My therapist from hell

Hi everyone!

Just thought I’d share my therapy abuse story — and I feel like there’s so many things to talk about but I’ll start by saying that I had a shrink who routinely told me to ignore my inner voice. And it was a disaster.

During our second meeting she diagnosed me with “narcissistic trauma” without explaining what it meant and when I told her I was feeing terrible she said, “Oh, you’re just dissociating a bit. No big deal”.

And this was really the pattern. She would override everything I told her I think and feel until I basically lost any sense of direction in life. And then she would use this fact against me.

The things is, I'm gay. And it took me a very long time to accept that although I can find women attractive, I don't enjoy dating them or having sex with them. Even now when I write this, I'm shaking a bit because she's tried to convince me that this was a lie.

I told her about this girl I met and how I don't want to invite her on a date (because, again, I'm gay) and she said, "Yes, you do."

And that broke me.

She told me that the reason I want to say no to having sex with women isn't because it's objectively unenjoyable and performative and unpleasant, but it's because "my anxiety is trying to protect me from real relationships and connection."

I have diagnosed ADHD and I guess a bit of OCD. So whenever I feel unsafe, my brain goes through things I really shouldn't say to another person. When I'm around Black people (I'm white), I keep thinking to myself "Don't say the N-word" and when I'm around women or men who might sexualize me i keep thinking "Don't say anything sexual."

During one of our meetings she literally pulled a sexual phrase out of me – and that felt absolutely terrible. Like a complete loss of agency over my life and words and actions.

Since then I slept with and tried dating several women and it was just agony. But because I had told myself that my "no" meant "yes" and my intrusive thoughts were my true impulses, I just kept going.

I kept seeing her for over a year, beause at some point, I felt like no one else could help me, even if every time I saw her I would feel worse.

But eventually I told my friend about her and they were like "She's probably not doing you any good", so I confronted her about it during our last session.

And all she said was "Are you done? Did you enjoy it?" And that was it. No apology. No accepting responsibility. Nothing.

She just insinuated I somehow got off on insulting her – because she was an attractive woman and I guess in her eyes I was just an incel who convinced himself he was guy.

I'm sorry if it's a bit of a rant and if my thoughts meander. I might come back and structure it more in later posts, but just wanted to share this with the community.