A Public Service Announcement
Because I care more about the emotional wellbeing of your clients than I do about your ego.
Below are some versions of the reviews that I’ve left on Google for my ex-therapist, Aaron Gleaves, Licensed Professional Counselor, who currently works at Calmed Counseling & Consulting in Blacksburg, Va. My intention in writing these is to add to the public awareness that badly done terminations are all too common and should be totally unacceptable because they cause emotional damage and trauma to clients. I feel like the best course of action for clients who have been harmed like this is to speak up about their experiences.
As a society, we need to stop allowing therapists to harm clients without consequence. They need to be held to a higher standard of behavior. Currently the mental health industry doesn’t have to answer to anyone. Allowing them to judge themselves has proven insufficient at curbing malpractice, incompetence, and the outright harm being inflicted on many clients.
My original hope was that Aaron Gleaves would be willing to have conversations with me and might show me the ways that he’s working to improve how he handles client terminations. As that sadly seems like something he’s unwilling to do, I feel my only recourse is to share my experience so other clients will be more aware and better prepared.
Here are my reviews, with the most recent version first:
- (My current Google review)
I had a very negative experience with Calmed Counseling & Consulting. I don’t recommend Aaron Gleaves as a therapist. He was emotionally abusive to me at the end of my therapy. He also didn’t do the professional things he’d written in the documents that he had me sign in the beginning. He seems nice, but I found him to ultimately be untrustworthy, and being trustworthy is something I value in therapists in particular. I’ve had good therapists after him, ones who were compassionate and helped me work through the emotional damage he caused me. I thought Stacey Bolt was kind at first, until she proceeded to harass and bully me for not leaving her a five star review. I want potential clients to know about my experience because I didn’t deserve to be treated badly by Aaron and I don’t want them to be treated badly by him either. Thank you for reading this.
2. (Past Google review)
My therapy ended terribly and it’s left me extremely hurt. Aaron Gleaves was my therapist. He helped me navigate several bad situations, and I was grateful for his support during the year and a half that I met with him. I appreciate the times that I felt like he really heard me and maintained a safe space for me to express myself and process through painful things.
Endings don’t have to be horrible experiences that leave people scarred. I worked hard the entire time I was in therapy and accomplished a lot and definitely deserved a better ending than what Aaron and Calmed Counseling forced on me.
The pain from a bad termination is quite excruciating. I’m a strong person and I’ve been through some awful experiences, and this is something I honestly believe that I’ll never fully heal from. It’s harmed me and confused me and left me feeling unable to connect with and feel safe with other therapists.
When I started therapy with Aaron I was sent a document and part of it was about termination. I’ll try to include a screenshot of it. The termination I experienced wasn’t respectful at all like what is described in the paperwork that I was given.
Because of how much pain and confusion this has caused me, I don’t want other clients to go through this, and telling people is all I know to do. My advice to clients is to keep in mind that therapists aren’t regulated in a way that protects clients. They oversee themselves which is totally absurd and unacceptable. Until our society values clients as much as therapists and we change this biased system, clients must be careful and protect themselves and get empowered by being educated about therapy and staying aware.
I highly recommend the book In Session: The Bond Between Women and Their Therapists by Deborah A. Lott. It’s been very helpful to me and I wish that I’d heard about it before this experience. I recommend it for every client and I wish therapists would read it and actually take it to heart because it would help them to be better therapists.
Thank you for reading this.
3. (Past Google review)
I met with Aaron Gleaves of Calmed Counseling & Consulting for 70 sessions. The majority were productive and beneficial to me. With his help, I quickly overcame anxiety and worked through many past issues and bad situations that I was experiencing at the time. I found him supportive and resourceful.
However, I feel compelled to change my once glowing review to include the unprofessional and emotionally destructive way in which he terminated me. My issue is not that he ended therapy with me, but how he did so. A bad termination is painful and damaging, more so than those who haven’t experienced it might be inclined to believe. While there are therapists who take the end of therapy very seriously and do it in a respectful way, there are many who are more concerned with getting rid of a client for their own personal reasons and become sloppy, neglectful, and emotionally abusive. I encourage those unfamiliar with the subject to research it and to not dismiss the painful experiences of clients who’ve suffered from bad terminations.
Mr. Gleaves didn’t terminate me over text, and I respect him for having the guts to do it to my face in our last Telehealth session. He also provided me with 2 therapists references, although he was initially slow to do so.
I want to believe his intentions were good, but at the end he presented as emotionally checked out, dismissive, and passive aggressive. I was confused when he clearly wasn’t being the therapist I thought he was. Instead, he behaved like an emotionally vacant, self-absorbed boyfriend who has decided he is done and can’t be bothered with even basic kindness and just wants his soon to be ex to be quiet and disappear already. The key difference is that A.G. was supposedly a trained professional and therapy is supposed to be a safe space for the client. Maybe if I’d engaged with him more about his feelings then things would’ve turned out differently, but I thought that wasn’t my role so I didn’t. Keep in mind that I was shocked while it was happening, and although I truly cared about his feelings, I felt like I wasn’t in the position to navigate us through it. He also didn’t allow me the opportunity to try to understand or fix what was happening.
I don’t know how much of his poor behavior came directly from him or from the influence of his supervisor, but I want to warn clients that for me, Calmed Counseling was great for the basic issues like anxiety, and for that I still recommend them. I cannot in good conscience, however, recommend them for bigger or multi-layered issues, especially those that delve into the deeper waters of relationship dynamics. I reached those deeper waters unintentionally and was badly hurt.
Many therapists have their own personal issues and they get triggered and let things go off the rails. Additionally, it’s still rare for therapists to have significant training in rupture and repair and terminations. Again I encourage clients to research and be aware as you go through therapy. It’s supposed to be about the therapist helping with your issues, not them hurting you because of theirs.
Dear Aaron Gleaves, I disapprove of how you treated me at the end. I won’t coddle you or absolve you of responsibility for your actions. I also didn’t and won’t give you a feminist card because you clearly acted misogynistic when you silenced and dismissed me. I don’t picture you doing that to a male client, nor do I think you’d respond with “You present as strong,” or “I don’t know what to say to that,” and then quickly changing the subject if a male client spoke out about how something you’ve said or done confused or hurt them. I won’t be dehumanized or silenced by you or anyone else, and I wish better for your other clients, present and future. Please be kinder and more respectful to your clients even if you feel annoyed, hurt, or angry with them. That’s the good that I want to come from this bad experience.