New low for me , ghosted by my therapist

[HowMuchShouldBePaid]

Ive had a short course of therapy (12 sessions) 2nd time ive seen this particular therapist.

On our last session he said he didn't have any more room to see me and was fully booked untill next year. Offered links to other local therapists.

I have emailed twice 2 Weeks ago, 4 weeks ago) asking if he would reserve space for next year. No response.

I emailed from another account and got a response within 12,hours . Offering a trail session etc etc

I was going to therapy due to low self esteem and my "voice not being heard". ,seems even my therapist can ignore my voice 😔

Why ghost me , that just seems really unprofessional.

FFS I'm going to need therapy for my therapy !!

Are you female?
Find a female therapist.
In my experience they’ve far more empathetic.
You need empathy. ❤️

Sorry it's late. I just remembered you said you paid!! Ignore the NHS bit!

I get your frustration

It can take a lot of time and effort to find a psychologist that's right for you and it takes time (and money) to establish a new therapy relationship - for the therapist to have enough information about you to be able to provide the right kind of help.

If he'd been open and honest about what he didn't want to continue to be your therapist you might be better informed on how to move forward in terms of therapy.

It's likely that either he felt he wasn't the best fit for you going forward or that professionally it was the ethical thing to do or something more personal. But whatever the reason it's frustrating he chose to mislead you on why he wouldn't accept a booking.

I hope your next therapist is better equipped to help you.

OP I’m sorry to say this but I suspect you may have some issues with communication. I only say this as another poster referenced your previous threads, and so when I looked at them it seems you sometimes have trouble with your perception vs others and miscommunication.

Even from reading all your posts on this thread, there’s been some things that didn’t make sense to me, like where you referenced a strange ending with another therapist which was later resolved, but when someone asked about it you just said they retired.

This is not a dig or an insult, just pointing out that communication might be an issue for you in general which must make things quite tough. Maybe your therapist thought they were clear with you, but they weren’t.

Either way, moving on seems like a good idea. Why not try a monthly session with someone, rather than a solid block with a long gap? The consistency could help.

I am stunned by the hard time some people are giving you on this thread OP. For what it’s worth, I think you’ve got a really healthy and appropriate grasp of the therapeutic relationship and your needs. I guess it’s possible that your emails have accidentally gone into junk or something like that, but the fact that he’s told you he has no capacity but is willing to take on somebody new tells me that he is avoiding saying something to you. is it possible he might be attracted to you or something like that, his comment about you being important… nobody deserves to be treated like that by a therapist if he’s done it on purpose. bollocks to anyone telling you you’re stalking him or you’re overly attached, absolutely ridiculous.
I know a lot of therapists irl and my god they are a mixed bunch, including some of the most fucked up people I know who conspicuously cannot do relationships, I guess they are drawn to it for this reason. You get people that are not very good at their jobs in all walks of life don’t you. I am hopeful on your behalf that somehow this is a miscommunication because I can imagine it will have soured the work you did together, when you decide to start working again, might be really healthy just to go in and talk about this at the start, make sure you’ve got someone who is able to be direct and adult with you

My previous therapy was due to end (12 session block) and I wasn't going to have anymore as the therapist was retiring. Simultaneously , the last session was also not the best and a final "extra" session cleared up any confusions.

So both of my statements were true

Possibly for clarity , I did not book anymore sessions as they were retiring

OP, not sure if it was asked already but was that therapist HCPC and BPS registered?

Misunderstandings happen he was professional enough to talk you through it. I would look for another older mature therapist man or woman who will listen to you and want to help.

Yes of course he should have.

There are a lot of bad therapists around - the fact that yours behaved in the way that he did is absolutely not your fault or a reflection on you.

I haven’t read the full thread but in your position I would find someone better.

OP, he was completely unprofessional and like others, I think you should consider reporting him to the BACP. This is him, not you. (Some therapists are great. Some are batshit.)

Sorry you are being gaslit by some posters who seem to like to kick people when they're down.

Very good luck to you for the future, and I agree that an ASD/ADHD investigation might prove enlightening and helpful as to some of the things you feel.

PGDip,UKCP,BACP,BPC

You need to move on and focus on getting a new therapist to help you rather getting hung up on your x-. Therapist.
Hanging out on forums will not help get over the problem you need therapy for.

Many thanks to it all the (mostly) helpful posters.

I will look for other therapists / support mechanisms.

Thank you all

I know it’s hard but really you’ve hurt yourself by doing the investigative work. the blunt truth is you aren’t owed the truth and an explanation of his true reasons for not wanting to see you again. It could be personal for him and by not sharing it he’s made it clear that he does not want to share it. Therapists are human. Sometimes therapists become personally triggered by what their patient starts to discuss in therapy, because it may remind them of their own ongoing trauma or something their own family members going through etc. Therapists have trauma and relationships and phobias they deal with too. He doesn’t owe you an insight into his personal life. He did the professional thing by explaining to you that he wouldn’t be able to see you again and asking you to move on. Maybe when he said he wouldn’t have availability he meant emotional availability. I mean this with love because you obviously are struggling, and taking it personal. It is not personal but you need to accept that he has the right to consent in the therapist relationship and for whatever reason he doesn’t want to see you again.

It sounds as though the therapist did not handle the situation correctly. Instead of telling you directly, he doesn't feel it is appropriate to continue working with you, he lied. That being said, I do think it is healthy you contacted him under a fake account.

Agreed he has been unprofessional, leave a shite review.

I’m sorry but there’s no way a complaint would be taken seriously. I work as somewhat of a therapist too. We are all humans. We have our own personal flaws and traumas. We have the right to withdraw treatment if we feel we are getting too attached, getting too triggered, getting too irritated, getting our own traumas activated by a patient. It is definitely NOT professional to tell a vulnerable patient this truth ‘you are reminding me of my own abuse’ - because that is too personal and we are not supposed to burden them with our own trauma. It is 100% advised and appropriate to tell a patient you do not have capacity to see them anymore (this is not even a full lie as it can mean emotional capacity.) he has behaved professionally.

I can understand how you feel. You put yourself in a very difficult position by letting yourself be vulnerable with a figure who is meant to be trust worthy and above all, professional. He has let you down and proven that - like in every other single profession - he is human. That’s not an excuse, but I think most ppl take it as read that certain professions have these amazingly high standards and are infallible.

It’s comforting to us, even though we know of course that they are susceptible to the same vices and negative behaviours as the rest of us - look at the horrifying stories about the priesthood, teachers, firefighters, doctors, the police….!

He was in a difficult position because he didn’t want his decision to discontinue your sessions to have any more of a detrimental impact on you than it was obviously going to. But he has inadvertently made it worse by taking ‘the cowards way out’ and lying to you - and worse than that, being caught out in the lie. He was looking for damage control but it has backfired quite substantially.

I would leave it at that now and chalk this up to life experience and a narrow escape - be grateful you only paid for a couple of sessions with him, as he is clearly not the right therapist for you.

Don’t let this put you off seeking help
elsewhere, but perhaps be more wary of the fact that even though these people have a professional title, it doesn’t mean they are infallible robots.

However, some are arguably more professional than others.

Good luck finding the right one for you, I’m sure you will 💐

I obviously can't tell as I didn't hear the interaction, but if you think you might have ASD, I wonder if it was an NT (neurotypical) to ASD communication failure.

It's possible that he said "I won't have any space till the new year, I recommend you see other therapists" in a very flat discouraging tone, that a neurotypical would interpret as "I don't want to do more sessions with you." Sometimes for NT people this is a way of softening an unpleasant message because then the recipient has a choice, they can either "save face" by pretending to believe the literal words, or they can choose to respond to the real meaning, and ask why the therapist doesn't want more sessions.

However, an ASD person might take it literally, without adding an interpretation based on facial expression and vocal tone, and would therefore receive incorrect information.

Given that he knew you interpret things in a black and white way, I think it's his responsibility to make sure he communicates on an asd-friendly way - as you say, it's not fair to expect you to read between the lines. But if he is unskilled at communicating with ASD people, he might feel that he has been clear.

If the above seems to be true, I'm sorry, it's a painful thing to experience. It reinforces that he is a bad therapist for people with ASD and you'll be better off with someone else.

I don't know how therapists work but because therapy is so personal to us we can forget this is just business for them and you were just another client with a 12 week session that needed to be completed. He did it and that's it. Anyone wanting extra is probably not a priority as the essential part was done. In the fake account he thought this was a new client and felt he had to respond (as most businesses prioritise new customers). I may be completely wrong but might be a possible alternative scenario.

I had one that did that @HowMuchShouldBePaid , there are good and bad therapists around. When you feel ready, you could shop around for a new one. x
It's not personal he might like or dislike dealing with certain issues. My one had worked in eating disorders in the past and I think was bored of that. Once I brought that up, she started becoming rude in session and then ditched me.

It's not like they don't get paid enough to put up with us, you'dve thought.

He did the professional thing by explaining to you that he wouldn’t be able to see you again and asking you to move on.

But that isn't what he did .

Professional : "i am unable to carry on this work with you , I can not divulge why, here is a list of other good therapists"

Un professional:

" I can't book any more sessions I am booked. Up , I won't have any space untill next year "

"Please can you book space for me next year"

Tumble weed

I just clicked on See all to read all OP's posts.

There were 60 of them when I looked, within a space of three hours or so. A post at least once every three or four minutes. Remarkable!

For someone who says they find it difficult to be seen or heard, OP, you have a very clear and determined voice. You argue your own corner firmly, not apparently listening or considering what well-meaning people have suggested. You seem to have taken offence or objected to some quite sensible observations. Perhaps you could use this evening on MN as a therapy session. What might you learn from it?

Have you heard of Rejection Sensitivity Dysphoria, OP? It tends to affect people with ADHD and ASD. Basically it means what it says on the tin — that they perceive rejection where possibly others wouldn't, and feel it more keenly than those who are NT.

FWIW I think your therapist has behaved unprofessionally. He could have said that he has come to the conclusion, after 24 sessions, that he's not the best person to work with you or he doesn't have the skills required to help you with your issue. But maybe however he tried to end the relationship you would have found it painful.

Life isn't black and white. People don't always get things right. Sometimes even people who are supposed to know what they're doing handle things badly. That's how I would choose to view what's happened here. The relationship with him is over. There is only so long you can usefully spend complaining about him and focussing on his failings. He's just a fallible human being, like the rest of us.

I hope that shortly you'll find time to try again and risk failing again with a new therapist. Because that's what it's about — trying, learning a bit more, thinking a bit further, struggling again and again and with luck getting just a little bit wiser and more sorted with each struggle session.

It doesn’t happen regularly but over the course of an entire career it’s of course likely that we need to cease working with certain clients. Otherwise we might spend our whole working lives with clients we don’t want to see. Sometimes the real reason why we don’t want to work with them anymore is not a good thing to share so we keep that private and say we are fully booked. This is the same as any profession. My partner is a personal trainer- does he have to train anyone who wants to be trained by him, even if they want to be in his life for years and make him regularly dread his day? I’m sure OP didn’t do anything awful but the point I’m trying to make is Of course we all have a right to manage our own work day and stop seeing people we don’t want to see, to improve our work wellbeing