Therapists Reveal Jaw-Dropping Moments That Left Them Speechless
These responses to a recent Reddit thread may provide further insight into what these professionals deal with from time to time. The stories tackled disturbing parenting practices, questionable romantic relationships, and people’s life choices that may make you shake your head in disbelief or second-hand shame.
#1
I evaluated a child and had to testify in family court. During the court session I learned that the mother had “rented” her oldest daughter to her friends when the daughter was 15-17. The mother told the daughter she “had to do it” otherwise her siblings would be homeless and hungry. Father pays rents and brings grocery every week because he knew mother didn’t have money. Custody was 50/50 when this was happening.
The judge did not terminate the mother’s parental rights and mother got supervised weekend visits. She went on about the importance of children having a mother in their lives. Till this day, I judge both the mother and the judge.
#2
I once had a man who was attending family therapy with his 3 children, admit that his last child (a girl) was an “accident we tried to abort – we only wanted boys”. The sad thing is, the girl didn’t even look bothered; she had clearly heard it all before.
#3
A lovely teen girl was brought to her first appointment with me by her dad. Her mom had, as diplomatically as he could spell it out to me, recently up and left the family to go live some selfish new age lifestyle with a “reiki healer.” Just abandoned him with two kids to raise solo, and he was doing his best for them.
Therapy was the daughter’s idea; she had been having troubling intrusive thoughts lately about school shootings, like…how to plan and execute one, and these thoughts were upsetting to her and she did not want to act on them. I can still picture how scared and sad she looked telling me this. I just wanted to wrap her in my arms, but instead I offered so much praise and encouragement for her seeking help and trusting me with this information. She also met most of the diagnostic criteria for onset of a schizo-affective disorder.
We pulled dad into session, caught him up, explained the most urgent part of the plan: he was going to take her for a full eval with a great psychiatrist colleague of mine who understood the situation and was going to get her in stat. Daughter seemed relieved, dad seemed relieved, we scheduled time to talk soon.
#4
The guy had ex-communicated and doesn’t interact with his parents and hasn’t for years. She thought this is a good reason to not let him parent his children, like he’s not allowed to go out on his own with them because his parents are Mormon. She says she’s worried that he will let his mother kidnap her kids and was asking me for support for her beliefs. She was also just calling him names, it was weird.
#5
It remains one of the only times I’ve dropped any effort at experiential/socratic questioning and just flatly told people “absolutely not.”
#6
Used to work in an acute child psych ward. Saw a lot of angry preteen/elementary (think 8-12 yo) mostly boys, and most often than not, parents treated the kid really harshly and were *shocked* this only made the kid worse. Also worked in an area where they did NOT want to hear their “old school” parenting could be a problem.
Had one dad who said “well ya I will spank him (11yo son) when he gets angry, look I know everyone nowadays doesn’t like that but I was spanked my whole life and I turned out FINE.” It took my entire ability to bite my tongue and not to say “….sir, you just got out of prison 3 months ago after serving 5 years for a violent felony.”.
#7
I worked with a teenager who was struggling with eating disorders, to the point she’d been hospitalized for organ damage at one point a few months before. I went to dinner with the girl and her mother. Her mom spent the entire dinner counting the individual pieces of rice she (the mom) was eating so she could accurately count the calories she consumed. I asked the mom to stop and she just stared at me and asked why she would do that because she had to watch her figure. I wonder where the 15 year old got her eating disorder from…
Edit: for those of you wondering why I was eating with the kid and the mom, the teen was in patient and the mom was visiting. I was working as a psych tech, and the kid wasn’t allowed to eat un-observed since I had to document her food intake to make sure she was eating sufficiently as a part of her treatment plan, so I joined her and her mom in the cafeteria for the meal. I definitely passed along the info about the mom’s eating habits for the therapist to follow up with in family therapy.
#8
#9
I was a therapist pretty briefly and moved on to another profession, but I’ll never forget one client in particular during my internship.
My internship was at a site that primarily did court mandated therapy sessions for people who were going through the criminal justice system. This client was in the system because he had m*lested his girlfriend‘s 12-year-old daughter while the mother was in the bed as they slept one night.
As a therapist, they drive it into you pretty hard during your training that we’re all basically good as human beings and I believe that with very few exceptions but this man was an exception. He felt no remorse or guilt for what he had done and what’s worse is tried to justify his actions.
It was clear in speaking with him that this wasn’t the first time something like this had happened not just with this child, but with others. Sitting with him for an hour at a time was difficult and he stopped coming after only a few sessions.
The email I sent to his parole officer stating that he had missed his court mandated sessions was the only one I sent gladly in my time there. I’m sure this man had a terrible childhood himself and perhaps over several years could get to a better place, but in my view, the only place for him was in a jail cell for the time being.
#10
Worked with a former therapist. Most memorable she had was a guy with serious emotional issues. His hands were all scarred up and always had fresh scabs on the knuckles when he came by. He said when he got mad, he would go to his shed and punch the “soft” concrete he had or do the same to a dumpster when he was at work. In his words, he did this to avoid doing it to his girlfriend and kids like his dad to him.
#11
I had a woman once bring in her child for scholastic issues. The child clearly had Fetal Alcohol Syndrome. I asked her gently if she consumed alcohol while pregnant, which she confirmed. When I told her that is likely the cause of the scholastic issues, she said “I don’t feel bad about it”.
#12
“Yeah I grew up in the country.. we were always outside as kids, building forts, playing tag, drowning the stray cats down the well…”
It took the group a minute to absorb the info… and honestly, I just let them have at him.
#13
I heard concerning information about the way a child was being treated (not my patient, but a sibling of the patient that I had never met), called CPS and reported it that day, and the following day found out the child had died. It was traumatizing, and 6 years later I still think about it a lot.
#14
I had a client who had a sexual relationship with their twin, which was…shocking. Other clients engaged in long term sexual relationships with their mothers – I don’t really think there’s much hope for someone who is involved in that kind of a dynamic. I don’t really judge – after 20 years in the business I’ve seen some version of it all by now. I just feel sad for these folks, and their victims.
#15
I once had a white male client who was essentially seeking help for his sadness relating to POC/queer people.
He was a white supremacist who wasn’t seeking help to y’know, not be a neon*zi anymore. He was sad/disturbed at the state of the world not fitting his racist worldview. Dude tapdanced all around it, but said essentially “I’m upset/sad because not everyone is straight and white” .
