bad therapy for marital ending

When Rosa's marriage of eighteen years ended she became so upset and out of control that she feared she was losing her mind and, quite naturally, she sought help from her medical practitioner who referred her to a therapist.

"I was very reluctant to see a therapist," explains Rosa. "I didn't want to tell a stranger, even a doctor, the sensitive details of my inner life. I just expected my doctor to give me some pills to calm me down but he insisted I needed professional help. Trusting he had my best interests at heart, I acquiesced to his medical judgment."

"The lady he sent me to see seemed to be very nice," says Rosa, "and as I had gone this far to seek help in getting my life together, I decided to continue seeing her."

"She put me through a series of exercises where I had to keep a journal of everyone I had dealings with and everything I did," says Rosa, "and in doing these exercises I surprised myself in realizing just how crazy my life was. I was dating four guys at the time!"

"She asked about my childhood and marriage and despite my telling her that I had a happy childhood, and seventeen years of happiness in my marriage before my husband went crazy and left me, she maintained that I was kidding myself."

"Hello? She seemed adamant about making me believe that my life up to now had been a lie," says Rosa, "and this just didn't sit well with me because I knew that I had been loved and wanted by my parents and ex husband."

"From the little I knew about therapists they are supposed to be supportive and instrumental in building up self-esteem," says Rosa, "but this lady seemed to be determined to shred me to pieces."

"I started to get suspicious when she talked about another client of hers - a man who had apparently fallen in love with her and was annoying her by calling her at home."

"She suggested that he would make a good friend for me," explains Rosa, "and she kept on asking me to meet with her at a bar where she would arrange to introduce him to me."

"I refused the introduction because frankly I had far too many guys in my life already and I certainly didn't want to get mixed up with someone in therapy - even though I was," explains Rosa. "If anything, I felt I needed to strip people from my life and mix only with reliable and happy people capable of helping me over this period in my life."

"I thought it was very odd and possibly unethical for a therapist to be acting as a matchmaker," adds Rosa. "I wanted to get my life back together so that I could be a good mom for my kids and do well at work, but all this woman was doing was upsetting me more than I was already."

"I may have been out of control and totally scattered when I first saw her," says Rosa, "but after a few weeks of her so-called therapy I was climbing the walls!"

"I guess my displeasure didn't go unnoticed because at the next therapy session I was surprised when the therapist didn't invite me into her office," says Rosa.

"Instead, she sat in the waiting room with me -- actually she sat way across the room from me, rather than next to me -- and proceeded to ask me all the usual questions about what I had been doing since she last saw me."

"I felt terribly uncomfortable and terminated the session early," says Rosa. "I paid her for the hour but decided after that session not to see her again."

"I felt she was playing mind games with me," explains Rosa, "and while that is probably the sort of thing therapists do for a living I didn't feel she was doing it in my best interests."

"Maybe it was all her round about way of getting me to assert myself and face the fact that I deserve better in life than what I had been dished up," says Rosa, "but it all left a bitter taste in my mouth."

"Rather than coming away from a few months of therapy feeling good about myself," explains Rosa, "I ended up feeling absolutely worthless."

"I thought: If a therapist I was paying to help me ended up treating me like dirt, then what hope did I have to get my life together?"

"I spend the rest of the year reading a lot of self-help therapy books and they turned my life around," says Rosa. "Actually, the books helped but it was my own inner guidance that steered me on the right track."

"The therapist actually called me a few times wondering why I hadn't make another appointment," laughs Rosa, "and I told her quite truthfully that I didn't feel the sessions had helped me."

"She told me that I needed to complete the sessions in order to get benefit from them," says Rosa, "but I wasn't going to buy into that nonsense."

"As far as I was concerned she had betrayed my trust and twisted my vulnerable situation to her advantage."

"The self-help books were telling me that I was a beautiful person and deserved a beautiful man and a good life," explains Rosa, "and this was what I needed to hear because it matched what my inner guidance was telling me all along. How silly that I needed someone else to tell me what I knew already!"

"Everything that the therapist had told me was designed to make me feel bad about myself," says Rosa, "and if I had continued with her sessions I would have probably ended up penniless and totally dependent upon her for any sort of worth."

"I suppose therapists have a vested interest in keeping their clients feeling bad about themselves," sighs Rosa, "but I didn't go there feeling bad about myself. I went there feeling bad about the lousy people in my life - and she became just one more lousy person in my life that I needed to get rid of!"

"My childhood had been happy, and my marriage had lasted seventeen happy years before my husband went through the mid-life crisis and went off the rails."

"By robbing me of those memories of happiness -- trying to get me to believe that it was all a lie --that therapist was acting, in my opinion, in an unethical manner."

"I thought about reporting her to the professional body, to safeguard some other poor soul from falling into her clutches" says Rosa, "but I decided against it."

"Let's face it," laughs Rosa, "I was a client, a woman with emotional problems, and who do you think would be more believable - the crazy therapist or me?"

"If problems can be scaled," says Rosa, "then that therapist had far more problems than I had. People in positions of power who use and abuse vulnerable women are sick."

"I'm back on track now and feeling good about myself," confides Rosa. "and the next time I feel ill or upset about anything I'll be turning to self-help books rather than doctors!"

(Rosa's story first appeared as the therapist and is reprinted with permission.)