AtypicallyRecovering

Photo- mine

A big part of the eating disorder therapy with my now ex-therapist was based on increasing self worth. There were a lot of terms of endearment and declarations that I was loved. But words are really, really cheap when they’re not followed up with actions. I feel even less worthy of food or contact with other people now, after being breadcrumbed and manipulated. I was used for payments, with nothing consistent in return.

How are the following supposed to help feeling ‘worth’ something?

– more phone calls not made than made after saying she’d call

– telling me how she was spending time with other patients or flying to other countries to see them when I didn’t even get a stupid phone call

– being told that she was making food for other patients at her house while I was barely able to open the fridge without breaking down in tears

– telling me I could call if I wasn’t OK, after a message that wasn’t responded to, but then declining the call and telling me she’d get back to me “if possible” (she’d gotten off the phone with me before when others had emergencies).

– spending over a year recording the audio book for one of her yet to be published books (working on one since blog dated in 2013), contacting me now and then, but nothing consistent

– the whole asking for money for personal reasons, and then greatly reducing contact when I couldn’t send more, after she said she’d keep me on when I told her I couldn’t pay past last December. She asked for another year, knowing I couldn’t pay- and then had very little to do with me when she knew I was going through some serious medical issues- during which time she asked for more money for personal reasons, telling me to sell things. I didn’t have the money to send, and no phone contact from her for a month after that.

– telling me she’d send information, food lists, etc- and not doing them, aside from the food list that took over a year to receive (and she was supposed to be approving what I ate).

– telling me i was like a daughter to her, and that she wished she’d raised me. I was better off with the one I had, even with the abuse and neglect.

– wanting to have control over food again when she couldn’t even be trusted to call when she said she would, and disappeared for up to a month at a time with very few, and brief messages

– sending me the wrong person’s messages- like she was cramming more than one of us into some ‘time slot’ at the same time

– making all kinds of comments that she couldn’t back up, or that sounded very strange (referring to her and her daughter’s medical issues). Hearing them as a RN, many didn’t make any sense.

– wondering what she’ll say to others about me after she told me thinks about other patients that I should never have heard

– knowing that her words were worth very little, and that I was just another name on a to-do list, when she got around to it. I have no reason to believe anything she told me about anything


How do I work on recovery when I feel worth even less now? I know it’s ‘her stuff’, but it impacted me badly. How can I warn others? Or will they just do what I did, and hope that she truly was how she came across in the media? How does someone use another person’s vulnerability and desperation to get well as some kind of psychological control/manipulation vehicle? What therapist has such low integrity to ask patients for money that isn’t part of the payment agreement FOR therapy? What kind of person does that? I guess one consolation is that I’m not like her. I do get comfort from that. I just wish those still in her talons knew that they were being used.