Sexual Advances by psychotherapist

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My psychotherapist grabbed my hand and held it tight in his hands.

He made sexual advances towards me and send me provocative literature on phone.

Are we so emotionally weak that people take so much undue advantage of our weakness
right from father trying to beat us up and mother abandoning, brother hitting and now
psychotherapist sexually molesting

No, you are not weak. The very fact that you are posting about this situation shows that you are strong.

A lot of people go into the profession of psychotherapy because they have their own issues and are hoping to both help themselves and help others. Others are just flat out exploitative.

Psychotherapy has a pretty sorry history of sexual exploitation of patients. And maybe they have handled this marginally better than organized religion. Well, marginally better is not near good enough. The field needs to do a lot more to clean itself up and correct its own abuses.

If you choose to report this, it's going to be a real struggle and you need to understand that from the get-go. If you have a sister, an Aunt, a female friend who can be with you every step of the way, that is a significant positive. Or maybe you can ask the ethics board or whatever they call it, if they can appoint someone to be your advocate and be with you every step of the way. Or you can choose to go it alone, but it is likely to take a lot of your energy.

The professional review board is likely to rule that it's indeterminate or that it's a 'misunderstanding' or that it was 'inappropriate' behavior on his part. And this abusive clown of a therapist is likely to lie big time.

Even if you still have the stuff on your phone, that is good evidence, but he is likely to say that it was material he was sending to help with your marriage, or material you requested he send. He will lie. Most likely, he will.

You want to be very factual and straightforward. And on the brief side. Let this guy kind of expose himself with long, convoluted explanations.

Again, it is entirely your choice whether to report it or not.

The prime benefit is if a second or third patient complains, then it will be taken more seriously. That is, you will be incurring cost to yourself and disruption to your present life to potentially help the future.

You're a good person. I'm sorry this happened to you.

Please do not see this bad therapist again. Either send him a short email or text, maybe just one or two sentences. Or maybe send something to his receptionist or administrative person. Or, just cut him off cold.

This selfish lout of a therapist does not have your best interests at heart.

Like my good man A.G.S. says, report him. That's very inappropriate but you may have a hard time proven it happened. Sorry if that wasn't what you wanted to hear. Maybe from now on, just see same sex therapists, etc. But you should never have to put up with that approach.

Get rid of him, make a formal complaint so it's on record and move on. There are predators in every profession and it's our job to discern them and leave them in the dust. This is one reason why I do not use counsellors or any kind of psychologist, too easy for them to exert some kind of power or control over you and then claim....you're the crazy one. It's human nature to take advantage of those perceived to be in a weaker position.

i should have seen it coming....stupid that i am

i dont have energy to report him etc....just too tired
and dealing with s**t people around me

just want to disappear from earth

There is nothing wrong with you. He is the one that is wrong.
Emotional problems are a known way to "get" people in their weak moment (i just watched a movie where a guy takes advantage of a girl that is his friend and, because she was a failure at her job, he manipulates the situation to sleep with her), but you are actually quite strong to both not give yourself in to the situation (because some people do this even after recognizing what is truly happening) and also because you decided to talk about it. Don't let this depress you. Almost everyone gets too vulnerable when passing through any traumatic/emotional problem and this psychotherapist knows that! But it's good that you're actually quite aware of his intention, so just get rid of him and don't blame yourself for this situation.

Please continue to have faith in human progress. For example, people are not near as accepting of sexual violence as they used to be, although obviously still a long way to go. Fewer people believe in various crappy stereotypes used to justify this behavior, or at least they have doubt and no longer believe in the stereotypes as much.

Maybe other people can talk about how it's most likely progress will be uneven, but progress will still be made.