Bad Therapist Thread (no disrespect to the good ones!!)

Poet Kelly just posted a "bad therapist" story (seriously... a haiku????)

That got me thinking about my "bad therapist" story.... and I suspect there are a few mmore out there... PLEASE SHARE YOURS... because, at the end of the day and when the problem passes... they are usually pretty darn funny!

DISCLAIMER- I know there are many, many good therapists, in fact, I see one every Tuesday.... so this is not a dig IN ANY WAY against therapists or therapy!!!!

My "bad therapist" story:

My ex-husband and our (then) two year old daughter went to Wendy's one day. He got annoyed with me and began to berate me, including looud curse words, at the table. I wanted him to stop, but didn't want to make a scene so I took one of my daughter's french fries and bit down on it hard while making "stop it" eyes at him.
 
This comepletely set him off.... he took my purse, threw his chair and stormed off to the car and drove away (tire squeals and all). Now I am stranded at a Wendy's with a two year old and no purse. She is unaware of what is going down and keeps chirping, "where's daddy".  We start to walk home (5-7 miles in HOT weather) "where's daddy"... "why are we taking a walk" "I'm hot". 

At some point, he drives past and picks us up ("oh look..... it's Daddy!!!") . We then go home and he does not speak to me (literally.. this was his "punishment" style) for the next 10 days. Wakes up on day 11 and starts the morning as if nothing happened. I basically tell him that I am done... I don't want to do this anymore.  He first starts with, well, you shouldn't have ticked me off..... but when he sees that his words are having no impact he says, lets see a marraige therapist (something he would NEVER do before).   I think, well, we do have a child, I suppose it's worth a shot.

I tell the therapist the above story (for both an example of what the problem is and also the intro to how we got there)....

She thinks for a moment and says, "did you ask your daughter for that fry?" .. Stunned, I just look at her. She tells me, "well, you should have... it was hers"... More stunned, I say "seriously, this is what you took away from the story?" 

She says, "yes.... why?"

I also got divorced... but that is another long story
 

Just re-read.... sorry about all the typos!!!!!

That is awful.  My first thought would have been to, gently, broach the idea with you that you were in an abusive relationship and ask if you'd like help getting out.  I sure wouldn't be worried about whose fries you ate.  It troubles me a lot when therapists seem not to pick up on domestic violence - and unfortunately, it seems to happen kind of a lot.

You are SO right!!!!!

Just to tie up the loose ends... we actually ended up having a great divorce! Sounds odd, but even though the marriage was DONE and then some, we both committed ourselves to having a good divorce for our daughters sake.

She is now 20, doing great in a hard to get into college, fairly unscarred, and he and I are both very happily remarried to better matches.

We did NOT, however, achieve this with any help from the before mentioned therapist (who was never seen again... even though my ex thought she was "great"!)

Come on .. there have to be some more stories out there!

Wow... just, wow.

Hubby and I have an awesome marriage. Ten year anniversary in two weeks! But about 5% of the time things are a bit strained.

After one of the most disturbing issues came up, he and I decided to seek marriage counseling. He was married before, and has a bad taste when it comes to marriage counseling, but he knew it was important and so we looked to see counselors in our neck-o-the-woods who were covered under our insurance.

We ended up going with this one counselor. I believe we went back three or four times. The guy seemed pretty peculiar the first time we saw him. His number one piece of advice to us was that we should write a magazine article together. (we actually had before we even saw this guy).

since we started with the whole "get to know you" the first time through, I didn't expect any miracles.

Our second visit..... we went through teh whole "get to know you" thing again. He didn't recall anything he'd already said. He gave us all the same advice, asked the same 'get to know you questions"

We gave him one more shot. It felt like we were stuck in a scene of "Groundhog Day"..... Same "get to know you" questions, same specific advice, no recollection of any of our previous issues. No sense that we would EVER get beyond the 'get to know you" stage.

Now, I've never successfully gotten therapy. Never connected enough with a therapist, or even had therapists who told me that frankly I didn't need them. so perhaps my idea of what therapy should be like is skewed. but it seems to me that one cannot get THERAPY if the therapist doesn't remember ANYTHING of prior sessions.

After that hubby and I decided that it wasn't worth our time to shop for another therapist, particularly as the next closest therapist was over 50 miles away, compared to this guy's 35 mile distance from our house.

So that's my only real therapy story.

I admire therapists, and believe that getting therapy is a cornerstone of success in the WLS journey.

You are so right Lithia... a good therapist is worth his/her weight in gold!

I'm glad things turned out for the better for everyone involved. I can't top your story either. All my ex said was he wanted to get help (had a drug & alcohol problem) but, wanted to see a friend on east coast first. After 2 weeks of no contact I filed for divorce and a month later he called me and said he wanted a divorce and for me to pay for it. My words were I already filed but have been waiting a month to find out where to send your papers. Never heard from him again and we were together for 10 yrs. Just glad we had no children together.

That's quite a story, Lori!

Oh, my.  You're right... it is funny... in a very sad sort of way.  When I was in grad school for my counseling degree, there were a number of poeple who clearly -- as we progressed through the program -- had NO business ever working with clients.  Yet they graduated from the program.  (Thankfully, a couple of them do not do actual counseling.)

After a very brutal sexual assault, I saw a local therapist from right after the attack.  She seemed overwhelmed by  some external events as well as the severity of my trauma, and things started going downhill about 6 months out. I did not want to have to go through the struggle of starting with someone else, but by the time it was close to the first "anniversary" of the attack, we both knew it was not working.  A month before the anniversary, she agreed to see me through the anniversary and then we would terminate.  So I started looking for a new therapist and saw one for an initial session so that I could see if it would be a good fit (since he was male... and, no, taht wasn;t going to work for me).  A week later at my next session, with my anxiety level sky high because of the upcoming anniversary, my therapist informed me that the current session would be our last. No warning.... she just claimed that because I had seen someone else, she considered herself "fired" and she was "accepting" the firing "effective immediately".  I was a mess.  I was so distraught that I don't even remember much about my first 2 or 3 months with the new therapist (someone else in the same office as the male therapist I had the one consultation with... and knew seeing a man was not going to work).  She knew I had rejected the counselor I had the consultation with but dumped me anyway.  I was suicidal and had no one to help.  If it were not for the fact that I was about a year away from finishing my own counseling degree (and did not want my first contact with the state counselor board to be a complaint against another therapist), I would have filed an ethics complaint against her for abandonment.  It still makes me angry.

Lora