Examples of Client Abuse © Martyn Carruthers

Online Coaching, Counseling & Soulwork Therapy

Most helping professionals are conscientious people with good intentions
– and some damage the people that pay them for help.

My therapist was like the loving father I never had and I would do anything he said.
When he suggested a weekend together, I agreed … but later I felt terribly used.
He still calls me and still wants me to purchase more appointments.

Consequences don’t care about good intentions, credentials or philosophies.

Therapy, Counseling & Coaching are Conversations

Coaches and counselors and therapists are professional conversationalists – and may be educators, medical doctors, HR professionals or spiritual guides. Some of them may, often with good intentions, damage their clients.

• Have you been hurt by a therapist, coach or counselor?
• Have you abused the trust of people who asked you for help?
• Do you feel that you depend on a therapist, coach or counselor?
• Have you failed to change yourself – and now consider yourself incurable?

Examples of Client Abuse

If you seek help, you may feel overwhelmed by negative emotions or in shock following a relationship crisis. perhaps you may even feel like a lost child, exceptionally vulnerable to criticism and abuse.

We usually ask people about their prior coaching or counseling, and we find that abuse often occurs during counseling, coaching and therapy sessions. The following situations appear to be fairly common – helping professionals may:

1. Claim that you are overreacting
2. Talk mostly about their own problems
3. Endlessly elaborate their philosophies
4. Withhold important information from you
5. Exaggerate or misdiagnose your problems
6. Repeatedly re-schedule your appointments
7. Label your communication as bad or wrong
8. Refuse to answer your reasonable questions
9. Be preoccupied or daydream during your sessions

10. Refuse to consider your perceptions or point of view

    My massage therapist was gorgeous – and his gentleness triggered
    something deep inside me. I practically raped him. But I never went
    back – the shame was too high. He should have stopped me.

11. Blackmail you with private information
12. Use your sessions to promote themselves
13. Extend your sessions without benefit to you
14. Claim that you cause them to act inappropriately
15. Arrange to meet you for non-therapeutic purposes
16. Refuse to discuss topics which you want to discuss
17. Express mood changes and / or emotional outbursts
18. Talk endlessly about the therapist’s beliefs and opinions
19. Tell you that you do not deserve love, care or support
20. Invite you to participate in emotional or physical intimacyThis client acted so docile and I found myself getting angry with
    her. A couple of times I shouted at her to grow up!
    Then I realized that I had fully stepped into her abusive father’s
    role. That’s when I contacted you for help.
21. Act pompous, condescending or officious
22. Give you covert post-hypnotic suggestions
23. Try to persuade you to join a religion or cult
24. Later deny or justify suggestions of intimacy
25. Ask you for advice about personal problems
26. Advise you to change your sexual orientation
27. Continually defer solutions to the next session
28. Threaten to end your sessions unless you comply
29. Prescribe experimental drugs without warning you
30. Cause you to distrust other helping professionals

The last may be worst. Mentor damage can delay you from seeking other help.

Part 2 of Therapist-Client Abuse & Codependence

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