When I was 15, I walked into my therapist’s office to find a gun aimed at my chest.
I’d been seeing Dick regularly for a couple years, since the death of my parents, and had seen him prior to that at a much younger age. He worked from an office in the basement of his suburban home. When I opened the front door, he yelled for me to come on downstairs, as usual. I came down the stairs, rounded the corner, and stepped through the open sliding glass door into his office. Then I saw the gun. BAM!!! The gun went off and I jumped. For a moment I thought I was dead. My heart stuttered. I don’t know if I screamed. Dick was laughing so hard that tears were streaming down his face. I yelled, “you could have killed me!” “No, no,” he said. “It’s just a starter pistol.” He showed me there was no hole in the barrel for a bullet to come out. It only fired blanks.
On the surface, it seemed he had only done this for his own amusement. My being angry at him only made him laugh harder. I had no recourse as a child, and no parents to turn to. Eventually I had to pretend I thought it was funny, too. But left in the back of my mind, for years, was the self-doubt, had he done this as some sort of therapy? What was it about me that was wrong that he was trying to fix with this stunt? Was it because I hadn’t been grieving properly over my parents? Had I been too numb? My depression had me in state where it was hard for me to take actions or express myself–I was kind of shambling through life like a zombie; was he trying to jar me out of that?
Somehow, it took not years, but DECADES to realize how wrong this action was and that it was only one in a series of events that were very harmful to me. The most severe was when I was in 2nd or 3rd grade (he was a friend of my mom’s from church), when he came to my home and told me that he had spoken to my teacher and my classmates and none of them liked me because I was dirty and smelled and wasn’t fun to talk to or play with. “Not even my teacher likes me?” I was crying. “No, she said you are too much of a loner.” Somehow, from the time I was 6 (when my parent’s divorced) through their death when I was 13, and even up until I was 19, he remained the sole provider of psychotherapy in my life. And keep in mind the turbulence I was experiencing and that I had no parents for a time… When I was 18 he got me to buy expensive weight loss products from his home marketing pyramid scheme and wanted me to sell to others.
I’m sharing this story for two reasons:
1. as a reminder to adult patients that even though this sort of extreme abuse isn’t likely to happen to you as an adult, damage on a more subtle level could be done. You need to step back and objectively study whether your therapist is aligned with your needs. Even a therapist who is good for us in one phase of our life might become a subtle hindrance in another; or there might simply be better therapists for you at this moment. Even as adults, it’s easy to become lulled and become misguided if we take a therapist’s word as gospel. Finding the way through the maze of your psyche is a delicate business for even the most skilled professionals, and add to this that therapists are only human and have their own biases, flaws, strengths and weaknesses. A therapist who is not a bad person still has the keys to the most intimate parts of you, and a mistake in their judgment could have deep and lasting effects to your mental health. Even a clumsy handling of things could cause you to internalize more shame, when the best part of therapy can be unburdening, understanding, and accepting yourself.
2. if your children are seeing a therapist, you should have some level of involvement to be certain they aren’t misled or abused. You may want to respect your child’s privacy, but keep in mind your child won’t necessarily know whether the treatment they are given is appropriate; and even if a child knows they are being mistreated, they might feel they can’t do anything about it. When my therapist said mean things to me, I believed him because he was an authority figure and I was only a child and needed to listen to him. I never felt there was anybody I could turn to when I was hurt by him. So please be sure to check in with your children. Ask them about their therapy and pay attention to how their actions and moods change over time between sessions.
