I had a truly horrendous experience with relate. Basically the counsellor allowed herself to be H’s tool in his quest to ‘prove’ I’m awful and wrong. She ignored anything I told her in our individual session (like the fact he was financially abusing me!) and overtly enabled him to further abuse me through therapy. In the final session, she was genuinely unacceptable. It was on zoom. I asked for the session to stop. She would not stop it. I walked out of the room and she continued with him (in the living room on zoom). I told her explicitly that I wanted the session to end and if they wanted some private session to collude against me (which is exactly what they were doing) they could book one entirely separately. She insisted on continuing. It was awful.
Turns out, he had a very similar experience of relate with his first wife. The counsellor sided with him and she ended up walking out (although it wasn’t on zoom so she could literally leave the building). Then the counsellor reinforced H’s view that the wife was the villain and he’s a poor, tortured soul.
The first wife and I are very different people to put it mildly. It’s not a coincidence that H is the common denominator in engineering this unusual yet alarmingly similar outcome in counselling. I would not recommend relate (it was relate both times).
I have subsequently learned that a decent counsellor should have acted on my disclosure of ongoing abuse and not returned to sessions together. Especially as he’d openly subverted the initial session and had openly admitted to me that he was purposefully looking to make the the villain and get the counsellor on his side. And I’d told her that alongside information about how he was abusing me.
The topic that she brought up in the final session was a situation that I’d told her had made me actually suicidal. To the point I’d sought support and was on antidepressants. Yet she not only brought it up. She was lecturing me and telling me I HAD to do what I’d told her I could not do. That it was a boundary put in place by my suicide crisis counselling and was my way if surviving. She knew this. I’d told her it. And then she would not stop the session when I said I could not continue.
An extreme situation - I have come to realise that he’s an extremely good manipulator and probably has diagnosable NPD - but a decent counsellor should not allow this to happen. That’s why they do questionnaires and individual session. And they should recognise they have a duty of care towards you. On that basis, I would not recommend relate. Especially as the organisation let him do this to two different women.