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When trauma therapy goes wrong: a candid insight from the tapes of intensive individual trauma therapy: a personal and professional development guide.
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Context: I was at the tail end of a counselling diploma, which I was referred into by this therapist (so I’m a trained counsellor). I was also 1.5 yrs into my bachelor of psychology & about to enrol into a double degree of psychology/counselling to continue my study (will still do this bc academia is eternal). But at the moment I was young, and I felt it was then or there or never (my early 20s).
I had just started a horrible flooding from severe developmental trauma coinciding with my counselling course which required a lot of self reflection for professional development. My therapist had given me an exercise off the back of my confidence to finally ask him about his moral alignment with the pedophile alignment of Hillsong church, a problem I had felt but struggled to articulate for months. At the time the royal commission into institutional child sexual abuse was happening, which Hillsong church was a part of, and Frank Houston, the founder, had been investigated for his role in covering up the sexual abuse of children historically.
In February 2017 I brought up if Peter was able to be trusted due to his alignment to Frank Houston’s living son, Brian, who is the main target for the coverup of his fathers crimes, of sexual abuse. Brian was a pastor at the Norwest Hillsong church, and a prolific personality in the church. Brian has since been cleared of complicity of being aligned to his covering up his fathers sexual abuse crimes, however Brian Houston is a very wealthy man. Regardless , religion aside, my care is aligned to pedophile cover ups and not religious belief. I wanted to know how he felt about Brian being investigated by the royal commission, I am open to other people and their religious belief. I cannot trust a therapist who is aligned to a pastor who complicity covered up childhood sexual abuse for his father. It comes back to to values & principles.
The response was: no Brian and Frank are innocent! They are not being investigated at all. It’s not true. (Denial.) he then deflected and told me to write a trauma timeline like my psychiatrist had asked for my medication & psychiatrist history in a document format.. I had earlier shared this exercise with him.
This medical exercise she asked me to do was based on quantitative (medications I was on, diagnosis and doctors I’ve seen over the years since age 9). Not deep trauma secrets I’ve kept hidden from my childhood. It was for insurance reasons, had a higher purpose, and she emailed me back after receiving it.
He did not respond. This set my trauma off worse, because I knew I was “left out to die, dry, kill or be killed” lacked containment, safety or any sense of integral therapeutic alliance.
In a effective trauma therapy, a therapy alliance that is built on: safety with the client is core to maintaining a supportive, secure, stable therapeutic alliance.
Alliance building : acknowledge your client email, ask them to bring the document with them to session next time.
Ok our conversation:
Me: no ! you said how many are false memories
Him: no I didn’t !
Me: you basically implicated it via an open question …
Me: you have to remember I am an actual tape recorder (me using his NLP method back on him, I used it to drop the hint I was recording the sessions)
Me: I remember EVERYTHING people tell me, so I have all these questions pressing on my mind, and I went to my other therapist with the questions I had from our last session that you mentioned about false memories and told him what you said
Him : of course if you mentioned false memories he would …
Me : cuts him off “no what am I supposed to say” what would you think of someone like me is told no,
Him : what do you mean if you say no?
Me: well if you tell me no I’ll do the opposite , so when I wanted to know about my family history when I was studying that cultural diversity unit at uni last year and you told me not to look into my family history, I was going to do the opposite, you knew I was like that in my character, you told me to study this course, of course I’m
Going to look into my family history, even if you told me not too
Him: why would you put trauma on top of trauma on top of trauma?
Me: I was just curious
Him: ok, the thing with you is you are so intelligent
Me no I’m not that intelligent though:
Him: no. stop. Just stop.
Me: laughs, half dies
Him : the problem with you is.. you are so intelligent
“How many do you think are false memories”
That’s what the therapist said about my deepest childhood secrets (nothing Vs what I later remembered) I can’t believe I sat there and was able to be submissive or calm without the anger and hurt I felt listening to that again today.
“You are so intelligent, you are so well read okay, in regards to trauma, therapy and everything psychology theories that it is starting to convolute and make it difficult for you”
Me : what do you mean
“This theory and that theory - you are grabbing at everything “
Me: what am I supposed to do ?
I’ve always been like this I used to read encyclopaedias as a child just to find out what is wrong with me
Him: I think it’s given you an obscure view, it’s changing your way of how you view your trauma
Me: what do you mean ?
Him:You are grabbing at everything!
Him: it’s changing your way of dealing with your trauma. It’s giving you an obscure view. Changing the way your dealing with your trauma
Don’t keep looking for more information. The more you look for it, the more you will (voice fades out).
Me : well I’ve always been like this
Him:”give yourself a break, you need to STOP LOOKING FOR INFORMATION ON YOUR TRAUMA OR AROUND YOUR TRAUMA”
Me : “what am I supposed to do, what would you do in my situation? You are obviously intelligent too, what would you do in my situation? ”
Him: what do i, why did i?
Me: mmmm
Him; why did I feel like that or why did I do that, I don’t go information hunting for evidence on it
Me: I don’t mean to keep finding things out , it’s not like I want this
Him: you have too much information; take a break
Me: I don’t mean too
Him: you need to stop looking for new information
Me: what would you do in my situation?
Him: why did I feel like that, why do I feel like that?
I dont go looking or searching for new clues I look at myself
Me: I DO THAT. I just find this stuff on the side
Me: what if you have multiple aspects of things that contradict each other, that’s what I have,
I honestly do this; I scrapbook and I honestly TRY I AM DOING THIS,
Him: but you come out what about this, theory, what about that modality, what does this mean in context to that framework, and you shouldn’t do that, because you are being harmed by this
Me: but as part of our counselling diploma we are doing professional
Reflection and have to do reflection on what we learnt in our developmental psychology subjects last year ? How am I supposed to NOT do this ? Along with therapy ? It’s part of being a competent clinician ? To be incompetent would be to not look into my trauma.
Him: but is it helping you or is it hindering you ?
Me: I don’t know, I have a grasp now but I barely read on trauma
Him: is it hindering you or helping you?
Me: I don’t know you tell me doctor (lol )
Him: I don’t know you tell
me (he reverse uno back to me)
Me: I don’t know.: why would people go to psychology unless they wanted to resolve their issues and help others
Him: is it helping you or hindering you?
Me: what do you mean?
I believe I’m better you tell me, somethings are better but others are worse. My awareness is better but it’s a hinderance. It was activated by dbt way back in 2013.
Nothing to do with this trauma now.
Me: I think I’m better than I was before DBT a when my life was in a perpetual chaotic, melodramatic, toxic, self destructive, suicidal state and the worst issue along those lines I have now is a few adhd spending habits. So it’s calmer now but I have crippling self awareness.
Him: what would you rather? That or that?
Me: This. I have a compass in life now. I had nothing to guide my life back then.
Me: why did you become a psychologist ?
Me: unless people have issues to resolve and want to help others they would not be studying psychology and counselling.
Him: when you went to class were you there to learn, did you go to class to learn or were you like that me?
Me: what class ? It really depended what class I went into and what we learnt developmental psychology HELL NO And not trauma and mental health either because I was having a mental health and trauma breakdown by the end. Trails off
Him: what are you thinking
Me: about uni , how much I miss it and I cannot wait to go back , you know I graduate soon.. yay I completed something else.
Him: and then what ?
Me: well I said I have to movie out because I cannot do developmental psychology living at my parents house anymore , so I need to move out next, then I have to keep studying .. I’m really confused about my study path now, this woman zorica has confused me because social science is so fascinating and you are telling me to stop now
Him: you need to seperate yourself
Me: I’m going to studying digital media maybe ‘ (what the fuck)
Him: yep
Me: to balance things out so I don’t get too overwhelmed and I get it’s a different field
But it will stop me being overwhelmed but it’s only 25k off my HECS debt if I study the digital media diploma oh well,
Me: I’m only at 20k so I can afford another 25 k before I have to pay it back
Him: oh I don’t even worry about my hecs debt anymore because it’s so much, over 200k
Me: yeah yours must be huge now
Him: I don’t even worry about it at the end of the year, it comes out of my tax
Him: my accountant says if you pay it off you could have a better estate
Him: my son is going to pay it back that’s how much it is (lol poor kid)
Me: Omg what about him , don’t you think about his generation and how messed up they are going to be with the debt situation
Me: I see my sister and it’s a whole alien thing with their tech now
Him: more irrelevant convo
I leave and it ends.
It took a lot of emotional energy just to go over this last bit, but I have to do this for my personal & emotional & professional healing. It’s irrevocably damaged me for years, let me just say if these were false memories would’ve all my meticulously planned goals and ambitions been hijacker’s so I could HEAL AND INTEGRATE all the trauma from my early childhood ?
Not to mention the very fact it took me literally 5-6 years to step back into another therapists office after walking out of his. after using COMPLETE and utter faith in the profession I had given my life towards.
Heart and soul breaking.
I cannot underestimate the damage this caused me, ineffective trauma therapy kills, and is a reminder for practioner to be delicate in working with complex trauma clients, you never know how delicate peoples childhood memories and secrets can be. You never know the courage and strength it may take someone to disclose the secrets and shame of sexual abuse and to finally give this to a therapist after years not doing that (I only told him because my mentor Maxine said the best therapists are integrated and healed from their trauma) I thought doing this would help me better at my work as a therapist. I was not only rejected, left to flood, be traumatised by further memories of my childhood and reality of my 25 years of trauma already, and facing to these horrible things I’d dissociated from, but when I faced up to the therapist I had the courage to tell my secrets too, he was questioning the validity and authenticity of my childhood memories. He then challenged the coping I had adopted from the academic course he had referred me to study a year and a half before, and now he was gaslighting other trauma therapy modalities (and what I learnt YEARS LATER ON MY OWN LEFT WITH NOTHING BUT THE LITERATURE AND MY OWN DEVICES, from the pioneers of trauma therapy research like Daniel Siegel, Janina Fisher, Bessel Van Der Volk), was actually standard practice.
Psychoeducation is key for trauma treatment, he told me repeatedly to stop doing that.
Luckily I had found an amazing trauma therapist. who saved my life and introduced me to the trauma modality of treatment. Introducing me to great work such as “the body keeps the score” and the interpersonal neurobiology & work of Daniel Siegel. Years later these were my “light home” and helped save me, as I saved myself, through my self work, applied into rigorous self work.
I’ve also been blessed with a patient & dedicated psychiatrist who has been treating me since 2012 and has been a blessing. She warned me before, and validated me after, about this therapist, so I wasn’t without warning of the risks of potential fallout. I didn’t think it would be this bad.
My take home is going forward into my professional journey, which I thought would cure it all. Is noting it won’t, because it’s just picking up the place it left off. My current therapist and I are currently working through EMDR on what happened with my last therapist (imagine needing therapy for bad therapy).
I will continue to work towards my professional and personal goals as I have had for years now to pursue my career as a mental health professional, i don’t think clinical psychologist needs to be the end goal, because of the changing scope of the field.
But social policy researcher, psychotherapist, having a masters degree & being a mental health clinician, trauma informed, yoga teacher (in Australia) & musician are some of my overarching aims.
I will never put my clients through the same things people have caused me personally or professionally, but in the capacity of therapist to client, in the context of trauma treatment, I will never engage how I was hurt because I know how much that hurts.
Sharing your darkest secrets from the depths of childhood to have them invalidated, dismissed & their authenticity challenged is the reason I kept “seeking” answers, for proof or lack of proof, what came was more evidence my mind or brain could handle, so without the coping skills to handle it, I was retraumatised by the reality of being in reality.
It hurts my soul to know I had worked so hard to be hurt so much, then hurt so much after working so hard with such a genuine intent at my core.
It took me years to pick up these pieces off the floor and stop these new memories that weren’t included in the original timeline flooding, from finding the real places and spaces in real life with real evidence of memories that were far more heinous than the innocuous things that were in that original trauma document. To question the validity of things I never forgot, when I first I poured my honest truth into is hurtful in a way I cannot express.
nor do I not wish upon any other survivor of complex trauma. I remember I kept these secrets locked inside me for decades because of the sickness and shame they were laced inside me with, but to finally summon the courage for the greater good of my counselling degree and the sacrifice of being a better therapist with the “hope” revealing my truth to this therapist would make me a better clinician was a perfectionist mistake.
I was a month into this document, and on the tail end of submitting assessments so I sent the email after days of deliberating. My heart and soul knew I couldn’t trust him. My mind tried to explain the rationalisation of “but all the therapy before helped so this should do the same, take the risk”.
The next morning as I waited for my bus to uni, in the pouring march rain, I knew i would never live to see the end of the regret I felt. My brain, alive, but dying, at the same time, as it pulsated, with sensations, images, flashes, burning, hot, freezing, cold, a rush, unending, pouring, descending, into my frontal lobe consciousness after I woke up full of new elements of context from my life. The puzzle fitting together, the blanks that were blurred out becoming clear, parts erased becoming vivid, and I suddenly had my sight back. It wasn’t gone but only hazed. It was a waterfall but it was out of control, by the end of the day, I felt like I was going insane and broke down after class, two weeks later, I was sure neurosis was coming for me, after a month, I was physically unwell from the intense duration of non stop never ending memories flooding into my consciousness at every waking, sleeping and dreaming moment. I had to go through my childhood documents to confirm, or deny that would more often than not confirm things, which created long piles of evidence, because I found a lot of documents, photos and paperwork from my childhood, which lead me to memories, leading to evidence finding, leading to me hopping in a car and driving to follow a memory or spur of the moment childhood flashback that was revealed.
You want to know how many “dreams” turned out to be real places that were behind churches or the orphanage or hospital next to my childhood home? Did that reoccurring nightmare ever happen when I followed it ? Would’ve it even happened if I had of send that trauma timeline to him, or had a therapist work with me in a safe way?
Probably not. Needless to say It was a real place I had nightmares about my whole life, right next door to my childhood home, and now it’s been discovered and I’ve found it, I haven’t had any nightmares since. I follow the trail left by my memory, originated by the trauma therapy, if the therapist did the work he could’ve stopped me going to the place to start with but because he left me to be alone with this in the months after I emailed it to him, I was forced to take matters into a “detective style” coping skill.
I ended up learning that my childhood was a lot darker, more twisted and macabre than my conscious memory can recall and I’m grateful we are amnesiac for things like this. For if I could remember this I wouldn’t be able to cope, that’s the extent of how much I’ll talk about some of the depths of finding out real life crime scenes from the sites I found following my memory.
Knowing nothing can be better than knowing at all, but now I know, I see my context in clarity. I don’t need to ruminate about why I have periods of blank or amnesia or why I am x y z. I know why, I don’t need to be shameful about hiding ritualistic or organisational child sexual abuse anymore. I have had multiple professionals acknowledge and validate the reality of what happened to me, and denying that only further harms me and other survivors.
It happens, it happened, it still happens, it doesn’t need to be satanic ritual abuse to be ritual abuse so don’t even start. Ritual abuse is ritualistic abuse. Let’s lose the stigma and the shame and the false memory association with ritual abuse and sexual abuse. Do you know Elizabeth Loftus is now debunked ? Her studies were based on adults for one. I’ll go into the problems with the false memory hypothesis and sexual abuse discrediting in the psychological profession in another post.
I’d just like to thank all the brave testimonies from other Australian survivors (or the advocates) like Fiona Barnett, Gabby Chong, Dale Holmes & Rachel Vaughn. Keep talking. There are others. I hear you. I see you and I appreciate you.
“Uncle Bearheart” for being the first core reason I survived any of this at all.
Juxtaposed, Michael Aquino, for validating this happened at all, because knowing it was happening is better than having a therapist who isn’t saying anything (I’d rather know about the 2005 ATS forums at that point I was digging for anything).
Maxine Rosenfield for being a pinnacle for my transformation into healing.
Steve stokes.
Janina fisher.
Bessel van der kolk.
Daniel Siegel.
Anomalous trauma and the UFO/MILAB community (James Bartley , eve Logan) it always helped me to listen to ufo related things when I was having flashbacks, because I could focus on aliens
My ancestors and spirit guides
The Loa & 21 commissions of spirits
My sentinel spirit
Santa Marta la Dominadora
St Rosa of Lima (rosita Legba)
St George
St Michael the Archangel
Many others.
Prime creator : papa bon dios : or god
My higher self, my true will & my great work.
My birds & my will to persevere. I was on the edge of my seat ready to give up so many times. I didn’t, I have a reason to be here. To help others.
I will never be this clinician, never.
Please believe your clients if they disclose secrets from trauma especially if it’s childhood memories they haven’t told anyone before. It can be harmful and deeply destructive to deny them their deepest shameful secrets and question the veracity. I cannot emphasise the level of pain, shame and further suffering it causes to be diminished by being told your darkest secrets are false memories.
It’s a betrayal and wound that I don’t think I can ever heal, but I will NEVER inflict on anyone LET ALONE a client.
