You have still not stated what, only more cryptic messaging. 
1. This is deliberate vagueness, of course. 
2. You state only that you are akin to a hacker and: 
1. you will share information 
1. what information? 
2. where will it be shared? 
3. how will it be shared? 
4. with who? 
3. as freeware
1. I have no idea what that means: 
1. you will create a programme that spreads information from our sessions, 
2. breaking therapist-client confidentiality? 
4. Do not apologise for 
1. "using words in a way that causes [me] to feel 
1. threatened, 
2. and ordered - 
3. and indeed coerced" 
2. when that is exactly what you are attempting to do."

Finally:

1. Who Needs to Know? // Clients and therapists.
2. Make a Decision about Confidentiality. // His identity will not be disclosed.
3. Make the Call or Submit Your Disclosure.// Published.

What else?

Do I need to do more with this information?

It is a great error of mine to think that facts speak for themselves, I think that the harmful dynamic was so obvious - my husband wouldn't tell me what he actually thought or felt because he felt that he had to lie to protect himself (he was scared of her husband!) The therapist likewise wouldn't tell me what he actually thought or felt. It felt like he didn't think he could tell me what he really felt because whatever he said would be dangerous. I felt that there was a sense of shame in both situations.

There is some similarity here with spiritual abuse - the abuser uses 'Holy doctrine' in a twisted way to justify their abuse. Kit twisted the guidance provided by the ethical framework to justify positioning me as 'out of order'. This really isn't what the ethical framework is for. It is possible that he truly believed that I was 'out of order,' essentially being 'wilfully transgressive', so my complaint is of negligence rather than a desire to harm. In my voice message I said that I needed to be able to be honest with him, and I needed to know how he felt. 

He felt that I had invited him to break the ethical code, 'if he responded in a certain way'. [+]

End of.

Being a therapist meant to him therefore, that I must not feel able to bring my emotions or genuine feelings into the room. I believe that the courage to use immediacy is an essential part of being a therapist. Immediacy is core to the I - Thou relationship characterized by mutuality, transparency, and presence. 

The Gestalt requirement that we are emotionally truthful and vulnerable, honours the client.

I am a better therapist because I know what bad therapy is...but I'm also conflicted about what has happened. I suppose next thing is to write something like an essay and copy the sections into some kind of coherent order to justify my claims. Then the information is all there, and you can decide what you think! 

And perhaps then I'll have the courage to let him know?

Or should I make one more request for resolution?

That never contact me again was pretty clear though.

I really disapprove of people hiding information because they don't think that the other person can take it. But I've seen enough horror films to know that this can be true.

Nevertheless: 

• I think he has a right to know what my complaint is. 
• And what supports it.