Honestly, I’m starting to despair now. It’s only ever made things worse for me.
- I was in therapy at 17 for social anxiety. The therapist seemed to think I just needed a kick up the backside to make more effort. I genuinely did not have it in me to do that at that point. The result was that I sensed her frustration with my lack of progress and started to self-harm because I felt so inadequate. This baffled her and she said she couldn’t handle me anymore.
- Tried again at 19 when at uni and having some eating issues. The therapist immediately latched on to the fact that I was still a virgin and became convinced it was all about sex. I still don’t think I totally follow her reasoning but something about how if I discovered my sexual self I’d start to feel deserving of a womanly body and want to eat more? With her encouragement I got into a very unsuitable sexual relationship with somebody I wasn’t even attracted to and which I did not have the confidence or maturity to handle. It did terrible things for my self-esteem which lasted years.
- Sought help in my 30s when my second pregnancy started to go very wrong. Doctors said to be prepared for the worst. Therapist said I was catastrophising, this was black and white thinking and ‘Don’t you think you hear something like this and blow it out of proportion?’ Said I needed to stop seeing so many doctors as it was just causing confusion and increasing my anxiety unnecessarily. Even gave me a telling off about how my anxiety would affect the baby. He ended up stillborn at 29 weeks. She never apologized.