22 Signs Your Therapist May Be Batsh!t Crazy: #1-5🦇💩 (7)
I had a sociopath for a therapist so that you don’t have to.
Download the free ebook, which has all 22 signs in one place, here! Share it with that friend who is on the fence about their therapist who keep saying they wish they could hang out IRL.
Fast forward to signs #6-11: 22 Signs Your Therapist May Be Batsh!t Crazy #6-11
Fast forward to signs #12-16: 22 Signs Your Therapist May Be Batsh!t Crazy #12-16
Fast forward to signs #17-22: 22 Signs Your Therapist May Be Batsh!t Crazy #17-22
Nothing teaches you better about therapist abuse warning signs than having a batshit crazy therapist for 11 years. There are many realizations I only had in hindsight; insights that I wish someone had shared with me at the time, so I could've been spared.
Instead, I’m sharing my insights with you and alchemizing my lead into gold, so that, hopefully, no one has to experience what I did. I also have a graduate degree in psychology, but am not a licensed therapist. While my opinions are informed, always use your own discernment. I wouldn't wish what I went through on anyone...except for the person who did it to me. (I know you're not supposed to say that, and yet, there it is.)
There are two, diametrically opposed sayings about the same thing: "The Devil is in the details" and "God is in the details." Apparently details are extremely important. A lot of problems start out small and become XXL, fast.
While many of my awakenings were after the fact, I also sometimes had what I call the "niggling" feeling while seeing this abusive therapist. That’s my term for when something doesn’t feel right. If I could go back in time, I would amplify that feeling and listen to it.
Society conditions us to gloss over negative, interpersonal data and hyper-focus on externals, but paying attention to and zooming in on your sense impressions can save you a ton of trouble.
To quote Maya Angelou, "When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time". It's the "first time" part that I think most people struggle to believe. Do better to yourself than the people who have gaslit you. Don't gaslight yourself.
Here are #1-5 of 22 signs that could indicate therapy harm is well on its way, if not already present, because your therapist is 🦇💩 crazy.
1. UNPROFESSIONAL, OVERLY CASUAL, OR OVERLY HARSH LANGUAGE
The first time I met the therapist who would go on to abuse me for over a decade, one of the first things she said was that she had to "pee". Despite not having much life experience at the time, I remember thinking that sounded like something a girlfriend would say—in 2nd grade.
Not only was it unprofessional IMO, it was also exhibitionistic enough to make you pause but not enough to sound rational if you said something about it. I believe that's intentional. They know what they're doing. If you say nothing about it and stick around after that, that's information for them. They'll add it to their ingredient list for chiropteran crapcakes served with a side of vampire cave queso.
I'll say it again: boundary violations often start on a subtle level, with small things, and get larger.
Over time, she made cracks about violence and arson against people, like saying she wanted to bash her ex-husband's head in with a rock. Once, when we were discussing women's healthcare visits (🚨ick alert!), she used the term "robot dildo" to describe an instrument used for ultrasounds.
There are many other examples, but my point is: the fact that she went from "pee" to bashing skulls to "robot dildo" is not a coincidence. Only a batshit crazy therapist says things like that in therapy.
If I had listened to my first niggling feeling when she used the word “pee," I might've been spared the disaster that followed. This one sign may not be a stand-alone cue to find a different professional but it could be—certainly in combination with other items in this list.
TAKEAWAYS: Don't trust your brain to someone who makes it a point to tell you that they need to "pee," unless you want it pre-treated with OxiClean, and washed in the "heavy duty" cycle with bleach. If your therapist's words make you wish you'd never heard them, especially from the jump, there's a good chance that bats have dropped a #ChocolateChallenge on TikTok and tagged your therapist.
Words matter. Professionalism matters. One important way professionals show respect is via words, including tone. If anything makes you uncomfortable, investigate what that feeling is telling you, no matter how small it may seem. If you talk to your therapist about it and what follows is not satisfactory for you, you don't have to stay.
There's no rule that says you have to leave because of something big. You can leave because of something small. You can leave because you're uncomfortable and your therapist isn't helping. You can leave because your sweater itches. You can leave for whatever reason you see fit. It's your mental health, your money, and your time. Don't stick around for a small problem to get larger. Nip it in the bud early on.
2. LACK OF INTAKE PAPERWORK, INCLUDING INFORMED CONSENT AND PRIVACY ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
This one is probably less likely in the digital era but still possible. My crazy ex-therapist never gave me any informed consent or initial paperwork to fill out. Ever. The only forms she asked me to sign were for fee increases.
After the disastrous ending to our “therapy”, she claimed she had destroyed all my notes (shocking, I know). The thing is, I don't think she ever kept any. She said she had a system at home, but she doodled in our appointments. I know this because she showed me her pad of yellow paper on occasion. It was never professional, written notes. It looked like the only reason things were drawn in pen was because her mommy had forgotten her crayons at home.
My point is, her lack of intake paperwork signalled/became a lack of any and all record-keeping. (Don't even get me started on how she announced that she had destroyed all my notes during the lawsuit and how her licensing board still didn't do much to hold her accountable—for that and about 200,000 other things.)
I'm not a lawyer or an expert on the matter but, generally speaking, there are best practices for ethical and legal compliance for licensed therapists. Informed consent and confidentiality paperwork are amongst the intake forms that I think should be included, at a minimum.
If your therapist hasn't given you any paperwork or information in order to consent to treatment, it signals a lack of professionalism and professional boundaries. It shows entitlement, laziness, and no regard for best practices, or ethical and legal standards.
The provider is not taking your care seriously but feels entitled to your time and money anyway, because they’re so very special. This extreme degree of entitlement is a red flag of malignant narcissism, which is what my ex-therapist had. None of this bodes well in terms of a therapist being trustworthy.
TAKEAWAYS: Your mental health is a big deal. Don't risk leaving it in the care of someone who is about as stable as a Jenga tower in a wind tunnel. A provider gives clues about their trustworthiness and integrity early on. If they don't care enough to get your basic info and comply with the most minimal of ethical standards, then bats are baking booty biscuits and your therapist is serving them hot on a plate. You deserve a therapist who wants to do right by you and isn't a sociopath.
3. INVITING YOU OR MEETING YOU ANYWHERE OUTSIDE THEIR OFFICE (INCLUDING FANTASIZING ABOUT IT)
The Beatles shot to fame with these unforgettable lyrics: If your therapist blurs boundaries with you, they may as well be harvesting your organs for the black market.
Ok, no. That wasn't from their #1 single. I'm trying to make a point—one I cannot stress enough: If your therapist wants to meet you anywhere outside their office (even imaginarily), run and don't look back.
The only potential exceptions to this, aside from them being subpoenaed for your lawsuit in a courthouse, are:
a) You're joining a therapy group in another professional setting that they're running.
b) Earth is about to be hit by a giant asteroid and they know of an underground bunker that is your only chance at survival.
Otherwise, there is never a good reason for a therapist to meet or invite a patient outside their office. If they're trying to get that going, there is something rotten in the state of Denmark. I would include hypotheticals and fantasies in this, i.e. "What if we got a hotel room..." NO. Non. Nein. Nee. Nei.
Even if a patient tries to ask, beg, or bribe their therapist to meet them, it's still 100% on the professional to have boundaries and decline. In this hypothetical scenario, if a therapist said yes, it's still 100% on them; not on the patient for asking.
The ex-therapist I saw invited me to a lot of places that she would be. She sometimes hung out with me at them. She also invited herself over to my home on several occasions, under the guise of checking that it was energetically and spiritually safe in one way or another. All this is very wrong and she knew it. It led to enmeshment, obsession, and emotional incestuousness.
Therapists very well know that saying anything but “no” will cause gigantic harm to the patient. Therefore IMO, if a therapist invites or allows this anyway, they want to harm you and/or don't care if they do. Why? Because bats have launched mission im-poo-sible and your therapist is Tom Cruise.
TAKEAWAYS: Never, ever, ever, ever, ever meet your therapist outside their office. Aside from the possible exceptions noted above, I believe that if they want to socialize, initiate or agree to meet you elsewhere, they have bad intentions. The following is the only correct response to a therapist trying to pull that shit: NO. Both to their out-of-line suggestion and their practice. Make like a tree and leave.
This can be hard to do if you're emotionally invested and due to transference, but you know what's harder? Complex trauma/ptsd, soul-crushing betrayal, persistent self-loathing, psychological malpractice lawsuits with Billable-Banshee-Bob, years of depressive immobility, financial ruin, picking up the pieces of your shattered soul, and writing a list of 22 signs you missed about what caused it all. Protect yourself; walk away.
4. TREATING YOU LIKE YOU'RE SPECIAL, INCLUDING SPECIAL OFFERS FOR FREE/DISCOUNTED SESSIONS AND MAKING EXCEPTIONS FOR YOU IN OTHER WAYS—ESPECIALLY IF THEY TELL YOU THEY'RE DOING IT BECAUSE YOU'RE SPECIAL/ DIFFERENT/ UNLIKE OTHER PATIENTS
Pretty much all 22 items in this list fall under the category of “boundary violation”. If your therapist is treating you like you’re special to them—whether that be through extra time, extra discounts, extra close physical presence or contact, asking you do things for them, sharing extra information with you, gifts, cards, or being overly involved in your life emotionally, or otherwise—they are going beyond the boundaries of a professional therapeutic relationship. If you feel regularly and/or increasingly needy towards or obsessed with your therapist due to their shitty boundaries, it’s because they have dropped the ball. Not you.
Some ways my ex-therapist did this included buying gifts, offering multiple free sessions to make up for multiple abusive appointments (while failing to get supervision or therapy), and making up an unconscionable treatment plan and telling me it was because I was such an exceptional patient, while ripping me off the whole time.
Another example: I once ran into my crazy ex-therapist at a social event (which she told me about ). She asked me to keep an eye on her son while she went to the bathroom because she knew she could trust me with him. Fuck off. I was so buried in her manipulative sinkhole at that point in my life that I took this outrageously unprofessional move as a compliment. In reality, it was inappropriate, unboundaried, enmeshed, exploitative, manipulative, and just plain wrong of her to do.
Treating you like you’re special can be a sign of/lead to grooming, enmeshment, emotional incestuousness, over-dependency, obsession, and psychological harm, i.e. if the therapist is inconsistent, pulls back, or is intentionally messing with you, it can cause feelings of shame, guilt, and self-blame for the patient. I repeat, self-blame. In other words, there’s a much better chance than not that it will fuck your shit up.
On the therapist's end IMO, this reflects blurred boundaries, lack of objectivity, idealization, and a host of other possible countertransference issues that they're failing to manage. They could also be flat out incompetent or a sociopath.
Therapists shouldn’t play favorites, have dual relationships, or ask you to pet sit. In their homes. Overnight. It’s called Rover, people. This moral wasteland managed to become a licensed professional. They can hire a fucking pet sitter. So why are they asking you? Not your circus; not your monkeys.
If any of the aforementioned dynamics are part of what brings you in, your woundology is being added to, not healed. We are taught this in counseling school. If your therapist is doing it anyway, it's because bats are sending a mudslide down Splash Mountain and your therapist is in the first car, in the front row. Leave and do it quickly.
TAKEAWAYS: A therapist can acknowledge you as a unique individual without taking you under their wing and giving you special access to them. Drawing you inappropriately closer under false pretenses and making you “teacher’s pet” is for them, not for you. Therapy is for you.
5. INAPPROPRIATE SPIRITUAL OR PSYCHIC TALK
My therapist’s abuse involved new age abuse, spiritual abuse, and inappropriate claims of her being psychic, which led to more inappropriate claims regarding her psychic readings about me—this included "remote viewing" my life in her dreams and telling me what she supposedly prophetically dreamed about my life, as if it were fact.
I know psychicness conjures up images of hunched carnival women with pointy fingernails and headwraps, staring at crystal balls in the dark. I know there are tons of frauds. I know it sometimes makes me think of that funny clash of mental powers in the dinner scene of the movie “Dinner for Schmucks.” I prefer the word “intuition”. I also believe there are legitimately intuitive people out there who have gifts. My crazy ex-therapist wasn't one of them.
What I do know is that it was inappropriate of her to bring her faux psychic abilities into my appointments and use them as a fake upper hand with me. She imposed this and other spiritual beliefs without asking me. No therapist should be imposing spiritual or intuitive views on a client.
There is such a thing as psychic, energetic, and spiritual boundaries. She overstepped all of them. She didn't get my consent to imaginarily "read me", which I know sounds strange, but it's the consent part that matters.
In addition, this may also sound strange, but when someone who you’re supposed to trust tells you that they’re having psychic visions and dreams about you and some part of it seems true, it ups their power over you and the ability to abuse it.
Why would someone want you to believe they have special powers? To control you and become your Tap-to-Pay terminal. If a therapist uses anything spiritual or intuitive against you, including leveraging it in order to one-up you, it’s because bats have started a coup d'poo and your therapist is leading la resistance.
TAKEAWAYS: Imposing psychic, metaphysical, and spiritual activities and beliefs isn’t part of therapy. Using them, or anything you believe, against you isn’t either. A good therapist doesn’t thirst for power over you and doesn’t abuse power. If they do...wait. What's that smell—Is it bat shit? My crystal ball sees you leaving and finding a good therapist.
Numbers 6-11 will be in my next post.
Download the free ebook, which has all 22 signs in one place, here! Share it with that friend who is on the fence about their therapist who keeps ordering and eating lunch in their appointments.
Fast forward to signs #6-11: 22 Signs Your Therapist May Be Batsh!t Crazy #6-11
Fast forward to signs #12-16: 22 Signs Your Therapist May Be Batsh!t Crazy #12-16
Fast forward to signs #17-22: 22 Signs Your Therapist May Be Batsh!t Crazy #17-22
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