Therapist Call Out

 I reached out to the therapist I saw Wednesday June 3 and the two preceding Wednesdays to ask why she berated me so harshly about trying to process abuse perpetrated by my aunt. When I did so, her tone changed from pleasant to nasty, and she lectured me to “stop living in the past!”

It was a one hour long session. The last 20 minutes of this session, I had kind of shut down so she started what she called a “clinical assessment” where she asked me basic questions. When I reached out to her yesterday asking her to clarify why she had gotten so ugly with me, she responded that no such conversation ever happened and that the entire session consisted only of the clinical assessment. Then she told me not to contact her again, because she knew that the assessment was only the last 20 minutes and that her shit parade over me was before that.

She is lying, and only I know that. Because of this, I will never again agree to process my past with a therapist unless the session is being screen recorded. I want to encourage others to always screen record your therapy sessions that are done over zoom, even if you trust your therapist. If any sort of verbal or emotional abuse happens, and you do not have proof, you cannot report it. You “can”, but it’s your word against theirs. They have the power to manipulate your diagnosis, because psychiatric diagnoses aren’t based on any physical, provable markers. If I was to report this interaction, all she needs to do is take a pen, scratch out my PTSD diagnosis and write another one which has delusional thinking as a symptom. Then tell the board, “See, she’s making it up.”  

And I’m not making it up. I will not be ready for therapy again for a long time, and if/when I am, the therapist HAS to be ok with being screen recorded. I have a hunch that 0% of them are ok with it, and that’s fine. That means I never have to go through another one of them and they lose my business. There is a lot of pressure out there to go to therapy, and any time in the past that I’ve said I didn’t want to go, I was pressured even more. 

Being told, “Just don’t focus on the past” is extremely dismissive and a thing people say when trying to get you to go to therapy, ironically. You’ll hear things like, “Don’t listen to people who just say forget about the past, process it in therapy!”  So this is a huge smack in the face. Never again. 

I have a screen recording app called “record it”. There are about 6 or 7 more of them in the app store, mostly free. I highly recommend screen recording these people. I should have this past Wednesday, and I will not ever go again unless I have permission to. 

Marjane Satrapi and Truth in Storytelling

 For a few weeks or a few months now, I’ve been planning to blog about this old interview of Marjane Satrapi talking (especially in the first 60 seconds of that video) about writing something based on your own experiences and it not being 100% true. 

I suppose now would be the time to mention it, because Marjane died yesterday at age 56. It doesn’t state the cause of death other than to say she “died of a broken heart” one year after the death of her husband. 

Americans would never put it that way, but she died in Paris, and dying of a broken heart is real. I can imagine being devastated over the loss of your spouse. Sometimes I’m lying with Kevin and I can’t imagine it. I could see myself being in the danger zone of dying from sadness, but refusing to. 

I liked Persepolis when I read it, and I liked what she had to say in the first 60 seconds of that video even more. When writing something based on your own experiences, like she did with Persepolis and like I’m doing with The Child Advocate, the story will not be written down EXACTLY how it happened as if the camera had been running. This is important for me to remember, since these therapists tried to sabotage me by asking me if I was sure that happened instead of xyz other thing. Liberties have to be taken, or else it doesn’t become a story. Details also have to be changed to protect anonymity of people we worked with. Memories get convoluted over time, not because we are shitty crazy people, but because we are human. 

Rest in Peace, MJ. Thanks for the masterpiece. 

Therapy Update

 About two weeks ago, I made a grave mistake. I decided to give up on therapy- you can read about it here. Then I decided to give it another try. I had three sessions with this last lady. The first two went pretty good!  Then in the third one, when talking about some abuse I suffered at the hands of my aunt, this new therapist started getting verbally nasty with me and reprimanded me to “just not focus on the past!”  She said in a very demeaning tone to only focus on the present, like Buddhists. 

Well, first of all I’m not Buddhist. But that’s not the issue. I was a sobbing mess for the rest of the afternoon. I feel like it’s considered unfathomable to tell anyone who suffered abuse to just not dwell on it and not to focus on the past. And with such a nasty tone, too. If she’d done this to anyone else, it would be considered wrong. 

In the middle of my verbal beating, she paused and asked, “Am I being too strict with you?”  So she knew what she was doing!  In the moment, I had to say, no you aren’t  obviously when you’re being verbally accosted like this, you can’t say “yes you’re being too strict.” You just can’t, because you’re being extremely reduced.  Many advocates of therapy would say I should have spoken up and said yes you are, so she could “know she needed to try a different approach” but how on earth was I supposed to feel strong enough to do that when I was being literally accused of choosing to live in the past, when trying to process abuse I suffered???

I really should have been screen recording the session, but I didn’t even think about it. She was pretty great for my first two sessions. If I had been screen recording the session, I would have proof of the way she just went off on me. Might I add, “the past” is something I thought you were supposed to “dwell on” and “process” in therapy. 

I am absolutely not going to seek out another therapist for real this time. Most, if not all of them, are toxic individuals, and the narrative about therapy that’s out there in society just isn’t reality for me. It puts me in a situation where whatever anxiety I felt before is made worse exponentially. I am not someone who goes and is able to get the help other women get. 

I just need to accept that there is no help for me and move forward with my purpose. Telling someone like me to “just find a new therapist” is toxic and minimizing. I did “find a new therapist” when I made three consecutive weekly appointments with this lady. And she was great at first and then turned on me in the third session. It’s devastating when this happens. 

20 YearsAgo Today

June 4, 2006 was my first day working as a Discovery Guide at the children’s museum. I worked there for several years. I left in order to finish my last semester and summer sessions to get my college degree. I crammed classes into those sessions that wouldn’t have been possible with a job. It was single-handedly the biggest mistake of my life. I threw my life away for someone else’s dream. 

Working there fulfilled the career goal I set at about age 21 to help children, and it was the only thing I ever did that fulfilled that and wasn’t sad. It was joyous. Thousands of kids from the community could come in and learn on their own terms. I facilitated all of that, and if only I could have a dollar for all of the “aha moments” I saw in their faces. 

Four months later, I found out i was pregnant, and two and a half years after that, I started going through a divorce from Anna’s father. The museum and the people there (and also Anna’s daycare at the time) were such a wonderful support system. I never brought Anna to work while I was on the clock, but I brought her there on my off times to play, because I had a free membership. She was obsessed with that place!  When I was about 8 months pregnant, the head of the cleaning ladies there told me, “Whatever you hate the smell of when you’re pregnant, the baby will love .” I said, “I hate the smell of this museum!” And lo and behold she was correct. 

I went through my phone and added whatever pics I could find from there. Some are during busman’s holidays with Anna when I was not working, and some are from different October's, when we were all required to wear costumes for two weeks preceding Halloween. 

Anna in front of a “carry a kid” 

Pillar on the outside- it’s a spoof on the “caryatids” in Ancient Greece. 

This meme reminded me of field trip days. It really was like this n

Me dressed as a chicken for Halloween.  

Me as an ice cream sundae for Halloween. 

Anna with my coworker, dressed as Snow White for Halloween. 

Anna in one of the changing exhibits that I really don’t remember the details of. 

Anna in the eco station. 

Anna with a doll. 

My baby shower in May, 2007. 

Me and Anna in the two and under play exhibit called “totspot”. 

Anna doing a special Christmas activity. I don’t know why she looks perturbed at the presenter!