The Therapist Who Broke Me — Part 1

(Part 1 of 3) From Hating to Healing and Why I Now Highly Advocate Therapy

The following is a paraphrased section of my memoir, The Invisible Storm, chapter 1, page 34. (Names have been changed for privacy.)

I didn’t get a choice.

I was 14 years old when my stepfather, Ron, molested me. Despite his threats and demand for silence, I told my best friend, and her mother later discovered the narrative in her diary. I’ll never forget the day a faculty member and two police officers entered my quiet classroom while we were taking a test. He whispered to the teacher, whose eyes quickly landed on me.

Fear spread like wildfire inside when the teacher called me forward, and the three men escorted me out while scrutinizing whispers spread out behind me. We walked in silence down the hall to a conference room, where a group of blank, intimidating faces I didn’t recognize stared back at me. One woman asked me to sit down.

In the next several moments, I learned that not only was my secret exposed, but these adults wanted me to tell them every single detail of the event. I sat alone, terrified, with no hand to hold, knowing my life was over now because my stepdad would find out I told.

Instead, my stepdad was put on probation with a restraining order, and I was sent to see a therapist.

I’ll admit I entered Dr. Lynch's office with heavy judgment and resistance. The plaques lining the wall and shelves with fancy books didn’t move me. He wasn’t welcoming or even friendly, implying that I was just another name on his roster of clients.

I couldn’t understand how these adults—the group at my school and now Dr. Lynch—expected me to dump out my most sacred, shameful, gut-wrenching secrets like a bowl of candy when there was no indication that they even cared about me.

They all said they wanted to help me, but I never asked for help. They didn’t know I had been abused several times before Ron, and I had handled those incidents fine on my own.

The only redeeming quality of his office was the half-hexagon window seat along the left wall, adorned with pretty curtains and pillows. From that vantage point, two stories up, I could see a landscape of plush grass and trees. It looked peaceful out there, and for a moment, I got lost in it.

Dr. Lynch pulled me back by saying we would meet several times over the next six months, so it would “behoove” me to cooperate. By the end of that first session, I had begrudgingly emptied the details of what happened while he scribbled nonstop on his yellow legal pad.

In the following session, he approached a topic I discussed with no one: feelings. That’s when things got unstable. That was an inner room I kept locked shut, and even I stayed out.

I never felt safe there. The secrets of things unspoken lurked in the dark corners of that room, but Dr. Lynch pleaded with me now to trust him with those secrets. I couldn’t possibly. No one got in there. Ever. I wavered and stalled until the end of the session, but I sensed his relentless mission to get the truth from me.

At the next session, I gave him an inch. He asked again how I felt when Ron abused me. I’d never tried to assess or vocalize my feelings about that, and peeking into the feelings room didn’t expose just one but a whole tornado of them. So, I grabbed the strongest one.

“Angry,” I said. “I felt angry.”

He furrowed his brow and leaned back in his chair. Tapping his pencil on his chin as if I’d said something confusing, he tilted his head and said, “You felt angry?”

“Yes,” I said.

"Well, you shouldn’t have felt that way.”

His words stunned me. This man in front of me, whom I just trusted with sacred feelings, told me in seven words that anger was wrong. In seven words, I lost my ability to perceive how abuse should make me feel, and I decided right then that I would never tell anyone again. My ability to trust my own feelings shattered, and whatever control I thought I had with Dr. Lynch dissolved. He knew everything.

After six grueling months with Dr. Lynch, I was anxious to be done. On the final day, what I thought would be a "Goodbye, I hope you have a good life” session turned into something else entirely.

…..

I thought it couldn’t get any worse, but it did. Much, much worse. In Part 2, you’ll discover what made me swear off therapy for life.

…

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