How to complain about a counsellor or psychotherapist?

1. Find out which ethical body oversees their work, and go to their website.

Examples:

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 therapist yourself - and they simply respond with 'don't contact me again', and you try again, you risk being charged by the police with harassment. 

OK..and the advice from ethical bodies is, to contact the therapist and explain.

After therapy I was in such a mess I couldn't even do that with clarity...my communications simply bled pain all over the place! 

Anyway, his theoretical interpretations about emotion seems to be a psychodynamic approach. which is in my view the cruellest; positioning emotion as regression. 

Yeah, that leaves us with the official complaint form. 

I tried that in September this year - my carefully, non blaming complaint was dismissed by AI.

The most obvious problem is at 3. 'Attach evidence to the form'. 

You wont have any. 

Sessions are 'confidential'  unless they are recorded. I explicitly state in my client contract that clients are welcome to record their sessions - because they are not my sessions, and if I say dumb stuff, please tell me! Plus, if I've harmed you by doing what I thought was the right thing, it is vital that we both learn from this - a recording is the only way to get to a clear understanding...

So, evidence?

You will have your journals, possibly? 

Would that count as evidence?

There is a website for therapists who are stuck in the process of the investigation that follows - or should follow - a complaint.

All ethical body members need to read this to prepare for the shock of a complaint compounded by the shock of the complaint being mismanaged. A single complaint by a disgruntled complainant or member of the public, however unjustified or trivial, can wreck your business, your career and for some, your life. This can happen to you at any time in your career.  Absolutely no-one is immune. https://www.therapists4justice.uk/

Because each of us, my colleagues at the charity I work for, all of us have had complaints made against us, I know the effect of a complaint very well. We work with 'high impact' cases, we also work with the stressed and marginalised parents of those 'cases'. Every complaint has been resolved through compassion, empathy and heartfelt apology. 

Anyway, my dinnertime is almost over.

I think I'm going to buy this book!

The Psychotherapist and the Professional Complaint: The Shadow Side of Therapy:  Adah Sachs (Author), Valerie Sinason (Editor)

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