Why I didn't, and wont make the complaint...

To hear Susie Jamieson's account of what it is like to have a complaint made against a counsellor, please follow the link to Josephine Hughes' podcast: [LINK]. 

It is clear from Susie's account that the way complaints are dealt with can cause emotional, psychological and financial devastation to therapists. This isn't what I wanted or needed to happen to the therapist. The harm he caused could never be made any better by setting in motion a procedure that causes more harm.

On the other hand, the laws around harassment state that if a person has been asked to stop all communication and they don't - they risk committing an offence. This leaves a complainant with no option other than making an official complaint...or silencing themselves. There is no way now to repair the relationship and leave it as something as iconic and relatively pointless as Stonehenge, a noble monument - it will instead be a smoking ruin in the heart of dystopia, breeding zombies and monsters.

Telling the story is the only way to avoid this...as far as I can see?

Thinking of dystopia takes me into the fear of the night I entered the police station. As my son said to me afterwards, 'now you have a taste of what it feels like to be disappeared'. 

I'd entered the back rooms...emptiness and long passageways lined with doors. Inside the interview room a grey haze over and between everything. I have a vivid recollection of taking care to not look at the solicitor as I listened to the police, and answered their questions "living like a rat in front of cats"[Shiey]... in case it was interpreted as looking for clues about what to say. I was being videoed. Did I show my shock when I saw a letter I had posted to the therapist now held in the policeman's hand? I felt violated and at the same time, validated. I'd only said what was true. And I could see that the therapist had used a green highlighter on a sentence in the middle of the page? Something that he felt was significant? It felt like a trap, and I must have avoided it?

  • I got out.
  • I have not passed on the pain.
  • Time to use what I've learnt...

This begins with getting clear about what happens when people make complaints, and the complaint procedure itself. And then creating a service to bridge the gap, to create the alternative.

On getting out, and feeling that it has ended?

I know that the therapist has had ample information from me to assess the validity of my claim and so I believe that he is very aware that I had just cause to complain. 

And I have no regrets. 

Medium Term Strategy by The Infinite Three

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