While going to therapy can be a very vulnerable experience, it's important for therapists to make their clients feel comfortable during their sessions. Unfortunately, when Reddit user u/straw_hat95 asked: "What's something a therapist said or did that made you stop seeing them immediately?" a lot of people shared their troubling experiences with unprofessional therapists. Here's what they had to say below:
It's important to mention that while the below people have had issues with certain therapists, not all therapists act this way, and, in fact, can provide help for various situations and reasons.
If you're in need of talking to a mental health professional, the National Alliance on Mental Illness helpline is 1-888-950-6264 (NAMI) and provides information and referral services; GoodTherapy.org is an association of mental health professionals from more than 25 countries who support efforts to reduce harm in therapy.
1. "He answered a text while I was talking. Ironically, something I struggled with at the time was not feeling heard."
2. "They told me I had dissociative identity disorder, because I said I felt like I became different people around different people. Looking back, I was talking about masking, but she jumped to multiple personalities."
"The same thing happened to me. I was talking about something challenging, and the topic switched to something easier, and my tone changed, and she was like, 'Can you tell your voice is different? Does that happen a lot?' and she started asking me DID things, and I was like: Bro, we were talking about trauma and then talking about (something happy, I don't remember). It's reasonable for my voice inflection to change."
3. "He kept falling asleep during my session. At one point, he dropped his pen. LOL."
4. "She said I threw myself at men. I had been single for seven years, not even any dates, by choice. And I hadn’t talked about any of my prior relationships with her, just childhood abuse by my father. I emailed her and told her I was ending therapy with her (I was very polite despite being extremely offended by her accusation), and instead of taking it as it was over, she repeatedly called my place of work over the course of the next couple of days. I never answered her calls and found her calling weird and inappropriate on top of what she said about me."
5. "He was extremely unprofessional, and in our second session, gossiped about a local patient of his without saying their name, but said their profession and their psychological issue, and it was really damning. I knew who it was from the gossip, and I was horrified, never went back to him, and reported him to the licensing board."
6. "When I was a kid, I had a therapist who told my parents in front of me that everything I had been saying about my pretty severe mental health problems was a lie. He also fell asleep during a session — also in front of my parents. But I was just a kid, so I wasn't really allowed to just stop seeing him."
7. "First visit: 'What are your problems?' I proceeded to talk about my problems. 'I don't hear you talking about solutions, only problems.' I said, 'That's what you asked me to do.' 'Now you're making excuses to blame someone else.' I noped right out of there."
8. "She just straight up wouldn't believe me. I've been through some weird stuff, and I understand that's not something one hears every day — but why would I go to therapy just to lie?"
9. "Every session: You're valid! You're valid! You're valid!!"
10. "I saw a therapist when I was 21 who was probably in his 50s. In what ended up being our last session, he asked me, out of nowhere, to tell him what my first sexual experience was like, and when I tried to brush it off, he said he couldn’t help me unless he had more details. He was a psychoanalyst and the only one I’ve ever seen — and if he was really Freudian, then maybe he would've put a lot of emphasis on the sexual, but it was not for me as a fairly sheltered at the time 21-year-old woman."
11. "I was at marriage counseling and rubbed my nose from the outside as it was itching. The therapist stopped talking and quickly said, 'What? What was that? What’s going on?' I told her I might have allergies and that I just rubbed my nose. She paused for a cold 5–10 seconds like she was trying to process what happened, and it reminded me of someone with dementia. I went through two sessions with that lady and never got to share why I was having trust issues as she seemed to just assume that I had done something wrong in the marriage and would go off on these tangents about trust and gratitude in a relationship. After the nose thing, we agreed not to go back to her."
12. "He told me to have kids right after I told him I wasn’t ready and didn’t want to bring a kid into this world while my relationship with my husband was going through a rough path. But to him (the therapist), kids would solve every marriage’s problems, and I just didn’t know until I had one. So nope. See you never!"
13. "I was attempting to process the flashbacks that I was having, and she interrupted me to say: 'Why are you telling me this? What is the purpose of you speaking about this?' In the coldest, most condescending tone."
14. "This might sound dumb, but I was seeing a therapist after my mom was diagnosed with terminal cancer, and I was having a hard time grasping her death and the limited time I not only had with her but also the limited time I personally had on earth. The first guy I saw literally said, 'You just have to accept it.' And then was like, 'I don’t understand why you’re crying. It happens to everyone.' I never went to another meeting."
15. "I went to therapy with my husband for his controlling behaviors, and she told me they weren’t a big deal. My husband, of course, agreed with her and tried to use it as justification, so I packed my bags. He backtracked and found a new therapist. The therapist held him accountable but was fair to both of us. And now my husband doesn’t do that shit anymore."
16. "'Whenever you feel angry or hurt, you can just put that feeling away in a box, and you don't open it again.' Well, fuck me — that's what I was already doing!"
17. "I saw her several times, and we decided it was time to bring my husband to the next session. Her eyes widened on seeing him, and [she] started flirting. I got up, and we left after I told her we wouldn't be back."
