After seeing my psychiatrist for several years, he decided to 'change the treatment.' What that meant was that suddenly we were to forget the past four years and behave like strangers with each other. I tried to please him and suffered terribly doing it. I told him that he was treating (a word that both people should come to agreement about)me in a way that was tremendously painful to me, abusive even and he rebutted that by saying it was only my illness,the sick part of me that made me see perceive things that way. That in fact, he was treating me just fine. Further, because I was used to being abused (childhood), when this man refused to look at his own behavior and blamed me instead I accepted it. He wouldn't even allow that what I felt was real and true, labeling it some dissociated part or something like that. Now five years later, it is clear to me that he was
My own story is probably typical enough to forego telling most of it, but I have a couple of things I'd like to say.
Now, the tragic thing about that was that I came to him with a history of being dissociative, that is to say cut off from what I felt and never having had it attended to anyway.
So if he dropped a rock on my foot and I cried and he said Stop, it doesn't hurt, I would believe him rather than trust my own perception.
I bore this man's narcissistic disorder until I thought I would die. When I finally broke down, he became even more aggressive and confrontational. I remember standing in the middle of the room, sobbing and asking "Why are you doing this?" And he smiled. He really did. To be sure you could, if your heart was made of tin, twist things round to be a sort of repetition of childhood. Which is what he did in a way. But people who are suited to play the part of my avenging and moralistically psychotic mother,hell bent on destroying me should not be practicing psychiatry.
He attacked me emotinally for months while I tried to be good. I sort of trailed away after he announced,
" Everything I ever told you was a lie."
Many, many people will blame themselves before they'll blame their therapist when things go wrong. That kind of thinking is why half of us are there and even the most sophisticated patients want to believe their therapist would never harm them. I believed I'd found a safe place.
terribly angry about something and at the same time desperately clinging to his self-image of the good guy, the help...To dieentangle our relationship in a way that allowed me to retain my hardwon dignity, credibility and trust in the world would have compromised his self-image irretrievably.
As he said at the time, one of us has to take the fall. I never thought it would be me.
I don't know how to safeguard against patient abuse but one place to consider starting is by carefully screening people who wish to be therapists. Those with Narcissistic disorders that by definition preclude them from true caring should be prohibited from practicing.
I realize that, at least as far as psychiatrists go, this might eliminate a large number but it is the only way to protect vulnerable clients who will otherwise be torn apart by the kind of self protective, vicious behavior these people exhibit when their image is threatened.
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