The Black Box is closed.

Closed...I've been thinking about what that actually means ever since writing it 20 days ago. My feelings are not resolved on any level, but on the other hand - I have a comprehensive 'crash report' and clarity on what not to do as a therapist when clients make complaints. 

And I now have the information that I need to make the formal complaint.

Thinking about writing that complaint, and even downloading the form again after saying so many times, that I wouldn't do this; because what good would it do? 

Well

Things have changed. 

The black box has been deciphered. And the complaint isn't so much about him anymore, it should be made because clients rightly fear being disempowered and belittled by therapists. The way to resolve such disputes is up to me to bring forward, and to that end I'm reducing my hours working for a charity, but keeping my private practice,  and I'm going to have to learn something about marketing...

OK, so the therapist's choice - going to the police appears to make sense when you are receiving messages from a client, ex-client or the client's family that cause you distress. 

But we need to assess content and context.

I was saying that something was wrong with the therapy and that I want resolution, I need an apology, and I wanted to hear in his reply that he understood how and why his responses caused harm.

The therapist found my complaint and especially my victim statement distressing. 

Because nothing could ever be wrong with his assumptions about, or practice of therapy?

Bear with me!

A victim statement is bound to be distressing. A victim statement describes the effect of actions. Discovering the depth of the pain someone felt, being told that something you did caused it is shocking. Yet it is possible to understand that the client, or the client's family might be metaphorically out of their minds in grief and the only thing they can think of is to demand an apology.

I believed that it wasn't too much of a leap from feeling shocked into thinking about how to apologise.

But no, I get it. 

The therapist found it all find too distressing. 

So?

So, obviously the problem is, the client!

The therapist's strategy, could be either stepping up, or to  tell them not to contact you ever again. 

Chose the latter and we now have a real problem.

At this point I'd advise anyone going through this - if you are told never to contact the therapist again - to make a formal complaint to the therapist's professional body: BACP/UKCP/there are more. 

I was blindsided by the therapist's emotional reaction to my request for my notes. He interpreted that as a threat. Despite the law stipulating that notes about you contain your information. I had muddled the water when I said that unless things were resolved, this story would be freeware.

Openness, transparency, is both the cure and an act of opposition to the poison of defensive avoidance.

I see now that knowing I'd share what happened and keep working on it to create something better is what got me through. It stopped me feeling isolated, and mad. It made me sort through the whole of it.

But, you know - when I wrote if you don't respond the whole story will be freeware - this was a promise.

So yeah - this story is now CC -  freeware.

Lets go back to harassment - 

• Harassment is behaviour intended to cause a person alarm or distress. The behaviour must occur on more than one occasion but it does not have the be the same kind of behaviour on each occasion. Common harassment incidents include:
• texts, voicemails, letters or emails
• comments or threats
• standing outside someone’s house or driving past it.

Intending to bring distress or alarm? 

As I've said, receiving a complaint from a client is extremely distressing and alarming! Always! Realising that no matter how accidental it was, something has gone wrong. Doing harm when we only mean to do good is sickening. It disrupts self trust. Yet as distressing and as alarming it is to be confronted with 'such a distorted and ugly image of ourselves ' such complaints must be dealt with in a fair and compassionate way - if we as therapists want to restore our reputation!

If we wish to be people who actively do our best to help and heal.

What happened to me was not OK, it was bad therapy. Telling him how I felt about him took almost more courage than I had. And I knew which way things would go -  before I sent the victim statement I had written about how denial works, and how people who make complaints are dealt with. 

So now, a year after I sent the victim statement -  the formal complaint has to be written and sent? 

A year after the Rollrights...and the same warning voice that was so right before has started up again.