The Moment I Was Actually Fired — By My Therapist!

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When we began working together, we were both in our late 20s, young and untested. Rhonda was a new therapist; I was a newly published novelist. I chose her because I was struggling with anxiety, and she was inexpensive, about my age, so I thought she’d understand me more. She was woo-woo — but in a good way.

Our work together didn’t start out so great, though. One day, she picked up a soft mallet, turned to me and said, “Pretend this is your mother, demanding you be a good girl.” She whomped the couch to show me, shouting, “No!” Whomp. Whomp. I stood there, frozen in embarrassment. Then she turned to me, triumphant, and I felt myself deflate.

“I can’t do that,” I said.

“Do it,” she said, putting the mallet in my hand, and when I refused again, she rolled her eyes. “Fine. Doesn’t like trying new things,” she said, and moved on.

But over the months, she kept pushing mallet work. Worse, she wanted to role-play, with me as the therapist and her as me. “I can’t do that!” I cried. "I don’t know how to be a therapist!”

She narrowed her eyes, and then she began to criticize me. She told me that she read my new novel, and it didn’t go deep enough, that she much preferred Toni Morrison, and why didn’t I write as well as Toni? The next day, to my shock, she got up and put her hands through my mane of curls, ordering, “You need a good haircut. Like mine.” Her hands didn’t release until I moved away from that unwelcome intimacy.

But despite all this, I believed that she knew better than I did what I needed, and that more time would reveal truths to me. And so, I kept coming back.

And then a real crisis shattered my life, and everything changed.

Two weeks before my wedding, my healthy, young fiancé died in my arms of a heart attack, and I completely fell apart. My friends surrounded me. I went to grief groups, and Rhonda asked me to come three times a week. “You need to,” she insisted.

For the first time in my life, it didn’t seem to be just me who began feeling worse after each session. She began pacing, and one day, she came into the session wearing an engagement ring. “You’re getting married, and I can’t!” I wailed.

She twisted the ring on her finger. “I don’t like your grief leeching into my own relationship,” she said.

I stared at her, and then a sparkle of anger rose in my throat.

“Has anyone you ever loved died on you?” I blurted.

“I don’t have to experience something to know how it feels,” she snapped, and for the rest of that session, I just cried while she was silent.

Why did I come back? Because I was broken and desperate, and all I could think about was what if another therapist was even worse? Sometimes, too, like her, I thought I was the problem. Too dramatic. Too unhappy. Too everything.

Every session after that was the same. I cried while she watched me. Finally, she told me a story of a neighbor she had had who had lost her husband, and Rhonda used to hear her pacing the floor every night. “But,” Rhonda said, triumphant. “Gradually, she stopped. You will, too.”

I blinked at her, hard. I began to wail, but I still couldn’t speak up for myself.

Instead, I wrote her a check and slammed it on her desk. “I hate that you aren’t helping!” I sobbed.

And that was when she shouted. How dare I? I was too much work. I was not worth her time. “Don’t come back here.”

I was paralyzed for a moment, shaking, I was too much work. She was done with me.

But I wasn’t done with her.

However, I found another therapist, a truly great one, who was appalled by my experience. She didn’t make me play-act or hit a couch with a mallet. Instead, she gave me practical, cognitive things I could do to feel better. And they worked.

But I couldn’t let go of Rhonda — not yet. A year later, on social media, Rhonda’s photo popped up, and I began my snooping journey. She was no longer a therapist! But to my shock, she was trying to be a writer. Then, months later, she wasn’t a writer anymore but working for a company as a manager.

She had a daughter who was troubled. And her marriage broke into pieces. Then a new, older boyfriend showed up, before vanishing from her pages.

Through the years, right up into my 60s, I told myself I was just keeping track, but all the old, bad feelings began to erupt again. Sometimes, I wondered what it would take for me to stop obsessing and finally confront her. Did I really expect an apology? And then what? My fingers hovered over my keyboard, but I couldn’t do it.

Recently, just two weeks ago, I snooped again into her social media. Her parents were both gone now. Her daughter was grown. She had left and then inexplicably gone back to her old manager job. In photos, she looked tired, even defeated.

Why did it still matter to me that she had fired me as her client? It made sense years ago because we both had misbelieved that she knew better. But in looking at her life over the years, it was clear that wasn’t true. When she had been my therapist, she had been struggling, too, because why else would she have the need to criticize me so harshly, to break the boundaries that should be there?. Maybe, I thought, she had become a therapist because she was troubled herself, because it was easier to pick at me, and less terrifying than to work on herself.

I took a deep, confident breath. And then I did what I should have done decades ago: I blocked her on all social media, fired her, and vanished her into the past.

I no longer felt the need to confront her. Finally, the lessons of therapy paid off. I confronted myself, discovered what was true, and then, happily, moved on.

Lena Gold is a pseudonym who is forever grateful that she went on to find the right therapist.


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