My ‘friend’ stole my therapist

[TheRedEngine]

I was seeing a therapist, ‘T’ about my relationship difficulties. It is obvious now that these difficulties were caused by the behaviour of a Friend, called ‘F’, towards my partner. But back then I thought F was on my side in a difficult relationship. T knew F was centre stage. My partner wouldn’t let me see F, this seemed controlling.

I saw F. I said I had this excellent therapist and recommended T. I obviously hadn’t thought this through.

Next week I saw T they said they were now seeing F too and thought they had to tell me but that it was ethically OK. I suddenly realised I was not really OK with this. It felt very weird hearing things coming from T that were F’s words. Our 6 sessions ended.

This was a few months ago. I just got back in touch with T seeking further sessions. T says they can’t see me as they’re seeing F.

How did that happen to me? Was this acceptable behaviour from T? I can see they could see that F would be with them for months or years and this would be much more profitable than I was. I now realise I was only there because F had been bullying my partner and indeed me.

It is important that you remain in therapy OP on the basis of this thread

I'm not sure.
I know my therapist has said she would consider not seeing my friends, as potentially a conflict of interest.

Really? Because I’ve had one bad experience with a therapist I should have another?

Make that two bad experiences. Partner and I went to couples therapy. Therapist said they wanted to see just my partner for a few sessions and then we’d go back to couples therapy. When it came to the going back to couples therapy they wouldn’t do it citing conflicts of interest. The whole point of my partner’s therapy was to be a window on our relationship. What a waste of time, effort and money.

Make that three bad experiences. She was hopeless, came from a well-regarded team. Never spoke unless spoken to. Just repeated my words back to me. And she couldn’t tell me what we were trying to achieve.

A shame as T from OP was excellent and I enjoyed working with her.

My experience so far is that they’re all charlatans.

Why on earth recommend your therapist when you were having issues with the friends behaviour ?
Sounds like you have issues with boundaries

I’ve had a therapeutic relationship come to an end over something more trivial than this so I totally get that you’re disappointed and have complicated feelings about this. You invest a lot of trust in any kind of therapist and it’s difficult if the relationship ends in a not-smooth manner. BUT - you did make the recommendation and you haven’t seen the therapist for months: things have moved on. You need to put this behind you and find a new therapist and work on your boundaries a bit more.

Sounds like you need a certain type of therapist, there's loads of different approaches they can take.

I'd also be thinking about your relationship, are you sure it's not a problem? It's quite possible that both your friend AND your relationship are not up to scratch.

Well you've learned a valuable lesson about not recommending your therapist to people you dont like. They shouldn't have taken your friend on as a client, but now they did do that, they're correct not to take you back on due to a conflict of interest.

BUT you're not wrong to feel how you feel about it. First your friend interfered in your relationship, now they've interfered with your therapist.

I think the friend is the problem so id cut contact with them. That will solve most of the problem.

You should not recommend your therapist to anyone you know well because at some point you might need to talk about your relationship with them, and vice versa. Presumably the therapist didn’t know the connection when she took your friend on, but she does now. You’ll have to find someone else.

Yeah, I agree with this.

It was not ethical of the T to take on F in the first instance if there is a conflict of interests. And if there wasn’t a conflict of interest then why can’t they see you again? Both can’t be right.

I’m not sure about the RT situation as I couldn’t quite figure out what happened. But the situation with the 3rd T where you describe them as just mirroring back your own words and not knowing what was happening in therapy sounds like your issue. It’s your therapy and you should be the one to set goals and know what the purpose of your therapy is. So yes, keep going as you’ve clearly got stuff to work through… for you to have friendship issues AND relationship issues AND therapist issues indicates, kindly, that you’re the problem in some way. Find out what!

Your friend didn't steal your therapist, you recommended them!

You told your friend to go to your therapist! And as it sounds like you only had a 6 session course booked with T, it doesn’t seem so bad for them to take on F who’s more long term. I think you have to own this one, OP, but agree you need more therapy not least to stop doing self-defeating behaviours like this. Find someone else and don’t recommend them to others.

The therapist imo should have said no to the friend.

Yes, if she was told from the beginning that the two clients were good friends. She could at least have delayed seeing F until OP had finished. But since OP had only arranged short term therapy and was possibly already near the end of the six sessions, she thought it was OK to take on F as a long term client.

Personally I think if you need a therapist because of someone in your life then it's better to part ways with the person in your life. What's the point of navel gazing with a therapist if you're not going to tackle the root cause?

How would a therapist know who all your friends are?

How would therapist have known to say no to your friend prior to their first session?
Was the session that your therapist told you they were seeing friend your final session anyway? Therefore it makes sense that as they had continued to see friend that when you got back in touch they would say no to you.
Your therapist couldn't have said no to friend without actually knowing who your friend was and they couldn't exactly say hey friend your name sounds familiar and it's coming up in sessions with your friend so I can't see you.

Perhaps the therapist is trying to tell you that she feels a little out of her depth with you OP and to look elsewhere?

So you recommended your therapist to the friend that actually put you in therapy? Or have I read that wrong?

I don't understand why your therapist saw F while she was seeing you, but won't see you while she's seeing F - unless I misunderstood? To be honest, sounds like you should bin the pair of them.

Your therapist should not have started seeing your friend. They should have explored with you your behaviour of recommending your friend to help you see your self defeating patterns in life. Your therapist fucked up big time. You could ask for a session to talk it through to hold your therapist to account.

I don’t really know the ins and outs of whether this was professional behaviour or not. It seems a bit of a grey area to me. You recommended her and then you didn’t see her for a while. All of which may have suggested to the therapist that it was ok to move on and see the friend.
I would also like to point out that this is her job. It is how she earns money. She needs clients to pay her bills. I think leaving and then wanting to dictate who else she takes on is a bit unfair.

If two of three therapists have cut you off, the problem is probably not than both were unethical.

Take some responsibility for your role in this, OP. You recommended your therapist, with whom you had a pre-booked series of six sessions you were almost finished with, to a ‘friend’ you seem to see as responsible for your problems — why recommend your therapist to someone you see as the source of your problems?

Make that two bad experiences. Partner and I went to couples therapy. Therapist said they wanted to see just my partner for a few sessions and then we’d go back to couples therapy. When it came to the going back to couples therapy they wouldn’t do it citing conflicts of interest.

Wo0ah! This update in your second post reveals that you have had not just one but two experiences of feeling let down by a therapist because of complexities surrounding a third party. In both cases the therapist was initially happy with talking to both of you, but then had to withdraw from you citing conflicts of interest.

The fact that there are two such instances does seem to suggest that there may be something that you bring to your relationships that is problematic in a particular way, making it hard for the therapist to deal with both you and the other person. In couples therapy I imagine that the decision of a therapist to withdraw from one party in a relationship after speaking to another is quite unusual and must have some sort of explanation.

I do think the therapist who saw both you and your friend perhaps made a misjudgement when she decided to see your friend too. But perhaps she could only see that misjudgement when she began the work with your friend, and saw her perspective on the dynamics of your friendship.