Falling in love with one's therapist... the crash report.
With trepidation...
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Not sure where I'm going with this, so I will just write and see..
Someone pointed me in the direction of Kendra, a woman who posted a succession of films about falling in love with her psychiatrist.
I've only watched two YouTubes about her story so far - one from an expert in AI who was commenting mostly on how the 'magic mirror' quality of LLMs can reinforce error, as Kendra took to talking to two AIs about what happened. And the other YouTube is from a Dr in Seattle.
Briefly, Kendra's story begins this way:
Kendra believes that her psychiatrist had feelings for her, and 'bread crumbed' her into staying in therapy with him for four years. But what if all the usual questions about boundaries and ethical conduct fail to address the real issue that underlies the problem? What If the psychiatrist acted in the best and most ethical way and despite all good intentions the outcome was a problem?
What if everything was right?
So, what went wrong?
Could there be a problem with the interpretation of what constitutes ethical behaviour in therapy?
The assessments made by the people in the videos, focused on only two questions:
Was Kendra deluded or not - Blame the client.
Was the psychiatrist's behaviour ethical or not - Blame the therapist.
They are reasonable questions and yet, as I try to understand this story I keep hearing this phrase in my mind, the operation was a success but the patient died.
The only things I am sure of is that:
Kendra believes she experienced "weaponized neutrality"..
The Dr in Seattle didn't accept Kendra's term: weaponized neutrality. Because neutrality is seen as neither good nor bad. The only thing the Dr was concerned about was physical contact. My argument is that deprivation of information, the neutrality much favoured by those of a psychodynamic modality in particular , but it isn't confined to them, can be harmful.
Epistemic injustice: neutrality can be a withholding of information purposefully and intentionally, to maintain an unequal power dynamic.
Epistemic injustice destroys informed consent. Hence Kendra's view that her psychiatrist was withholding information to keep her hooked and paying him.
People associate the term catfishing with complex narratives designed to create an alternative reality. And catfishing fits Kendra's narrative. Withholding critical information keeps the client swimming, trying, trying harder to get to the truth, trying, trying harder to prove what a good match they are, trying, trying so hard to make something meaningful out of some gesture or word that could be interpreted as significant if the ambiguous hoped for context is true.
Then when it is all over, having been so powerless it feels safer to tell ourselves that uncomfortable details don't matter. Self blaming, self attack often follow.
In my case, Kit's refusal to talk about his feelings, and indeed blushing when I asked him directly to be more open with me, certainly didn't do me any good! As much as I understand the constraints of the profession, at some point there needs to be more openness about the fact that therapy techniques such as neutrality, certainly act in the same way as a prejudicial denying of information.
I'm still ill. Almost phoned for an ambulance yesterday. That bad, difficulty breathing in. But, got through. So, here I am. Morning routine. Three rounds of Wim Hof , following a brief panic about the wording of my insurance. Realised again that interviewed under caution isn't the same as being under caution. But I need this in writing. Verbal wasn't enough to stick in my cautious mind. So, Wim Hof, then good coffee - which I can't taste due to my COVID like, non COVID. Sitting outside, soaking up the blue of the sky, the good green around me. Listening to: Lemanis by Spaceslug Next comes the cold shower of course. Breakfast... Then I'm as done as I can be. And today? All clients cancelled because I can't talk, only cough. Many thoughts. What to do with today, how to navigate a safe encounter with the hurt and rage that bubbles under fear and compassion. I heard someone talking to Huberman about idiot compassion ...my understanding came from Trungpa ...
26th January 2024. It is difficult to explain how powerless I still feel about this situation. I can't think for the life of me what empowered could mean. Again I'm struck by the uselessness of understanding . I understand the reasons for the crash. Worse, I also understand what I could have done right - that is a hard thing to deal with! I also understand the truth of the idea - that what I'm not changing I'm choosing . But empowered? I can't get to an understanding of that at all! I simply don't have a clue. Right now I'm working on The Black-Box . As close a thing to a real black box as I can imagine, putting the pages I wrote last year together to be stored here as this blog. Does doing this make me feel empowered? No. As Huberman said, " Anxiety makes children of us all " . Kit would explain to me how he would recognise and speak to the Child in his clients; and this was something I always found hard to take. Not least because his res...
1. Find out which ethical body oversees their work, and go to their website. Examples: UKCP BACP 2. Fill in the complaint form . 3. Attach evidence to that form... So basically, as soon as I walked out of therapy, my next stop after asking myself why I wont be dead as a result of what has happened - should have been initiating a complaint. The reasons why it didn't happen rest within the complaint process itself. And in how I personally think of complaints. Add the way the therapist had handled minor 'ruptures' - with defence; telling me that I'd misunderstood him - and then going on to repeat what he'd meant me to understand. The problem is: I am not the only person who has been accidentally silenced by the complaint procedure. Nor am I the only complainant who has been reported to the police. No surprise then when I tell you that I believe that the complaint procedure itself needs to be resolved. I'm not alone in discovering that if you complain to your thera...
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