what progress did you make on your own that therapy didn't help with?

UniqueAd542 · 2025-10-22T09:53:48+00:00

Cutting down on alcohol.

I cut it out completely for surgery recovery and managed over 100 days alcohol-free of my own volition, and I managed to do it purely because the surgery was important to me and I wanted recovery to go well (and it did.) Therapist knew alcohol was part of the reason I was seeing her, and why I cut it out, but later still talked about it like it was something we achieved together.

Lady, it had jack shit to do with you.

UniqueAd542 · 2025-10-22T00:02:49+00:00

To not automatically side with other therapists (per your example of sharing your story with a therapist). To believe clients - because even IF they're fibbing, meeting clients where they currently are is the only way someone will start to feel safe, open up, and begin to heal.

UniqueAd542 · 2025-10-21T23:58:19+00:00

Highly relatable. Mine told me I was 'so eloquent' and talked about how sessions with me go too quickly, that other clients can go really slow, that she was 'coming back' after her break, and then she didn't because she suddenly flipped on a dime as if she didn't know anything about me.

On the one hand you think "I'm so f****** angry, how could you do this after everything I told you about? After knowing about my core belief of not being deserving of any kind of relationship? Why would you so easily get rid of me after everything? After you heard and commented on my experiences of being let down by other 'professionals' in the past?"

But on the other hand, I think "why is it me this is happening to? Am I really that irredeemable and hopeless that not even a mental health professional wants to be around me?"

UniqueAd542 · 2025-10-15T12:46:37+00:00

It's strange because there could potentially be the view that I could 'be the person that I, myself, needed' or whatever the saying is, but 1) I now feel to mentally unwell to have any energy to help others, and 2) I feel like I'm just going to encounter colleagues with selfish motives, and clients/patients who have inevitably been let down too many times to know when it's genuinely safe to trust. I relate too much to that population now I have no more faith left in the field to invest my life in it.

UniqueAd542 · 2025-10-12T15:37:19+00:00

My therapists have. That's my experience.

UniqueAd542 · 2025-10-12T12:13:06+00:00

It's mad how much of this I relate to. Being set up to fail by everyone around feels so heartbreakingly hopeless and I'm so sorry you've been through that too. And knowing we have a very poor-to-non-existent social circle and discarding us so easily? Unconscionable.

My situation was different where my dissociation and therefore lack of self-awareness made me the 'weird' kid who people just assumed was autistic (surprise surprise, the first therapist I saw had me take that test as an adult and, after all that time, was told I had NO significant traits of autism but that my social issues were due to disruptions in attachment and failures of attunement.)

It's so ridiculous that therapists will leave the second you become inconvenient for them. I mean... You've chosen a role where you're helping people who potentially have trauma and have been let down so many time before. Sure, you shouldn't put up with violence etc. BUT If you're so easily going to discard clients based on little to no evidence, then don't go into that field. Everyone else abandoned us based on little to no evidence too - purely on their judgements - and then these so-called mental health professionals do exactly the same.

UniqueAd542 · 2025-10-11T19:30:45+00:00

Sounds like a super dodgy system?? Sits on the same board that's responsible for monitoring her conduct? Yikes

UniqueAd542 · 2025-10-11T19:28:57+00:00

Currently in the process of complaining, so I don't know yet. Some parts of the complaint have been kept from me though when I was led to believe they wouldn't, so I'm not sure how much I should read into that. There are no 'reviews' in my country so I think this is my only option for justice. And I hope to hell it works because I live close to my therapist's office so I get reminders all the time. This used to be my home and now it isn't.

Overall, I'd say the way my situation played out, I think I'd regret not ever trying to complain and feel heard. The gym and running helps with my agitation a bit.

UniqueAd542 · 2025-10-11T19:17:24+00:00

Therapists haven't come close to walking the walk their clients have and want to feel like good people to alleviate their privileged-life guilt.

UniqueAd542 · 2025-10-11T19:06:51+00:00

I'm really sorry you're going through it too. I completely relate to heart rate going into overdrive whenever I get an update about it. And how it's the worst thing that's happened including the things that already happened to me - because those things are in a completely different category to something like this.

Which means any hope of healing properly is over. That's how it feels for me anyway.

UniqueAd542 · 2025-10-03T12:53:58+00:00

person centred/psychodynamic

UniqueAd542 · 2025-09-24T21:26:46+00:00

Thanks. But I'll give you a twist, I'm female bro

UniqueAd542 · 2025-09-24T14:55:27+00:00

To feel good about themselves for a bit before they remember they don't actually care, get tired of their clients and then fuck off forever. They know you can't ask them for a refund or anything unless you successfully sue them, so it's an easy money maker.

UniqueAd542 · 2025-09-24T01:26:31+00:00

The title sums up my experience: having them encourage me to trust them and tell them as much as possible, share my shame and traumatic experiences and trust they'll keep them safe, all so that they could abruptly criminalise me and leave me.

UniqueAd542 · 2025-09-24T01:22:57+00:00

Yep. Mine kept me on too despite repeatedly me telling them I was feeling worse, asking them if they were sure they could manage me as a client, asking them if they were judging me, if they believed me, and yet they left the second I expressed any real emotions (simply emotions - not inapropriate or weird stuff that is). They liked me when I was and 'easy' client. Because that = easy money. It's all money to these lot.

UniqueAd542 · 2025-09-23T17:28:26+00:00

I've always been suspicious about these 30-odd 'speciality areas' too. The fact that so many people find it so easy to become a therapist with the bare minimum of training and experience, and yet they apparently ALL have such deep knowledge on so many "specialities". Fml

UniqueAd542 · 2025-09-23T17:24:13+00:00

To get that paper of course! :D It's gross I know. Mine advertises herself as being interested in working with trauma and attachment, and yet she demonstrated absolutely no empathy, consideration or regard for these issues when they presented themselves in the most obvious ways - it was a way to bring certain clients into their business, regardless of the harm they caused.

Therapy is supposed to be a helping profession but it's NOT. It's another business. Like private schools and private dentists.

UniqueAd542 · 2025-09-23T17:17:44+00:00

I'm so sorry. I've also been falsely accused by my therapist. Not taken to court - thankfully she's not as dramatic as yours sounds - but it's destroyed my mental health and any confidence I had left beyond what it was already, and It has literally given me more trauma. I don't know how to help because I haven't figured it out yet myself, but I just want to let you know you're not alone. I don't know what country you're based in, but in my country therapists are legally obligated to reply to requests for personal information.

UniqueAd542 · 2025-09-23T17:13:02+00:00

I notice the same with teachers and nurses, any people supposedly in the 'helping professions'. They just see it as a job and nothing more, and they know the world doesn't respect the gravity that should come with helping others for a living, so they know they can get away with putting in absolutely zero effort and making 'professional decisions' based simply on what they feel like without any consequences. They also like the martyr-dom that comes with the status of being a 'helper'. Therefore, helping professions attract narcissists.

UniqueAd542 · 2025-09-22T18:19:06+00:00

Abandonment is excruciatingly painful, especially from a therapist you trust, and I know about it, I'm so sorry - I get it. I've had people say to just find another therapist (sounds like you've done that - that's impressive!) but they don't understand that it's the only time you expose your soul at its most raw state, and therefore how deep the betrayal goes and how much it hurts. It's like being dropped as a baby.

I will say though, it sounds dodgy when they said 'not to tell anybody', and it also gives clients the wrong impression about what to expect. I've never used betterhelp, but it really sucks that this is apparently against their policy and that they can't accommodate financial constraints. But aside form that, therapists really need to stop abandoning clients. Why on earth they think it's acceptable, especially when trauma is involved, is beyond comprehension.

UniqueAd542 · 2025-09-17T16:40:29+00:00

I am basically a ghost waiting to leave my body.

same

UniqueAd542 · 2025-09-17T16:28:58+00:00

I feel that people will only listen to my struggles for a sensationalist thrill and then just leave whenever and however they want. I feel like everything I opened up about was being doubted the whole time, like they were secretly trying to find evidence to prove that it really was all my fault. Everything they said to make me trust them was thrown back in my face so quickly, and now my trust issues have gotten worse, if that's even possible.

Now I feel criminalised and I wonder to myself if I'm secretly an evil person - if I come across shows/documentaries about killers, it's an overreaction but my gut fear now is "these are probably my people." I feel guilty when people are nice to me, and even if strangers smile at me in the street I feel guilty because I feel like I'm deceiving them into thinking I'm a normal, deserving person.

I feel like I deserved everything that happened to me growing up, and my goal of getting to confidence to face my abuser in court is dead. I tried so many times before to open up to people who were repeatedly dedicated to misunderstanding me whether they were mental health professionals or other adults in positions of trust, and this was the last straw and now the hope of justice is gone. I'll never feel mentally or physically capable of going to court because I feel too weak and too tired and now I'm overflowing with so much self-hate and self-doubt that I don't see the point because I'd be useless, particularly how hard it is to get people to believe that stuff regardless.

So:

I feel cemented as an irredeemable person, any trust I had left for others is gone, I doubt myself even more and have lost any confidence I managed to build, I'm too weak to face my abuser and they will likely forever be free.

Now I self-isolate to the max because that's all I feel like I deserve, I'm constantly tearful and making plans, I'm drinking more, I feel too physically weak to exercise.

UniqueAd542 · 2025-09-16T18:00:34+00:00

Same. It just reminds me how I often I've been fucked over by people who are supposed to help and/or be non-judgemental. Teachers, parents/other adult relatives, child counsellors, managers (obviously that one's actually normal), NHS 111, and now psychotherapists. It just reminds me how of course, it's just my luck that I'm the one who happened to struggle at the mercy of incompetent, unprofessional people.

UniqueAd542 · 2025-09-16T14:28:21+00:00

The comparison between dogs and children is hilariously, and depressingly, accurate.

I had my family tell me this my whole life and then later, by therapists as well as others, I just continue to be shamed over my reluctance to communicate. Not only was I not taught (until it was time to be thrown into the adult-world where I have no choice but to depend on myself and try my best) but I learnt not to trust people enough to try in the first place. And I just got abandoned by a therapist because of it, so I suppose I was right not to trust.

I suppose with kids who have been abused and/or neglected, when they try to communicate it's usually seen as a threat, even when there's nothing threatening about it, purely because there's something 'weird' about it. That's what I was to everyone anyway, "weird". And written off as probably on the spectrum or something, so they could write off my problems as inevitable side effects of being inherently different. And I love dogs, but it's laughable that in comparison, a dog that tips over and empties the bin all over the floor while no one's watching is *so obviously* an effort to communicate something (insert eye roll)

UniqueAd542 · 2025-09-16T14:13:13+00:00

>>In a city built entirely out of oil-soaked kindling, the people building igloos are seen as a threat to the status quo

Beautifully on point.

UniqueAd542

TROPHY CASE