Posted by alexis6 on September 10, 2004, at 21:08:38
Hi there,
I'm new to these boards, and am dying to get opinions/advice on something pretty traumatic that just happened to me. I'm a college student, and had started seeing a psychotherapist for abandonment issues, anxiety, depression and low self esteem...the usual stuff I guess, lol.
I'd been seeing him for over three months, and things didn't seem to be going well (although I was trying to be optimistic). I found him distant and distracted, sort of uber-professional and clinical and I was having a difficult time being open with him. We had just begun CBT for anxiety, when (on the first day of my new term in school, no less) I received a brief email from him stating that he had assessed my progress, decided that he was not the right therapist for me, and had cancelled our session which was supposed to be two days after this. He left me with three names and phone numbers in case I "wished to continue working with another therapist". No more information at all.
I was in complete shock-I had tried to open myself up to this man, and I actually had told him many, many things about past abuse and my feelings about myself that I had never told another person. He was well aware that feelings of rejection and abandonment were one of my main problems-and here I felt that even my own therapist was quite coldly shutting me out.
I was very, very upset and called his cellphone and left, I'm embarrassed to say, a bit of a pathetic message crying and asking him why he was doing this to me and that I didn't think I could start all over with another therapist. He responded with another VERY chilly email, saying he was "sorry I had concerns about his previous email", but that he had spoken with a colleague who advised him that this was the right thing to do.
I had never threatened him, contacted him excessively outside of therapy (I did send him a few emails with information I was uncomfortable revealing in person), missed payments or made sexual advances towards him. I was slightly non-compliant with some of the homework, mostly out of fear of sharing my thoughts, and I didn't want to do EMDR for trauma because it at the time sounded a bit spurious.
I was a wreck all week, this just completely re-traumatized me in the worst way. I couldn't talk to people or attend school, I didn't eat for three days and just cried all the time. I was so upset that he wouldn't even acknowledge that this was painful for me or transition me to a new therapist-or even tell me the reason for this. If I did something, I need to know.
Has anyone ever heard of this happening? He's been in practice for I think about 8 or 9 years, so he's not new to the field, and this just seems so negligent to me. I can't help but think that were I not fortunate enough to have a supportive boyfriend and know enough about psychological practices to understand how wrong this was, I might have tried to hurt myself or at least had my trust in the profession completely destroyed. His emails were so brief and quite cold, and gave me really no information on why I wasn't making progress, why these other therapists (all women, lol) may be better suited for me....If anyone has any advice (should I file a complaint with his regulatory board?) I'd appreciate it so much.
Thanks, Alexis
poster:alexis6
thread:389416
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20040905/msgs/389416.html