Should I report my former therapist for her behavior?
For some context off the bat, I (F23 & NAT) went to my former therapist for about 5 years, I started seeing her form 17 till I was 22. I left her last year because of multiple disappointing sessions over the last couple of those years. I’ll lay out the main ones that troubled me:
1: She pulled out the bible during a therapy session. I mentioned having trouble with religion, growing up queer and all, I had fears of going to hell that she knew about. So, when I was having trouble falling asleep for a time I mentioned it, she said that when she has those times she reads the bible. Then she got the bible from her desk and walked over to me with it and flipped to a section she said she reads often. It was really uncomfortable to me. I just nodded along but the whole time I was like… why are you showing me a page from the bible?
She told me about her own trauma. When I mentioned a situation I found a bit traumatic, she mentioned her own story and how that was an example of trauma. I don’t think it was her intention to invalidate me but it was odd to me, I wasn’t expecting to hear about her own trauma in a session.
This was the situation that made me decide to leave her and get pretty angry/upset. During a session, I was talking about an issue I had with a nonbinary friend. She asked about my friend’s assigned gender at birth. I kinda shook my head and asked why she needed to know, she insisted on knowing. I told her, thinking maybe she was going somewhere but she just wanted to use their ‘assigned’ pronouns. I was extremely uncomfortable with this and told her so, saying that I didn’t want her to use those pronouns for them, she was insisting on it. Pretty clearly transphobic. I’m not trans myself but being queer (and a decent person) I was really uncomfortable. It struck me how unaccepting she was. She went on to say my friend was only nonbinary for attention, which I abhor. Yes, me and my friends had problems, and I was mad at them at the time, but that was so uncalled for.
Before I left her as a client, I’d called the office she works at to say I was going to leave her/ask about a new therapist. They said she’s one of their best and to have a call with her. We had that call and it went horribly. I expressed my discomfort with what she said and she doubled down. I told her that it hurt me as an LGBT person and she did not apologize, just said it wasn’t her intention. She actually hung up on me after saying, “well, I know the truth,” and something else I can’t remember. That hurt real bad, she brought up all this religious trauma in me with that conversation, I regretted even trying to have it because I cried for an hour afterward.
All this to say, I’ve thought about if this warrants reporting her or not. I can’t help but worry about other young lgbt patients that might get set up with her, I was 17 when I started seeing her. I’d hate for them to have the same feeling.