AMA Therapist became my best friend UPDATE

[YouWereRightIWasWrong]

Original post

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/AMA/4983805-my-therapist-became-my-best-friend

it’s all fallen apart
she began withdrawing, I became more needy
hated myself for being like this.
power imbalance never adjusted (as everyone said before)
I think she actually enjoyed the control
so I stepped back and told her it was too stressful for me
she was stone cold. She literally said “I’m sorry you feel that way”. Instantly stepped into therapist mode. All connection gone. It was really quite guy on smacking just how she could change.

feeling weird but not bereft as I was expecting. It was never a friendship

she helped me enormously as a therapist during a challenging period of my life, so my mantra is going to be that I’ll appreciate what it gave me but release what it never was or ever be.

so to those of you who “told me so” on the other thread. Yes - you were 100% right. And to anyone else thinking of doing this then please don’t.

I’m so sorry you’ve been through this OP, it’s incredibly harmful. Do you think you have it in you to report her to her governing body (assuming she has one) to help prevent harm to future clients?
And I hope you are able to trust another therapist in the future, this behaviour is vanishingly rare in the profession and it makes me very angry

Ex therapist here. This is why your clients, no matter how much you like them as humans, should never become your friends. I'm sorry her boundaries were so shit.

I cannot report her. I am an adult and chose and probably encouraged the friendship. She would lose a lot and she was actually a very helpful therapist.

I was very surprised however that we didn’t ever discuss the transition. It was literally last therapy session then we communicated as friends. I never wanted to bring it up in case she ended the friendship.

She was in a position of power over you. You were the vunerable client and she was the professsional of course you can report her.

I wasn’t really in a vulnerable position when we became friends. I didn’t need therapy at that point.

it would financially screw her and I don’t want that. Despite how she’s behaved at the end she is a kind person and I don’t want to go through a complaints process. I will find it very stressful and I do t have the energy. I’m also autistic so it will require human interactions that I’m not comfortable with.

@YouWereRightIWasWrong I'm sorry but a "helpful therapist" does not leap straight into friendship with a client after 2 years without any discussion of how the change in relationship might affect you both. I read some of your previous thread. I think you may be blind to the harm this person has done you.

BACP guidelines state to exercise caution - it's not practical to ban any kind of different post therapy relationships, of course. But it does not seem that caution was exercised here at all. BACP also suggest that you should be at least 2 years post therapy ending before deciding to pursue a personal relationship.

She’s not a member of BACP.

You were vunerable to her because she knows your inner most thought. You don’t need to report her but I think it’s important for you to understand she is in the wrong and she will know that.

I am also autistic, btw. If you are unable to go through a complaints process because you are unable to manage the human interactions it involves, then you are vulnerable and she DEFINITELY had no business blurring the boundaries and forming a friendship with you. I would also presume she had a good idea, knowing you as a therapist would, that you would be unlikely to complain if it all went tits up. Even what you said about you being afraid to bring it up after you stayed in touch shows that this has never, ever been an equal friendship.

What she has done makes me very, very angry. It is possible she is a good person who has made a very bad error of judgement, but unfortunately, a lot of these sorts of therapists who have terrible boundaries repeatedly do this type of thing and don't learn from it, unless they are forced to confront it.

I need to know she was wrong. Her final texts were so cold. In a way it’s helped as my decision to step back was clearly correct but for last 6+ months she has clearly been withdrawing, but denying it. I wish she’d had the guts to tell me before.

I don’t have many friends. But I do have a lovely husband. But posting here is my only opportunity to discuss.

I just read your linked post. It was very wrong of her to befriend you and obviously this has now borne out in a bad way for you.

i had therapy recently for a year. I really liked my therapist as well, we had a lot in common - when I talked about my childhood etc she had experienced the same thing (it wasn’t abuse just a sad life experience) Don’t want to say here - you never know who reads mumsnet - but when I was starting to feel ‘we’d be great friends if she wasn’t my therapist’ - it was time to say bye bye. For me at the end it was like having a chat with a friend as we’d worked through the issues I had. I did miss the sessions for a bit but thankfully I have good friends so talked to them instead.

I can function in every day life but in past two years I’ve just been through the most brutal work process (I was bullied out of company) and - whilst probs ly sounding pathetic - if I go through a complaints process it will trigger all the awful stuff I’ve been through and not resolved.

I don’t think she told anyone IRL - including her husband - about how she met me. So I guess she doesn’t have anyone to talk about it either as I hardly imagine she’ll be discussing it in a supervision. So I hope she has some regret and realisation she has done damage.