New to my Substack? Read “My Psychotherapist Was a Creep” from the beginning here

I just have to get through this post. I just have to get THROUGH it and get it out.

I published the post My Stupid Deposition, Part 1 on March 1st and then ran away from this entire platform right in the middle of the story and abandoned my entire Substack for four months. Granted, my life has also been ON FIRE the past four months (read all about that here) but I also have to admit I never wanted to come back and write Part 2 of this post.

It’s like I ripped the scab off of one third of a massive wound and then covered it with a paper towel and told myself “that’s fine you can just leave it like that” and now I don’t want to look at what’s under that crusty old towel.

Now it’s FIVE months later. I’ve just gotta get through it.

It’s far from the most exciting, salacious or shocking part of my story. My Stupid Deposition, Part 1 is actually one of the least popular posts on my whole Substack.

That’s part of the problem. The Erin Brockovich part of me thought the lawsuit, the chance to speak my truth on the record, this BIG DEPOSITION, would be a lot more dramatic. In fact, what stands out about it the most is how absolutely effing unextraordinary it was. I sweated it for months. I was so scared. I went in so determined.

My deposition ended up being as impactful as a fart in the wind. My big moment was a nothing burger that’s more notable for the idiotic fumbles the Creep’s lawyer Wilfred made more than anything else. The deposition had almost nothing to do with what had happened between the Creep and I in therapy. Wilfred wanted to grill me about absolutely everything except what happened in that room, alone between me and the Creep.

But enough stalling. Let’s get to it.

Read My Stupid Deposition Part 1, here or if you don’t feel like it all you really need to know is that I admitted I looked at the Creep’s wife’s Facebook page a bunch of times during my “treatment” with him. You can read all about the Facebook thing here

Read My Stupid Deposition, Part 2, below:

When I left off in March, we were actually only 30 pages into what was a 210 page deposition that took place over 7 hours. I’ve barely scratched the surface.

After asking me how on Earth, in the ye olde year of 2017, I was able to find out who my Creep therapist’s wife was and find her completely unrestricted Facebook page featuring years of family photos and intimate details, my Creep therapist’s lawyer Wilfred switched tacks for a moment.

The Creep’s lawyer Wilfred then started asking why, after years of suicidal depression and hundreds of sessions with the Creep, I had gone to see my husband’s therapist for two sessions. I told Wilfred that my husband spent so much time in his own therapy sessions talking about how badly I was deteriorating, that HIS therapist felt the need to intervene and speak to me in person.

Wilfred asked if I’d told my husband’s therapist about looking at the Creep’s wife’s Facebook page. I said no. He asked if I had told my other therapist (aka Flute Guy) that I’d looked at the Creeps’ wife’s Facebook page. I said no. When Wilfred asked me why I said

“Because I was embarrassed.”

Wilfred then read posts I had shared on a message board about how looking at my therapist’s happy, beautiful life on Facebook with his many friends, beautiful family, and trips around the world just made me feel worse. He kept having me read aloud that looking at these posts made me feel worse, and more obsessed with the Creep.

My guess at the argument Wilfred was trying to make here: Liz looked at her therapist’s wife’s Facebook page which made her feel worse and caused herself harm, so my client’s complete exploitation of her sexually, emotionally, financially, and spiritually is irrelevant ladies and gentleman! Case dismissed!

I guess? Maybe?

Wilfred would come back to the Facebook situation repeatedly over the course of the seven hours, but then veered in another direction and read aloud a pathetic post I had written anonymously on a message board asking strangers for help. It read:

“I’m wildly attracted my therapist. I would give up everything good in my life to be with him sexually for one hour.”

“Was that true or were you just being metaphoric in describing that,” Wilfred asked.

“That was true,” I said, under oath.

And it was. I would have abandoned my whole life to run away to a cheap motel with this weaselly, cheesebag, balding, rodent-faced con man for an hour of sex. I wish I could show you all a picture of the dude so you could really see how messed up I was. He is not hot.

This next part is kind of funny. Wilfred asked:

“You say in this paragraph that (the Creep) was telling you that your body looked different since opening up about your sexual fantasies about him, that you looked ‘sultry’ and told you that he felt desire for you. I’d like you to tell me as best you can recollect, the exact words he used where you have the word ‘sultry’ written here.”

Me: “He said: ‘you look sultry.’”

Wilfred: “And what did you say?”

Me: “I said: ‘Really?’”

Wilfred: “And what did he say?”

Me: “He said ‘yes’.”

That was not the answer Wilfred was hoping for.

My guess at what he was trying to do: Maybe he was hoping to trip me up and get me to say my therapist had referred to me as something other than sultry? Not clear.

Then Wilfred asked me to estimate how many times the Creep told me he wanted to have sex with me.

“I am going to estimate eight times,” I said.

Wilfred didn’t look super pleased about that statement either.

I’ve got some pages from the deposition right here that don’t say the Creep’s name on it so you can read one right here if you want:

Oh man, this next part is really bad.

Wilfred asks me “Did you ever tell any friends or therapists that there were times when–while you were having sex with your husband you’d see [Creep’s name here] face?

I replied: “I definitely told friends that.”

Shout out to Claude.ai that helped me redact his name here:

Wilfred switched to another message I had written about the fact that I had started going to therapy with the Creep after I’d had a completely nervous breakdown after being cut from the Groundlings sketch comedy troupe.

“What do you mean when you say ‘the Groundlings nervous breakdown’?” Wilfred asked.

I reply: “I’m referring to the nervous breakdown I had after being let go from the Groundlings.”

Wilfred has literally made MILLIONS of dollars asking idiotic questions like this, so if you ever feel like lawyers in general get a bad rap, I promise you they don’t. I personally know one lawyer who is a decent person and smart. Other than that, every single one I’ve met (including my own) is an incompetent boob.

Here’s the next part where Wilfred tries to prove I should have known better than to get myself abused by my therapist because I was totally a therapist myself (except that I was not)

Around Page 70 of the 210 page deposition, Wilfred tried a different line of questioning He brought up the fact that I had worked on the National Suicide Prevention Hotline (that’s 988 now) for about five and a half years and had taken over 700 calls and asked what license I’d gotten to obtain that position.

I told him the truth. I’d gotten none. It was a volunteer position that came after several months of paraprofessional training.

Then came about ten pages of him asking about my internships in social work school where I acted as no one’s psychotherapist, in spite of the fact that I hoped to train as one.

Then he thought he REALLY had me. I had applied for a license as an Associate Clinical Social Worker at some point after graduate school. It’s the “license” you get to go into training to be a real social worker. He showed me evidence that when I had received that license (which I never ended up using) that I had received a copy of the infamous “packet”: “Psychotherapy Never Includes Sex”. “The packet” came up a lot over the course of this lawsuit. Read my specific post about it here

He seemed to be trying to prove that I, as someone who had participated in the field of mental health, should have known that the Creep was being an absolute effing Creep because I’d seen “the packet” that talked about how therapists should never act like my Creep therapist acted.

Think about that.

His argument was: “You were kind of a therapist once even though you weren’t so you saw the packet that said therapists shouldn’t creep on their patients years ago so you should have known better than to let my client treat you like an absolute pervert psychopath.”

This was the point he was hoping to get across. This was his big proof–that I was a trained therapist who should have known what an absolute dirtbag his client was, and because I didn’t realize what pervert creep he was, then his client was in no way liable.

I think I’ve mentioned this before in other posts, but it bears repeating here: Wilfred was and is the #1 lawyer in the state of California for defending psychotherapists accused of sexual misconduct by their patients. So much so that before my own lawyer even heard my story, before I even filed my first demand letter or my lawsuit, my lawyer knew that my therapist’s lawyer would be Wilfred. If you’re a therapist and a creep, Wilfred is your guy.

Take that into account. Wilfred sucks at trying to prove a point, and I mean bad. Dude wouldn’t know a logical argument if it bit him in the ass, and he’s still the first person therapist-insurance companies go to when someone they insure gets accused of being a Creep. He doesn’t have to be good at being a lawyer. He doesn’t have to make a coherent argument. He doesn’t have to prove a goddamn thing, because the system is already completely rigged to let dirtbags like my Creep therapist off the hook no matter what.

He can’t make an argument to save his life, but he doesn’t have to.

He relies on victims like me being too broken to get through the legal process–too broken to sit through 7 hours of pointless questions under oath, too ashamed to admit they got tricked into being jackoff material for a pathetic pervert who charged them for the privilege, too weak and desperate to put their life on hold for years while the wheels of the justice system lock up over and over again. He’s great at making victims miserable, and he’s pretty great at manipulating lawyers like mine as well, but we’ll get to all of that later.

At this point in the deposition, we decided to break for lunch. My lawyer and I went across the street and both got personal sized margherita pizzas and iced teas. She paid, which I thought was really nice, not registering at that moment that I’d be paying for the pizza and iced tea two years later when it was deducted from my settlement, but that’s neither here nor there.

Let’s get back to this nightmare, shall we?

After lunch:

Wilfred was really ready to get down and dirty now. He asked me about every single friend I had confided in about the Creep exploiting me. It was like 6 different people, not including the hundreds of anonymous strangers who had read my posts on the mental health message board.

First he asked me to clarify if I’d really had a “five day orgasm” after his Creep client had stroked the back of my hand before leaving for a two week vacation, and then called me back into his office after I’d left, closed the door and I asked me if I was “really going to be OK” while he was gone. I told Wilfred that yes, the five-day orgasm was real. (I know. You can read about it here if you haven’t already.)

I guess maybe he hoped I’d be so humiliated at this point that I’d run out of the room? But I didn’t.

Then Wilfred read aloud from an email I had sent a friend from college explaining the situation:

“All right. Now, you’re describing in here to your friend having panic attacks all fucking day long, and you say some of it was still about the Groundlings, but most of it is really about the fact that ‘I’m totally fucking obsessed with this therapist that gave me the five-day orgasm by touching the back of my hand,* et cetera, ‘and checking to make sure I wouldn’t kill myself while he was gone.’”

“So do you have any way of allocating how much of your panic attacks were due to the Groundlings as opposed to your interaction with [the Creep]? Do you have any way of putting a percentage on how much of it was about the Groundlings?”

Lol. Dude. Really? A percentage? I guess he was hoping that I’d give his client a 50-50 split here? That way in case a jury sided with me, they would only charge my perv therapist for half of whatever they awarded me?

But I’d already said MOST. And he wasn’t very subtle about what he was trying to quantify here. After he and my lawyer argued for a couple minutes about how stupid the question was, I was allowed to answer, and I said:

“In retrospect, I would estimate that 90% of the panic attacks were in regard to Dr. Creep,” I said (using the Creep’s actual last name of course, but I assume you guys know that already.)

Then he asked me to define what I meant by a panic attack and I responded:

“I’m talking about violent choking in my throat, squeezing in my chest, difficult breathing and obsessive negative thoughts.”

That’s honestly a pretty mild description of what it was really like. It was worse than that. It was like pure terror and the feeling like I was going to die from it at any moment as well. I’m someone who absolutely hates rollercoasters and amusement park rides, so for me, it was kind of like being on a rollercoaster, and you know the second that the thing starts rolling that you’ve made a terrible mistake by getting on the ride, and you try to make peace with the fact that you might actually die this way–like one of those people you see on a 30 second news report about someone who fell off a rollercoaster–-and you make your peace with it but the rollercoaster keeps going, and you try to rationalize with yourself that eventually it’s going to be over. Rollercoasters don’t go on forever. Either you’re gonna die, or the ride is going to come to an end, and you try to comfort yourself with the fact that in a few minutes it’s going to end–except that those few minutes go on for three and a half years.

That’s how I wish I’d described it in my deposition. It’s more accurate.

But since no one is ever going to read my deposition and there are a few thousand people out there who read this Substack, I guess I can correct the record here.

That’s what I’m trying to do with these posts about my deposition, I guess. I’m trying to correct the record. I’m trying to speak my truth in a way that I wasn’t allowed to in that stupid, STUPID deposition.

My God, we’re not even halfway through bullshit. I’m sorry.

Part 3 coming soon. Like really soon. Thanks for reading.

I’ll post a new chapter of “My Psychotherapist Was a Creep” as soon as I can.

Four months and eleven days. That’s how long it’s been since I posted here, or anywhere else. I haven’t written a word in private either. I have been choking on my life.

New to “My Psychotherapist Was a Creep”? Read the posts in order from the beginning here

Four months and eleven days is the longest I’ve gone without writing since nine years ago, when my lawyer told me anything I wrote down, even in a diary, would be handed over to my Creep Psychotherapist’s defense lawyer and used against me. It was a brilliant tactic on the Creep’s creepy lawyer’s part. My ex-therapist knew that I got sick when I didn’t write, that writing helped me calm myself, that writing brought me peace and grounded me in the present. Taking it away could have broken me forever, but I hung on.

Not writing has made me sick these past four months and eleven days too.

I still know in my heart that the three and a half years of abuse by my psychotherapist were worse than my 20-month lawsuit, but somehow it’s harder to write about the lawsuit than the abuse itself. It was the shock of a lifetime to finally wake up to the fact that the person I’d entrusted my mental health to for three and a half years was an absolute parasite who wanted nothing but to suck the lifeblood (and every dime I had) out of me during the most vulnerable years of my life, but when I got out, I was hell-bent on a redemption story.

There would be justice! I would have my day in court! The people who rallied around me to help me leave the Creep Psychotherapist would be evidence for my broken soul that people cared deeply about me! All would be healed!

Revisiting just a handful of the hundreds of legal documents in my case made me consider never talking about it again or writing about it again. Maybe, I thought, that would lead to me never thinking about it again, too. Learning that there is truly no way for a victim of therapist abuse to “win” legal justice within our system has broken me on a completely different level. State licensing boards, professional therapist communities, and dirtbag lawyers all rallied around my Creep in spite of the mountain of evidence of wrongdoing I provided.

It’s not like I don’t need someone to talk to.

These past four months and eleven days have been a fever dream of stress. I could have used a therapist, a friend, a kind word. I could have used any kind of help at all.

I reached a breaking point with my son early this year. He is severely autistic, and eight years after his diagnosis, I am feeling completely helpless to help him.

Last year, two months after I was laid off from my job, I put our family into massive debt to pay for a lawyer to sue LAUSD to get my son into a school I thought might finally be able to help him. It hasn’t helped. He is getting worse—more distant, more agitated, less engaged. We’re losing ground. He can’t stop throwing everything he sees. I’m afraid he’s about to get thrown out of the camp I spent seven months getting him into because he ripped a fire extinguisher off the wall of one of the classrooms and threw it. There is almost nowhere left willing to work with him.

Things have been escalating for a while. It’s been so bad that I actually considered going back to therapy back in February.

I just wanted to be able to vent. I just wanted someone to sit in front of me, keep their mouth shut and let me TALK about how much I hate autism and what it’s done to my son and our whole family.

I contacted the therapy center where my son receives speech, occupational, and music therapy and asked for “family counseling” sessions for myself. They sent me the name and profile of my new counselor and my heart went cold.

“I believe in the power of mindfulness,” she wrote in her bio.

FUCK. NO.

“I believe in the importance of tapping into the mind-body connection.”

NOT THIS MIND. NOT THIS BODY, LADY.

“All of my sessions come from a neuroaffirming point of view.”

I wanted to cry but couldn’t muster the tears.

“Neuroaffirming.” My life revolves around an autistic person and every time I read the definition I feel more alone:

Here’s a summary of what “neuroaffirming care” is supposed to mean:

Neuroaffirming care acknowledges that autism, ADHD, dyslexia, dyspraxia, and other neurodivergent conditions are part of normal human variation, not deficits to be ‘fixed.’ The approach encourages people to live as their authentic selves without pressure to conform to neurotypical norms.

It hurts my heart. My son’s disability is not a normal human variation. He can’t speak or even communicate basic needs. He can’t tell me if he’s in pain. He can’t tell me what he’s thinking or what he sees. He can’t tell me what scares him. We can’t reach each other. His authentic self is not welcome in public. No one on an airplane or at the grocery store or at a public school or at the park wants to see my son’s “authentic self.” No one wants to hear stories like mine during “Autism Awareness Month”. No one wants to see what autism looks like for my family.

My husband says it’s just too painful for people to look at, so they look away and walk away—because they can. He’s right.

I wrote back to the counseling center immediately, canceled my session, and told them I’d changed my mind.

“Are there any questions you wanted to ask the therapist privately?” the confused guy at the scheduling desk wrote back.

“NONE,” I replied. “Please confirm that my session is canceled.”

And he did.

So that was February. Then there came the hell of March.

March

I had to hire a lawyer to get the methhead gun nuts my property manager had chosen as tenants for my beautiful house in Vermont to leave after they tried to shut the heat off in the dead of winter. I paid thousands to have the piles of garbage they’d left behind dragged to a dump and have turned down every applicant wanting to rent the place since. I need tenants but I trust no one.

April

In April, I woke up at 5:30 AM to a frantic text from my mother. A sheriff had come to her house and served her with papers that she was being sued by a credit card company for failure to pay her bill.

It wasn’t her fault. It was mine. Almost two years ago I sat down with her in the bedroom I’d grown up in with her credit card bills all collected and helped her enroll in a debt consolidation company. I had done it myself maybe seven years earlier and it had been a huge relief.

But the company I had worked with was a California nonprofit. My mother was in Vermont. I Googled “credit card debt consolidation companies,” called the first number on the list, and my mother and I had a very similar conversation to the one I’d had with the nice lady at the nonprofit years earlier. Now my mom would be paying half of what she typically paid per month, and her money would go to the principal and not just interest.

Except it didn’t. The debt consolidation company I signed my mother up for was nothing like the nonprofit I’d gone to. It was (and is) a sleazy for-profit shell game company that didn’t have the clout to settle her largest debt, was charging her massive monthly fees for their services, and pocketing a huge amount of her monthly payment for themselves. They had told us both to ignore the calls and letters from the credit card company warning her that she was in default—they’d handle everything.

Except they didn’t. Enter the sheriff banging on my emotionally fragile mother’s door at 7 a.m. as she was trying to fall asleep after another sleepless night as caregiver for my father with dementia.

And it was all on me. I hadn’t vetted the company at all. I was burnt out from my own stress—mainly my own caregiving responsibilities for my severely autistic son. I had ignored the warning signs that kept popping up for her account while I dealt with my own spiral: a job layoff that came out of nowhere in the middle of the worst job market in my adult lifetime, the constant calls from my son’s school announcing “he pooped you have to come get him,” the panic over my psycho tenants in my house, the other crises from the past two years that have all blended together now.

May

My Dad has been falling down all over the house for years following a hematoma that led to a brain fluid leak, a stroke, a diagnosis of Agent Orange lymphoma at the peak of the Covid pandemic, and signs of psychosis on the heels of 50 years of severe combat PTSD from his year in the Vietnam War.

I had been talking to his doctors for years, asking what it would take for someone to actually admit him to long term care since he had no reliable care at home with my mother.

“What is the care plan here?” I asked one of his doctors at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center. “Is the plan just to keep letting him fall down until he can’t get up again?”

“Yes,” she snapped back at me. “That’s the way things are now. He’ll keep falling down until he can’t get up again and then he’ll get admitted somewhere.”

And the “until” went on for years, “until” this past May.

My mother texted me to tell me he’d gone to the hospital in an ambulance after falling and hitting his head, resulting in a massive cut on his face. I called her and she picked up the phone in the ER and told me my dad was discharging him after only a few hours of observation. I called the ER frantically begging the physician’s assistant to at least keep him through the night since my mother couldn’t safely drive him home in the dark.

He told me it wasn’t his problem, that Medicare coverage wasn’t what it used to be, and that it was time for me to “get my butt on a plane and take care of him myself.” I left an urgent message with the social worker on call, and after 30 minutes of waiting to hear back from her, called my mother.

She was panting. “I’m….just….trying….to get him….inside…” she said.

My mother and father were at home. The dickhead PA had discharged them the second he’d hung up the phone and my mother had already driven him home 15 miles on an unlit highway that had a horrific track record of wrong-way collisions for drivers operating under the best of circumstances. Now she was trying to drag his 200-pound body back inside. I cannot imagine what that must have looked like, but somehow she succeeded. She got him up the stairs and inside the door, at which time he immediately fell and hit his head AGAIN, then crawled across the floor until he somehow pulled himself up onto his bed.

“How did you even do that, Dad?” I said to him on speakerphone with my Mom.

“Because Rangers never say die,” he offered weakly.

That’s what he’d been in the Army—an Airborne Ranger special forces combat infantryman.

It was a miracle they weren’t both dead—and that my mother, who could barely see or walk, who had to lift her dead legs into my dad’s Army jeep with her hands hadn’t driven off the road and killed them both or someone else.

I shuffled through my credit cards (the balances that had been settled years ago had now re-emerged tenfold), told my boss I needed to take (unpaid) leave to fly across the country to help them, and then spent five days in Vermont begging every hospital in the area for help, then documenting every one of them that denied me help, then threatening to sue his primary care physician and the hospital that he’d worked for, until someone called someone at the Vermont VA hospital who called me, chastised me for not calling her sooner, told me I couldn’t take the flight home I had scheduled for that day because “it sounds like you’re just dumping him”, and convinced me to whip my credit card back out and rebook my flight home for another (unpaid) day of work so I could give it one more try.

And I did. She said she’d meet me in the ER, and she did. When she saw my father wheeled in with my mother swaying behind him using two canes to “walk,” her tone towards me softened. And finally, my dad was sick enough that he couldn’t even pass a basic cognitive test anymore and the “until” had arrived. He was admitted for “failure to thrive” and the next day I flew home to my severely autistic son, who I’d left my husband to take care of entirely on his own for the longest I’d ever done in his life.

I spent my “free time” during this trip calling every debt lawyer in the state to help with my mother’s lawsuit, found one willing to consult with us for $300 an hour (pulled out a different credit card), and I successfully filed a motion on my mother’s behalf to extend her response time by an additional 60 days.

Some coworkers asked me how my vacation had gone. “It was great,” I told every single one of them.

June

My husband, son and I went for our pre-planned annual summer trip to stay in the Vermont house we can’t afford to live in for just a a couple of weeks. Even though it was sparsely furnished, my son threw every item he could find and smashed it.

My sister offered to take him to a farmstand to get some chocolate milk so my husband and I could have an hour to ourselves. I took a long overdue shower and emerged to find my husband gone. I checked my phone and found a frantic text message from my sister. Our son had eloped and run off into a cow pasture where he could have been trampled to death and then crawled under an electric fence.

“Call 911,” she wrote before losing service.

I did. We found him. He went to the hospital. He came back home. Every minute that followed during our “vacation” was fraught with panic. There were no moments of rest, only terror.

What’s the lesson here? What’s my takeaway?

Writing teachers and editors at mainstream publications are always asking these questions. “What’s your takeaway?” like I’m supposed to have some sort of wisdom to impart on the world. I have no wisdom for anyone but myself. I only have my story to share.

But if I had to sum up what I’m trying to say in this increasingly lengthy post in one sentence, it would be this: My Creep Psychotherapist and the lawsuit that followed destroyed every shred of faith I had in therapists and I really could have used someone to talk to these past four months.

More soon. Thanks for reading.

I’ll post a new chapter of “My Psychotherapist Was a Creep” as soon as I can.

This post is part of the series “My Psychotherapist Was a Creep”. You can read the series in order from the beginning here

When I first went to my Creep psychotherapist, I had friends–not a lot, but a few. I met with people for coffee sometimes, maybe even lunch. We talked on the phone. We collaborated on creative projects. We checked in on each other.

It meant a lot to me to have friends, because I grew up with very few. The severe lazy eye I carried throughout my childhood made me an outcast and a constant subject of ridicule. Some people treated me as if I was intellectually disabled because of the lazy eye. There’s a memory burned in my brain from 8th grade when I tried out for the cheerleading squad. They had current cheerleaders pair with new hopefuls to teach them the routine. The two girls assigned to me were typically blonde and beautiful. As they taught me the moves to one of the tryout routines, my shoe came unlaced and I bent down for a moment to tie it.

“I feel SOOOO BADDDD FOR HERRRRRR,” one of my trainers said, perhaps thinking that my lazy eye also made me deaf.

“I knoooooooowwwwww,” said the other girl. “It’s so SAAAAAAAAAAADDDDD.”

I stood up and they were smiling and cheerful again, feeling great about themselves for being compassionate enough to lend five minutes of their day to the class freak.

I didn’t make the squad.

Things got better in 11th grade when my Dad cheated on my Mom with his secretary and my Mom and I moved to a tiny small town in Vermont with a graduating class of 54 students. When a school is that small, it gets hard for people to be clique-y. If there was a party, everyone was invited because that’s how few of us there were. I did make a couple of friends before we all went our separate ways for college.

I spent my college years trying to make friends by acting as a confidant and helper and errand-runner and general personal assistant to anyone who would give me the time of day. I bought people presents until the ATM machine confiscated my card after one too many overdrafts. I picked up people’s dry cleaning, walked their dogs, bought their lunches with the money left on my cafeteria card. When I got an off campus apartment junior year, I let “friends” stay with me for free for as long as they wanted. I offered the apartment up as a free storage space for the everyone going home for the summer.

Labor Day Weekend 1997, I tried to kill myself by overdosing on prescription medication and alcohol. I did tell one friend who was kind enough to call 911, despite our other mutual “friend” telling her to let me “sleep it off”.

When I was in the psychiatric ward, one of my “friends” showed up when I was visiting with my mother. The “friend” said she had left all of her most valuable shoes in my apartment over the summer and wanted to know where they were. The weekend I attempted suicide was also the weekend I was scheduled to move out of the apartment. While I was on lockdown, my parents salvaged what they could and left the piles of belongings from strangers in the lobby.

“I’m sorry hon, the shoes should be there in the lobby,” my Mom told my friend.

“Well, they’re not,” she snapped.

“OK, let’s not talk about it right now,” my Mom said heartbroken. “Just send me a bill.”

My “friend” did send my mom a bill–for $1200–for her shoes.

The “friend” also let me know that other “friends” were furious with me because they, too, were missing valuable items.

This was what I knew of friendship when I decided to leave it all behind and move to Los Angeles at age 25.

I had learned that friends were people who talked to you only if you could provide them substantive value in the form of time, money, or goods. Friends were there for you, if you could do something for them.

When I met my boyfriend, I was living with a “friend” from college. While she’d had many boyfriends throughout college, I had had none. I was a fabulous and readily available wingman. That was my role in her life, and that’s why she allowed me to call her a friend. When the boyfriend, my future husband, started showing up to our apartment with flowers and books of poetry and brought me food every day and carried me to the bathroom when I had a herniated disc in my back, she’d had enough.

When we ended up at a party with other people we’d gone to college with, she pulled my future husband aside, gestured to me and the man I was talking to, and told my boyfriend:

”Watch out for Liz. She slept with that guy she’s talking to back in college.”

It was true. I had. I had slept with that guy in college.

My boyfriend thankfully ignored my “friend” and I moved in with him. We’ve been together for 24 years.

My boyfriend and I were friends with our neighbors for a while. I made a friend at work. I went to graduate school and tried to make friends, but I really didn’t fit in. I remember that one of the friend groups that included me decided to have a hike and a picnic on the last weekend of school. I spent way more money than I had on fancy cupcakes and champagne to celebrate us completing so much difficult work for two years. I got glares and dirty looks. Cupcakes? Day drinking? No one wanted any. I was the weirdo once again. They were embarrassed by and for me and I was embarrassed too.

I really REALLY thought I made my “friends for life” when I entered the sketch comedy world and got cast in the Groundlings Sunday Company after 6 years of classes and auditions. These were my people. “We’re family for life!” was a phrase often thrown around. When I got cut from the troupe 6 months later, I only heard from one person ever again. We get together for lunch once or twice a year now. I let her use my Hulu account for free, but that’s probably not why we’re friends. It expires next month anyway, so I guess we’ll see.

I remember when I used to look at my Creep psychotherapist’s Facebook page. My lord did this guy have friends. LOTS of friends. Dinners, getaways, group trips–he was referred to as part of his friends’ “family of choice.” I was so envious. What an amazing life.

When I was being tortured by my Creep psychotherapist, I had very few friends to turn to for help, but I did indeed turn to them–a friend from comedy, a friend from graduate school, and a friend from the writing world. They all told me to run from my therapist for dear life–that I was worth more than the way that he was treating me.

The grad school friend sent me this text message:

That was some nice and supportive friendly stuff for her to say.

She felt differently when she ended up on the witness list for the defense because I had shared her supportive texts with my lawyer. 18 months into my lawsuit, as everything fell apart, she called me at work and said she needed to talk. I found a tiny room and locked the door.

“So are you going to settle this case or what? Cause I really don’t want to be involved in this. I don’t want to testify at a trial, so if you could just settle it, I’d appreciate it.”

I told her I wouldn’t be able to talk to her anymore for confidentiality reasons and never spoke to he again. I did send her an email after the case was settled letting her know she would no longer be contacted by anyone.

My writer friend thought the whole lawsuit was delightful and was going to make a great story for her to tell. She loved it. She joked about it. She couldn’t wait to get her subpoena. I begged her to take the case seriously, said my life was on the line. She giggled about what she should say in her deposition the next day. I was so disturbed and terrified by her tone I actually told her not to show up.

She did show up, of course. This was her moment to shine. She immediately started lying about random details—said she hadn’t spoken to me in weeks and then tripped over that lie and launched into a monologue about how I told her the lawyers didn’t care if I killed myself. They only cared about the money.

My lawyer emailed me immediately after her deposition was over, enraged because the “friend” had gone rogue in the deposition and told the lawyers I told her not to even come to the deposition and that they were all trash.

The writer friend called as I sat in my car crying. “What did you say?” I said, freaking out as I picked up the phone.

“You made me lie for you!” she shouted into the phone. I hung up. I still don’t know what she meant.

A third friend was one I’d collaborated with on a podcast. We had to take it offline when I entered the lawsuit because it was a podcast where I talked about my mental health. He hated me for it. He hammered into me over and over the amount of time and money that he had invested in making the podcast work. He told me how selfish I was and that I’d better settle the case cause he wasn’t testifying on my behalf. For years afterwards, he complained about the money and the effort. I apologized over and over and asked how much money he wanted to be reimbursed so that we’d be square. He never said so. I think he didn’t really want the money. He just wanted me to feel like shit.

The case settled a couple months after the text friend told me to hurry up and settle. It wasn’t because she said that but I did email her to let her know no one would be bothering her again.

I don’t really have friends anymore. I thought having a child would mean I’d have mom friends, but my child is severely disabled. Moms of normal kids and severely disabled kids don’t mix. Our lives just have nothing in common.

Now I have text friends only. We text each other occasionally with a joke or a meme. Sometimes there’s a five minute phone call where we swap updates. Mine are always tragic so I try to keep them short and focus on the other friend.

When I was young, somewhere between the cheerleading audition, and the last couple of years of high school, I told myself I didn’t need any friends. I could be my own best friend.

But I lost that too. I lost myself as a friend when I had a nervous breakdown after the Groundlings and then went for help and ended up in the hands of a psychopath and sued him and alienated everyone I had left. And then I had a severely disabled child whose condition I blame on myself completely.

So I don’t even have me as a friend anymore.

I don’t think I’ll try to make friends again and maybe that’s for the best.

I’ll post a new chapter of “My Psychotherapist Was a Creep” every week

I was deposed by my Creep therapist’s lawyer on Tuesday, December 19, 2017, about two and a half months after my own lawyer had officially filed suit against the Creep in LA Superior Court. I’d never sued anyone before. I’d never been deposed before. I’d never testified under oath. I was terrified. Truly.

I had already handed over thousands of pages of evidence to both my own lawyer and the defense–hundreds of emails exchanged between me and the Creep, pages and pages of screenshots of text messages and emails with friends who told me to get away from him, and the links to the hundreds of message board posts I’d written in the “Forum” that used to be hosted by the site PsychCentral.

Something in me thought that the more I handed over, the more truthful I would appear and the more trustworthy a jury would find me. I was so overwhelmed and scared of the whole thing I went above and beyond what the defense asked for in the “discovery” requests. I wanted to do a perfect job and be an excellent plaintiff. While I did this to stand up for myself, I truly did believe that my testimony would help protect the Creep’s other clients. I believed my lawsuit was a noble endeavor.

The week before my deposition I bought a suit at Nordstrom Rack at the Glendale Fashion Center – the first one I’d ever owned. It was important to dress conservatively and not like the insane nymphomaniac stalker whore the defense planned to make me out as.

The day of the deposition I was a mess. My husband joked with me to try to lighten the mood, saying I should respond to all questions from the Creep’s lawyer by saying:

“I object, your Honor! This is highly irregular!”

and other typical phrases we’d been hearing in legal shows and movies our whole lives. I stopped at Starbucks to pick up my Venti Americano and took someone else’s maple latte instead. I was not a hot milk fan and abandoned the $6 beverage on top of a trash can at the gas station where I was filling up for the 45 mile drive to the Creep’s lawyer’s office in Irvine. I was already shaking from the adrenaline rushing through me. I headed into rush hour traffic towards Orange County caffeine-free.

In civil lawsuits in the State of California, the defense gets 7 hours to depose the plaintiff. That’s it. I just had to get through 7 hours of sitting in a room with the Creep as his lawyer sat next to him bringing up the intimate details of the most humiliating and frightening years of my life.

I had spent 324 sessions telling the Creep all of the most vulnerable things about me. I had given over every possible piece of ammunition. He knew I was drowning in student loan debt. He had heard me complain often about my oldest and closest friend. He had heard me say that she was a bitch and that I hated her, but stayed friends with her just the same. He knew I’d been thinking about him during sex with my husband. He knew I wet the bed until I was 11, that I slept with my rag doll into my teen years, that my mother suffered from severe depression made worse by my father’s PTSD, alcoholism, and mental cruelty. He knew so much more than all of these things. Every fact was ammunition now.

My lawyer told me she knew the deposition would be rough on me and that I should try to avoid looking at the Creep and his lawyer directly. She suggested I either look at the camera (the whole thing was being videotaped as well as transcribed by a court reporter) or a spot on the table. I had to make sure the video camera could see my face, but I didn’t have to look at my abuser or his legal representative.

Otherwise the preparation I’d done for the deposition with my own lawyer was minimal. She told me to be sure to always pause before answering in case she needed to object. I asked her what to say if the Creep’s lawyer brought up that I’d looked at his wife’s Facebook page.

She told me to own up to everything.

I looked my psychotherapist’s wife’s Facebook page. A lot.

I asked what to do if he asked me how much money I owed in student loans. She said he’d never ask that and that she would object if he did. (He did.)

What I remember of the room is:
-a large brown conference table

-a smaller table at the front of the room with a water pitcher and coffee

-a video camera on a tripod–I see from the records that the person behind the camera was male, but I don’t remember him

-a woman sitting at the head of the table–the court reporter

-Wilfred, my Creep therapist’s lawyer, sitting across from me

-my own lawyer sitting to my right

And no Creep anywhere in sight.

I think I tried to steady my breathing and relax my body as much as possible, steeling myself for the moment when he would make his grand entrance. It never came. Wilfred asked my lawyer whether we were ready to begin. She glanced at me and said “yes.” I said I had to turn off my phone and then quickly texted my husband before powering down:

“He’s not here”

I studied an online deposition-prep guide that wisely instructed me to take a breath before answering any question. I remember it saying that if I took a breath before every answer, it would put me in control of the tempo of the deposition. It would keep his lawyer from rapid firing questioning me. It would keep me from blurting something out without thinking it through. And, of course, it would shave minutes off of that seemingly endless 7 hours.

I’ve often wondered why the Creep did not appear at my deposition. For years it’s seemed like a clumsy misstep on the defense’s part. Once I realized that the Creep was manipulating me, and that he had been for years, I was completely terrified of him. He had been pulling the strings of my nervous system like a puppeteer torturing its own battered marionette–strings crossed and knotted and jangled, unable to unwind itself. It’s been over 8 years since this deposition, and I do believe the Creep is still the person in the world I am most afraid of.

There was no one who could have thrown me off balance more, whose mere presence could have shaken me to the point of a complete and total freeze and fumble in the face of questioning. His absence made me feel exponentially safer. It’s taken me years to understand why he wasn’t there, but now I think I get it.

If my reaction to seeing the Creep had been caught on video, any person with a shred of empathy would have ruled in my favor in a heartbeat. The Creep made my entire body shake in terror. I saw him while we were both in our separate cars in the Whole Foods parking lot over a year into the lawsuit and I didn’t stop shaking for days.

Wilfred knew the Creep was guilty and that’s why he kept him out of that room. Wilfred is California’s foremost expert on defending Creep therapists, and he knows how to control the dynamics of the room. Well, to an extent.

The deposition opened with me raising my right hand and swearing to “tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth so help [me] God.”

(I’m agnostic, but sure.)

Wilfred then proceeded to explain the rules of the deposition–that I was under the same oath that I would have taken had I been in a courtroom in front of a judge and jury. He told me a transcript would be presented to me in the days following the deposition and that I’d have an opportunity to correct anything if I felt I’d misspoken, but that any “corrections” would be pointed out as such if the case ever went to trial.

He told me that unless he specified otherwise, he was asking for my “best recollection” of when events occurred, not exact dates. He said when he asked about conversations he was asking for the “gist” of them rather than exact quotes, unless he specified otherwise.

All very friendly and cordial. What a great guy.

Then he asked me where my handwritten journals were. He had requested that I turn any journals or diaries I kept at the time of my treatment with the Creep over.

“Where were my diaries?” he wanted to know.

The hundreds of emails I’d exchanged with his clients, the hundreds of posts I’d made pouring out my heart in detail on an anonymous message board, the text messages I’d exchanged with friends and family about the treatment–they were not sufficient.

He said I’d told the Creep I was journaling during the course of our treatment. Where were those journals? He insisted I had told the second therapist (aka Flute Guy–read more about him here) that I was regularly journaling as well. Where were my journals? He was entitled to all of them, he said.

I had handed over dozens of emails that I’d written to Flute Guy where I had written out every thought and feeling and action and movement that I had made over the course of several weeks so that he (Flute Guy) could gain a better understanding of what was going on in my mind over the course of each day.

Those pages I had turned over weren’t enough. Where were my handwritten diaries? Wilfred was sure I had them and was holding them back.

I am a writer. I’ve scribbled thoughts down in maybe 100 different journals over the course of my lifetime. Sometimes I did it as part of the “morning pages” exercises from “The Artist’s Way”. Sometimes I scribbled down story and sketch comedy ideas. I have journals from 20 years ago with three pages filled out and then abandoned.

To this day, I cannot imagine what he thought he would find in a handwritten journal that I hadn’t already turned over. Did he think I was holding on to some secret pages that stated “I’m going to make up a bunch of stuff that didn’t really happen to get back at my therapist for not fucking me”?

But there were already thousands of pages of documents that showed that that wasn’t true. Did Wilfred really think I had spent years creating an anonymous profile for myself online and cross-referencing that with hundreds of legitimately creepy emails from his client and THEN on top of that written about it secretly in a handwritten journal somewhere admitting that it was all a lie?

I had already turned over plenty of things that could potentially make me look “bad” to a jury–a text message I had sent to a friend who helped me escape, where I said something like “I want to ruin his life” about the Creep.

He eventually moved on to ask me how I’d found my lawyer.

I said “I Googled ‘therapist abuse lawyer’.”

He asked if I’d ever gone to a website called Advocate Web. I hadn’t

He asked if I’d ever spoken to anyone from the Therapy Exploitation Link Line. I hadn’t.

Then, at last, he asked about Facebook. I had posted on the message boards that I was deeply ashamed to admit that I had found the Creep’s wife’s Facebook page and that I looked at pictures of the Creep and his family often.

Wilfred read one of my posts out loud to me:

“I totally cyberstalked him, found his wife’s Facebook page and have been ogling the public pics and videos of him with his wife and kids for over a year now.”

“What did you mean by ‘ogling the public pics and videos of him with his wife and family?”

I answered: “I meant that I looked at the photos of him with his wife and family.”

“How frequently, as of the point of this entry?” he asked.

“Quite often I would estimate,” I answered.

“And how were you able to locate Dr. Creep’s wife’s Facebook since her name is not the same as his?” he asked.

“”I Googled his name and the word ‘wife,’” I answered.

We’d still spoken nothing about what had happened in session with the Creep at this point in the deposition, but there were still more than six hours to go.

I’ll write a new chapter of “My Psychotherapist Was a Creep” every week. Thank you for reading.

I’m so grateful for the recent surge in subscribers to “My Psychotherapist Was a Creep”.

If you’ve just started reading one of my posts without context, you can read the whole story from beginning through current times in the posts below.

Welcome to “My Psychotherapist Was a Creep” in chronological order:

1. My psychotherapist was a creep (He probably still is.)

2. How I met my creeper (psychotherapist)

3. My five-day orgasm (and why I wouldn’t recommend it

4. What really caused that five-day orgasm

5. 5 psychotherapist abuse red flags I missed

6. I was never safe with him (a post about suicide)

7. I looked at my psychotherapist’s wife’s Facebook page (a lot)

8. Sex stuff was said

9. F**k, that’s malicious (one judge’s ruling)

10. Actual clips from my Creep psychotherapist’s deposition

11. I found my diaries from when I was with him

12. Psychotherapist abuse: what made me the perfect target

13. Bad Buddhists: My Creep psychotherapist and “The White Lotus” Season 3

14. I saw my psychotherapist with his baby and decided to get pregnant

15. Mindfulness guru Dan Siegel hired my Creep psychotherapist

16. My terrifying pregnancy for which I will never forgive myself

17. Creepy psychotherapist email of the week: my mango sex dream

18. The therapist who helped me escape my abusive therapist

19. The pseudo-therapist who abused me first

20. How I told my husband about my relationship with the Creep

21. Actually, ChatGPT IS my therapist and it’s great

22. Why would someone abuse a mental patient? Oh right! Money!

23. The embarrassing, explicit sexual email I sent my psychotherapist and his response

24. Creepy Fridays for paid subs! A new deposition clip to turn your stomach

25. Bill Maher says there’s no excuse for staying with your abuser anymore since #metoo happened

26. The strangers who helped me escape my abusive therapist

27. My therapy throuple ruined my therapists’ romance, Part 1

28. “I thought you had my back!”: a Creep’s lament

29. I thought I was too ugly to be sexually abused by my therapist

30. Therapist abuse patients gone wild: the enduring rage he left me with

31. The therapist abuse “packet” that I swore didn’t apply to me

32. Creepy Fridays for paid subs: when he told me to go masturbate

33. I fired my abusive therapist after 3.5 years. This was our last session.

34. Kendra told TikTok she was in love with her psychiatrist and TikTok hates her for it

35. This next part is hard and you’re not going to like it

36. I sued my Creep psychotherapist

37. The price of telling the truth about psychotherapist abuse

38. Why I’m afraid to write about suing my therapist

39. All the psychotherapists I had to see to sue my psychotherapist: Part 1

40. It’s “officially” over: the decision on the Creep psychotherapist’s license is in

41. Nobody wants this garbage psychotherapist rape storyline in “Nobody Wants This”

42. I snuck my psychotherapist abuse story into a mainstream publication

43. I need to talk to somebody

44. I had a sex dream about the Creep last night

45. Hello new “My Psychotherapist Was a Creep” subscribers. Buckle in tight.

46. My stupid deposition, Part 1

47. I lost my friends by suing my abusive psychotherapist

48. The past four months have been Hell, but I’m still never going back to therapy

In the dream, I was in his office—not his real office from real life, but a completely different office that I sometimes see him in in my dreams. It had several couches—maybe for when he held group sessions for other people dreaming about him.

He was happy to see me, kind and warm and willing to “help” me by sliding both of his hands up my skirt and into my underwear. He left them there as he smiled and told me I was doing “good work,” like he did once in real life after I told him my sexual fantasies. In the dream, I was so happy that he still wanted me after everything that’s happened—the lawsuit, the licensing board complaints, this Substack, the 30 pounds I’ve gained since I last saw him, the wrinkles, the sagging skin—all of it. And he still wanted me sexually. In the dream, I felt lucky and happy, just like I had when he first told me he was attracted to me in real life.

It felt like escaping my life. When the real abuse happened, it felt like an escape too, at first. When he told me it was OK, healthy, and even fun for me to talk about my sexual fantasies about him, I remember being so shocked and happy. It was OK! Having an emotional affair with the psychotherapist I was paying to help me with my suicidal depression and anxiety and childhood traumas was “more than OK, it’s fun!” he said.

How long has it been since I had fun back then? How long has it been now?

I can’t remember. Back then, I think the last time I’d had fun was years earlier, when I’d been writing and performing sketches every week onstage in the Groundlings Sunday Company. When that ended, fun ended for me too. I couldn’t find it again. I was so depressed that everything felt empty, day and night. Outside of the physical panic attacks, my body was numb. And then when the Creep told me he was sexually attracted to me, it felt like my body turned on again. It was like he’d flipped a switch. Sometimes the feeling would last a whole day or two. A whole day or two of fun. It was like a weekend on parole until the misery crept back in and I’d have to wait for my next appointment to find out if I’d ever get to have fun again.

And now? Now, the idea of “fun” feels completely dead. Fun is for people who don’t have a severely disabled child who screams at you and tries to rip your head off your neck one minute and then giggles and skips away to trash his bedroom again the next. Fun is for people who have friends to talk to. Fun is for people who don’t dread the weekend like it’s a prison sentence because it’s 48 straight hours with no breaks, no rest, and constantly walking on eggshells in the hope that I can prevent a complete meltdown from my child.

It’s my son’s birthday today. He is 10. We’re not having a party because there’s no one to invite, and I don’t even know if he’d like it anyway. He’s 10, and I don’t know him very well. He’s 10, and a day that should be fun makes my heart feel so heavy. If I’d known the day I gave birth how profoundly disabled he would be, I would have been devastated. It was my greatest fear. I wrote about that earlier in this post that you can read here:

My terrifying pregnancy for which I will never forgive myself

So, last night, after arguing with my husband about who was going to lie in bed with our kid for hours and try to get him to go to sleep (I “won” and got the big bed to myself for several hours), my poor, fucked-up brain looked for some “fun.”

And it came in the form of a sex dream about the guy who I fear has destroyed my brain for life. I felt arousal and warmth and comfort with his hands up my skirt and a smile on his face and the reassurance that everything was OK in this moment.

“You’re alright right now,” he used to remind me as a mantra to use in mindfulness practice.

“You’re alright right now,” he told me to tell my brain and body when the panic attacks shook me to my core.

“You’re alright right now,” he told me to tell my body, to reassure it that I wasn’t in any immediate physical danger.

The mantra never worked for me, because it wasn’t true. Yes, I was “alright” in the sense that I wasn’t about to be eaten by a lion, but no, I was not “alright” in every other sense.

“You’re alright right now,” I would tell my body.

“No you’re not,” it told me back. And it was right.

And then came the less fun part of the dream—when I couldn’t find my checkbook. And then when I found it but kept filling out the numbers wrong. I had to keep ripping up the checks and trying to rewrite them again. What grown woman can’t fill out a check for $250 correctly?

In the dream, I looked at the checkbook and there were only a few checks left. Then I was down to one check and still filled it out wrong. I felt panicked. The Creep was packing up his briefcase to head out, and the last check I had looked like it had been filled out by a preschooler, with the numbers and letters all wrong and written over and rewritten to try to correct the mistakes.

“I’m so sorry,” I told him. “I ran out of checks. Do you think the bank will take this one?” I said as I offered him the scrawled-upon slip of paper.

“It’s OK,” he said. “You can give it to me next time.”

I was ashamed but so grateful. What a kind man, I thought in my dream. He was so generous—he’d let me pay for my “fun” when I came back next time.

Then I woke up to the crashing sound of my son throwing a candle across my bedroom, and it was time to get out of bed and start vacuuming up the broken glass.

The “fun” was over.

We’ve been trying to potty train him for eight years. We’re in a phase where we’re not trying anymore right now. He still screams when we make him change his diaper.

Inevitably, every day, when my husband and I are at our lowest points—overcome with exhaustion, demoralized by his screaming and wailing, snapping at each other—that’s always when he poops, and my husband and I team together like it’s some sort of battle cry. We both drop whatever we’re doing when it’s poop time. We both know we have to have each other’s backs on that one.

This morning he was wailing before school. My husband said, “It sounds like a moose is dying,” and it does. It does sound like that.

We don’t know why he’s screaming. We don’t know if he hates the school I gambled our financial future to get him into. We don’t know if he’s in pain. We don’t know if he’s having a panic attack.

We run around our home day and night trying to find ways to soothe him—TV shows, notebooks to rip up, hundreds of boxes of markers so he can have a fresh set every time, a warm bath, a trip to the park, a trip to the other park, softer clothes, soft blankets and stuffed animals, Motrin in case he’s in pain, foot rubs, standing around his bed like gymnastic coaches spotting a student as he uses his bed as a trampoline, and of course every kind of food. We often cook him three different meals in succession in the hopes that he’ll take a few bites of one of them. Sometimes he does.

And sometimes it’s just more wailing, like the dying moose. I lose my patience every day. “Please stop,” I say to him sometimes. “Please stop screaming.”

There are so many other things that make my heart hurt. Every trip to the park. Every time we go, I see the other kids playing and talking together, riding bikes, playing games. Their parents turn their backs and focus on conversations with other adults, unafraid that their child will disappear if they look away for even a moment.

I always dress him in red when I take him to the park so I can spot him from far away if he runs. I am in bad physical shape—a few months away from 50 years old, overweight, one bad ankle, and lungs that never fully recovered after my second bout of COVID. The twenty years of smoking, from ages 19 to 39, have caught up with me. Even when my mom-adrenaline kicks in and I know I have to run at full speed to catch up with him when he flees, even then I barely make it. My lungs can’t keep up. When I finally reach him, I have to bear hug him to slow him down long enough so I can catch my breath.

Last weekend at the park, he wanted to walk down a wet tree branch in the rain boots I got him from Target. They’re cheap and have no traction. He insisted on eating Goldfish crackers at the same time. I told him he had to come down. He refused, and I reached up and pulled him off the branch before he could climb out of my reach.

There were no dying moose sounds this time. This time it was the screams—like a hyena ripping himself apart—as he pulled off his boots and flung them in one direction, then ran in the other and threw himself down in the soaked grass and began to log roll through the mud. I pleaded with him to get up.

“We can go get ice cream. We can get a popsicle. Let’s go home and see Dad. Let’s go get warm. Let’s go get something to eat. Please.”

But no.

Everyone else at the park stared at us until they turned their backs so they wouldn’t have to see anymore—me, a 50-year-old woman in off-brand yoga pants and an eight-year-old T-shirt, gray roots, and a busted manicure—pulling a 65-pound wet rag doll to his feet and back toward the boots—because they were $35—and then to the car, all the while screaming like he was being murdered.

I wish I could tell these things to a therapist. I wish there were a space where I could cry and feel better. I wish I had someone who could help me shore up my strength, help me cope, help me accept that this is my life for the rest of my life.

I wish I had someone to talk to just for myself. I’m lonely. I’m scared. I wish I had people. I wish I could go to a therapist.

I can’t. I never will. It’s not safe. These people are not safe.

I just published a personal essay in Huffington Post today, and there’s a paragraph in there about my therapist abuse. It’s not the central theme of the essay, but you guys, it’s IN there. Here! Look!

The essay: 20 years ago I sent myself an email. It just showed up.

For about six years, I’ve been begging for legacy media outlets with huge audiences to publish my therapist abuse story in any form. I wrote it half a dozen different ways:
-The straight story: Therapist abuse happened to me
-The service piece angle: Depression is at an all time high; here’s how to protect yourself from abuse
-The news angle: Famous therapist accused of patient abuse; it’s more common than you think
-The artsy angle: I wove my therapist abuse lawsuit into decorative baskets

and a couple more I can’t even remember. The artsy one got accepted at the New York Times and then killed when a new editor showed up. It was in consideration at the Washington Post until it wasn’t. Every rejection was more than the usual frustration of trying to get my work out there as a writer. It was like a shadow ban on bringing the issue up at all.

It’s not that nobody wants to hear about therapist abuse. It’s that no major legacy publication has the guts to talk about it. I don’t know if they ever will.

So today is a victory: three lines of text about therapist abuse embedded in an essay that covers a lot of other traumas.

It’s a start.

I’ll publish a new chapter of “My Psychotherapist Was a Creep” as soon as I can,

“Trigger warning,” my friend on the East Coast texted me. “New season of Nobody Likes This on Netflix.” Then she sent a picture of an episode called “The Unethical Therapist.”

Oh my God, I thought. Wait—isn’t it a comedy? I thought.

As scared as I was, I knew I had to see it for myself. Maybe someone made creep psychotherapists funny? Maybe I had something to learn.

I did not have anything to learn. They had not made creep psychotherapists funny.

If you’re not familiar with the show, it’s about a woman named Joanne (Kristen Bell) who has a “sex and relationships podcast” with her sister Morgan (Justine Lupe). Joanne is dating a newly single rabbi. Morgan is apparently jealous of her sister’s crappy relationship and desperate to find someone of her own.

So Morgan shows up at her mom’s birthday party with “Dr. Andy.” Her family soon realizes that “Dr. Andy” is Morgan’s psychotherapist.

Then there is one single, solitary moment where someone (Joanne) critiques their relationship as “illegal” (which it is). From that point on, it’s lots of “fun” jokes about having sexual relationships with your therapist—or as the American legal system refers to it:

RAPE.

Rape, you say, Liz? But what if she’s into it! This character is clearly into it, and this is a hilarious way to show what a fucked-up, pathetic nutjob she is! No rape here, surely! You’re too sensitive!

Please Google “Is having sex with your psychotherapist considered rape?” and you will get the following answer:

YES. Sexual activity between a psychotherapist and a patient is legally considered sexual assault or abuse, and in some jurisdictions, it can be prosecuted as rape. Due to the inherent power imbalance in the therapeutic relationship, a patient cannot give true, legal consent, making any sexual contact an act of exploitation and abuse by the therapist.

Hilarious, funny, silly, whimsical fucking RAPE. Nothing funnier than rape, amirite y’all? Lol, for realz.

So: seven out of ten episodes of one of the most popular and highly acclaimed comedies on streaming have built a main character arc around the hilarity of rape.

I remember being in court the day the junior lawyer (I was her first case) presented the facts to the elderly white male judge, saying that I “couldn’t consent” to the sexual exploitation of my psychotherapist.

He scoffed and rolled his eyes. “What do you mean she couldn’t consent?” I was just some crazy nutjob bimbo, just like Morgan in Nobody Wants This.

Six months later, at the hearing for punitive damages against the creep psychotherapist, he had changed his tune. “She wrote him in April 2016 that she had feelings for him, and he kept seeing her for a year,” he said. “I find the plaintiff can file for punitive damages.”

Listen to me. Please trust me on this one. If this judge was creeped out by what the creep therapist did, it’s creepy.

I was so grateful. I was so shocked and grateful that this old conservative white dude looked at my case and was like, “Jeez, that’s kinda rapey of him.”

That guy got it. Nobody Wants This didn’t. Soon after it’s revealed that Morgan is dating her therapist, her dad Henry (played by Michael Hitchcock, who I’ve always admired) giddily shares:

“I kissed my therapist once, but he said it was a trust exercise.”

Hilarious, gut-busting, adorably silly sexual assault reference! FUN! What a hoot!

And that’s the last we see anyone talk about how demented it is that Morgan is being repeatedly raped by a man she decides to marry.

Joanne’s boyfriend Noah even tells her to cut Morgan some slack. Why won’t Joanne just let her enjoy her relationship with her serial rapist? Why is she so uptight about her younger sister getting repeatedly raped? Doesn’t she want her sister to be happy? And when Morgan and her rapist get engaged, is Joanne sure she’s not just jealous she doesn’t get to be raped for the rest of her life? What a bitch!

I was not able to stomach watching the entire season, nor did I want Netflix to accrue those watch hours for their stats, so I skipped to the final episode, which features Morgan’s engagement party to her rapist, Dr. Andy.

It’s a super luxe Los Angeles rooftop affair! It’s the rape party of the year!

But suddenly, during the party, Morgan gets cold feet about marrying her rapist.

“You know what really bothers me about him?” Morgan tells her sister Joanne at the party. “He weaponizes things I said to him in therapy when I thought it was a safe space.”

“WOW THAT’S TERRIBLE AND UNFUNNY AND ALSO YOU’RE BEING SERIALLY RAPED,” I shouted at the screen.

Eventually, Morgan decides to dump her rapist at the party, and her rapist responds:

“As your fiancé I’m utterly heartbroken, but as your therapist I’m really proud of you, Morgan.”

Then Morgan feels confident in her decision, now that her rapist has validated her feelings, and we just move on to other people’s complicated relationships that may be shitty, but are not entirely and solely based on rape.

“He’d make an amazing cult leader,” Michael Hitchcock’s character quips at the end of the episode about the funny, funny, funny, funny rape relationship.

Fuck you, Netflix. Fuck you, Nobody Wants This writers. Fuck you, Hollywood. Fuck you, Creep.

Thanks so much. You’ve been a terrific audience for this hilarious post. I’ll be here all week.

I’ll write a new chapter of “My Psychotherapist Was a Creep” as soon as I can.

A full six and a half years after I filed a complaint against my Creep psychotherapist with the California Board of Behavioral Sciences, the “decision” is finally in. The BBS didn’t contact me to let me know; I had to find it in the quarterly email they send out about “latest enforcement actions.” It was decided months ago. I’m the last to know.

It was Thursday morning, and I had just gotten some really good news about a job offer after six months of terrifying unemployment. I stepped out of my yard for my usual 20-minute walk, glanced down at my phone, and saw the email from the California BBS. I’ve been on their mailing list for six and a half years, waiting for news. I clicked on the “Latest Enforcement Actions” tab and scanned the list for his name like I’ve done dozens of times before.

It was there this time. The decision was in.

I turned around and almost ran back to my house to read it, but I stopped myself. I kept walking. I chose, in that moment, not to let the Creep destroy yet another happy moment from my life—a celebratory walk through my beautiful neighborhood on a beautiful day after I’d fought like hell to get work to take care of my family. I took my full 20 minutes and even stretched my back afterward instead of diving straight into what I knew would be trauma.

Why had no one contacted me? Had they just let him off the hook completely and didn’t want to deal with me?

The decisions on licensing enforcement actions are hard to find if you don’t know where to look. I assume the BBS makes it as difficult as possible to find them. They are fiercely dedicated to protecting predators in their community. I knew where to look, though. I’ve been looking for six and a half years.

I saw the little gavel next to his listing that indicated an “Administrative Action” had been taken on his license. The first line took my breath away:

**IT IS HEREBY ORDERED that Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist License No. LMFT ***, issued to [Creep’s name here], is revoked.

Over the course of the next 1.5 seconds, the following thoughts rushed through my mind:

I did it. Someone believed me. One of the licensing boards believed me. One of the licensing boards in the state of California said the Creep’s behavior was unacceptable. One of the licensing boards in the state of California still had integrity. Maybe someday I could go to therapy again and learn to feel safe there and sift through some of the complete disaster of the last 12 years of having this loser in my life—and maybe someone could help me feel better. Maybe a mainstream media publication would actually listen to my story now and believe me. There was so much hope in those 1.5 seconds.

Then the second sentence slapped me back into reality:

The revocation is stayed and Respondent is placed on two (2) years’ probation with terms and conditions.

It’s probation. He got two years’ probation. It’s just the way they phrase things legally: it’s revoked and then unrevoked, and then it’s probation.

It’s two years’ probation. It’s a year less than the California Board of Psychology gave him. He’s got about a year and three months to go on that probation still. After six and a half years, the guy has two licenses on probation and unfettered access to vulnerable patients.

Six and a half years ago, everyone who knew my case knew for sure he’d lose both licenses. Thursday, when I started texting friends that he got probation after all this time, the responses were: “Well, at least he got something.”

It’s true. At least he got something. He destroyed so much of me, but he’ll have to take some ethics classes and pay, like, $4,000. At least it’s something, right?

I’m always slow to react to big emotional news. When someone close to me dies and I get the news, I nod and say “OK,” with the knowledge that it won’t really hit me for days. The news is a warning signal:

“Two days from now, you’ll be in mourning. Two days from now, if you start crying and you don’t know why, it’s because of this.”

I closed my computer and said to myself: You got a new job today in the worst job market in 17 years, and you did everything you could to hold a terrible person accountable for his actions, and it’s over. It’s a new chapter of your life, I told myself. A new chapter starts now.

Two days later, I was crying and I didn’t know why. There were other reasons for me to cry:

• a holiday weekend where everyone who was scheduled to help my severely disabled son canceled at the last minute

• financial stress as I wait for my background check to go through for my new job

• existential stress as we all waited for news from the Middle East

• self-hatred after watching myself trying to recreate Taylor Swift’s “Fate of Ophelia” dance on TikTok, only to see that my body is so overweight and my back is in such bad shape I could barely move to the music

• stress over the fact that I’m going to a “Mom’s dance night” in a couple of weeks and I can barely move

• stress over FaceTiming with my parents, and my 79-year-old father, who’s languished in bed for five years and has bruises on his face from falling down over and over again, taking one look at me and saying: “You look tired.”

There were plenty of other things to cry about.

I had to remind myself: Something else happened too, Liz. I wish it were as simple as closing my computer and declaring a new chapter in my life. There are definitely some positives.

It’s “officially” over, and I did everything I could to stop the Creep from hurting other people. I didn’t succeed, but I did everything I could.

I would do anything to erase it all from my mind. So much pain, for nothing.

I’ll post a new chapter of “My Psychotherapist Was a Creep” every week.

So six months after escaping psychological captivity with the Creep, I had to go therapist shopping again. This time there was an extra complication: my new therapist had to be aware that I was suing my old therapist and be willing to be deposed as part of my lawsuit. Additionally, I needed someone who was willing to see me for no more than $150 per session.

My husband and I were already seeing a couples therapist recommended by a friend. Let’s call him Cliff.

The couples therapist recommended I talk to a woman who shared his office suite. I called her for a consultation. She seemed OK, but when I told her what I could pay, she responded, “No, I’m not comfortable with that. Let’s do $160.”

Ten dollars. She needed an extra ten dollars per session to feel “comfortable” treating me. I’ll never forget it. I had just told her I’d been abused and exploited by a therapist for years and that I felt unsafe with therapists, and she responded by saying that unless I could come up with another ten dollars a week, it was a dealbreaker. I made an appointment with her just so I could get off the phone, then canceled it the next day by email.

I told Cliff it was a no-go. He didn’t ask why, he just said:

“OK, I know someone else who’s great.”

“Great,” I said.

“It’s a man,” he said.

“Nope,” I said. “Absolutely not.”

No way was I sitting alone in a room with a man in therapy ever again. I was OK with Cliff because my husband was there, and I also felt like having a male couples therapist would be better for my husband. But for me, alone? No way in hell.

“He’s gay,” said Cliff.

“How gay?” I asked, dead serious.

“Like, ‘married to a man for the past fifteen years that I’ve known him’ gay,” said Cliff.

“I don’t think so,” I responded.

As weeks wore on, it became clear that I didn’t just need a therapist for the purpose of the lawsuit. I was a wreck. I was screaming at men who stood too close to me in grocery stores.

“Get back!” I’d shriek when I realized they were close behind me. Then they’d leap back in horror and I’d go running out of the grocery store, mortified, and drive to another one.

I asked for pepper spray for Christmas, and my husband a canister of “Smith & Wesson” brand for my keychain. I watched YouTube videos on how to use it effectively without it being turned against me. I practiced spraying and running away in my front yard once a month. The neighbors in my bungalow complex started shutting their windows when they saw me in the yard.

“I know someone very good to fix that dent in your car,” said an old man in yet another grocery store parking lot, pointing his cane at my front bumper as he walked toward me.

“GET BACK!” I screamed at full volume.

“What do you mean?” he said, walking closer.

“GET AWAY FROM MY CAR! I HAVE PEPPER SPRAY! GET AWAY!” I screamed before leaping in and locking my doors.

I was screaming at men everywhere: “GET AWAY FROM ME!”

I couldn’t sleep. My new psychiatrist prescribed Trazodone and Klonopin. It was enough to knock me out but not enough to stop me from falling into hours of nightmares about the Creep.

I tried to go to a restorative yoga class—the kind where you don’t work out, you just learn to relax and let your body “go.” It was awful. I was shaking and twitching during every pose. I couldn’t close my eyes. The rest of the class was blissing out, and I was flailing around like a fish dumped on the deck of a boat. Eventually, the teacher guided me over to a wall and had me lie with my back against it while she swaddled me with a yoga blanket. I eventually stopped shaking.

Back to the wall. That was a really good idea, I thought.

I started sleeping with my back all the way up against the wall in bed.

Even though the Creep hadn’t physically assaulted me, I was terrified by the physical presence of men. I no longer trusted my own judgment. Every man except for my husband and my infant son was a threat. I had been stupid and naive enough to be manipulated by the Creep for years. My radar for danger was completely off. I had to be hypervigilant if I was going to protect myself.

I needed help.

“The gay guy,” I said to Cliff at the next couples therapy session. “Do you think he’d be willing to see me even though there’s a lawsuit?”

Cliff sighed with relief. “I already talked to him about you,” he said. “He’s waiting for your call whenever you’re ready.”

So I called and made an appointment. From his website, he looked to be in his sixties. His biography said that he’d spent the first forty years of his life in England before moving to LA. His smile was warm. I was terrified.

I arrived early at his office in West Hollywood, the gay capital of Los Angeles. I scanned the waiting room wildly for signs that my new therapist might show a hint of heterosexuality. A giant rainbow flag hung on the wall next to a David Hockney print. Pamphlets for gay men’s group therapy and PFLAG were stacked neatly on the table next to a copy of Vanity Fair featuring Benedict Cumberbatch in a soaking wet T-shirt on the cover, alongside the latest issues of The Advocate and Out magazine. The furniture was mid-century modern.

“A little on the nose,” I said quietly to no one before chastising myself in my head.

“Liz,” I told myself, “the chances that some straight man would create an extremely gay waiting room for the sole purpose of tricking female clients into complacency so he could sexually exploit them are pretty far-fetched. Give him a chance.”

Oliver, as I’ll refer to him from here on out, opened the door to his office and invited me inside. Cliff had already warned him not to try to shake my hand, so he didn’t offer it. I sat on his couch and immediately, instinctively, grabbed one of the giant pillows and held it so it covered my entire torso.

“Cliff said you’re gay,” I said quietly as I scanned the room for non-gay things, finding none.

“Yes,” said Oliver.

“How gay?” I asked unabashedly.

“Totally gay,” he said.

I nodded, but I didn’t move the pillow. I kept that pillow covering my entire torso for every session for at least a year.

Oliver was as formal as I needed him to be. In our first session, he reviewed each intake form with me carefully, explaining the reasoning for each question and how the forms would be stored in a HIPAA-compliant medical records system.

Then, he offered me the packet. THE packet. The “Psychotherapy Never Includes Sexual Behavior” packet.

“I have that already,” I told him while I stared at the floor.

“Cliff mentioned that you’re familiar with the packet, but I wanted to offer it to you anyway,” said Oliver.

“I have a copy,” I said. “I have several copies.”

“Got it,” he said, and placed it on the table next to him.

For the rest of the session, he asked me about my goals and my expectations. He said that I was in control of the therapy and could stop coming whenever I wanted to.

“No, I can’t,” I said. “There’s a lawsuit.”

“I know,” he said. “You can still stop coming whenever you decide you don’t want to come here anymore. It’s up to you.”

Then he started talking about termination—right there in the first session. It was brilliant.

“You won’t be coming here forever,” he said. “Let’s talk about how you’ll know that your time in therapy with me is over. What goals will you need to have met?”

I was silent. I had no idea. I don’t think any therapist had ever asked me that question.

“Well,” I said. “I’m afraid of all men. I guess it would be good not to be afraid of all men anymore.”

He nodded.

“And the lawsuit will have to be over,” I said.

He nodded again. That was all I was willing to give him on day one.

Both Oliver and I knew that the notes he wrote for every session I attended would be handed over to the Creep’s defense attorney. I needed the safety to be completely honest with Oliver about what happened, but I couldn’t be. I felt the presence of the Creep’s lawyer hanging over every session, analyzing Oliver’s notes for anything that could be used against me. It was an impossible situation.

Every time I started to talk about the sexual feelings I’d had for the Creep, I stopped.

“Are you sure you’re gay?” I’d ask him every time.

“Yes,” he said.

“How gay?” I’d ask once again.

He sighed. “Totally gay,” he said. “I mean, I could describe in graphic detail how gay, but I don’t really think you want me to go there, do you?” he asked.

“No,” I said, and we both laughed.

“You’re as gay as it gets, right?” I emphasized before telling him about the five-day orgasm.

“That’s right,” he said. “I’m the King of Gay.”

All hail. God save the King.

I’ll post a new chapter of “My Psychotherapist Was a Creep” as soon as I can. Thank you for reading.

Ever since I got to the part of the story where I sued my psychotherapist, I’ve been frozen. I went from posting on this Substack every week to finding any other possible thing I could do with my time than tell the rest of this story. Every time I sit down to write a few lines and tell another piece, I suddenly realize I need to clean the bathroom or run to the store or fold all of the laundry or stare at TikTok for 6 hours or rewrite my resume or declutter the garage.

Every time I’ve started again, I stop.

It’s because I’m terrified.

I’m not scared that the Creep or his lawyers will come after me–it would hardly be worth their time or effort and I can’t imagine any of them would want to file paperwork against me that would associate their names with a blog called “My Psychotherapist Was a Creep.”

I’m not scared of them. I’m scared of telling it wrong.

What my lawsuit taught me is that every single line of the my story had to be told perfectly.

No inconsistencies or you’ll lose the case. Get a detail wrong and you lose the case. Remember something differently than exactly how it happened and you’ll lose the case. Say something slightly differently than you said it before and we’ll all know you’re a liar and you’ll lose the case. Say too much and give too many details and you’ll lose the case. Don’t give enough excruciating detail and you’ll lose the case.

And if you lose the case, Liz, he gets away with it. And if he gets away with it because you screwed it up, he can do it again and again to as many other women as he wants to until the end of his days. Don’t screw it up Liz. Don’t lose the case.

For the 20 months my lawsuit dragged on, I had to be perfect. I couldn’t post a thought anywhere on social media, or I’d lose the case. I couldn’t stumble in my deposition or I’d lose the case. I couldn’t stop going to therapy or I’d lose the case. I couldn’t show progress in therapy or I’d lose the case.

The burden of proof was always on me–not my lawyers who were juggling who knows how many other cases worth who knows how much more money than mine–but me. I was the only one fully paying attention. I was the only one who was tracking every document as soon as it was filed in the court system. I knew about motions before my own lawyers did. I had to. I found out very quickly that my case was not a priority. And I had to read every motion and point out every error or fabrication or falsehood by the defense or my own lawyers would miss it and I’d lose the case.

I’ve moved past something by writing the first portion of this Substack that was solely focused on the abuse from my Creep psychotherapist. I kind of can’t believe it. It lifted something off of me–telling the grotesque details to friends and strangers here.

I exposed the most humiliating parts of my therapy and showed them to hundreds, sometimes thousands, of readers. I expected to be ridiculed. I expected to be treated by my readers the way that the lawyers in my case (both his and mine) treated me–like I was lying. Or if not lying, then just plain nuts, and because of that, completely at fault for what happened.

Following my first few posts, I did get a couple of readers who accused me of lying. They disappeared entirely when I started posting receipts–deposition screenshots, court record screenshots, email screenshots. After post number 3 or 4 they all skittered away and never returned.

In some ways, I think I posted the goriest of details to challenge them to come back. I was waiting for the world to shame me the way the lawyers did–both his and mine. I was ready for anyone who was willing to read my story to know that I’ve blamed every which way possible already.

And I also posted them because if, by chance, the Creep or his lawyers ever did or do read this Substack, I want them to know I’m not afraid of them anymore–that they have nothing to hold over me ever again because I’ve already exposed the absolute worst of what I did to the entire world.

And I also posted them because I’ve needed the story out of me, once and for all, for years. I needed it all out. I still do. I need more of it out. I need it all gone from inside of me. And getting out the story has, quite frankly, helped a whole lot more than any therapy since the Creep ever did.

What I did not expect was for my readers to almost universally take my side, to tell me it’s insane that the Creep didn’t lose his license, that the things that happened weren’t my fault.

When I said I decided to get pregnant after seeing my therapist with his baby in a social media post, most of the comments I got were from people saying how normal that was–that people often realize they want a baby when they see someone else with theirs. I thought it was the worst thing I’d ever done in my life. That’s how the lawyers made me feel about it–like I was a sicko. It has always affected my relationship with my son–that I was inspired to get pregnant by seeing my abuser with his own baby. The lawyers taught me to be ashamed of that. My readers here have helped me let go of it.

My readers here have helped me let go of so much of what happened during the abuse–by reading every post, by commenting sometimes, by subscribing sometimes, by even paying to subscribe sometimes.

The second round of mistreatment I suffered at the hands of both his and my own lawyers scares me all over again. It’s like I really did it to myself. I chose to pursue the lawsuit despite being told I would suffer, that my friends and family would be stalked, that I should never smile in public, that I wouldn’t be allowed to write anywhere–including in a diary–until the lawsuit was over. I chose that. I had good intentions. I believed. I could get the bad guy and stop him from hurting anyone else ever again.

But I didn’t.

And that’s another reason I stopped writing. I can’t give any of you the ending that you want. I want to tell the story of the lawsuit, but there’s no happy ending. Readers want a happy ending.

I’ve decided to keep going–and keep telling even if it comes out a complete mess. It should come out a complete mess, I guess. It was a complete mess.

A wise friend recently advised me on going forward with my story: “It’s Substack. You can be as sloppy as you want.”

So here comes the rest of it–possibly in random order, possibly poorly told and chaotic, possibly not as good as the first part, and most certainly with a disappointing ending.

Thanks for reading.

I’ll post a new chapter of “My Psychotherapist Was a Creep” as soon as I can.

The three and a half years of abuse that I went through with the Creep psychotherapist was worse than the 20 month lawsuit.

I can say this with confidence because I double-check with myself every day whether it’s true. My brain has been permanently altered by both experiences. Every day I ask myself if the lawsuit was “worth it.” I’m still not sure. I think I did the right thing, but I’m not sure. What if I had just walked away from it all?

It’s not like I stopped the Creep from hurting other people. It’s not like I stopped him from doing anything. He’s never lost access to one on one private sessions with trauma victims for even a day. I try not to think about what has gone on in his office since the last time I saw him. I tell myself that I did everything I could to try to stop him from hurting other people. It didn’t work, but at least I tried. Maybe I’d feel guilt if I hadn’t tried. Maybe I also would have been able to move on with my life without adding extra trauma to it if I hadn’t tried. I certainly would never recommend that anyone sue their therapist, no matter how badly they were abused.

Never.

My lawyer estimated that about 95% of the therapist abuse cases he handled with Wilfred settled before trial. He also warned that if I fell into the 5% that didn’t, then the Creep’s lawyer Wilfred would put me, my family, my friends, and anyone he thought I might care about through Hell to get me to drop the case.

I found out I was about to become part of Wilfred’s 5% on Labor Day Weekend 2017. Labor Day weekend is famous in my family for very bad reasons. When it comes around, we all hold our breath for four days straight.

Labor Day Weekend is the weekend my parents split up, the weekend I tried to commit suicide, the weekend my grandpa had a stroke, the weekend our house got hit by lightning, the weekend my dog got hit by a car, the weekend at least a dozen sincerely terrible things happened in my family. We’re officially superstitious about it. My husband used to think it was ridiculous, then we got mugged together, he watched our dog get run over and dragged by a car, and a few years later learned a friend he had known since childhood dropped dead overnight from an aneurysm in bed.

And then–it was the weekend I found out that the Creep wouldn’t settle out of court and I was about to become Wilfred’s latest target of misery.

When I found out I was soon to become part of that 5% I thought about backing out. How could I keep going?

I just felt bleak. That’s the best word for it. Everything was bleak. Dark. Cold. Terrifying.

I was also shocked. Why on Earth wouldn’t the Creep settle? Did he think I wouldn’t go through with it? Did he think I would be too ashamed? Did his lawyer tell him he could get out of it since he hadn’t physically assaulted me? I’ll never know what they were thinking.

I decided to keep going. My main motivator was that I’d been told the Creep’s licensing boards wouldn’t believe me unless I won a settlement.

I think I’ve mentioned this before, but here’s a refresher: if a psychotherapist in California’s insurance company has to pay out a claim for $30,000 or more to a client, the insurance company is required to report that payout to the therapist’s licensing boards. $30,000 is a very low bar to have to meet. I thought I could meet it.

My next rationale was that even if I couldn’t make it all the way through the trial, I at least needed to hang on long enough for the Creep to be deposed. I needed that deposition. If I couldn’t get the $30,000+ settlement, then I needed him confronted with the evidence on the record. If I could just hang on until his deposition, then I would have SOMETHING for the licensing boards to look at. I just kept trying to endure one more thing to get a little bit closer to having the Creep’s licensing boards believe me so they would stop him from hurting anyone else.

When my lawyer’s office said that I needed to hand over absolutely every communication I had had with anyone about the Creep, I did it. I gave them everything.

It’s not just that I’m naive (which I am, in spite of my cynicism). I’m also a terrible liar. For both of these reasons, I handed over every single text, email, and message board post I’d written about the Creep from the beginning of our relationship all the way through its nightmare end.

“I have a podcast too,” I told the lawyer. “I talk about him on my podcast.”

For several years, I co-hosted a monthly-ish comedy podcast about mental health. It was a parody of a self-help podcast where I roasted myself for my ongoing mental problems from a darkly comic point of view, let the world know what meds I was currently trying, and talked about how none of it was working in general.

The lawyer said the podcast had to go, and so it did.

And my writing would have to stop as well, the lawyer said–no more memoir pieces talking about my mental health condition. It could be used against me. I had just broken through with my memoir writing with two essays placed in huge publications. And then I had to stop.

And no more social media. I was told to lock everything down, purge any followers or “friends” that I didn’t have a strong personal relationship with, hide any photos where I might be seen smiling or feeling happy from all corners of the internet.

And I definitely couldn’t do stand up comedy. Absolutely not under any circumstances–NO comedy.

I cut people out of my life without explaining why.

I can’t even remember how many opportunities I turned down. They blurred together at some point. My life was on hold–completely–until the lawsuit was over.

In addition to all of the information that I gave my lawyer that showed that I had been abused, I included text messages and emails that made me look bad–messages where I said unflattering things.

In one text message exchange with a friend who had help me escape the Creep, I said that I wanted to “ruin his life”. In another text message to a friend, the friend suggested that I might get a significant sum of money out of the settlement and I responded “gotta get me some of that.”

My lawyer was ethically obligated to hand over everything that I gave to her, and so they did.

In retrospect, there was no way the Creep’s lawyers could have known about most of the texts and emails. They certainly wouldn’t have known about the thousands of messages I’d written on the message board. I shouldn’t have handed everything over. It’s not like it was a criminal case and I was under investigation. But it did feel that way to me–very much–like I was the one who had done a terrible thing.

As a victim, you have to be perfect. You can’t make any mistakes or missteps. You can’t say the wrong thing. Who would believe some mentally ill comedian who told her therapist she was “in love with him?” He had the professional degrees and the licenses. I was the one who was, admittedly, crazy.

When the initial documents were filed with the court, they came back with a trial date. It was 8 months away. I put a countdown on my phone. “Every day you get through is a day closer to it being over” I told myself. I would reset that counter over and over again for 20 months.

I’ll post a new chapter of “My Psychotherapist Was a Creep” every week.

I’d like to open the next chapter of my story by saying that every joke you’ve ever heard about lawyers is both 100% true and also far too kind.

In the first months after I left the Creep, I felt like I was staring into a black hole everywhere I looked. I remember not knowing what to do with myself while waiting for my night shift every day. When my husband would go to work I would just drive my baby in circles around Griffith Park just a couple blocks from the Creep’s office listening to Haim’s “Days Are Gone” album on repeat. Those girls really got me through something.

“I give a little
Into the moment, like I’m standing at the edge I know
That no one’s gonna turn me round
Just one more step I could let go”
-Falling by Haim

The emptiness seemed unbearable. I had cut myself off from the Creep’s chaos but I couldn’t even begin to think about how I would get better.

One of the friends who had told me to leave him said I was “trauma bonded” to the Creep. She said she had gone through a similar painful break up. She had had an abusive boyfriend. He raped her. She still found herself going back to him and struggled to break the cycle.

“No contact is the only way to do it,” she told me.

“How long until I feel better?” I asked.

“Maybe a year,” she said.

“I can’t,” I told her, hysterical. “I can’t make it a year. I won’t survive it.”

I was wrong. I could survive it. I did survive it. It was awful in ways I never could have imagined. It was excruciating. Still, it was better than being with the Creep.

About two months after I’d left him, I met my oldest college friend for lunch and told her what happened. She was a lawyer–a very good one. She had seen me deterioration over the past four years, and now my inability to get better made more sense. She was disgusted.

“You can sue him,” she said.

“No,” I said. “There’s nothing to sue for. We didn’t have sex. No one would take the case.”

She shook her head. She was the type of lawyer that put murderers away for life. She wasn’t scared of a weaselly low-rent sleazebag con-man therapist.

“You MUST talk to a lawyer,” she said. “You have to talk to at least one and if they say there’s no case, then OK.”

I didn’t know what to do. She seemed to always know what to do.

“Who would I call?” I asked.

She knew a couple of civil attorneys who handled personal injury cases and forwarded me their websites. I didn’t contact them. I was too embarrassed. I had what I assumed must be the weirdest case on Earth. I imagined how my pitch would go:

“Um, yeah hi. So, I’m severely mentally ill and I thought I fell in love with my psychotherapist and I told him that I was sexually obsessed with him and he gave my a five-day orgasm by touching my hand and he said we couldn’t have sex because it was against the rules but still told me to tell him his sexual fantasies. Whaddaya think?”

There was the money he took, of course, but I couldn’t imagine any personal injury attorney would care about me losing $50,000. And I couldn’t afford to pay a lawyer so what was the point anyway? I wondered if there were specific lawyers for therapist abuse cases. I didn’t think anyone would take my case, but at least the phone call would be less embarrassing.

I searched “therapist abuse lawyer” and my zip code and wrote to the first place I found. I don’t have the original message I sent in, but I am quite sure I stated that I didn’t have a case but my friend was making me talk to someone.

I got a call from the law office’s intake coordinator two days later. I was both confused and mortified that my message had not just been swallowed into the abyss. Now I was going to waste some poor woman’s time because her bosses probably made her call back everyone who wrote in–even the crazy people.

I’ll call the intake coordinator “Maria.” Maria was persistent about setting up a time for us to talk. I obviously couldn’t take the phone call with anyone around. I didn’t even want to talk about it in front of my 1-year-old. I had been bringing him with me to a co-working space for mothers that had a small daycare room attached. I told the sitters I had to run an errand and would be right back.

I drove down the street and parked in the Toys R Us parking lot in a spot far from any other cars. I thanked Maria for her time, apologized in advance for wasting it, and then proceeded to recount the entire miserable tale as quickly as I could so we could go our separate ways.

I rattled off details without taking a breath and eventually got to the part where I said:

“So I told him I had to stop seeing him because I was attracted to him and he asked me if I would feel any better if he said that he felt the same way.”

Maria interrupted. “Wait,” she said. “What?”

“We didn’t have sex though,” I quickly clarified. “It was really all on me. I just told him I was sexually attracted to him because he had stroked my hand years earlier and I had this embarrassing sexual reaction and I finally told him and then he was trying to make me feel better and he asked me ‘Would you like to hold hands right now?’”

“WHAT?” said Maria, the tone of her voice getting more high-pitched and breathy with every detail.

“But we didn’t have sex,” I reiterated. “He said he would love to have sex with my but we couldn’t because of f the ‘bounds of psychotherapy’. He just told me to talk about my fantasies about him, but we never did anything physical. It was all just talking and emails and stuff.”

“What kind of emails?” Maria asked.

“Oh…all kinds. I mean, there are hundreds of them. He told me to email him whenever I wanted to, until the end when he said I had taken the therapy outside of the office, and I was talking to too many other people about what had happened and to stop talking to other people about what we were doing in therapy. After that he said I couldn’t email him anymore, but before that I think I emailed him almost every day.”

Maria took a beat and then said something I never expected: “OK, I’m going to get you a plane ticket to fly to our main office to meet with the lawyer.”

The firm’s main office was in another city

“Wait,... really?” I said.

“Yes, we’ll pay for your ticket,” she said.

My head was spinning. “But….even though I didn’t have sex with him?”

She sighed. How many versions of me had she talked to in the course of her job over the years. How many women had called her about their creep psychotherapists, downplaying how bad their abuse was? Hundreds? We must have all sounded exactly the same.

“He shouldn’t have said any of those things to you sweetie,” she said.

She sent me an email the next day with my flight information and a list of the documents I should start gathering for the lawyer.

There are more parts to the story that happened over the next month before I met with the lawyer, but for the sake of you, the reader, trying to hang on to this narrative that is quite literally all over the place (because that’s how it happened), I’m going to skip right to the trip.

Everything felt weird and surreal as I boarded the plane, anxious for take off and then this happened:

I’m in a dream, I thought to myself. This is all a dream. Or a prank?

It was neither. It was the pilot’s last flight before he retired and Southwest had spared no expense, crafting him a hat with what I think are golf flagpoles to thank him for his years of service.

FYI here’s the pilot’s message:

I congratulated the pilot on my way off the plane and wished him the best. Such a weird detail.

I think my cab to the law office was $130. I was so embarrassed to tell the secretary. She told me it was OK and cracked the petty cash box right open.

I think of how fragile I was back then and how utterly broke I was after three and a half years of funding the Creep’s life. I had no money, only debt. A cheap plane ticket and $130 in cash seemed like a big investment to me at the time. I was so broke that the $400 they spent seemed very generous to me. (At the time I didn’t realize it would be deducted from my settlement nearly two years later.)

Everyone at the law office was extremely friendly and kind. I didn’t have to wait long before I was introduced to the head partner who I sat across from and relayed my story to for about 6 hours. Let’s call him Anthony.

One of the first questions he asked me was:

“Have you ever been diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder?”

“No,” I said.

“Well, you’re going to be,” he said. “By his lawyer..”

I was deeply confused. What lawyer? How could the Creep have a lawyer already? I hadn’t even sued him yet.

Anthony explained that he already knew which lawyer my Creep would retain, even before I’d filed my lawsuit. Just like there were lawyers that specialized in therapist abuse cases, there were also lawyers that specialized in defending therapists accused of abuse. There was one Creep defender in particular who handled the vast majority of therapist abuse cases in my state. Anthony had been working with (or rather against) him for decades. Anthony knew how he operated. He said every time he went up against Wilfred (not his real name), Wilfred did the same thing–and Wilfred accused every patient who sued their therapist of having Borderline Personality Disorder.

“That’s disgusting,” I told Anthony.

I remember taking a class on diagnosing patients with mental health conditions when I was in graduate school for social work a decade earlier. The professor strongly recommended against diagnosing patients with personality disorders–especially borderline–because it was both stigmatizing and usually not the main problem a patient was dealing with. She also said that personality disorders would likely be removed from the next version of the DSM altogether since they were so controversial and, frankly, extremely rare.

She was wrong. Personality disorders live on in the DSM VI and continue to be diagnosed in about 9% of the U.S. population.

My lawyer was right–at least on this part. The Creep retained Wilfred as his lawyer, and when the Creep had to send in his records a couple months later, a sheet of paper on top of my file read:

DIAGNOSES:
-Major Depressive Disorder
-Generalized Anxiety Disorder
-Traits of Borderline Personality Disorder

I screamed when I saw it.

The Creep had literally specifically told me one during our treatment that I DIDN’T have Borderline Personality Disorder. “You’re missing key traits of that diagnosis,” he told me. “You don’t have that.”

Still, after everything he’d already done, I retained the capacity to be utterly shocked the Creep could sink so low.

Years later, when I tried to write a reported story about victims of psychotherapist abuse, I talked to three other women in California who had accused their psychotherapists of abuse–one of whom who had had full blown sexual relationship with her therapist for years–and every single one their therapists was defended by Wilfred, and every single one of them had been accused of having Borderline Personality Disorder. (No media outlet in the world wanted to take the story.)

What I would eventually come to accept is that there’s a system in place for therapist abuse–and not the one described on the websites of the licensing boards. It’s a system that has been worked out by lawyers and quietly supported by licensing boards who will go out of their way to protect their licensees from being held accountable. A patient accuses a therapist, Wilfred accuses them of having BPD. It’s the way things are.

“But why would that make what he did BETTER?” I screamed into the void, to no one. “If someone has Borderline Personality Disorder that means they’re extremely fragile and abusing them is even more disgusting.”

My lawyer friend who had encouraged me to sue wasn’t having it either. “No no,” she said. “You’re SUPPOSED to be crazy,” she told me in a phone call. “That’s literally WHY you went to him.”

I agreed. I was so shocked that the BPD diagnosis would be used this way. I felt certain that it wouldn’t hold water and was just an intimidation tactic.

I spent all day talking to Anthony then took a flight home to L.A. He seemed like an OK guy. I was extremely sensitive to any suspicious behaviors by men at this time and he didn’t creep me out. He was respectful. He didn’t ridicule me. When I said I was a writer he said he would let me review the initial demand letter would be sending to the Creep and I could give him notes on it.

I reminded myself: your husband is safe, Flute Guy is safe, that my male therapist in college had been safe, that I had male coworkers who were safe.

Anthony said he had only lost one therapist abuse case in 30 years, and that was because the psychiatrist who was having sex with his patient actually married her and the jury let him off the hook. (Yes, Anthony told me, the psychiatrist dumped her afterwards)

Maybe he could help me. I mean, he’d fronted at least $400 for my travel expenses already.

He didn’t have to do that, I told myself.

Maybe he was one of the good guys.

I’ll post a new chapter of “My Psychotherapist Was a Creep” every week.

I have been having trouble moving on to the next section of my story–the part that happens after I got away from the Creep–when I sued him, and filed a complaint with both of his licensing boards–the California Board of Psychology and the California Board of Behavioral Sciences.

I think these are some of the reasons I’m having trouble starting the second act of this story, which is even longer than the first:

This is “supposed” to be the part of the story where we all learn what happened to me happened for a reason. It’s supposed to be the part where we learn that all this abuse and heartache and misery was all “for” something, where I learned a valuable lesson that made the suffering make sense, where I rose like a phoenix from the ashes and slayed the dragons and won. That’s what everyone wants to hear. I would like to hear it too, but I can’t write that story because that didn’t happen.

I wonder about the alternate timelines in which this abuse I endured happened “for a reason” and I learned valuable lessons and it was all worth it for “the material” because it inspired the bestselling book that became the Oscar winning movie and I live un-traumatically ever after with my safe and healthy family. I can’t write that story for any of you, because none of that ever happened.

I want to ask the Pollyannas which lesson was the valuable one I learned:

-That even with my deep cynicism and distrust of people, I am still too trusting and not cynical enough?

-That I am capable of enduring more pain than I had ever perceived to be possible?

-That my pain is “too much” for most people to hear about?

-That I can’t save anyone, including myself?

I have been severely depressed for most of the last 12 years now. I got cut from a comedy troupe, had a nervous breakdown, and never got well. I’m “better” than I was when I was being tortured by the Creep, but I still wake up every day with a heavy heart. Every morning starts with sadness and fear from the moment I’m conscious. Many nights when I go to sleep, I wish that I would never wake up.

I have a severely disabled child who will need care for the rest of his life, so suicide is off the table, and sometimes I really miss it being off the table. It was an escape in my mind at least. When it was an option, life felt like a choice. I no longer feel that way. I no longer feel like I have a choice on whether I keep living. I must go on.

I wonder, often, what my life might have been if I’d received “good” therapy and medication management. What if I’d found a therapist who could help me heal and move past the rejection. What if I’d been able to move on and not let that rejection define over a decade of my life. What if that rejection weren’t forever commingled with my relationship with this demented man whose voice still lives in my head and attacks me every day, without fail. And, as I’ve said before, I will always wonder if staying with an abusive therapist and being unable to get my depression and anxiety under control is what caused my child’s disability.

I am writing all of this in the hopes that one day I might be free of him. I don’t truly believe that I ever will, but I have to keep going. I have to keep going. I have to keep going.

I would love to never think of him again.

Tomorrow, I’ll post the first chapter about my life after I left the Creep. Thank you to everyone still reading.

Recently, a woman named Kendra posted a 34 part video series on TikTok about how she fell in love with her psychiatrist and it took her four years to leave him. She states he was unethical for continuing to see her, that he seemed to enjoy the attention she lavished on him, that she was addicted to him, and then she publicly touted her own bravery in sharing her story.

She is the laughingstock of the entire app. People are making parody videos about her, leaving comments about how “scary” it must be to be a psychiatrist when you have to deal with nutjobs like her, and what an absolutely psychotic loser she is.

I posted my own video in her defense, saying that therapists and psychiatrists act unethically all the time, and then shared a short version of my own experience. The comments came rolling in and the new narrative was clear:

I was a good victim. Kendra was a bad one:.

“There is a stark difference between just the authentic way you are speaking and the very inauthentic way she is telling her story.”

“I think you and her experiences are completely different. Hers are in her head. Yours happened in reality. She is delusional. Very different.”

“You look horrified and embarrassed in telling your experience. Yet in Kendra’s story she is the one crossing boundaries and bringing up sex conversations. Smiling, looking smug and dragging out the telling of her story.”

(Dragging out? Babe, welcome to my SUBSTACK)

Kendra’s bullies are right about a few things–our stories are different in many ways. Her relationship was with a psychiatrist, not a psychotherapist. She saw him once a month over Zoom and I saw the Creep twice a week in person. She doesn’t claim her doctor said he would love to have sex with her. I claim mine did, many times.

There are also a lot of parts of the story that are the same. Kendra describes feeling “addicted” to her psychiatrist and that he worsened this addiction by intermittent reinforcement of her obsession–sometimes he was warm and friendly, other times cold and clinical. She talks about how he loved the attention she lavished on him. Her psychiatrist was trained in trauma and attachment issues. Of course, that was the Creep’s speciality too. She told her doctor she was in love with him and he kept seeing her. I told the Creep the same and he kept seeing me.

So why is Kendra a heinous monster while I remain a victim?

Well, she smiled while she was talking about her experience. I looked humiliated. Looking humiliated is GOOD. Got it guys?

And Kendra’s experience was “all in her head” while mine was “real.” Why is mine “real?” Because I state in the video that I have a deposition where he admits to saying a lot of the gross things I accuse him of. I have evidence. She just has her own word. A mentally ill victim’s word up against a respected psychiatrist? That’s worth nothing–less than nothing actually. Her comments are filled with people saying they take her psychiatrist’s side.

Another difference that the TikTok mob points out? My therapist touched me. Her therapist just complimented her glasses. And my therapist touched me–hers just complimented her glasses.

By the way, on that “touching” thing–one of the commenters “supporting me” asked “the first time he touched you–was it sexual or just a hug?”

I cannot plant my own palm hard enough into my own face over this one. I said “he stroked my hand.”

“OK, then she responded.”

“Why would it be OK if it was ‘just a hug’?” I asked and was quickly labeled as defensive by someone claiming to be an LCSW. Lemme guys lady–you give your patients hugs right?

You know why I support Kendra? Because I know what it’s like to be told that what happened to me isn’t bad enough.

When I asked the Deputy Attorney General why she said there was no way the Creep would lose his license over my case, she explained that he hadn’t had sex with me. Not bad enough. Just tortured me in my head and held my hand a few times and milked me for 50 grand. Not that bad.

Even with all of the evidence I had of his wrongdoings, it wasn’t enough for him to get anything more than probation, and the licensing board said his biggest error was not diagnosing me with Borderline Personality Disorder.

TikTok says what happened to Kendra is all in her head, because they don’t like how she talks, how she smiles while she’s was talking about it, how she sings her own praises for being brave by speaking up.

My presentation is much “better”--I’m mortified and I’m not smiling and I never, ever talk about myself as being brave.

I am a humble victim. It makes me more likeable. And appropriately humiliated.

And if you want people to believe your mental health professional creeped on you better have proof. And don’t smile. And don’t call yourself brave.

My perception of Kendra’s story is this: she met her psychiatrist when she was vulnerable. She quickly developed an erotic transference for him. She told him about her feelings for him. She tested his boundaries to see how flirty he’d get. Some sessions, she got more of that flirting drug from him. Some days, he gave her nothing. It harmed her and she wasn’t able to bring herself to leave for four years because of her obsession with him. When she left she told her story to the world on TikTok, and when it went viral she leaned in and sought out more attention from the app and the app ate her alive.

It’s so very easy for me to feel empathy for Kendra, because over the past six years I’ve learned that therapists and psychiatrists hit on their patients ALL. THE. TIME. Why wouldn’t they? Patients are easy prey and there’s no one holding them accountable.

One commenter on my video reassured me that Kendra’s doctor would be held accountable if Krazy Kendra’s claims were ever provent true because “MDs are more regulated.”

(INSERT HUGE SIGH)

No ma’am. Nope. After you finish this post please mosey on over her to John Oliver’s report on medical boards who hold absolutely no one accountable:

I don’t know what Kendra’s actual diagnosis is. TikTok has diagnosed her as psychotic. Her story could have been one that just ended up with a couple thousand views per video and gotten ignored like most posts on the app. But the community saw blood in the water and ate her right up.

I’m just about to launch into the part of this Substack that deals with what happened after I got away (not bravely of course) and decided to sue him (unbravely) and reported him to his licensing boards (unbravely).

I promise to stay humiliated through the whole thing. Kendra’s story confirms it’s the safest bet.

I’ll post a new chapter of “My Psychotherapist Was a Creep” every week.

I was shaking before I went into my 324th session with the Creep. I didn’t know it was going to be the final session when I walked in. I just knew that things were bad and scary and that I was afraid of this man now.

Why did I go back to him when I was afraid of him? Why does anyone go back into a relationship with someone they’re afraid of? It’s a very good question. For me, I truly was unable to accept that things were ending the way that they were ending. There was a part of me that thought I could go back and “fix” it. There was still a part of me that said I just wasn’t working hard enough and that I could fix it. I couldn’t walk away from things as they were. Even if I was leaving, I had to say goodbye. I couldn’t leave without saying goodbye. Yes, I know how sick this sounds, but I was very sick.

I think part of me still hoped that he would do or say something to turn it all around. Maybe he’d apologize and tell me he screwed up and it was all just because as a human being, he really deeply cared about me. Maybe he would tell me that he’d overstepped his boundaries with me because he just loved me so much–because I was truly so special to him that he couldn’t help himself.

When he came to collect me from the waiting room, it was like I was being called in to see the principal at school. I was in a lot of trouble and it was all my fault.

I opened the session by saying that I wished I knew exactly where the therapy went wrong.

“What makes you think things have gone wrong?” the Creep said. “Maybe this is exactly where the therapy needs to be.”

He said that.

“Maybe this is exactly where the therapy needs to be.” I was crying all day, every day. I was putting our groceries and electric bill on credit cards to pay him. I told him I was addicted to him and he told me not all addictions are bad. I told him I was in physical pain from my attraction to him. He told me to masturbate my feelings away or channel it into sex with my husband.

Maybe this is exactly where the therapy needs to be.

He told me I was too judgmental. He was always “correcting” my words. He said I needed to stop looking at things in terms of “good” and “bad.”

I said: “Well, a few weeks ago when I was shopping for guns on the internet so I could blow my brains out over this situation with you, that felt pretty bad.”

He changed the subject. He kept cutting me off and saying things that made no sense.

Then he began scolding me. He told me that I was to blame for “taking the therapy outside the office.” This is after we exchanged hundreds of emails.

“I believe I can still help you,” he said. “But you can’t take the therapy outside of the office anymore. No more emails. In fact, if you send me an email, I won’t open it or read it.”

I told him I felt like he was punishing me. All these years he’d told me to email whatever I wanted whenever I wanted. Now he was saying no emails at all?

“I didn’t say that,” Creep said. “You love to twist my words around and distort things. I didn’t say you couldn’t email me. I just said I won’t open or read or respond to your emails.”

I wasn’t fixing things. Things weren’t getting fixed, just more broken.

“Why would I send you an email that you’re not going to open or read or respond to?” I said.

He had really lost so much control over me. I was calling him out on everything that he said that didn’t make sense and he didn’t like it.

“You just want to vilify me and control the session,” he snapped.

“It’s MY fucking session,” I said. “Can I talk about what III want to talk about? For once?”

“You’re trying to take the power,” he said. “You feel powerless right now so you’re trying to control the conversation.”

He gave me an ultimatum and said that it was time for me to pick between him and Flute Guy and said that since I had so many complaints about him, he wondered why the choice was so hard for me. Why didn’t I just go to Flute Guy?

I said: “Because I am sexually obsessed with you and desperate for you to tell me you feel desire for me again and terrified that you won’t say it anymore.”

He said: “Well, our work together means you having to overcome that fear.”

I asked him “What would the course of treatment be for that?”

He told me that he would be able to help me mourn the loss of the sexual relationship I wouldn’t be able to have with him. I wish I were making even a word of this up.

I think I was sitting on the couch and he was sitting in his chair, so there was maybe like 8 feet between us, but in my memory his face was so much closer to me. Maybe we were both sitting on the floor. I feel like he was closer when he said these things–like he was hovering over me.

He gave me an ultimatum: choose to keep seeing him or choose to keep seeing Flute Guy. He gave me one week to decide.

I think I asked him something like “If I stay with you, what would the course of treatment be?”

He said: “It would be about you learning to mourn the loss of the sexual relationship you’re not going to have with me.”

And then he added one more condition: I needed to start coming to see him three times a week instead of two.

I was crying. I knew it wasn’t right. Nothing was right.

I took a deep breath and said “I don’t need a week. I’ve made my decision. This is my last session.”

His face looked grim.

“You just decided that right now?” he said.

“Yes,” I said. “Because I’ve been coming here for three and a half years, spent all my money, energy, and time on this and I still woke up this morning wishing I was dead. I don’t know if I ever want to go to therapy again. Why did you say all those things to me? About your desire for me and that you’d be with me sexually if you weren’t my therapist and that you felt the same way I did? Why did you say those things?”

“Because they were true,” he said.

I gasped.

“What did you mean by us ‘being together mentally, emotionally, and spiritually?” I said (crying and crying through all of this.

“I just meant,” he said. “That you would come to therapy.”

I can’t believe the way I stood my ground. “Do you understand,” I said. “How the things you said could be VERY confusing to me?”

At last, a very begrudging “Yes” from him.

My mind was racing, desperate to grab onto anything that I had ever wanted to say to him, knowing that this would be the last time.

“I don’t think you handled my transference very well,” I said.

“I did what I thought was best at the time,” he said. “You’ve made me the repository for everyone who’s ever hurt you.”

“But, YOU actually hurt me,” I said.

“I didn’t hurt you,” he said. “You’re twisting things around.”

“No, I don’t,” I said. “You’re gaslighting me.”

He looked surprised and scared. There were still 15 minutes left in the session. I just started wildly looking around the room, trying to take mental pictures of everything–the art on the walls, the books, the stuffed animal on the bookshelf.

Why? Why did I want to remember every detail of the room so badly? If you were in a prison cell for three and a half years and someone came to let you out, would you look around the room desperate to remember every crack on the wall, every water stain on the ceiling? Would you?

“I can do a full backbend in yoga now,” I told him. He was the one who had gotten me to start taking yoga in the first place. I started going five times a week because I thought it would please him. And now, here I was, in my final session, still desperate for his approval and praise on something.

“Congratulations,” he said. “I hope you can take that away as a positive you’ve gained from this therapy, but I know you always want to focus on the negative.”

“No,” I said firmly. “No, I DON’T want to focus on the negative. I DON’T want to be unhappy. I DON’T want to be miserable. I DON’T want to be lonely and feel dead inside. I don’t want ANY of those things!”

“Part of you does,” he said.

“I’m going to miss you so much,” I sobbed. “But I can’t do this anymore.”

I stood up and I handed him my last check and walked out the door. He looked angry.

When my husband got home from work, I told him that I’d fired the Creep and that it went really badly. Without revealing the sexual abuse part of the story, I told him the rest–the way he told me I wanted to be miserable, that I always twist things around, that I blamed him for every bad thing anyone’s ever done to me.”

“Jesus,” my husband said. “He sounds like a jealous boyfriend from junior high school.”

I gulped.

I was out. I was terrified. I knew it was the right thing to do, but I had no idea how I was going to live without him.

This was the final time I saw him face to face, but our story was far from over. What happens next is wild.

I’ll post a new chapter of “My Psychotherapist Was a Creep” every week.

I try to “reward” my paid subs with a little extra information and detail from my case. I don’t know how much of a reward this one is, but if you’re hooked on this crazy story, you’ll probably want to read this clip from the Creep Psychotherapist’s sworn deposition.

My lawyer asks him to read aloud from his notes on my case (granted 8 months of the notes are missing, but here’s some he kept for some reason):

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“You need to read it again,” he said calmly. “I’ve printed out two copies–one for each of us, and we’re going to read it together.”

I was so furious with him–with everybody in my life that I’d gone to for help. I thought I had explained the situation very clearly. I told Flute Guy, about five friends, and dozens of strangers online that I had done something terrible. I had fallen in love with someone who wasn’t my husband. Not only that, it was extra embarrassing because the person I was in love with was my therapist.

“He’s been totally ethical about the whole thing!” I told everyone. I explained that he had said that while he stated he was attracted to me and would love to have sex with me, that our situation came with inherent heartbreak, because we couldn’t be together sexually since he was my therapist. We could be together mentally, emotionally, and spiritually, but couldn’t have a physical sexual relationship. We could still talk about my sexual fantasies about him at length–we could still hold hands. We could still enjoy the “fun” of knowing that we both wanted each other.

I was so distraught. I felt like I couldn’t go on with my life. How could I live without getting to have sex with this incredible man who lit up every part of my body. It was unbearable. And my poor husband and baby. I would surely have to leave them now that I was in love with someone else. It was just tragedy all around. I needed help from friends to know what to do next.

And then came the packets. From everyone. Everyone I told sent the packet.

After I emailed a friend from college about my terrible behavior, she wrote back:

“I have MANY things to say about this, the least of which is that this fucking guy needs to have his license revoked. That is the most fucked up shit I have ever heard a therapist tell a client. Do you think we should hold hands?!? Seriously Liz, no wonder your head is fucked. Much more to say tomorrow xoxo”

The next day, she sent me a link to the packet.

“I talked to my friend who is a therapist,” said another friend. “She said you are in danger and need to read this packet.”

“Liz, before you do anything else, please read this informational packet from the licensing boards,” said a third friend.

Someone else linked to the packet in the chat room where I was dumping out my story.

“I have that already!” I snapped back.

I scoffed at every single one of them. “I’m sorry I’m explaining this wrong,” I said. “We didn’t have sex. I don’t need the packet. He’s completely 100% ethical. We haven’t had sex. We just talk about it.”

Why was everyone giving me the packet? This was bananas!

“The Packet” I’m referring to is called “Therapy Never Includes Sexual Behavior”. It’s put out by the California Board of Psychology and Board of Behavioral Sciences and every single therapist in the state is supposed to hand it to their clients at their first appointment. Guess who didn’t give me one? (Creep)

It didn’t seem strange to me that he didn’t give me the packet. I had always thought it was sort of an embarrassing and awkward thing for therapists to do. I had worked at a mental health center myself about a decade before and burst out laughing when I first saw the earlier iteration of the packet called “Professional Psychotherapy Never Includes Sex”.

I showed it to my supervisor with a laugh and a “what’s this?” and she explained what seemed unfathomable to me–that some psychotherapists took advantage of their clients’ vulnerabilities and started sexual relationships with them. Ensuring that all therapists at the counseling center gave their clients “the packet” would keep them safer.

I couldn’t wrap my mind around the idea that anyone would be this sick or demented. I tucked the packet back into the client’s intake paperwork folder and didn’t think about it again for years. After I got my MSW (Master’s in Social Work) I registered with the California Board of Behavioral Sciences to start pursuing hours towards my license. Apparently, I received a copy of the packet with my registration materials.

I say “apparently” because I don’t remember receiving it, but the Creep’s lawyer showed a receipt that it had been part of the materials that I received when I registered–about 8 years before I met the Creep.

Why was the Creep’s lawyer bringing up the packet in MY deposition? Well, he wanted to prove that I had seen the packet before and that meant that I, as a patient, should have known better. Me having seen the packet twice in my life was “evidence” to him that everything that had happened with the Creep was all my fault–that I was a willing participant–perhaps I had even TRAPPED the Creep with my extensive knowledge of the packet. His lawyer sought to prove that I knew full well that the Creep wasn’t allowed to be such a raging Creep and therefore it meant the responsibility for his abhorrent behavior was on me.

Flute Guy read me the introductory paragraph to the packet as I twitched and wrung my hands and covered my body with one of his large pillows:

Sexual behavior between a therapist and a client can harm the client. Harm may arise from the therapist’s exploitation of the client to fulfill his or her own needs or desires, and from the therapist’s loss of the objectivity necessary for effective therapy. All therapists are trained and educated to know that this kind of behavior is illegal and unethical.

Therapists are trusted and respected by their clients, and it is not uncommon for clients to admire and feel attracted to them. However, a therapist who accepts or encourages the expression of these feelings through sexual behavior with the client—or tells a client that sexual involvement is part of therapy—violates the therapeutic relationship, and engages in conduct that may be illegal and unethical. This kind of abusive behavior can cause harmful, long-lasting, emotional, and psychological effects to the client.

“AND?” I said. “He didn’t do this! There was no sex!”

Flute Guy kept reading:

In most sexual misconduct cases, other inappropriate behavior comes first. While it may be subtle or confusing, it usually feels uncomfortable to the client. Some clues or warning signs are:

• Telling sexual jokes or stories.

• Sending obscene images or messages to the client.

• Unwanted physical contact.

• Excessive out-of-session communication (e.g., text, phone, email, social media, etc.) not related to therapy.

• Inviting a client to lunch, dinner, or other social and professional activities.

• Dating.

• Changing the office’s business practices (e.g., scheduling late appointments when no one is around, having sessions away from the office, etc.).

• Confiding in a client (e.g., about the therapist’s love life, work problems, loneliness, marital problems, etc.).

• Telling a client that he or she is special, or that the therapist loves him or her.

• Relying on a client for personal and emotional support.

• Giving or receiving significant gifts.

• Suggesting or supporting the client’s isolation from social support systems, increasing dependency on the therapist.

• Providing or using alcohol or drugs during sessions.

If you are experiencing any of these warning signs, you have the right to file a complaint with the appropriate licensing board and consult with another therapist.

“AND?” I said again. “He didn’t do any of these things!”

I think we probably exchanged at least a thousand emails, but I still couldn’t see it. And I twisted it around in my brain that I was the one telling the sexual stories, so he was completely faultless.

Flute Guy said he believed that part of the reason I couldn’t see what was happening was that I couldn’t bear for yet another person in my life to let me down so egregiously.

Flute Guy had a pack of playing cards. I remember that. He started listing the people in my life who had treated me like trash and tossing a playing card on the floor to represent each one of them.

“Your father,” he said and tossed a card on the floor.

“Your mother,” another card.

“Every single kid in school who made fun of your lazy eye instead of being your friend,” six or seven cards went flying to the floor one by one.

“The people at the Groundlings who told you they were your family,” cards were flying like wild now.

“The professor who failed you in your research class out of spite,” another card.

“The psychiatrist who drudge you out of your mind,” another card.

I was sobbing at this point and he stopped.

“Look at the mess,” he said, and then held up one card in front of my face. “And you just needed this one person, Creep, not to let you down,....”

He flung the card across the room. I cried and cried.

“I have to go back on Friday,” I said. “It’s less than 48 hours notice and he requires 48 hours notice or I’ll have to pay him anyway so I have to go on Friday!” I said.

Flute Guy shook his head.

“No Friday,” he said. “Going back to Creep is like drinking poison and expecting to feel better.”

“But it’s too late to cancel!” I plead.

“You know what?” he said. “I so badly don’t want you to go back to that office on Friday, I’m willing to deduct the cost of Creep’s fee from our next session so that you’re not out any money.” (Flute Guy charged $50 more than the Creep.)

Flute Guy had his only financial challenges that I may or many not get into later, but money didn’t rule him.

I told him I couldn’t accept, but agreed not to go on Friday. The following Tuesday was my final session with the Creep. I’ll talk about that next.

I’ll post a new chapter of “My Psychotherapist Was a Creep” every week.

I have anger issues. I mean really severe anger issues. Like, I’ve exploded screaming at people in public and never gone back to the place where it’s happened because I’m so ashamed.

Most recently it’s been the clipboard guys outside of the grocery stores who ask me questions like:

”DO YOU CARE ABOUT STARVING CHILDREN IN GAZA?” OR
“DO YOU CARE ABOUT PROTECTING CHILDREN FROM GUN VIOLENCE” OR “DO YOU CARE ABOUT VETERANS WITH PTSD?” OR
“LOVE YOUR SWEATER! CAN I TALK TO YOU ABOUT HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATIONS IN SUDAN?”

It’s happened twice to me in the past year that I’ve just unloaded on these guys in a screaming rage. I am ENRAGED when someone is trying to manipulate me. Yes, I care about starving children in Gaza and feel helpless. Yes, I send my son into a classroom every day wondering if he’ll get shot. Yes, my father is a combat veteran and our whole family has suffered with PTSD our entire lives because of it. Don’t fucking compliment my sweater. Get away from me.

Yes, I care HOW FUCKING DARE YOU even ask me. How fucking dare you imply that me giving you my credit card number to charge me $15/month to your charity with bloated administrative costs and no real plan to help anyone will make any of these things better. I hate liars and manipulators and people who use the most vulnerable people on Earth in their sales pitch with zero intention of helping them in any way.

Yes, I understand I should just walk away. Yes, I understand these people don’t know what’s happening inside me 24/7 and that I’m always on the verge of exploding. Sometimes I’m paralyzed by my rage and I can’t walk away.

A big part of that is because I have not healed from being abused by the Creep Psychotherapist. He clearly saw something in me that made me very easy to manipulate. I am on constant alert that others will do the same—even 8 years after getting away from him. I think I am someone that people view as an easy target. I certainly was for him. So instead of ignoring the clipboard guys sometimes I break down screaming. People lie and use and manipulate so easily. It doesn’t bother them in the slightest. I am not that way.

I’ve been told I’ve been through so much that I have the right to be angry, but whenever my anger comes out it’s in unacceptable ways. It’s exhausting. And the last guy I screamed out hangs out in front of the store that sells the only kind of pizza my son will eat, so now I have to drive twice as far away for the pizza or send my husband to get it, telling him “I exploded there last week. You have to go.”

When I started seeing Flute Guy, the therapist who helped me escape the Creep, it took him several months to realize the level and type of abuse I was enduring. But Flute Guy knew I was angry at the Creep, and he told me to tell him so. He said my anger was making me sick and giving me panic attacks. He wasn’t wrong.

Flute Guy said I should write the Creep a letter telling him what I was angry about and read it to him in a session. I did that, twice.

You can read one of the letters below. For some reason I’m still not telling you readers his name, so I’ve just substituted the word “Creep” where I actually wrote his name in the real letter:

Hi Creep-

There are some things that I’m angry about that I need to share with you, and I realize now that the whole reason I’ve been reluctant to do so is that I haven’t felt that I can trust you to accept what I have to say without telling me I’m not really feeling what I’m feeling. I’m truly unsure you can handle what I’m about to tell you. I do not have confidence that you will be able to take in my words and understand them, but I need to say them and holding them in makes me shop for guns on the internet. My baby needs me and doesn’t deserve to grow up without a mother, so I’m telling you these things anyway, fully knowing that you may not be able to handle them.

I have a visceral physical chemical reaction to your presence and desperately want to be with you. I am swept away with love and attraction towards you and fuck you for making me feel weird about it you douche. I'm not an idiot. I'm not a child. I'm a woman who feels deep love for and attraction towards you. This fucking SUCKS for me. It is NOT why I came to you. I did not come here off of a painful rejection to fall in love with someone that I cannot have. It has FUCKED UP MY LIFE beyond recognition for three years. But what sucks way WAY worse is hearing "you don't love me you poor thing. This is just a perversion of your childhood loneliness" Fuck you dude. I’m not your Freshman year psych project. Everyone falls in love with people for reasons that have to do with their past. When you tell me “you’re not really feeling this—you’ve just chosen me because you can’t have me and you’re just trying to show me what it was like for you as a little girl,” THAT’S invalidating my feelings—and that’s YOU recreating what it was like for me as a little girl.

My childhood was me saying: “THERE’S SOMETHING WRONG. SOMETHING’S NOT RIGHT. I’M TERRIFIED. I DON’T FEEL GOOD. I FEEL UNSAFE. I DON’T FEEL LOVED” and both of my parents saying: “THERE’S NOTHING WRONG. YOU DON’T FEEL THIS WAY! EVERYTHING’S FINE! YOU’RE LOVED! YOU’RE SO INCREDIBLY LUCKY AND FORTUNATE. YOU’RE THE LUCKIEST GIRL IN THE WORLD. YOU GET TO LIVE IN A HOUSE WHERE YOUR FATHER EXPLODES INTO RAGES FOR NO REASON WHATSOEVER AND YOUR MOTHER LIES IN BED STARING AT THE CEILING FOR EIGHT HOURS A DAY YOU LUCKY GIRL. YOU’RE NOT FEELING WHAT YOU’RE ACTUALLY FEELING!”

Now I’m here saying “Oh my God Creep! I have these explosive loving feelings for you!” And you’re like “Great let’s talk about them!” And then I’m like “I have wild fantasies about you and I feel so vulnerable and I need a lot of support and to hear that this is OK and when you said you found me desirable it made me feel amazing and I just want to hear it over and over again. My heart is broken over you and it really hurts!” And then you’re like “Your heart’s not broken over me! You’re just upset about your dad! Stop being so needy and saying you need me to say that I find you desirable again! You’re never satisfied!”

FUCK. YOU. DUDE.

I don't need your fucking permission to be in love with you! You have absolutely no say in the matter whatsoever. Neither do I or believe me I wouldn’t feel this way. Just because I desperately want to be with you doesn’t mean I’m ASKING you for anything. I’m not ASKING you for shit. I don't expect anything from you. I’m not trying to manipulate you or seduce you or make you feel guilty or intrude on your life. I want you desperately and I’m not asking you for SHIT and I have zero expectations of you. Do you understand the distinction Creep? You can take some time to think about it before you respond if you need to, because I have some more things to say about the pain this experience has caused me, and I don’t want you misinterpreting that I’m asking you for anything. Do you understand that I’m not asking you for shit?

If I had any control over how I feel I would NOT have these feelings for you. They have fucked up my life beyond recognition for YEARS. I CRY about not getting to be with you daily. I count the fucking days and hours until I get to see you again, just because I want to be in the same room with you and share the space with you and look in your eyes and maybe have you accidentally brush my hand. THAT’S how much I like you. I spend money I do not have to come here and I’m in horrible debt and now even worse debt because I need to go to Will in addition to you to deal with my misery over you. I never miss any appointment because this is the ONLY thing in my life that I look forward to—these brief sessions with you. Then I come here and try and soak in as much as I can and watch the minutes tick away with dread because I know my time with you is running out and I just want to be close to you because you have a pleasing effect on me physically. I think about you all the fucking time. I have lost YEARS of my life in deep, deep pain lost in fantasies with you, lying to everyone I talk to about why I’m truly depressed. You didn’t know me before I was depressed. I had light and humor and joy and resiliency. My feelings for you have reduced me to someone who spends all day choking and suffocating and feeling like she’s drowning. It fucks up my productivity. It distracts me from time with my beautiful baby and the husband who worships the ground I walk on. These feelings are ruining my life because I don’t know how to deal with them. I want to reiterate that I’m not ASKING you for anything. I keep these feelings inside because when I bring them up you keep misinterpreting them and invalidating them.

I’m not an idiot. I would never expect you to give up ANYTHING for me. I fantasize about you wanting me enough that you would, but that doesn’t mean I’m expecting you to do it. You seem to think that I need to be educated on the fact that I don’t get to have everything I want in life. I don’t know why the fuck you would think that. The experiences in my life where I’ve gotten what I wanted have been very few. I DO need help with learning how to cope with not getting these things. THAT’S why I came here. To learn how to cope with the searing pain of rejection. I thought you were going to help me with that, but instead you’re like “You don’t get to have everything you want! This is all I can offer you! Deal with it!”

It’s YOUR discomfort with my feelings that causes you to tell me that my feelings aren’t real and that they’re just about being sad about my father.

Here’s the other huge thing I’m angry with you about. I’ve told you multiple times how incredibly painful for me to be rejected by you and you say: “I’M NOT REJECTING YOU! I FIND YOU DESIRABLE! I JUST CAN’T BE WITH YOU CAUSE I’M YOUR PSYCHOTHERAPIST. YOU JUST WANT TO LABEL THIS AS A REJECTION BECAUSE YOU WANT TO BEAT YOURSELF UP!”

FUCK YOU CREEP, YOU FUCKING FUCK.

You are absolutely 100% rejecting me. You will not kiss me or hold me or fuck me or run away and start a new life with me. You are REJECTING the shit out of me. It’s not the SAME rejection I’ve dealt with from a dozen other men in my life who didn’t want to be with me because they don’t think I’m attractive, but it’s still a rejection.

This is not about me twisting the therapy around and turning something that’s not a rejection into a rejection. This is YOU not being able to handle the fact that you’re deeply hurting me by rejecting me. YOU can’t deal with being the rejecter, so you’ve turned it around on me because YOU don’t want to deal with YOUR feelings about rejecting me. That’s not my fucking problem dude. That’s YOUR fucking problem! You’re supposed to have these feelings handled. You specifically told me “You don’t need to worry about my feelings, Liz. I’ve got them handled.” Those were your exact words. Then when I tell you how much it rips my heart up to be rejected by you, you say “I’M NOT REJECTING YOU! YOU’RE DISTORTING THE THERAPY TO SHOW ME WHAT IT WAS LIKE FOR YOU TO BE REJECTED BY YOUR DAD!”

YOU’RE the one that’s recreating my childhood by telling me “I’m not rejecting you” just like my mother told me “Your father’s not rejecting you. No one cares more than he does. No one’s more upset about your suicide attempt than he is. No one’s more upset about John’s dog attack than he is.”

YOU ARE FUCKING REJECTING ME CREEP. But it makes YOU feel bad to say that, so you put it all on me—it’s my crazy fucked up brain that’s twisted it all around. You’d prefer to say it some other way, because YOU’RE more comfortable with it. THAT’S something my dad would do, and that’s not how this is supposed to work!

Please stop. It gives me panic attacks and I can’t financially, emotionally or spiritually afford to have them anymore. That’s it.

Thank you for reading this. I welcome all comments, feedback, personal experiences whether you’re a therapist abuse victim yourself or just a reader.

I’ll post a new chapter of “My Psychotherapist Was a Creep” every week. To start this Substack from the beginning, go here