So I haven’t posted in a while about how much I love my therapist. There have been some reasons for this. A few months ago she had some personal medical stuff happen and she went on hiatus to deal with stuff. Fair enough. When she came back she started behaving… oddly. Our sessions started involving a lot of personal details about her life. It started feeling more like she wanted to bond than be my therapist. This was a gradual process and for a while I wasn’t sure if I was overreacting or if things were starting to get way too friendly.
A few weeks (months? my time sense is toast) ago I noticed that almost half of our session was spent with her telling me how much she and I are alike in great detail and telling me about how we have overcome the same things in our lives and how special we are. Riiiiiiiight. Then I had the prelabor issue and I canceled sessions for a while because I was afraid of driving to Oakland. During this period I talked to a few people and decided that no really, she was being completely inappropriate. After I was on bedrest for a bit she offered to drive down and do a session in my house. I figured that I needed to talk to her about the weird boundary stuff anyway so sure. Only she just couldn’t seem to get here. She called 30 minutes before the session was to begin and told me that she was getting a late start because she had been having anxiety issues and her current med cocktail makes it unsafe to drive when she is freaking out like that. I said that we should maybe cancel because I had another appointment after her with not a lot of wiggle room. She indicated that she was already on the road, but she had stopped on the way and she could make it in time. She was pretty aggressive about still wanting to come down. So I agreed hesitantly and sat and waited. At 15 minutes past the start time she sent me a text message saying she was lost but almost here. When we got to the point where I needed to leave in 15 minutes I sent her a text message saying that I needed to leave soon. She called me and said that she understood that I needed to leave and that being punctual is very important to me. She then said she was very sad because she had really wanted to at least see my house and touch base with me–she hadn’t been planning to charge me for the session anyway. *blink* ? What? This was odd. I told her to just turn around because I was going to head out.
Then she sent out an email to all her clients saying that she needed people to pay in cash for a while due to an issue in her personal life. Well that’s odd…
I agreed to one phone session after that, but there was a weird connection and she lost phone connectivity (battery?) and so she didn’t charge me for that. Then I got to the point where I was just not up for the continued weirdness and I told her that I was going to be opting out of therapy for a while because I didn’t really want to be driving to Oakland and I thought I was doing pretty well anyway. She reluctantly agreed to this.
Then tonight she called me. She has missed me and wanted to know what was going on with me and why I haven’t called her. I was very very clear on my boundaries and told her that I’m doing fine and if I want to see her again I will call. Noah couldn’t figure out who I was talking to–he thought it sounded like my conversations with Rebecca when I’m being extremely clear on what I am interested in talking about. 🙂 She wanted to be sure that I would let her know when the baby comes and that it will mean a lot to her. She stressed a few times that if I want to talk on the phone because I’m processing anything she is totally up for that and she won’t charge me at all. Or if I am able to come up and see her that she won’t mind me feeding the baby at all. I’m starting to feel pretty freaked out. I left the phone call by saying that I was feeling like maybe I wouldn’t need therapy anytime soon but if I decide I need to see her I’ll let her know. That was probably too ambiguous. I’ve been seeing her for years. The next time she calls I’m going to need to tell her to stop calling and that feels so very uncomfortable.
I wish she hadn’t freaked out on me. My therapist is not supposed to be a source of freakin conflict.
you know….
not to say ‘oh, I’ve been there’….but that reminds me of the time my landlady accidentally peed on my bed.
She is crossing boundaries that should be painfully obvious to most therapists…
I hope this resolves whichever way you want.
Uhm, I have to ask. How does an adult accidentally pee on someone else’s bed?
err….by locking themselves out of the house after becoming very reacquainted with a massive drinking problem…and then mistaking my room for hers. and then resisting while I spent the next hour or so trying to get her out of my room. etc. It was all sorts of no good.
yah….
Hugely, hugely inappropriate. You need to be clear that you’re ending therapy, and if she continues to pursue you, you need to report her. Countertransference is dangerous stuff, and if she isn’t in control of herself it’s bad for her and bad for you.
Um, that’s not supposed to happen.
so so so NOT appropriate. If she’s not careful, her license is going to end up being reviewed and possibly revoked. Seriously.
that’s gotta feel weird for you. doing that shit to your clients can really fuck with them. oops, i’m swearing a lot. that must mean i’m seriously annoyed.
*hugs*
? Maybe it has been – what’s the deal with cash payments?
Sounds truly out of wack, trust your sensors…. It is too bad though, I’m sure having that resource disrupted is difficult.
Caveat: this is off an LJ, and thus never all-inclusive.
HOWEVER- looking at that list, no matter how I slice it or dice it, it stinks like four month old shark.
Your therapist does not sound at all well, and while reporting her might not be the “nicest” thing to do, it might be what she needs.
To be honest, between the confusion, the sudden clingyness and the need for cash, it sounds like a drug problem to me. God, I hope I’m wrong on that!
Yeah – some of the things just look like ordinary freaking out, but some of those things really sound like “drug problem”.
It’s so hard to find a therapist you like, I’m sorry yours is being weird…..
Wow. Just WOW. If my therapist started behaving that way, I would certainly freak out! You seem to be handling the situation quite well, actually, as much as it sucks to lose a “good” therapist. Just … WOW.
(On another note, and this may be unimportant, but I wanted to share, anyway – I usually read my blogs via Google reader, and evidently “friends only” LJ posts don’t show up there! Hence my missing this post until now when I happened upon my actual “Friends” page. I’ve just decided to change the way I read my friends’ LJ entries. LOL)
Tom told me a little about this story… that is so totally f-ed up. Though I didn’t think of it, I’m inclined to agree with the people who cited “drug problem.”
Also, is it normal for a therapist to be on psych drugs themselves? I would feel so overly uncomfortable with that. I’m pretty anti-drug anyway, but if my therapist couldn’t get along without them, I’d have serious doubts about them doing much for me… (this is all hypothetical, because the one time I sought therapist help, I was totally unimpressed with what they had to offer and went back to my usual sources of sorting things out).