Healing Transitions Creative Counseling For Children & Families Inc.

April Burrows _{on Google}

Nov 2nd, 2018

When I first started going here, I told my counselor my family was "white people crazy." She didn't understand what I meant, and I came to find out she was about the most white-people-crazy person I have ever met. She insisted on holding sessions at her house which I was visibly uncomfortable with but she wouldn't let my husband "the boy" come. She spent the sessions going through huge photo albums of her and her college friends partying, preparing for her jamberry party, discussing the latest developments in her personal family and friendship dramas, showing off her aerobic yoga moves, and playing endless renditions of Heart and Soul and Titanic on her piano. She continually played mind games with me, inviting me to her upcoming Jamberry party but forbidding me to tell the others how we met, then disinviting me and saying sorry she had to be a professional, and relishing how illicit our relationship was despite other professionals including her parents warning her about it. When she had me play a song, she teased me that "you're okay, but you could be better," quoting something I'd told her in a private session about how my parents treated me growing up. I was humiliated. During the months of time I invested into twice weekly "therapy," I got out less than five lines of what could be considered therapy related. I was just so desperate for therapy that I kept trying to make it work. I would take the huge leap of saying something extremely personal and vulnerable about my family life, and her response would be "that guys scratching his nose" or something about her foot. I wanted to quit but since she'd given me so many personal gifts including her side business products, and because she continually reiterated how if she lost my business she'd be stuck with her unattractive and boring husband (who is, at least, more endowed than her ex, by the way), I felt compelled to stay in the relationship. She also disclosed extensive personal information about her other patients to me including names and highly sensitive family life, information I truly did not want to know. It was actually my concern for a 12-year-old patient of hers that prompted me to eventually report. She divulged that her parents (who she calls narcissists--ha!) had had her Baker Acted and that she had quit all her antipsychotic medication in favor of Xanaxes and weed. It was an incredible waste of my limited therapy hours, and as a result 18 months later and I still haven't trusted anyone enough to go to therapy. I even created a Facebook support group for it.