Concerns about DW and therapist - am I paranoid?

[StonedRoses]

I’ve posted before about my concerns about the Male therapist has been seeing for the last three years. Let’s call him John. He’s a little unorthodox and the process has lead to my DW going nc with her entire family. I’ve really no idea about whether the memories they have unearthed are correct or not. But that’s a side issue to today

One of my concerns has been the frequency of contact. Often 2-3 times a week. Text and email between and often arranged at short notice. There have been emergency they sit sessions, sometimes meeting at a local park or in the car

This week she told me on Friday at 5pm she had a phone call with John at 6. Then she left the house to make the call from the car, for privacy of course. However she then drove off and come back a couple of hours later.
Again yesterday her scheduled session is Thursday. Mid afternoon she text me to say she has another session straight after work

A friend of mine who can be a bit cynical has said to me ‘are you sure there’s nothing else going on’. And it’s got me thinking. I’m sure there isn’t and I hate feeling paranoid. But even so it does feel like current contact is OTT and rather eating into family time.

Get your female friend to book an appointment with John to see what he is like.

That's a great idea by @thelake. It could lead to some really useful insights into how he works. Perhaps you have another friend who might also be willing to do the same.

Whilst your wife has gone NC with her family and friends, does that mean you have to.

I do think you need to reach out to these people to give you some rl support.

I think it has probably gone so far that what ever is said the therapist will manipulate it to being another conspiracy.

If your Dw’s family presented themselves at a police station and told the police to investigate them for what they have been accused of. It wouldn’t matter that there wasn’t a shred of evidence. It would just be more people in the cover up.

I do think though you need to ascertain once and for all that your wife isn’t just having an affair. Although on your updates this therapist is looking definitely dodgy.

OP you said you went to see him regarding your anxieyt, but why did your DW go? did she have particular issues before this therapy started?

It crossed my mind that he might be a Q Anon nutter, as other posters menteioned a cult - what with disregarrding covid restrictions and the whole peadophile angle, and being against trad therapy...but whether that's the case or not, he's after power/control/sexual agenda.

@CatAndHisKit Not everything that’s non mainstream belongs to the Qanon twats. SRA isn’t a conspiracy theory.

But it is true that face to face therapy hasn't been happening, only via video link. I don't know whether that's still the case? It certainly was the case last month. Could that be why this 'therapist' is meeting with the OP's DW in this way, because he's not allowed to do therapy sessions in the usual place yet?

*”SRA isn’t a conspiracy theory.“

“SRA“ is about as real as Bigfoot, although far more harmful. It was a cottage industry for quack therapists who made an awful lot of money on the back of it.

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satanic_ritual_abuse

I posted this a few pages back - good overview.

What is your opinion on the doctored photos, have you seen the photos with your own eyes?

I have seen loads of photos. They clearly show a happy child surrounded by friends at various events and birthday parties. They don’t appear doctored it changed - they fat predate digital photography To me at least it’s incomprehensible that all these could be faked or staged
There’s a lot of other claims she has made which have direct contradictory evidence. If it is true then it’s a huge conspiracy involving many many people. I know some believe this is the case but I’m struggling to understand this

I know some believe this is the case but I’m struggling to understand this

Who actually believes this in your situation?

You don’t need to understand it, you need to help your wife.

I know you don’t want to be the person who didn’t believe she was severally abused, but you currently are assuming she has been abused and have supported her but from your posts, things have not improved and she is being seen by a highly unethical therapist.

She is not receiving the correct treatment if she has been abused.

If she hasn’t been abused, John has dumped a whole heap of traumatic thoughts in her head and is feeding the pain. He is ruining lives whichever option is true.

You don’t need to decide right now if she was abused or not. You need to intervene and remove John. This may be a complicated and painful process which is why pps have given you the people you should involve. You need trained professionals to help.

Stop getting caught up in the details of what happened and take an objective view of what you are being told and what you have witnessed. You have seen the photographs of birthdays but she says she was never given a birthday party. What else has she said and what is the evidence to contradict that?

You have enough information to know that this situation is not healthy and something needs to be done. She has either suffered severe abuse or is currently being severely abused (without the family abuse have ever happened. Think about that. How would you feel if you cut off your whole family on the basis of the lies that someone out in your head? Her gran may die without having spoken to your wife for years).

Stop trying to understand the enormity of the allegations and start finding ways to help your wife.

I've read some of your other threads in addition to this one and I think it's time to stop delaying the inevitable by not facing up to it. She's treating you appallingly and whether or not she's being manipulated by this John, you need to act.

No one in person at all believed it except my wife and her therapist. But there are plenty of articles out there saying that SRA does exist and describes exactly what she believes. Including abusers going to great lengths to cover it up. Dissociation and repression of memory and recovered memory are very controversial debates in psychology, with strong views on both sides

He’s abusing your wife.

Call the police, her GP. Get over this ridiculous “oh his career” bullshit.

And if you leave her, take your kids because there is no way they should be exposed to the vile shit that could end up being if she can’t get away from her abuser. They come first, not her.

Yes, ritual abuse does happen. And victims do repress memories and disassociate. The abuse my DSis and I went through wasn't ritual, but my F was part of a paedophile network, which my DM knew nothing about.

But it wasn't suggested to us by a therapist. We both showed signs of trauma long before the memories came back and I had flashbacks that I couldn't place. We had the memories come back and had therapy in order to process them.

In addition, it happened to both of us, and we both remembered times when we'd been abused together. I find it very hard to believe that your DW's sister would remember nothing of the abuse. It's possible that only your DW was abused, but she would surely have some memories of at least some of the incidents?

But most of all, there would have been some evidence of the damage done by the abuse. For example, I couldn't cope with physical displays of affection and had great difficulty letting people get close to me.

The main thing here, though, is the therapist's behaviour. Telling her not to involve the police is a very definite red flag.

It’s not even close to 50:50 on SRA these days. It’s been widely discredited and rightly so.

A lot of the “recovered” memories were completely bizarre and obtained in hugely unethical and dubiously legal ways. Kids, in particular, were rewarded in sessions whenever they talked about “abuse” and punished when they denied it. For instance, kids denying they’d been abused were threatened with never seeing their families again if they persisted. Prosecutors destroyed contradictory evidence and railroaded innocent people into prison. Some parents had to choose between themselves on who’d be the scapegoat - usually the father - to admit their “guilt” just so their child(ren) could be rescued from the care system by the other parent.

The self proclaimed “experts” made lots and lots of money from it.

You need to wake up and smell the coffee here OP. If the evidence contradicts your DWs story, and the claims seem too fantastical to be true, then it’s overwhelmingly more likely that she’s being manipulated than that these things happened to her. John needs to be stopped.

You said, in response to my earlier query about medical issues stemming from her sexual abuse “from birth”, that you were in medicine. Are you a doctor of some other kind of medical practitioner?

*or some other ...

Right. So assume that she has been subjected to 18 years of SRA. What are the recognised treatments for that? Is she receiving any of those treatments?

Did she display any signs of severe abuse prior to seeing this therapist (with the level of abuse she suffered there will have been something. If she does suffer from DID then which symptoms did she display).

If she had no signs that she was the survivor of SRA prior to seeing the therapist, how quickly after starting her sessions did these revelations come about? Has there been a steady increase in incidences of abuse as the therapy has continued?

You don’t need to prove who is correct with regards to SRA and you don’t need to find definitive evidence to prove one side of the debate is correct.

You said you come from a medical background. Get your analytical hat on and go back to the source evidence ie what you know of your wife and what she has told you. If the majority of what she says happens is contradicted by evidence that can be corroborated then, on the balance of probabilities, the evidence points to the allegations being false.

If you go down the rabbit hole of “ah...but They hide the evidence. They’re really clever about it” then you and your wife are lost causes. There will be no-one to stop what is going on and if your not going to do anything to help your wife, then at least think about your children in all of this. They may will end up losing one or both of their parents.

Iirc the OP is an anaesthetist - a doctor.

Dissociation and repression of memory and recovered memory are very controversial debates in psychology, with strong views on both sides

What? Where have YOU seen these polarised debates?

Dissociation and repressed memories are a well documented and accepted outcome of trauma and PTSD. A core component of trauma recovery is working with these two symptoms.

Recovered memory is an entirely different ball game - and no there is no controversy it has been v publicly and widely discredited.

You are conflating lots of stuff here - you need to do some objective reading from credible sources.

@Sssloou Exactly. That's what I was trying to explain. I had PTSD symptoms long before I was able to place the flashbacks in the context of my life. Plus the strong reaction to unexpected physical contact, like being touched on the arm unexpectedly; I need to be in control of it.

So piecing it all together, once my DSis had started to remember it all, made sense of the flashbacks. It wasn't a therapist telling me that I must have been abused as a child. (I would have given them short shrift if they had.)

OP, as a healthcare professional and also someone who has had therapy, I agree with PPs that, from what you have described, 'John' sounds highly unethical, dangerous and absolutely should not be practising as a therapist. If it is indeed him that your wife is going to see and she isn't simply having an affair and lying about the whole thing, that is. But let's put that possibility to one side for a moment. You say your wife has uncovered repressed memories of horrific childhood abuse at the hands of her family. But does not want to involve the police. Are these relatives in contact with children? Because you could tell her that actually you have a duty to report to social services as a safeguarding issue for the children they are now in contact with (which you do). You can acknowledge that it will be hard for her and have an impact on her health but if these relatives did what she says they did, children are at risk and must be protected. Don't argue with her about it. Just say you are going to do it and be fully prepared to follow through.

I think John isn't who she's seeing. At least not every time.