Atypically Recovering: On My Own No Matter How This Goes

Tag: breadcrumbing

  • Head In A Blender…

    Blender containing a creamy green mixture around its spinning blade
    Image: WordPress Image Generator

    TW: mentions sexual assault with general descriptions; much was left out intentionally.

    It’s been about a year since I last spoke to my ex-therapist, and a little over a month since the last email. It’s still raw and hard to navigate the emotional toll this has taken, and so many before me. I feel like a fool for not leaving sooner, and at the same time, the breadcrumbing was effective in keeping me around, until it wasn’t.

    I was looking at some messages from June 2023, both to and from my ex-therapist, and I went on a pretty big rant on how I was miserable, not getting better, and was tired of all of it, especially eating. Then it devolved in some descriptions of myself that weren’t family-friendly. That was about 6 months after the first red flags. I’ve got a lousy history when it comes to listening to my gut.

    In 1987 (Jan 10), I was raped, sodomized, and beaten for 6 hours with ‘him’, his fists, and a wine cooler bottle, in Austin, Texas. I’d lived in that apartment for 10 days after getting out of the hospital, where I’d been in traction for 10 days for a back injury. It was the uncle of a baby I took care of during the day while working as a RN at night. He lied his way to my apartment, with a convincing story. I met him briefly when I stopped by to get my car at the old apartment, and then asked the baby’s mom if she’d clean my old apartment for me, paid of course. Her brother was there, and I said hi, but was mostly enjoying watching the baby crawling around their apartment. She told me before I’d ended up in the hospital that her brother was getting out of jail, and would be staying with them. I asked what he’d been in jail for, and she told me that it was ‘wrong place, wrong time’. That’s probably the story he told her. She wasn’t 20 yet, and I was 23, and had no clue about criminal matters aside from my figure skating coach’s six kids being murdered by her husband when I was 14. I was naive, and wanted to help based on the story he told me. It was plausible. I was uneasy, but went to pick him up anyway. I knew he didn’t have a car. I later found out about his prior crimes, going back to his teens, and always reoffending when on parole.

    Eventually, Numbnuts (what I call the rapist) passed out, and I slowly got up to go to the bathroom; I could tell I was still bleeding. He stirred and asked if he and the knife needed to come along, and I stated “Where would I go naked?” It wasn’t a question. He agreed to let me go alone. I was still bleeding quite a bit, and knew I had to get help, so walked back towards the bedroom and saw he was sleeping again, and turned around, grabbed a bath towel, and took off out of the apartment. I ran down the stairs, feeling like he was directly behind me, and then knocked on the neighbors’ door (I’d met Mr a few days earlier, and Mrs the day before). I explained that I’d been raped and he was still upstairs, and asked to use their phone. Mrs grabbed my arm and pulled me inside, locking the door behind me.

    Police began to show up, and a rookie went in, got beat up and thrown out of the apartment (sounded like full on war upstairs as I sat in the neighbors’ apartment). He yelled for someone to call 911 again, and find out where the rest of the police units were. By this time, media started rolling in, and once I made the 2nd call, several additional police showed up. About that time, the ambulance folks came to see how I was doing, and I’m pretty sure I’d gone into shock by then. I could see several police officers with weapons drawn aiming at my balcony upstairs. I didn’t hear the gunshots, but was told that a sergeant had shot Numbnuts (in my bedroom). Then the helicopter showed up to take him to the hospital. He wasn’t killed, so I had to testify for the State, and after lunch, the ADA told me that he wanted to change his plea to guilty. I wouldn’t accept the 40 years being offered, and when they asked what I would accept, I said nothing less than 60 years, since he’d be eligible for parole in 20 years, which was the same as a life sentence at the time of the crime. If only I’d listened to that ‘uneasy’ feeling. I know that nothing excuses what he did, and that me trying to be nice wasn’t a crime, but it was a hard lesson learned. He’d planned to dismember me alive, and turns out I looked like his ex-wife.

    Anyway, the one thing I hang onto from all of that was that I have survived. I hate the term ‘victim’ (and state of mind that can go along with it), and was able to see how I was played that day that was almost my last. I survived, and that’s what matters. I just wish I knew how to move into a more ‘survivor’ mentality with what’s gone on with the ex-therapist. Emotionally, this is harder than the rape because it was someone I knew personally, or thought I could trust what I’d seen from a 30+ year old news show. When 2 people know each other, even if only messages and by phone, and have for several years, it’s not random. When that other person knows many, many personal stories of abuse, neglect, and abandonment, and then does the same in an employment situation, it’s egregious (remember, I paid her for a specific reason). The dependency that was encouraged and ‘groomed’ also means that the one with the power has ‘turned off’ some of the ‘adult’ in their target, by design. It hurts- and that’s what I’m working on fixing in myself.

    At the same time, I still blame myself, even if that’s so completely illogical in this situation, where someone who has done this repeatedly for 40 years is still doing it. A type of serial offender. I know that in this situation, I didn’t have the ‘power’ on my side. She was the one who made decisions, and impacted those in her crosshairs. There’s no professional agency to report to because she never had formal credentials. The international end of this is also frustrating (I don’t recommend seeing anyone who isn’t licensed in the country where the paying party lives).. So, I’m eager to get to the place where I feel more like a survivor. I’m not interested in anything that would mean having to have any future contact, and it saddens me that the person I initially was in contact with was playing her role in starting to control as much of my life as possible. It was about personal gain, from my perspective. There’s more to that, but I’m not up for more tonight.

    I’m no longer a victim of ex-therapist, so that’s a start. I removed myself from the offensive situation before I was too brainwashed to do so, and I’m thankful that I was in a position to do so since I live thousands of miles away, and was never physically held captive. That’s another win, though a slow one that cost more than money. I’ve survived most of my life. I’d like to know, even if not for all that long considering my age, what it’s like to live.

  • It Started Out Pretty Well Before the Breadcrumbing

    It Started Out Pretty Well Before the Breadcrumbing

    Photo- mine, turkey tail mushrooms

    I have to be fair about how ‘therapy’ was – not just the bad ending. It started out well. I wasn’t in good shape, after not eating solid food for about a week, and in the middle of ’round 2′ in 2 years of losing weight rapidly. The first part of the relapse started in May 2021. When my labs came back, my kidneys were in lousy shape – as in getting used to the idea of a transplant list. I was in acute renal failure from cutting carbs too much, breaking down muscle that my kidneys had to deal with circling around in my bloodstream. I got out of that by increasing carbs, but still restricted. Then I restricted more, but kept ‘enough’ carbs on board not to make my kidneys worse. I’ve had chromic kidney disease for about 8 years, from inadequate blood pressure and heart rate along with dehydration after decades of restricted eating.

    I’ve been through enough relapses (vs. my ‘normal’ restricting that I thought was fairly normal) to know when I’m getting into trouble, and it didn’t take long when I started losing again. Over the past 4 1/2 years, I’ve lost/gained/lost/gained a total 220 pounds (45 down/up, then 65 down/up). That’s hard on a body. When I was having more and more difficulty with just getting in my 500-600 calories/day and unable to ‘snap out of it’ (labs were stable) I decided to contact the eating disorder therapist I’d seen on Facebook, after first hearing about her on 20/20 in the late 90s. After I’d found her on FB, I told myself that if she was still treating people, AND had an opening, I’d take that as a sign that it was meant to be. I also thought there was no way all three of those would happen, but they did.

    By the time I had my first phone session with Ex-T, I was barely even drinking enough water. I was getting just enough in, but that was about it after I’d cut the tube feeding formula out 5 days earlier. Ex-T was at an airport flying home, and she talked me through an 8 oz bottle of kefir. I’m not sure how long it took, but it was hard. My head was so against anything with calories, and it was a fight to get every sip down. She had a connecting flight, and called me from the next airport, and again when she got home, like she said she would. To distract me, she sent a video of some deer she’d seen near where she’d been staying. She was very kind and patient, just as I’d seen on the TV show.

    For the next several weeks, she called a few times a day to check in and tell me what to eat. That was very helpful, because it took the ‘blame’ of eating away from me, so my head wouldn’t go after me as much. It was also difficult, because I wasn’t used to some of the foods she wanted me to eat (though she never told me I had to eat anything that I really didn’t like) and the amounts were not what I was used to. She didn’t asked me to eat a lot at one time, except for once (2 whole bagels and cream cheese). I just wasn’t used to eating what normal people did, because I never knew what that was like. From that, we both realized that I had no clue about what normal eating was- I don’t remember it. So, she was trying to undo 5 decades of food restriction, whether imposed or when I went off the rails during the summer of 1981 and haven’t been the same since.

    Refeeding syndrome was a risk, and both Ex-T and my dietician said the same thing. Ex-T was in charge of food, but I had to see someone local, in person, in order for Ex-T to accept me as a patient, which was prudent. I’d seen the dietician a year or two before then, so had a bit of history with her, and knew I could work with here on this end of things. I hadn’t heard of refeeding syndrome, but looked up some stuff on it, though retaining information was a problem, and still isn’t back to my ‘normal’ of reading 3-4 novels a week. Ex-T gave me firm instructions that I was not to eat anything she didn’t tell me to eat, and if I wanted something else, I needed to check with her, and this was to keep me safe at that point. It wasn’t about controlling my food (or me) as much as it was to keep me from getting into potentially fatal complications.

    I ended up with a concussion about a week or so after moving from my childhood home to an apartment, and that was problematic because of vertigo, nausea, memory issues, and constant ringing in my ears (still have constant ‘cicadas’ chirping nonstop 3 1/2 years later). That move was about a week or so after the first phone calls. Then, there were a bunch of infections and a sepsis scare, and she was very attentive with calls and messages. My blood pressure and heart rate were still erratic, and I was on activity restriction limited to being up for 10 minutes three times a day except for getting food or showering. My dietician said the same thing, without talking to Ex-T, so that helped that they were on the same page. I passed out a lot, and also have seizures (diagnosed when I was 22), which were more unstable. I was a mess. Being conscious was never guaranteed.

    For about 5 months, if Ex-T said she was going to call, she generally did. I knew that the contact would decrease as I got more stable, and was fully on board with that. There were some humorous conversations and messages, and the relaxed ‘tone’ to the ‘therapy’ was pleasant. I had ‘homework’ assignments, to give background info on family, food history, trauma history, medical issues, etc. Those first 5-5 1/2 months were fine. I didn’t have any ‘red flags’ going off about anything. I had hope that I was going to get better.

    Then, Ex-T asked me if I could pay double for more intensive contact for 6 months. I agreed, hoping that it would cut time off of the back end of the estimated 2-2 1/2 years the five stages would take to work through. Within a couple of weeks, the first signs of trouble started. Ex-T had gone back to Europe for the winter, and was working ‘in person’ with several patients who were further along in their therapy with her. I heard nothing from her for a couple of weeks (and was in chaos with what to eat). I finally contacted another patient who I’d been in phone contact with for a few months, and she told me that things had been very hectic, and a guy from Oceania had just shown up at the airport. When I did talk to Ex-T, she told me he was only 29kg (about 64 pounds), and she couldn’t turn him away. Turns out, he weighed more than that when he got there… 29kg was his lowest ever weight.

    I have a hard time believing that someone just showed up at the airport to start ‘live-in’ treatment from another hemisphere without there being some planning involved. I believe she knew about this when she asked me to pay double. My heart sank, and the first very serious doubts kicked in. I understood not wanting to turn away someone that ill- I had no problem with that. But I did have trouble paying for more intensive time that was sporadic at best, and didn’t start for several weeks. I asked Ex-T if we should postpone my more intensive ‘therapy’ until the guy was more stable. She said no; she could do both. But it didn’t turn out that way. I never really got past that point in the ‘five stages’ in her program (stage 2), but I was so ashamed to send photos of what I’d eaten (how she checked what and how much I was having), or have someone on the phone talking me through food when she had the 64 pound guy there. It messed with my head a lot.

    I was stalled with food for months after that, and then ended up with issues related to gout medication, so I had to change the types of protein I had. That was just one more thing that focused on food and medical stuff. All of that makes eating disorder recovery so much worse. In the past, I didn’t have to weigh out protein or limit (severely at times) how much protein food I ate. Even being diabetic wasn’t that big of an issue since I was diet controlled for 12 years. I’ve been on insulin for 18 years now. So, I wasn’t supposed to focus on numbers, but had to for insulin dosing, kidney disease, and gout flare prevention. Ex-T was agreeable to me managing the amounts of protein since I was here alone, and knew what I needed to do. She would still give input about other foods, at least for a while.

    At any rate, the first 5-6 months were difficult only in that eating was so miserable, but not because of Ex-T. I was sick a lot. I passed out fairly often (have had a ‘safety routine’ when I first get out of bed, to avoid hitting the floor). My head was constantly upset about how much I was eating, even though I knew that for a ‘normal’ person, the portions were more snack-sized (though had 5-6 of them a day). I knew she wasn’t asking me to eat too much. My stomach was a mess with bloating, so that didn’t help. I was (and still am) using an NG tube to be sure I got enough fluids in. That started just to get me through a bladder infection, but it’s still in 3 1/2 years later (I change the tube every 4-6 weeks, and was trained as a RN on how to do that; do NOT attempt that if you don’t know what you’re doing- you could literally drown from it). I am doing better drinking fluids normally, but on ‘bad bloat’ days, it’s still hard. I want to remember more of the OK time. The lousy ending is still very raw, so I’m struggling. But it wasn’t horrible at the beginning. And there were some OK months with fairly regular contact after the guy was more stable, when I was supposed to be doing more intensive stuff. There were many calls that didn’t happen, and that got much worse a couple of years ago and continued getting more sporadic to the tune of not getting a call for a month (more than once or twice), but I didn’t know I was being breadcrumbed at the time.

    It saddens me a lot that someone whose views I once respected so much became such a source of pain and stress. Trust is gone, and has been shaky for a while. This was a last shot. If I can’t get it together with my dietician and the YouTube recovery videos, I will never be free of the food wars in my head. I can deal with getting enough macros in each day, because my head ‘allows’ for keeping my kidneys from a third run-in with acute kidney failure- that’s been a loophole for several years.

    I saw my dietitian today for the first time in 6 months (long summer of biopsies and tests), and she thinks I seem stronger mentally after ending contact/therapy with Ex-T, after I said I felt stronger. She is also checking into the YouTube content creators who share information based on their experiences with being recovered, and believe in a ‘no diet’ mentality. Single serving size packages of foods (frozen dinners, hummus, guacamole, fruit, etc) are also helpful for not being as scary. I’m no longer having to follow more food restricted by Ex-T, so my veggie intake has gone up (especially eggplant parmesan entrees, and bell peppers for a chickpea/feta/veggie/olive salad). So I am moving forward.

    I don’t have the hope I once did, but I’m not giving up.

  • What To Look For In Therapy Going Wrong

    What To Look For In Therapy Going Wrong

    I first had inklings of something not being OK nearly 3 years ago. Something wasn’t right, but I was the one who was seeking help for a messed up head, so what did I know? There was one other time when I didn’t listen to my gut, and it nearly got me murdered (and did get me raped, beaten and sodomized for 6 hours before I was able to escape prior to being dismembered alive), so being someone who thinks others are more valid, correct, ‘better’, etc. has cost me a LOT. But when I’m done being a patient patient, I’m DONE.

    I was in tears every month when I sent another month’s payment in, not realizing it was the solidification of how well ‘breadcrumbing’ was working on me. There was just enough contact to make me think things were OK ‘enough’, but not to erase my concerns completely. I did start to be more guarded, but that still wasn’t enough. I wanted SO badly to be a success story, and help others as many of her previous patients had done. But I also knew that the calls she never followed through with making, time she was unavailable (grew over time), other projects that took up her time, etc were making me feel more worthless- not the opposite, which was the supposed goal after seeing the TV show decades ago, and reading her book. It all seemed very precarious and confusing.

    There is a ‘normal’ dependency during deep trauma work (never got past the listing off of events, or some one-off discussions… there was no “work” on the issues). With eating disorder therapy, nowadays, it’s quite common for someone else to make decisions about what someone eats because there really is an inability to act on the logical ‘need’ to eat. But when is it more like ‘grooming’ ? When is the goal KEEPING someone dependent for the therapists’ own reasons? These are what I now feel were ‘breadcrumbs’ or other ways to manipulate me into being dependent. This should never be the goal of therapy, even when trauma and developmental stalls are involved.

    – telling someone they want to know them for the rest of their (therapists) life…. the goal of therapy is to heal and move on. If a friendship develops AFTER therapy, that’s up to the parties involved. When the “I’m not going to lose you” starts, it’s a worrying sign. I’m guessing she’d say it was about me not dying from the eating disorder- but then why not make those phone calls as planned? Because it keeps the patient hoping for contact. Eventually, the realization is that no call is likely to come, and the abandonment and attachment issues just deepen. For those who keep listening to the BS, it keeps them where the therapist wants them…wanting more contact.

    – wanting control over food… again. Nearly 3 years after that was appropriate. But when the therapist can be MIA for a month at a time between phone calls, how would having control over food look? There’s a saying “Whoever controls the food controls the people.” (from Henry Kissinger- yeah, not a great source, but he wasn’t wrong with this- then or now, even from beyond the grave). It was about political people, but it also fits here. When someone is in control over something as basic as food, that’s not a good place to be unless that person is known to the person being helped, and there’s enough “safe history” to be OK- as in eating disorder patients going through various programs where parents make and supervise food and eating. My ex-therapist and I never met- and never even had a video call. We never saw each other face to face.

    – history of questionable safety or ethical issues. I won’t go into detail, but the internet is full of negative information about this therapist. I simply didn’t want to believe it, and it has cost me a lot- financially and emotionally. There was a book written by someone who just seemed bitter at the time I heard about it (never read it). I did read several articles when I was trying to locate this therapist, but I couldn’t reconcile the person I’d seen in the TV episode on a news program and talk show 20+ years ago with what I was reading online. Do some serious digging when it comes to getting help online for any health issue.

    – not ‘letting’ me quit earlier. She dIdn’t want to ‘lose’ me, I wasn’t in a place to make a sound decision (per her), didn’t get through the stages (barely kept a toehold in stage 2 of 5, when per initial estimates would have taken about 2 years for the entire process).

    – ALWAYS has excuses/reasons for not having contact as planned… sick (she was sick for months in total over the past 3+ years), other projects, new patients, emergencies, jet lag, traveling/flights, patient returning after causing chaos with multiple patients- leaving the patients who were impacted in the dust while the therapist couldn’t ‘ethically’ not deal with the troublemaker (but for those who didn’t cause trouble, no problem with them hanging out in the cold), family sick, family traveling and had to get them from the airport, moving, moving again, moving between countries every few months, etc. ALL of this can be valid, but when it’s a pattern of never-ending reasons for not having contact, it’s a problem. NO THERAPIST should breadcrumb a patient. Period. Full stop. OR, if their life is that chaotic, it’s their ethical responsibility to set limits on new patients, or keeping ones they already have. An honest conversation is always a better option than meeting their own need to be essentially the ‘dear leader’ of their own cult.

    – asking for money besides what was agreed upon for therapy itself. It’s NEVER OK for a therapist to ask for money outside of this. Ever. This is also a test of how well the breadcrumbing has gone. Unfortunately, it took me another year, and more issues, to wake up that I’d been hung out to dry for a couple of years by then. When I finally said no, twice, to money requests, contact dropped even more. I’d paid what had been agreed to to the tune of $32K USD- which was huge for me. I’m in financial desert land now.

    – talks about specifics of other patients’ issues, weight, family business, etc. NOT OK. She’d asked me if she could tell another patient about me, who would be having contact with me (further along in the process, and a peer support contact). That was fine. But to tell me deeply personal and disturbing information about another patient and his/her family was more than not OK. In the US, it’d get someone disciplined by their licensing board, and possibly federal charges under HIPAA. But this therapist isn’t in the US.

    – when the request for money is ‘no’, and a list of financial issues on the patient’s end is responded to only with asking if I had the banking info to make a transfer, that’s a huge going-down-in-flames red flag. The patient becomes what the therapist needs… so effectively ending the therapy.

    – says things very specifically, in a way that may sound like a commitment, but is meaningless in the end. “I want to talk to you” doesn’t mean “I will talk to you”… and eventually, “I will talk to you at X time.” becomes meaningless, and retraumatises the ‘target’. With the therapist knowing full well about the abandonment and attachment trauma.

    _ has written in a book that telling a patient something positive doesn’t have to be true… just don’t be negative. Isn’t that just a fancy description for deceit and BS ? I’ve heard how my sense of humor is “to die for” (yeah, well in the end, it may be… ), or “you’re so much funnier than people in comedy videos”. Uh huh. I wasn’t laughing then, and definitely am not laughing now. “I wish I’d been your mother” “You’re like a daughter to me.” (gads, I hope not, for her daughters’ sakes). I have trouble believing anything she’s said to me at this point.

    – doesn’t respond directly to emails (or whatever communication) about issues WITH therapy (the calls that didn’t come more often than they did, requests to not planning calls ahead of time, falling asleep during calls- multiple times, etc.). It leaves the patient feeling not worth listening to or the time to work things out… and in this case, ‘working it out’ would have meant that the therapist would actually have to give a rip about what they were doing to the patient with the inconsistencies and ongoing breadcrumbing. No patient should have to keep track of “said she’d call” and “actual calls” for nearly 2 years.

    She travels throughout Europe seeing patients who pay ‘enough’. She has some live with her family. Her plans’ deadlines are always extended, whether publishing books, phone calls, or other endeavors. She makes promises she doesn’t keep. She keeps those around whose stories might boost herself. She often uses “I’m saving your life” or other dramatic terms. She talks about patients with patients… sometimes with their permission. Or not. She had more restrictive food ‘rules’ based on nothing more than random internet searches- not peer-reviewed science based studies (first thing my dietitian did when I told her I was no longer with ‘M’ was to lift all food rules not specific to physical diagnoses I have- and said that if something sounded good, but might be a bit on the ‘fun’ side, go for it… and supplement by tube as needed. That’s where I’m at. Still using an NG after 3 years because I can’t get my volume tolerance up).

    These are just a few personal examples. Yeah, I know it makes me sound so stupid and gullible- and I can understand the gullible part. And that’s what desperation for help can do. It blinds someone’s ability to realize that they aren’t perceiving things incorrectly… they’re being manipulated. The desire to get well blurs what is so clear, but only realized when something happens to blast open the blinders, and see what has been going on. There are others who experience this, and/or are at higher risk – domestic violence victims, cult members, and the thoroughly disenfranchised. And this therapist knew that local family was gone, I am basically housebound from disability, and was selling my childhood home (not for much, unfortunately). I couldn’t have had a bigger bullseye on my head.

    In the US, report any such therapists to their licensing board- to prevent others from going through what you did. And if seeking online help, be sure to know the way to deal with unethical behavior from a therapist or other healthcare provider. Keep records. Take screenshots of any messages. Save emails. Keep financial records. Protect yourself. It’s much better never to need any of it, than to need it and not have it.