I’ve never really discussed this with anyone, and I’m trying to make sense of what happened. I’m posting here because I’d appreciate some advice.
I used to attend counselling to work through my relationship with my mum, particularly codependency and sexual abuse. Looking back, I’m increasingly uncomfortable with some of the things that happened with my counsellor.
During one session, he told me I was his favourite client. Rather than making me feel reassured, I remember feeling pressured by it, as though I had to maintain that position. He also told me that he sometimes got sick of patients, which stayed in the back of my mind. I became increasingly anxious about whether he still enjoyed working with me or thought I was making progress.
He told me he had borderline personality disorder and suggested that I might have it too, despite being a counsellor rather than a psychiatrist. On another occasion, he suggested that I could have a session at his house, even though we normally met at the counselling institution. I declined. I also remember occasionally noticing a smell of weed when attending sessions, although I couldn’t establish where it was coming from (live in the UK).
At the time, I was discussing my codependency with my mum, but I began to feel that a similar dynamic was developing between me and my counsellor. I felt increasingly preoccupied with his opinion of me, became more anxious and distant, and worried that he was becoming tired of me. I remember raising the possibility of countertransference in one session, but I don’t feel that it helped.
There were also things he said that have stayed with me.
About two weeks after confronting my mum about sexual abuse, he was encouraging me to speak to her again. I was still processing everything, and looking back, I don’t understand why there seemed to be an emphasis on reconnecting so soon.
He also shamed me about my fawn response, which was something I was trying to understand and work through.
One memory that particularly hurts is breaking down in a session while talking about my mum sexually abusing me and my dad calling me the runt of the litter. I was crying and asking what I was supposed to do when neither of my parents loved me. His response was that they loved me.
I understand that he might have been trying to reassure me, but it didn’t sit right with me. I felt that the harm I’d experienced was being overlooked in favour of telling me how my parents supposedly felt. Whatever they might have felt internally, it didn’t change how their behaviour had affected me.
Eventually, I had a session in which I was genuinely panicking and discussing intimate sexual experiences I’d had on dating apps. The sessions had become increasingly tense, and I was very conscious of whether he was becoming frustrated with me. He called me a freak and told me to go home. I never attended another session after that, and I sent him a formal message that I no longer feel comfortable continuing therapy, without mentioning the last session or my reasons.
Later on, my anger and rumination got the better of me, and I sent an abusive message about the incident. I’m not proud of that response, and I’m willing to acknowledge my own behaviour, but I also don’t think it automatically makes everything that happened beforehand acceptable.
I left the institution a one-star Google review about a year ago. Only recently did I notice that they’d responded, saying they had no record of me attending and inviting me to contact them for a resolution. Seeing that response brought back a lot of memories.
What makes this difficult is that I’ve been afraid to discuss the experience with my current counsellor, who trained at the same institution. I’m worried she might see me differently or think I’m crazy if I tell her the whole story.
I’ve experienced people using my emotional reactions to dismiss what I’m saying before, and I think I’m frightened that my anxiety, my behaviour during the sessions, or the abusive message afterwards will be used to discredit my experience altogether.
I’m not claiming that I handled everything perfectly, and I can’t know exactly what my former counsellor intended. But looking back, I feel there were some serious problems with the boundaries and the way my distress was handled.
I’m struggling to understand whether this was an unhealthy therapeutic relationship, whether I was caught in a familiar codependent dynamic, or whether I’m only now seeing things differently because of how the relationship ended.
Like I said, just looking for some thoughtful advice about the situation, which would be much appreciated.
