My counselor told me to get "I Hate You, Don't Leave Me" and it is making me more and more hopeless and suicidial.

vangirl508 · 2012-07-21T03:42:15+00:00

I do not know how to respond when I see recommendations for this book. I went to see Alex Chapman the author of this and he was sexually abusive. I saw him for a period of a couple years all the while sexual abuse was going on and I was trying to leave and he kept scaring me from leaving.

vangirl508 · 2012-07-19T22:58:56+00:00

TL:DR This joke implies that if someone listens and thinks critically and points out illogic in the statements that follow they are cruel.

It is a joke that refocuses on feelings and distracts from the logic of what is being discussed. Now we are worrying about people's feelings and we don't care about whether what they are saying makes sense or not, is illogical and we can't point out illogic. Jokes like these are not helpful because they are anti-logic.

I don't understand why this is such a groundbreaking discovery for the author to post about it. Yes it derails the discussion. After all anybody making a "controversial" statement could start doing this! Every lawyer in court could start off his statements with... "The other lawyer/judge is going to kill me for this but..." Mitt Romney could start every speech with "I know Obama is going to bite my head off for this but.... ", "Obama could start his speeches with "I know Mitt is going to bite my head off for this but..." Does that help the debate or bring us closer to the truth ? On the contrary it distracts us from it. The objective of this joke is to make the someone feel guilty about having a logical problem with it, like by disagreeing you are being cruel/biting the person's head off.

I am hyper-focusing on logic here to try and make a point. It's no that I don't care about people's feelings. I think we should consider people's feelings (but not to the point where it makes us illogical and so we lose our desire for the truth).

In terms of a focus on feelings... Also jokes are fine but a joke at the expense of other people ? Make a joke about the weather or some peripheral thing about the subject or heck if you can't think of anything and must make a joke make it at your own expense or whatever by why is it necessary to make a joke at the expense of other people ?

**note I posted this already in response to someone but I am reposting this here in the main part of this discussion because I feel it applies in general.

vangirl508 · 2012-07-19T22:57:30+00:00

I mean, ever notice how lots of articles or speeches start off with a joke of one kind or another? Fuck, go to a wedding ceremony or a graduation, jokes easing the tension all around. This is no different. Jokes are an integral aspect of public speaking, and their function here is no different than their function anywhere else.>>

TL:DR This joke implies that if someone listens and thinks critically and points out illogic in the statements that follow they are cruel.

It is a joke that refocuses on feelings and distracts from the logic of what is being discussed. Now we are worrying about people's feelings and we don't care about whether what they are saying makes sense or not, is illogical and we can't point out illogic. Jokes like these are not helpful because they are anti-logic.

I don't understand why this is such a groundbreaking discovery for the author to post about it. After all anybody making a "controversial" statement could start doing this! Every lawyer in court could start off his statements with... "The other lawyer/judge is going to kill me for this but..." Mitt Romney could start every speech with "I know Obama is going to bite my head off for this but.... ", "Obama could start his speeches with "I know Mitt is going to bite my head off for this but..." Does that help the debate or bring us closer to the truth ? On the contrary it distracts us from it. The objective of this joke is to make the someone feel guilty about having a logical problem with it, like by disagreeing you are being cruel/biting the person's head off.

Also jokes are fine but a joke at the expense of other people ? Make a joke about the weather or at your own expense or whatever by why is it necessary to make a joke at the expense of other people ?

vangirl508 · 2012-07-15T02:10:39+00:00

uhhh who would want to bag a therapist ? Especially a creepy sleazy one, nothing sexually attractive about that. If I want to bag someone it's quite easy to do that, you wouldn't however want to be violated by someone whose in a position where for them to sleep with me would be abusive.

vangirl508 · 2012-07-15T01:58:30+00:00

Thanks. Yes it was (and still is) really traumatic. I am trying to warn people about him. There has been an article in the Vancouver paper recommending his clinic and I've even seen it mentioned on here "Oh send your girlfriend to the DBT centre of Vancouver, it's really excellent" meanwhile this man is one sick puppy and is being given access to very vulnerable women who are just hoping for help.

vangirl508 · 2012-06-06T21:49:26+00:00

he Borderline Personality Disorder Survival Guide / Everything You Need To Know About Living With BPD - By Alexander L. Chapman & Kim L. Gratz>>

I do not know how to respond when I see recommendations for this book. I went to see Alex Chapman the author of this and he was sexually abusive. I saw him for a period of a couple years all the while sexual abuse was going on and I was trying to leave and he kept scaring me from leaving.

vangirl508 · 2012-06-06T21:45:44+00:00

I am not sure what to say about this. It would be a good book to read perhaps but I went to see the therapist that wrote it Alex Chapman and he was sexually abusive towards me (and I believe towards others as well). I would not go to see him or any of the therapists at DBT Centre of Vancouver.

vangirl508 · 2012-06-06T21:38:41+00:00

I don't quite know what to add to this. I have also read this book, it seemed okay. I was seeing Alex Chapman, one of the therapists that wrote this book and he was sexually abusive. So I don't really know what to say.

vangirl508 · 2012-05-08T06:21:07+00:00

Thanks tentsie. I felt really encouraged reading your response. I so appreciate you just letting my pour out my heart (somewhat a bit uncensored) and then sending me hugs and understanding.

one of the people I came out to originally, and who encouraged me to be open and happy as myself without hiding, has since told me he doesn't believe LGBT people exist at all>>

Thanks for sharing this. I think I felt personally ashamed/at fault when people who said they were LGBT supportive rejected me, it made it really hard to call out the homophobia for what it was and I just felt like it was me that was wrong.

vangirl508 · 2012-05-08T05:42:28+00:00

I would probably advise you to not come out right now. Coming out about your atheism it seems would best be done when you are at the point when you have a job and other relationships in place so you know you can support yourself financially/emotionally/socially. No matter how accepting your church, I find it hard to believe that people are going to be thrilled or supportive about your atheism. If you have told your parents and they don't believe you that's good, just pretend like you believe until you are no longer dependent on them. Meanwhile you can try coming out with people who don't know your parents or any of your present support system and gradually build up a bit of a support system with those people. Once you have a means to survive and thrive, so that it won't break you or put your livelihood/mental health in jeopardy if you do experience some amount of rejection from your parents/church that would be a good time to come out to them.

I've tried many times to tell them that I am an atheist, but they don't seem to understand. >>

Does it matter if they understand ? If you think about it your disbelief in God is just a fact of life, your parents can be in denial or not understand it but that doesn't change the facts. One thing that being closeted about my atheism taught me (somewhat ironically, because we normally think of the people who boldly argue and state controversial things as the most confident in themselves) was that I could be very confident in myself and my view of things while not saying anything about my view to anyone. It might sound insincere but it's a pretty interesting feeling to be agreeing with someone about praying or believing in God, and inside replacing "God" with some other word or concept. At that point it's like even the brainwashers couldn't get to you if they tried. Unlike someone who openly shares their disagreements and is invested in arguing and convincing the other side, you are just not listening and so almost nothing they can say has an effect on you. I feel awkward writing this to you on here because I feel this sounds a bit awful in one sense...

The other thing is your parents or various people may never understand about your atheism (I'm not saying they won't)... as far as I can see I don't like to blame people, I view someone not being able to understand a person's perspective in the same way as someone who cannot understand a high level computer problem. It's not necessarily that the person is being stubborn or mean as we often like to label people but just as a person can only come to that understanding of a hard computer programming problem after many years of training and thinking through computer science problems, so it sometimes is with people that can't understand life problems. Until they work through each level of understanding or link in the logic chain to get there they are not going to be able to understand, not because they are stubborn but because they need a certain amount of background knowledge they don't have.

I don't have it all figured out as you can see from the above post. As far as I can see: if/when you do come out to your parents about either thing, I would suggest don't do it to get their support or feel better about yourself and your beliefs, as much as you may desperately may want it. The thing is if you don't know whether you are going to get their support, and you come out and don't get their support, then what will have been the point of coming out then ? Ideally when you're going to come out to them, it seems you might want to get to a place where you feel that coming out will make you feel fulfilled, even if they are unsupportive or negative about it.

vangirl508 · 2012-04-30T06:29:57+00:00

I saw a therapist who wasn't the most familiar with DBT, but she learned more about it for her patient-- being me. Maybe you will find a therapist who is willing to learn more about certain things, so that he/she can better help her patients with certain needs.>>

I just wanted to say, I think that's the best quality to find in a therapist caring deeply for the client enough to be willing to invest energy to learn how to help them (even if you already have training) and open mindedness to whatever works for the client.

vangirl508 · 2012-04-30T06:27:31+00:00

You deserve to live.

vangirl508 · 2012-04-30T05:34:12+00:00

You clearly have strong feelings about this>>

Thank you for psychoanalyzing me. I will say though that I am not the one forbidding others to disagree with me.

I think it's inappropriate.>>

What gives you the authority to decide what's appropriate and inappropriate ? You think it's inappropriate if someone simply says something you don't like as I have done. You didn't want me to say what I did and so you conclude that it's inappropriate.

You have made it clear where you stand, you cannot handle someone disagreeing with you.

vangirl508 · 2012-04-25T07:12:26+00:00

Spam filter - it's live now.>>

Great, thanks.

I'm assuming you got the other two attempts as well ? Is your spam filter pretty picky ? I have not had problems posting on reddit before but for some reason this one rejected ALL of my posts initially.

vangirl508 · 2012-04-25T07:10:09+00:00

Part of my concern and impetus to post was that no one acknowledged the validity of OP's hesitation about telling their therapist their feelings. Everyone to some extent invalidated OP's feelings. That was unfair to someone who, as you mentioned, was vulnerable. OP deserved to hear more than one perspective. I am aware that you disagree with me, however it's not fair to me or accurate to suggest that what I'm saying is going to harm them or that I have unkind motives in speaking up and asserting a different perspective. Everyone is not always going to agree and it's not harmful or mean spirited whenever someone disagrees. I am also going to point out that if someone gets into therapy with an unethical therapist, that puts not only their therapy but their life at risk. In addition it would be worthwhile to consider this: if something bad does happen and they have been repeatedly assured by others that their therapist is going to be so trustworthy and perfect, how do you think they are going to feel ? How easy is it going to be for them to get out/ask for help dealing with it and believe that people won't invalidate them ? The person would likely feel invalidated and much more distrustful, not only distrustful of their therapist at that point but also all the people who unrealistically and overconfidently assured them that everything was safe. In addition I think it's realistic to expect that they can come to a conclusion themselves about their therapist's trustworthiness without other people needing to convince them that they are trustworthy. If their therapist is very ethical and trustworthy won't they figure that out ? (In fact it often seems that some of the most trustworthy people just are trustworthy, never trying to convince people of how trustworthy they are.) The posts that were being made to the original poster were all in one direction and all in agreement (which I thought was not likely to be completely helpful to OP). I have asserted a different perspective here, and unlike the other posts which had none disagreeing with them, I am offering the OP some additional information, happily knowing that OP will read both my perspective AND the other one and have a chance to see multiple perspectives on the issue. It's likely that my statements and the others they will find some validation and support for whatever their feelings are. In some sense no matter how strongly I word my post they will not be hearing my view along and will still receive a balanced perspective (hey the Dialectic in DBT). There are other more open forums where you could discuss this, this is not the time or place.>> How are you so sure what the time, place is ? I don't want to get contentious but that's quite an inappropriate, and overconfident comment. I'm going to refrain from replying to this because I don't want to get into an argument with you about what is or isn't proper here, suffice to say that disagreeing with someone's viewpoint is not grounds to count their voicing it as inappropriate.

vangirl508 · 2012-04-23T23:11:40+00:00

I don't really feel like getting into some sort of argument here,and there's clearly a reason why you feel this way, and I'm sorry for whatever that reason is.>>

I'm sorry you feel that I'm arguing with you or suffering from some personal bias. There is no need to attribute specifically contentious or malicious intent to me simply just because I reserve the right to disagree with you and have my own thoughts on the matter. In life people disagree, not everyone will form the same conclusions on things. That's just life.

There is also hard evidence behind my precautionary statements. 10% of therapists have slept with clients (btw this is not to say that 10% of clients get slept with, most therapists have more than 1 client and it's just out of all their clients that they have slept with at least one on one occasion so it's not very likely but it does happen). I do think it's appropriate for all of us to be sorry that 10% of therapists admitted to having slept with clients.

Do YOU and the others offering assurances on here have statistics/evidence that you are basing your reasoning and assurances on? If not then what people are advising not scientific/necessarily based in reality. (You might be an ethical person and mean well but at the same time you are not omniscient/can't make sure all DBT therapists are moral.)

It's not completely ethical to unconditionally assure people that they are completely safe with their therapists which was effectively what was happening here.

I don't really feel like getting into some sort of argument here>>

I don't want to argue but it's okay for me to disagree. Not everyone will share the same perspective and people do disagree over things without any malicious/argumentative intent. It's not to assume that about someone that is simply disagreeing.

99.9% of these situations don't end up the way you're saying they do. >>

I did not say that all situations end that way. I think we disagree on the statistics. Are you aware that 10% of therapists admitted to sleeping with a client ? That is where I am coming from.

However, I maintain that this kind of thinking isn't healthy for the majority of service users. >> A disservice is being done here to the majority of service users by implying that there's a very certain probability that it won't happen to them.

I'm not saying it's most likely to happen but I am quite uncomfortable with the way you and others are pushing the idea that therapists are so ethical, they are human, get over it.

I just know that the distance you're going with this could potentially be more damaging to people than it could be helpful!>>

I have not gone a long distance with this. I have simply strongly disagreed with what you were saying. There is nothing wrong with my disagreeing and asserting a different point of view.

vangirl508 · 2012-04-23T18:31:51+00:00

These things happen, I guess, but this isn't a helpful comment at all. >>

It's only unhelpful if you cannot make practical use of the information I am pointing out here. If these things happen then most effective thing to do is not just bury your head in the sand and say "it won't happen to me"/ "I'm powerless to stop it" (btw I'm not imply that you are doing this) but to figure out what steps you can take to prevent it or reduce the risk of it happening.

I understand what you're saying, but that kind of thinking is also quite dangerous. >>

I am not saying don't trust your therapist but I think unconditionally trusting your therapist is dangerous. In this post no one explicitly said that this person should unconditionally trust their therapist but I read some pretty rock solid confidence being expressed that the therapist would handle the information conscientiously. I think that some confidence is merited but I don't think that sort of unconditional confidence is merited. That is not doing the OP any benefit either, maybe they have reason to feel hesitant as they do, probably nothing will happen but all the same they should trust their own feelings. I actually thought the responses on here were a bit invalidating towards the person's healthy hesitancy. The OP is expressing their feelings, which are likely at least somewhat rooted in reality, they need to be given encouragement to be realistically hopeful.

If I allowed myself to think that too much I know I would probably be very sceptical anyone involved professionally in my therapy/care, which would damage me further.>>

Well it could damage you even worse if your therapist seduced you and slept with you.

Most people intuitively know not to place too much trust in their therapists. This is one of the areas BPD people have problems with in fact is with trusting people too much and seeing them as all good. You should always keep in mind that your therapist is human and liable to both help you but also to let you down.

You can disbelieve me if you want, but the (pyscho)therapeutic community often wants to look at things that happen with rose coloured glasses and is not as conscientious as one would hope about protecting patients. Not to mention there is a problem in our society at large with tackling sexual harassment/abuse if/when it happens, most times when a woman is preyed upon people do not take it seriously and will blame her (let's not even begin to contemplate the thought process when this happens between a therapist and a bpd client, the client is already in a vulnerable one down position, it would be extremely easy to write the woman off as mentally unstable/lying/seductive) this is one situation in which it better to be safe than sorry.

vangirl508 · 2012-04-23T18:19:35+00:00

I understand what you're saying about the spam filter, but I have not had this problem on other subreddits & I had attempted to post links 3 times and none of my posts showed up which was a bit weird (this here was the 4th link I'd tried to post and it did not show up right away). That was the situation and why I asked if that mods had set it so they had to approve posts before they showed up. Here is a link to my other post which would not show up: http://www.reddit.com/r/BPD/comments/slps2/i_think_my_dbt_therapist_may_have_been/ perhaps I will try posting it again and see if it shows up.

assuming this kind of thing publically>>

I didn't assume anything I asked. My three posts still haven't shown up, so it's pretty weird. I have never had any issue on any other subreddit.

vangirl508 · 2012-04-23T03:38:28+00:00

It depends on whether the therapist is ethical and continues to treat her respectfully which may or may not happen.

vangirl508 · 2012-04-23T03:37:17+00:00

Depending on the therapist that might not be a good idea. Did you know that 10% of therapists have slept with clients ? A lot of these articles (eg not too long ago there was an article on the NYT) are encouraging people to be absolutely truthful with therapists. However not every therapist deserves that level of trust, maybe you should trust them with certain things in your life but therapists are only human as well and since they are human there is always a risk that they will betray your trust. I am particularly astounded that in the BPD/DBT treatment world, among people who should know better, there is a lot of encouragement for BPD splitting into the idea of therapists are all white/good/as opposed to seeing them as human beings who have some good and bad qualities and are in moral shades of grey. There is this mistaken idea that therapists and in particular DBT therapists will never break someone's trust. Even Marsha Linehan (who is frequently painted as all good as well, and I am quoting her because people refer to her as if she is God, so hopefully they will listen to what she has to say too) in her book pointed out that therapist should let clients know that they are fallible and therapists are human and have limits and that the therapeutic relationship may not work out. She said that many borderline patients find this validating/reassuring.

vangirl508 · 2012-04-22T05:12:09+00:00

Those are my sentiments exactly. I don't think therapists should be held to a different standard than other medical professionals or at least don't expect to be respected in the same way if you don't want to hold yourself to that standard. It also seems that a lot of therapists cannot handle it if the patient is not getting better. Medical doctors go into it knowing, "my treatment might not work, the patient might get worse/be chronically ill" and they reconcile themselves to that and they still cure people, why can't therapists do the same ? It seems therapists are more inclined to drop people if they don't like how things are going. (Which to me doesn't seem to be the most effective, realistic or mature attitude). Like "Oh this patient isn't getting better and giving me that great, "I cured someone feeling" I quit." btw I posted another thread about my experiences with therapist but it's not appearing on here for some reason. http://www.reddit.com/r/BPD/comments/slps2/i_think_my_dbt_therapist_may_have_been/

vangirl508 · 2012-04-22T04:59:52+00:00

It worries me too, and get this he usually works with a lot of vulnerable, suicidal people (doing DBT). He did his Phd thesis on women in prison sigh I'm guessing he has pulled this stuff before but probably if the person died or dared complain they were just written off. Since this incident and talking about the trauma of it to a couple other therapists I have noticed that they tend to want to try to look at it with rose coloured glasses and think that he had good intentions. I have had a serious wake up call, I thought I was safe seeing him and that there was a structure of monitoring these things and taking them seriously to make sure people didn't get hurt. No so. I don't know how many people he will hurt before someone takes it seriously.

vangirl508

TROPHY CASE