WKarin Black was recommended to see a therapist by a friend after her troubled marriage ended. However, she began to feel increasingly uncomfortable as he made inappropriate personal disclosures, including about sexual health, touched her, and invited her into his home.
He then acted as a psychotherapist for other clients, but it turned out that he had dropped out of a psychotherapy course “because he didn’t want to follow the rules” and was not qualified. The worst experience culminated with him touching her and telling her, “If I were 10 years younger, I’d be sitting next to you right now.”
“What I felt was that my problems were too big for any therapist to help me. I felt close to hopelessness. If a therapist couldn’t help me, then who could? “I guess so,” she said. “Once you start feeling hopeless, it’s a dangerous path. It can lead to all kinds of suicidal thoughts. I’ve been down that path at one point, and it probably meant I stopped seeing him. I think it was right after that.
“I didn’t know it at the time. I think this is a problem for a lot of people. They don’t really know what they want, and they don’t know when they’re going to cross the line. That’s exactly the situation I found myself in. I didn’t know that therapists weren’t supposed to hug you, hold your hand, or invite you into their home.
Black has since trained as a therapist himself and has written the book The An indispensable partner for talking therapyconsiders the difference between ethical and unethical treatment. She often works with clients who come in traumatized by bad therapy experiences.
She was one of more than 100 people who contacted the Guardian after it reported that experts were calling for all psychotherapists in the UK to be regulated. Readers shared concerns about what they felt were psychotherapists, counselors, and psychologists who gave bad or harmful advice.
Among them was Elinor*, whose adult son was diagnosed with schizophrenia. He tried to receive psychotherapy on the NHS but was turned away because local services said his needs were too complex.
Eleanor was shocked when she found a telephone counselor registered with the British Association for Counseling and Psychotherapy (BACP) who told her son she would help him get off antipsychotic medication without consulting a psychiatrist. received. After this, her son became unwell to the point where he needed to be separated, which “ruined two years of him being reasonably well and holding down a part-time job.”
She tried to file a complaint with BACP but was told she needed her son’s permission, but he was too unwell to give permission. “A good counselor will warn you if a client with schizophrenia is talking about withdrawal, as a safeguard, rather than encouraging you to do so or abusing your position of power or trust. ” Elinor said, adding that mental health professionals should know that people with mental illness: In the case of illness, the diagnosis and medication are often questionable.
Sophie* quickly became uncomfortable with the therapist’s approach of over-talking about her personal life. “I thought, ‘I shouldn’t do that,'” she said.
Her therapist also dismissed what Sophie wanted to talk about, focusing instead on the idea that she could be neurodivergent as a “magic answer to everything.” Despite Sophie’s opinion that being labeled as having a disability would not help her, her therapist told her three times to get diagnosed.
“She told me many times about her own neurodivergence, which I thought was inappropriate, but seemed obsessed with leading me to the same diagnosis,” she said. “I felt like I was being forced to prioritize what my counselor thought needed fixing.”
She completed treatment after a minimum number of sessions and is now considering filing a complaint with the BACP.
Suzanne* consulted a psychologist because she was feeling depressed, anxious, and having problems in her marriage. Although she initially found therapy helpful, she soon found herself listening to her therapist talk about her life and felt like she was paying him to talk to her. It has gotten to the point where I can say, [things he was working on]”.
When she asked him if she could be neurodivergent, he assured her that she wasn’t, that he had no qualifications for it, and that he was instead aware of her mental state. He assured her that her marital problems were the cause of her health problems. He advises her to divorce her husband, even though she is a new mother and not financially independent. She felt this advice was “well-intentioned but divorced from reality.”
After stopping treatment, she was diagnosed with autism and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder on the NHS. She considered filing charges, but felt she did not have the “mental capacity to deal with it.” She is now “cautious” about returning to treatment.
All names except Karin Blak have been changed.
