The Black Box.

The therapist contaminates your session with their prejudice. Unfortunately I didn't record any of our sessions until the great rupture - the infamous Brian Thorne session - so there are no records from the beginning of therapy. The recorded dialogues are mostly but not all, about therapy.  This post is specifically about my first weeks of sessions, when I'd come to therapy weeks after my husband suddenly left; and I had come to therapy with the hope of being less panicky and more clear headed about my way forward. But what I encountered in those first sessions, was more like a battle. The therapist took a position on what had happened to me - and demonstrated in how he spoke, and in what he said that I should view my husband as  no good. Underneath this, the therapist diagnosed me as holding on to a fantasy out of fear of letting go . In truth I was holding on despite my very reasonable fears, I was perfectly aware of what my husband was like, and my holding on was in ...

The question I wish to answer through writing this blog post is: where am I now in all of this? What do I feel, think, want. What do I know, what do I want to know... And where do I even begin! OK, well I'm beginning to enjoy? Is that the right word - I'm beginning to value my position as someone who will tell the truth. My experience of therapy abuse isn't the one most people instantly think of. This makes it important that I tell my story. By crossing through the fire-wall I describe instead the other truth - my lived experience. Let's begin: I was a client, and I fell in love with the man and not the therapist. I thought that he was a rubbish therapist - not because of his lack of skill, I can't comment on that. I simply don't agree with the basic assumptions that underlie his version of therapy. And this must have been obvious to him as soon as he asked me a standard set of questions about my childhood. At that time, June 2020, I was drowning in absolute a...

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It is February - and I always get the urge to do something about what happened in February. Doing something is dangerous. The intuition that I was 'standing on thin ice '  when I sent him my victim statement proved true. My vow to make the narrative and information freeware, wrong term - but it fits - continues. Next step is to get the story published. Why? Because whistle blowers get a very raw deal, and people prefer not to complain. A stoic, just get on with it mentality is seen as noble. We are socialised into displaying humility, saying 'I don't know the whole story, perhaps I'm wrong? I don't want to do anyone any harm'. So abusers get away with it. And it feels very wrong to say that psychotherapy could be harmful. Though of course, this is why my training took so long, and why I'm going back to university. But I want it understood here and now that psychotherapy isn't scientific, most of what we are taught is a set of interlocking concepts. ...

The application for university has been sent, so I wait. Meanwhile here I am again in the library thinking things through. Rather like criticising the theories that underpin why mental health services failed our family, criticising the theories that underpin how the therapist re-traumatized me is simple. What happened isn't difficult to understand. And I think that this signifies a deeper problem. The obvious answers don't work. Theories are only theories, and the people who made up the mental health team - working with my son - and the therapist who I saw, did not set out to cause harm, quite the opposite! This leaves a more complicated idea to be thought about. Is it bad practice when a good therapist uses bad theories, or is bad practice something else? I'm clear in my own mind that someone who chooses to apply a theory that isn't working, needs to be clear on what working looks like, and reassess their theory.  For example, remembering how terrible it was to feel ...

Time to look at the compass and consult the map. I've asked my formidably impressive boss to write a reference so that I can apply to university - because I need to get into research.  My feeling is that no one is going to listen to me until I spend enough money gain more qualifications. Probably because of how rubbished I felt by the therapist. I remember saying this as I left his room the last time. The man had made out that his two years of studying the theory of therapy (only two years!) was somehow better than the five years I and my 'sisters' took. We had literally completed years more practice sessions, endured feedback, and written more case studies than him.  Despite my 'lack of education' I can categorically say that therapy isn't supposed to leave a client-student feeling that they wont be qualified 'enough' after completing and passing a BACP approved course. My insecurity is a part of the pathology left over from my sessions with him. And I...

February is a bad month. It was in a February that I sent the therapist a heads-up that I was thinking of requesting my notes. It was a February when he called me a minx. And just before February last year I was shifting towards making a formal complaint against him, hoping against hope for a sensible resolution before I metaphorically let out the dogs... This February feels like it is going to be tough. But no longer is this to do with the therapist. I had a long drive to the border land between England and Wales to meet up with friends. But almost there a warning light lit up with an unwelcome ping! It was raining, it was cold. I stopped the car and felt the aloneness and vulnerability of being a woman who has 'lost' her husband. I felt all the fear I carry all the time, no longer drowned out by whatever clients, whatever CPD, whatever...it is the fear I feel in the evening when I catch a bus home. But not in the car; my car is my safe place! This sudden need brought back mem...