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UnTherapy: the one red flag you must fire your therapist over
A real therapist will never reinforce theories about third parties
The therapy industry really is a wild west, unfortunately. Many ‘therapists’ are completely unqualified, unregulated, and have no licence or education to actually delve into your mental health or wellbeing. This is not to say therapists are bad, and I’m especially not suggesting therapy isn’t a good idea, but I’m increasingly confronted with my friends and loved ones being made seriously worse by therapists who are behaving incredibly unprofessionally. So today, I’d like to warn you about something a licenced, sensible therapist should never, ever do.
And what’s that? Psychologically assess third parties and validate theories about them without ever interacting with them.
Listen very carefully to your therapist in your next session, and you’ll see what I mean.
A trained therapist will never tell you “Your mother is an evil person who wants to destroy you.” They might say, “It sounds like your mother’s behaviour really affected you negatively, and made you feel she was acting very maliciously.” Why? Well, three reasons: one, she can’t be sure you are accurately understanding the situation, two…
