my therapist is violent and a liar

my therapist is violent and a liar
Thursday January 31, 2008

Dear Alice,

Thank you Alice, thank you so much for posting “How to find the right therapist?”
I am shaking with fear, fear of my therapist, and reading again your chart is saving me right now. I know it is time to move on and leave this violent therapist but I am afraid of her potential revenge (which, I don’t know; but she scares me lots)

Today I went for session with her and truly I could not start on her agenda without asking her about something which really disturbed me. She had asked me basically to betray my son by holding back a major info concerning a collegue of hers (who is her boss too in the association where she works) whom she suggested he should call for therapy. This collegue of hers is a teacher in the university he attended till last month. She did not want me to tell him.

I do have with him a relationship based on trust; I respect and love him. I could not fathom lying to him in such a horrible way, ultimately destroying our relationship. It horrifies me to imagine hurting him in such a vile way. Told her so this morning.
She is very much into lying anyway. I experienced it before.

So I told her that I needed to understand what this was all about, why she had asked me to betray him . She immediately got incredibly defensive and hostile. And never answered my question. Instead she tried hard to make me feel guilty.
To make it short my trust in her was not climbing at the top and I told her so.
She began lying at first saying she did not mean it quite like that (how then?) ;and soon was talking over me to keep me from saying what I wanted to convey. Amongst other “bull” said I could tell him after all, that she just did not care.
Meanwhile looking at me with a very mean gaze, trying to intimidate me in the worst possible way.

She moved on telling me that I just wanted to make diversion on the agenda (hers more than mine it seemed); and concluded that I was just “making a caprice”
(i am not sure this is english vocabulary; i mean basically when a grown-up tells a child who is asking something and not agreeing with an adult in authority that she, the kid, is just being fussy). Told me that it was not a manner to speak to her. Just as if i was a kid indeed behaving “naughty”! I am 56. Fact is I had been very polite, just asking and explaining how I felt; managed to remain very articulate too. Till she managed later to make me cry.
She succeded thereafter to move with the agenda she holds for me.

But there is no way I can be bullied around like that. What she implied is that it is ruled out that from now on I ask her any question concerning her; that I got to shut up and swallow whatever disturbs me about her. No way.
For a while, back home, I even tried internally to find her some excuses/justifications, telling myself she is like a karate master; she wants me to learn fighting and getting strong; and says I am wasting time wanting to talk about “my feelings”.

I have been raised by extremely violent people, more than fathomable. And developped as a consequence a paralysy when I am agressed. Just unable to react, defend myself, fight back. Tetanized.
Usually it takes me a long time before I realize what happened to me. Eventually I do but by then I have been laying on the ground since quite a while.
So sure I want to get out of that and get more reactive and stronger. And yes I am getting stronger it is obvious too.
But I don’t want to turn into a brutish Rambo neither do I want one for my therapist. Seems to me that the goal is not to become as violent as they have been with me.
And I certainly don’t want to take more violence now from the person I am going to see for help. To be called a whimp which is something she already told me , a little more intelligently indeed but it was exactly what she meant. After that time she had said sorry, that she had not understood correctly the situation, that she had been too rushed. So I forgave her that time.

I am so afraid of her now ; I don’t know yet how to get out of her grip. Afraid of what she could do to me when I tell her i don’t want to see her anymore. Which is now! never again!. It reactivates lots of horrible sceneries.

I know she has been acting very strange at some point ; she was leaving an association where I was consulting her; said they were perverse. She “took ” me with her when she was forbidden to do so. I did not like at all the secrecy I had to keep; yet agreed because I thougt then I had found a good thearpist and did not want to start all over with a new one. She is in total illegality in regard to that. But will I have to threaten her too in order to get free?

Please help me.
For sure you have already as I said at the beginning of this mail but I know it is not over and I am calling for help.

With my very best to you. Gratitude. J.

AM: A person who scares you can never help you, and if she lies she is also dangerous. Why don’t you leave her immediately? You seem to know exactly what you have to do. Why are you hesitating? Is it because you had to learn very early on to live with such a danger and to tolerate it? Today you are free not to tolerate this. Look for another therapist or read more on the website. Above all read my interviews and the FAQ list.