Wwhen Karin Blak’s difficult marriage ended, she was recommended a therapist by a friend. But she became increasingly uncomfortable when he made inappropriate personal revelations, including about his sexual health, touching her and inviting her to his home.
It later emerged that although he was a practicing psychotherapist with other clients, he was unqualified, having left his psychotherapy course “because he didn’t want to play by the rules”. The bad experience culminated in him touching her and telling her: “If I was 10 years younger, I would be sitting next to you right now”.
“The way it made me feel was that my problems were too big for any therapist to help me with, it was borderline that I felt hopeless – if a therapist couldn’t help me, then who could then,” she said. “Once you start feeling hopeless, it’s a dangerous road to walk. This can lead to all kinds of suicidal thoughts. I did go down that route at some point, it was probably right after I stopped seeing him.
“I didn’t know then. I think that’s a problem for a lot of people, they don’t really know what they’re looking for, and they don’t know when boundaries are crossed. This is exactly the situation I was in. I wasn’t aware that a therapist shouldn’t give you hugs and hold your hand and invite you home.”
Blak has since trained as a therapist himself, and has written a book, The Essential Companion to Talking Therapy, which looks at the difference between ethical and unethical therapy. She often works with clients who arrive traumatized from bad therapy experiences.
She was one of more than 100 people who contacted the Guardian after it reported that experts were calls for all psychotherapists in England to be regulated. The readers shared their concerns about the psychotherapists, counselors and psychologists who they felt gave bad or harmful advice.
Among them was Elinor*, whose grown son was diagnosed with schizophrenia. He tried to get psychotherapy on the NHS but was refused because local services said his needs were too complex.
He found a telephone counselor registered with the British Association for Counseling and Psychotherapy (BACP) who, Elinor was shocked to learn, told her son he would support him to come off his antipsychotic medication without ‘ to consult a psychiatrist. After this, her son deteriorated until he became so ill that he had to be divorced, “which undid two years of being reasonably healthy and a part-time job”.
She tried to complain to the BAKP but was told she needed her son’s permission, which he was too bad to give. “A good counselor will raise a safety alert if a client with schizophrenia talks about stopping medication, rather than encouraging it, abusing their position of power and trust,” Elinor said, adding that mental health professionals should know that people with psychotic illnesses are often suspicious of their diagnosis and medication.
Sophie* quickly became uncomfortable with the approach of her therapist, who overshared about her personal life. “I thought, ‘You shouldn’t be doing this,'” she said.
Her therapist also dismissed the things Sophie wanted to talk about, instead focusing on the idea that she might be neurodivergent as “the magic answer to everything”. The therapist told her three times that she should seek a diagnosis, despite Sophie’s opinion that it would not be helpful for her to be labeled a disorder.
“She told me more than once, inappropriately, I thought, about her own neurodivergence and was directing me toward the same diagnosis,” she said. “I just felt like I was focused on prioritizing things that the counselor decided to fix.”
She ended the therapy after the minimum number of sessions, and is now considering complaining to the BAKP.
Suzanne* turned to a psychologist because she felt depressed and anxious and had problems in her marriage. She initially found therapy helpful, but soon found herself listening to her therapist tell her about his life, to the point where she “felt like I was paying him to tell me about [things he was working on]”.
She asked him if she could be neurodivergent, and he firmly assured her that she was not – something he was not qualified to do – instead assuring her that her marriage was to blame for her mental health problems. He advised her to divorce her husband, despite the fact that she was a new mother and not financially independent; advice she felt was “well-intentioned but detached from reality”.
After finishing therapy, she received diagnoses for autism and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder from the NHS. She considered filing a complaint but felt she did not have “the mental capacity to handle it”. She now feels “wary” about returning to therapy.
All names except Karin Blak’s have been changed.
