Greanleaf,

I was horrified about your situation. How humiliating.

That therapist might have been inexperienced; not an excuse, but i'm sure it was HIM not YOU.

Have had my own share of bad experiences with the mental health system-I got PTSD from being treated like a drug seeker at a hospital while having a weekend-long panic attack. Nothing has helped me more than talking to my current therapist about it. Releasing those feelings of being helpless, under the control of others who are harming you.

quote:

It scares me how the mental health industry exercises so much control over people, and people will always listen to a middle-aged professional over a young woman, so this situation could easily happen again. I don't know whether or not to bring this up with the new T, in case he/she thinks I'm suicidal too.

Hope I can reassure you here, that not all therapists and psychiatrists are like this. Although I don't technically self injure (once scratched my arm hard) I talk to mine about (persistant) suicidal thoughts, alcohol use, even transient psychosis-he had never even mentioned that I need to be hospitalized. Even research shows (i believe by Marsha Linehan) that hospitalization doesn't prevent suicides. And because one self-injures, does not necessarily mean that person is going to suicide! I wish I could say that therapist was being cautious and concerned for your safety, but sometimes it's a matter of being scared of a lawsuit-if something did happen (defensive medicine). It's not uncommon, unfortunately.

I know how scary this can be; after your experience, it can re-traumatize if put in that situation again. Totally understand. Hope you can talk about it as long as you need to, and that this therapist will not react; but instead, understand how you are feeling when you self injure... I can talk about my being accused of drug-seeking, as well as wanting to suicide or harm myself in other ways, as much as I want with my therapist, and he is so understanding. Hope yours is too.

(((((hugs)))))

Gggrrrrrrr...hearing about your experience makes me so angry.

Thanks both of you - glad you both have rational T's that actually listen to what you have to say without leaping to conclusions! I'm not surprised hospitalization doesn't prevent suicides - I mean, why would it? Putting a suicidal person in a room for 24 hours under surveillance and then releasing him/her isn't going to change anything really.

If my T had actually been concerned about me, he would have answered my calls/emails instead of ignoring me. I don't even blame the other T's at my university health center who weren't listening to me because I know he lied to them and told them I was suicidal.

Although I'm open to counseling again, I am very wary of the mental health industry. Trusting a T is important, but at the end of the day, it's an artificial relationship based off of money, and I will make sure to be more careful in the future.

((((GREENLEAF))))

What a horrible experience to have gone through. It's no wonder you are angry and wary. Control over your life was taken away from you. I think the counselors at the universities are all working on their degrees still and probably very inexperienced. That was my experience anyway. He may have panicked. But that doesn't excuse what he?? did.

If this reassures you at all, I've told my T a lot that I don't want to live (in the past) and he has never put me in a hospital. Actually, last spring, I begged him to put me in a hospital but he wouldn't do it. Now I'm thankful. But you are going to need to be able to be open with your therapist. This was a traumatizing experience for you. It seems to me that it would be very hard to go to therapy and establish a trusting relationship with someone without talking about this experience. You need to be reassured, hopefully, that the new therapist won't do the same thing.

Do you have the option of looking outside of the university counseling center and going a more experienced therapist? That might be your best option.

An experienced counselor should know when it is a real concern: like if you had a plan, etc. You weren't even talking about that in and of itself.

I don't know where you are located but in the US you can only be hospitalized if you are a threat to someone else or yourself. What that actually means can vary a lot state by state but if you might want to consider seeing a lawyer about it.


HUGS,

Liese

Hi greenleaf, it's nice to meet you.

I also had a terrible experience with my oldT which caused me to have PTSD over the very harmful actions he took in my regard. He abruptly terminated me and then when I fell apart (outside his office in my car) he approached me while I was in agonizing grief over what he just did and decided I was suicidal and called the police on me!

They forced me to go to the hospital crisis center for evaluation even though by that time I had stopped crying, swore I was not suicidal only in horrible grief and pain, and didn't need to be there. My oldT did not have either the guts to follow through and commit me or just decided that he made an awful error in judgement but in any case they made me "promise" not to harm myself and they let me go. There was no reason to keep me but it caused me lasting damage having that experience and almost 1.5 years later I am still recovering from it.

I do suggest you need to work this out with another therapist and I encourage you to find a therapist who has experience with patients with prior treatment failures. My current T has worked with others not only with prior treatment failures (which could mean THEY left the prior T, or the other Ts treatement was not effective, etc.) but also people like me who had traumatic experiences due to unethical or inappropriate behavior by a former T.

I do hope you can find someone to help you with this. It's a hard thing to come back from and it definitely screws up your ability to trust.

Stay well
TN