It’s not your fault if you think your therapist cares about you. It’s what therapists are trained to do—make you feel like they understand and care about you, but that isn’t realistic when you think about it logically.
My ex counselor was extremely convincing. Up until he behaved his worst, I believed that he actually cared about me. Perhaps your therapist listens well and empathizes and even shows emotion when bad things happen to you. When therapists do those things, they make it seem like they authentically care about you as a person.
And they do care about you, but it’s more like they care about you as the particular set of issues you are rather than genuinely caring for you. In other words, therapists care about what you are in the clinical sense, but they don’t care about who you are as a person.
Some of us have had to face that reality in a very painful way. Perhaps you’re coasting along peacefully with your therapist and if you don’t do anything they dislike, you might remain safe with them for the duration of your so called treatment. If that’s you, I’m genuinely happy for you.
If you’re one of therapy’s failure children like me, then your eyes have been opened in a way that will never let you look at therapy idealistically ever again.
It’s not unusual for therapists to virtue signal online about how much they care about their clients. You know, from them deep diving into your issues with you for an entire 50 minutes a week they know you so deeply.
If you think your therapist gives a damn about you, then chances are you might also believe that your coworkers are your real friends and your husband is your soulmate and still loves you even though he cheated or cheats or hits or insults you repeatedly. Good luck to you.
If you see therapy for the hoax it is, but you know how to manipulate it to get something you need to help you get better at dealing with something bad in your life, then I respect that. It’s difficult to maintain a cool distance with a therapist who has been trained to cultivate a fake bond with you so that you’ll keep coming back. If you can manage it and can get in and out fast enough, you’re probably in little danger.
The rest of us are just easy pickings for the emotional whores to prey on.
Therapists care about good reviews, not satisfied clients. Listen to how badly they talk and complain about us online. And how they don’t think clients should get to review them or complain about them in return. They think they are gods.
Sometimes I stay off this blog for months at a time and don’t write a thing. Then I see the false therapy gods mistreat another trusting client or sue one or cry and moan about clients having the few legal recourses we actually have, and I’m reminded that hell no, they are certainly not gods at all.
Many of them are the most broken people you don’t know who become counselors for bad reasons like for the privilege and status.
I say fuck them all. Their entire job should be discarded as the scam it is.
When they break their ethics, they’re protected. Their clients aren’t. When they break the law they have fancy lawyers to protect them and come after their victims instead.
Therapists are a scourge. Just another bunch of bloodsuckers going after people who are vulnerable because their fucked up parents did a shit job and no adults intervened on their behalf.
Fuck bad parents and fuck therapists, two sides of the same abusive coin.
Good luck out there. They write about you meanly online and blab about your personal business to their families and spouses and friends and coworkers. All while you or your shit insurance company pays them to do it.
They will hurt you and never apologize, ever. They will bully you and get their wives to bully you too.
Your therapist does not really care about you.
But he’s probably quite good at making you believe that he does.