Alright. Let’s get a validating vent session going. My fellow beautiful autistic people, what are some horror from your experience with therapists?
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In my early 20s, I was seeing a psychologist for depression. Because of issues with my mom, she thought it’d be a good idea to have an appointment with her involved.
So my mom came to an appointment.
And right after they met, it turns out they started meeting up personally to do some kind of craft project together.
The psychologist did inform me and check if it was alright but I had no idea what to say. Trust broken and I just stopped making appointments.
That sounds definitively against psychology’s professional ethical standards, and I’m thinking that their licensing agency would have liked to have known about that.
American Psychological Association - Ethical Principles of Psychologists and Code of Conduct
3.05 Multiple Relationships
(a) A multiple relationship occurs when a psychologist is in a professional role with a person and (1) at the same time is in another role with the same person, (2) at the same time is in a relationship with a person closely associated with or related to the person with whom the psychologist has the professional relationship, or (3) promises to enter into another relationship in the future with the person or a person closely associated with or related to the person.
A psychologist refrains from entering into a multiple relationship if the multiple relationship could reasonably be expected to impair the psychologist’s objectivity, competence, or effectiveness in performing his or her functions as a psychologist, or otherwise risks exploitation or harm to the person with whom the professional relationship exists.
Multiple relationships that would not reasonably be expected to cause impairment or risk exploitation or harm are not unethical.
I did get some accidental “revenge” for this one.
Sometime months later, for some reason my phone started pocket dialling this psychologist and nobody else.
I didn’t even realize it was happening. But it drove her so nuts she called me about it a few times, and eventually asked me to remove her number from my phone.
I made an appointment with the only psychologist in a hundred miles that didn’t have a 2 year wait list in March 2020.
I went there specifically because I was pretty sure I had ADHD and suspected ASD.
She asked me why I was there and I started out, “Well, I suspect I might have ADHD. Beca-”
She interrupted me to say that she knew (I saw her once before years ago, long story) I had a college degree. And therefore I couldn’t possibly have ADHD because someone with anything “like that” couldn’t possibly have it.
She wouldn’t let me get through any of my reasons or listen to me at all. Not the least of which is it took me 10 years to get a 4 year degree.
I left that appointment, went to my GP and said, “I think I have ADHD and here’s why.”
She said “Yep, sounds like it. Here’s Adderall tell me if it helps.” (Helps a lot…not completely because also ASD but didn’t know at the time)
When I went back the next month for a follow up with my GP she said that the psychologist made a note in my file and that I’m banned from having this medication.
I’ve never had any substance abuse issues ever. My parents did when they were alive, but I haven’t.
I am close to my GP in as much as you can be while maintaining boundaries. We trust each other. She said the psych notes don’t match what she knows of me but she was unable to override them. She just…encouraged me to get a second opinion.
Luckily the rise of pandemic telemedicine meant I got an ADHD diagnosis and was properly medicated before the medication shortage.
But I continue to be fucked in the medical system by that one quack psychologist and I don’t even know how to move forward pursuing an ASD diagnosis.
She sucked.
The infantilization and otherization of minorities will never stop mindblowing me. “Yes, we know you may require this medication to have a functional life, but there’s the chance you might also abuse it to the point of harming yourself so its distribution will be extremely monitored, and we may give you extreme difficulties to get access to it.” Bitch, there are idiots who DRANK BLEACH yet no one has seriously considered mandating the requirement of permits to buy bleach, and the only difference here is that everyone uses it.
I’m assuming that you’re referring to an experience with the NHS? Our provision of mental healthcare is shameful. I had a similar experience with a doctor who told me that since I have qualifications that it was unlikely to be ADHD. This was after I told them that I was worried about the substances that I used to get the qualifications. This went on for years as a series of doctors refused to refer me for a diagnostic session. I eventually paid for a private psychiatrist and was duly diagnosed at 47.
I’m not seeking substances any more, I have no desire to because the problem has been decisively solved by the medication and a plethora of coping strategies. Now I’m expected to pretend that the last forty years of gaslighting in schools, colleges, doctors surgeries, etc, was all just a big misunderstanding? This is a country of bigoted Dunning-Kruger morons. Why do I need to follow their rules when they don’t know what they are talking about?
Anybody labouring under a mental health disorder is forced to become an expert of their own condition while these cretins grub around in the dirt and wave flags for our most privileged royal family.
I am so sorry you went through that! That psychologist has absolutely no business in being a clinician. She’s not only unhelpful, but actively harmful. While this is entirely your decisions, I would encourage you to report her to the licensing agency because if she was like that with you, she’s doing it with others as well. Although you were lucky enough to have a supportive GP, many others don’t, and this supposed psychologist is actively preventing individuals from accessing proper care. She needs to not be in her position so that she won’t be able to hurt others.
However, I can empathize a little. I had a GI that I would see for a significant chronic GI issue. He noticed my attention deficit and encouraged me to tell my psychiatrist. I knew I had attention issues my whole life, but in my experience, telling a psychologist was a waste of time because they point out my successes and imply that I don’t have attention issues. Regardless, since I had confidence in my GI, I told the psychiatrist. This is exactly how it went because it was so shocking to me, that I never forgot it. I could paint a picture of the entire office setup when it happened because that’s how well my body remembered it.
Psychiatrist: Anything else you would like to report?
Me: My GI said to tell you that I have attention issues.
Psych: I’m not going to prescribe you stimulants.
At the time, I didn’t even know that stimulants were the medical treatment for ADHD. However, now I knew. I kept living my life, struggling and barely making it. My successes were highly supported by caring loving people that believed in me and gave me the support that I needed to achieve and contribute.
Edited: for reasons
Oh I have another one:
One counsellor I went to see through work insurance was just awful.
Most notably, I was dealing with issues surrounding having open heart surgery, and when I brought it up she started talking about her nephew or something who had some kind of heart problem, and how that obviously means she understands completely.
While not even his patient, I went along to a family-member’s appointment. It was maybe their tenth session. Time’s up. Therapist starts nudging for signing next to a laundry list of appointment dates that even I know never happened. Uh, what are you doing? I’m watching you commit insurance fraud. I’m sure many of his other patients just signed in the box. So dramatic fraud and brazenly taking advantage of people is just part of the routine for some people.
I personally knew a therapist that would commit insurance and tax fraud. I’m 100% convinced the licensing system for mental health professionals is inadequate.
Oh yeah… I got this.
Years ago (before most people even knew the word “autism”), my parents offered to send me to a therapist to work through some things. I was all in – I even had my own ideas about how to go about it, and enthusiastically presented those to the therapist during our first session. He listened with what appeared to be rapt attention, until the end of the fifty minute session, at which point he abruptly stated that we would pick this up the following week. The next week was much the same. And the week after that, I started running out of things to say.
Thing is, he never really offered anything in the way of feedback. He had even stated that this would be the case, as his silently absorbing everything I offered was supposedly part of his therapeutic method, or some such thing. But over the course of time, I started to recognize a few things. First off, it didn’t even matter if I said anything; he would very contentedly sit there the entire time and just wait me out until it was time to leave. And the vast majority of the time, regardless of whether or not I said anything, his gaze was fixed on a point over by the windowsill, just out of my line of vision.
Well, I mean… even as a kid, I was certainly no dummy. I made a point of looking at that windowsill as I passed it one day. Situated up there, where he could easily rest his gaze without his less observant patients ever even suspecting, was a clock. He was quite literally just relaxing as the minutes passed and counting the dollars as they tallied onto his bill. Two dollars a minute. That’s what he charged.
I don’t remember exactly how many months I went to him, but it was easily more than a year. Eventually, my parents informed me that he was moving his practice to a bigger office about an hour away in a much more expensive part of the area, and they asked me if I was interested in continuing to meet with him. I told them very bluntly… no. He very literally did absolutely nothing for me.
I recognize intellectually that this was probably a one-off situation… but nonetheless, I still haven’t been able to fully get over my distrust of any form of therapy nor of any therapists, since.
I’m in Canada but that may be true here as well.
Even from that description though it sounds like a grey area? Doing a craft project with someone isn’t like a romantic relationship or anything.
At the waiting area for my doctor there would be pharmaceutical representatives. Inside she’d push new drugs on me where I could not buy from a pharmacy. It felt like she was using me for cash.
That’s almost unbelievable. I don’t know how people that do things like that exist. I’m sorry you had to endure that.
Thanks.
Welcs.
