As A Bonus, She Didn’t Even Credit Me

by Muted
(USA)

I saw a therapist when I was a teenager after my parents had a rough divorce and I was being bullied in school. I saw this person maybe 6 months.

Fast forward to me in grad school, I decided to become a therapist. The VERY FIRST textbook I am assigned leapt out at me. It had a series of case studies. I came across one that was extremely familiar. This person had my same first name and also had exact stories that I had shared in therapy along with direct quotes and a very detailed falling out I had with a friend. Words cannot express how I felt, reading this in a textbook that all my peers were reading for this orientation. So literally, 80 strangers are reading probably the crappiest period of my life. She also embellished some details to make me seem more in crisis than I was. I was a minor when I was seeing her. She never had permission from me or my mother to include my therapy with her into a text book via a case study. The fact that I paid to relive my own therapy was even more damming. At the very least, I wish she had changed my first name or had gone about this the right way.