Red Flags of Therapist Abuse (and Coaching Abuse)

Doing inner work with someone is like psychic surgery. Letting someone into our healing process is vulnerable. Who we choose to work with matters.  

We don't talk enough about discernment and boundaries in trauma healing, therapy, and coaching work. (You can explore the differences between my trauma specialist work and trauma therapy here.)

When things go wrong, we blame ourselves. We figure that because the practitioner is the expert, we must have done something wrong. We may tell ourselves that therapy just doesn't work on us, or even feel like we're broken and can't be fixed.

This is never the case.

When it comes to healing, I've noticed that we're not the savvy consumers we could be. And we often don't know how to recognize the warning signs that we're not getting an appropriate standard of care.

Why We Stay Silent about Therapist Abuse (or Coaching Abuse)

Trauma healing, therapy, and coaching services are so private that we don't usually share what's going on with others, unless we suspect something is wrong. 

Most of us assume that psychotherapy (or "therapy") is safer and more structured than trauma healing and coaching because practitioners are licensed and regulated by their government's mental health organization.

But in practice, when things go wrong, there is much less oversight, supervision, and recourse than we would expect.

Even complaints to a licensing board often involve waiving confidentiality and entering our private health information into the public record. Many people aren’t willing to pay that price to file a complaint.

It’s much better to be safe than sorry.

When we are aware of the warning signs of therapist or coaching abuse, we are less likely to second-guess ourselves. A high-quality practitioner will be open and responsive to our concerns and make a serious effort to repair the relationship.

If our practitioner gets defensive, avoids taking responsibility, or becomes aggressive towards us (by blaming, shaming, or making us wrong), that's a red flag.

We spend significant effort, time, money, and trust to select someone for our healing work. Sunk cost fallacy (when we hesitate to leave something because we’ve already invested so much into it) can make it easy to ignore the red flags and just hope that it gets better.

But speaking up matters and if we don’t, we won’t feel as safe as we should in our healing space.

Our Emotional Safety and the People-Pleasing (Fawn) Stress Response

Our emotional safety is the most important part of a healing relationship. If we minimize, dismiss, or override our intuition that something is wrong, we put ourselves at risk. 

When we are doing healing work, the provider we hire is in a powerful position. They are working with our earliest relational patterns and attachment wounds, and we are uniquely vulnerable to manipulation.

When we relate to our practitioner, it is normal to people-please or slip into a fawning stress response. Especially if we have experienced relational trauma, we might be overly deferential and "respectful," even after they have broken our trust.

We might decide to "let it go," when something is bothering us about their conduct during sessions, or even blame ourselves for finding it hard to speak up. We might worry about their feelings and perceptions of us, instead of worrying about the fraying of our relational space and its impact on our healing.  

It's better to speak up and risk the relationship than to respond by being accommodating and understanding. We might decide to settle for mediocre care because we tell ourselves, "It's not that bad,” or we ask, “What’s the harm?"

But our healing space is not the place to compromise.

Our nervous systems require attuned and safe relational containers to heal. This is not optional. Anything less risks retraumatizing us and impacting our trust in others and ourselves.

Speaking up may feel vulnerable and even frightening, but we owe it to ourselves to set boundaries and ask for what we need.

Warning Signs that Your Healing Space is No Longer Emotionally Safe

I have been a victim of therapist abuse. I know the safety, time, and trust required to heal. In my trauma healing practice, I also work with people who have experienced therapist abuse or coaching abuse.

The following red flags are ones that I've experienced myself. If they have happened to you, I hope you'll pause, have a conversation with your provider, and decide what to do next.

These red flags all disrupt the safety of the healing process. They cannot be ignored if you want to heal, especially when we're working with symptoms of PTSD, CPTSD, anxiety, panic attacks, or other signs of trauma. 

If any of these have happened to you, reading this may be challenging for your nervous system. If you notice a stress response arising, I invite you to stop reading for now and attend to your self-care.

10 Red Flags of Therapist or Coaching Abuse

1. The provider is late to your session, without letting you know.

This might seem like it’s not a big deal, but being more than five minutes late without sending you a message is disrespectful of your time and stressful for your nervous system. If this becomes a pattern, it’s a sign that your provider is not showing up for you the way they need to. 

2. The space isn't completely private.

No one should interrupt the space you’re in, for any reason except an actual emergency. If you’re on Zoom, your provider should be in a space with no one else around and where no one will walk through. Sessions should take place in private, professional locations, where you have the provider’s complete attention (e.g. no sessions in the car or while driving).

3. The provider pushes additional sessions on you.

Your session schedule should be predictable and set by mutual agreement about what is most beneficial to your healing process. It can be helpful to know if your provider is potentially available if something urgent comes up. But they should never pressure you to schedule additional sessions.

4. The provider is smoking, drinking, or otherwise under the influence of substances during a session.

This seems obvious, but I’ve had a therapist pull out her vape pen and start smoking, on a Zoom session. You should never have to wonder, “Is my therapist high?” Not only is it extremely unprofessional, but you’re paying for their full and complete attention, which doesn’t happen when substance use enters the picture.

5. The provider brings their personal life into the session.

Sometimes, providers will share personal information that relates to what you’re working on, attempting to create connection around shared experiences. When this happens, it should be targeted and rare. If they share about their lives in a way that makes you feel obligated to respond with emotional labor, they are crossing a boundary.

6. The provider tells you to distance yourself from or even end relationships in your life.

You are the only expert on your life. Providers should never tell you what to do in your relationships, ever. Even if you are experiencing abuse, it is up to you to decide when you are ready to leave. The same goes for difficult relationships with friends, colleagues, and family. Provider’s opinions about your relationships don’t belong in your healing space.

7. The provider calls people in your life "crazy" or labels them with mental health diagnoses from a distance.

Therapists have the power to label their patients with mental health diagnoses that can cause significant social stigma. This is a lot of power. If they misuse it by speaking pejoratively about the mental health of people in your life or going so far as to give them a pseudo-diagnosis, this is a big boundary overstep.

8. The provider offers advice on your prescription medication or health supplements.

Providers are not trained to offer advice about prescription medication or even health supplements. They should never tell you that you don’t need your medication or that you should take a specific medication. Same goes for nutritional and health supplements. That is the role of your medical team and outside of your provider’s scope of practice.

9. The provider shares confidential information about other clients.

Confidentiality is the foundation of a safe healing relationship. If your provider starts to share personal information about other people they are working with, they are likely doing the same about you.

10. There is an exchange of sexual energy.

This one is extremely serious and can cause deep and lasting harm. Your provider should never made sexually suggestive remarks, tell salacious stories, or ask gratuitous questions about your intimate life. This behavior often starts small at first and seems easy to excuse. But the behavior escalates over time and can become dangerous, because of the boundary issues and power dynamic involved.

What to Do If You Experience Therapist Abuse or Coaching Abuse 

If you have experienced any of these happening in your trauma healing, therapy, or coaching sessions, I invite you to notice the impact it's had on your sense of emotional safety. I encourage you to take your time to decide what to do next.

It can be very activating of our attachment wounding and relational patterns, when a person we trust behaves in a way that makes us question our emotional safety.

It's normal for old triggers and behavior patterns to come up, including trauma symptoms from PTSD and CPTSD like anxiety, panic attacks, and obsessive compulsive disorder. This can also show up as hypervigilance, increased irritability, sleeplessness, fatigue, or dissociation.

If this is happening to you, I encourage you to double-down on your self-care as you find a trusted friend to talk things over with. It can help to recognize that what's happening is a breach of trust and needs to be addressed. 

I encourage you to plan for how to raise the issue with your provider, in person or in writing, and give them a chance to respond. Hopefully, they will take responsibility for the impact on the relationship and commit to rebuilding trust.

We don't need our providers to be perfect, but we do need them to take responsibility for making things right.

I hope that this exploration has prepared you to navigate the world of trauma healing, therapy, and coaching with more confidence.

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