My psychotherapist was a creep

He probably still is.

Feb 04, 2025

After three and a half years of treatment, 324 sessions, just under $50,000 in fees, and countless pleas from friends, family, and other mental health professionals to end things, I told my psychotherapist we were through.

I handed him his final check, walked out of his dilapidated office building with the filthy plastic orange “Therapy Suites for Rent” banner drooped over the entrance, and drove away sobbing. I was humiliated and heartbroken, but relieved that I had finally woken up to the truth about why I’d been unable to move past years of depression and panic. My psychotherapist had been using and abusing me for years. I was broke and broken, but at least I was finally free.

I sought psychotherapy treatment during a severe depressive episode. Three and a half years later, we were spending my twice-a-week sessions sitting on the floor together holding hands while he asked me to describe my sexual fantasies about him in graphic detail. He told me this was entirely for my benefit, after all, he had been the person to help me “feel my body” in ways that I hadn’t been able to before.

I had told him over and over again that he was hurting me. He told me I was afraid to let myself feel good and that I just wanted to be miserable. He said I was sabotaging myself.

“You’re not homeless. You’re not hungry. You’re not selling your body for drugs. With a history like yours, you could be lying in a gutter somewhere. You need to go to gratitude,” he said.

Sometimes when I think about all of the sexually inappropriate elements of our therapy, I forget how straight up cruel he was about everything else. He hammered away at me sessions after session about how my depression and panic were my fault because of my refusal to let myself feel good. Once he told me he had the urge to grab my shoulders and shake me because he was so frustrated with me. I always felt terrible about disappointing him.

My life savings was gone and I was deep in debt. I was suffering from panic attacks that lasted 8 hours a day. I was drinking heavily and looking to buy a gun to kill myself. Six months after I got away from him, I hired a lawyer who filed a civil suit on my behalf claiming Professional Negligence of a Therapist, Intentional Infliction of Emotional Distress, Breach of Fiduciary Trust, and Sexual Harassment.

I had an Erin Brockovich-style fantasy of what the legal fight would look like. My lawyers would expose his exploitation. I would have my day in court to look him in the eye and speak my truth. I would win enough money to start my life over. I would get his license revoked. I would become a fearless advocate for victims of psychotherapist abuse and tell my story everywhere.

It did not go that way.

Why am I telling you this now? I’ve actually been trying to tell the whole world about it for years.

Over the past few years, I have gotten wildly close to getting my psychotherapist abuse story told on some of the most prestigious, widely read outlets in the world. I thought that the only way people would believe my story would be for a highly-respected news outlet to publish it on their platform.

Over the decade that this story unfolded, I have hoped endlessly to make peace with what happened to me and what continues to happen to vulnerable people who are abused by psychotherapists. It seems too awful to be true. If you were like me, your psychotherapist was or is probably one of the most important people in your life.

Imagine finding out, one day, that all the time you’ve been seeing that person, he or she never had your best interests at heart. Imagine realizing that your psychotherapist manipulated you for money, power, and self-gratification every time you saw them.

What if you found out the person to whom you had revealed your every vulnerability was not a good person at all?

Terrifying, right?

This is a Substack about the worst thing that’s ever happened to me. It’s a pretty good story.

I’ll be posting to this Substack at least once a week explaining the details of how I got sucked into years of darkness with an abusive psychotherapist (and his friends!) I’ll tell you about the chaotic, soul-crushing and, at times, legitimately funny lawsuit that followed. I’ll tell you what it’s like to report your psychotherapist to his licensing board.

And if you subscribe, you’ll eventually get to the part of the story explains what’s happening in this photo: