Can my therapist legally and ethically make me do this?

Post Reply New Topic

She is what we call a quack.
I will be quite honest with you. She is not your parent, she is hired by you. You will tell her if she wants to treat you like an adult and not give you ultimatums, then you will continue seeing her. But otherwise you will cease sessions with her.

Your entertainment choices are your choice, and she honestly should have no opinion of them and should not give you ultimatums. She is on some type of power trips. I would fire her, write up a review saying she is prone to ultimatums and does not focus on real therapy.

I have to agree, your entertainment choices are probably an escape, and limiting them would probably worsen the depression.

My advice is to fire her, it is not her place for giving you such ultimatums, and find somebody who is actually qualified to be a therapist and actually does therapy, not gives ultimatums.

This is not an addiction by any means and you are not acting violent. People leaping to those conclusions is a bit rediculas. Honestly, fire your therapist, find one that doesn't focus on these things.

Also I would go a step further, tell her the exact reasons she is being fired, that it is not her place to make ultimatums, only to make suggestions. I would make very sure you write up a negative review on Yelp or Google. Help keep others from seeing her.

By the way, what she is doing is fine legally, and doesn't violate ethics necessarily, but it is questionable from a business and therapy perspective. In is inadvisable if you are in a voluntary therapy area to do things that will alienate patients. Making ultimatums is not the way to sustain your business as a therapist. Word of mouth matters and reviews matter in this field just as much as any other business and probably more so.

He was a consultant, and in those days (ca. 1988) they were like demigods. They were able to bully patients and staff with impunity, and many of them were quite arrogant....they'd draw a glib conclusion and think that they were too eminent to have got it wrong. They lacked the humility to put themselves into the patient's shoes. They were out of touch. In those days it would have taken a very brave patient to question it. Older patients were particularly deferential, and the consultants would take advantage of that.

Actually my GP wasn't all that different in his attitude to smokers. He didn't threaten to dump me if I didn't stop, but he had no interest in my gradual method of stopping (which proved successful)......"oh no, that's just playing at it, you've got to just give it up." He offered me nicotine gum as if that was all I needed to go cold turkey, but cold nicotine delivery systems have a poor success rate because the blood nicotine level doesn't rise as sharply as it does with cigarettes, so it doesn't satisfy the craving. So I went for a hot system (electronic cigarette that vaporises pure nicotine) - the NHS frowns on such devices, but it was the only thing that worked for me. I didn't particularly trust it for safety, but compared with tobacco it seemed the wisest choice for me, and I was able to wean myself off it and onto nicotine gum after a few months. Now I'm just waiting for the UK to start selling healthy chewing gum that doesn't contain chemical sweeteners, because I think that commercial gum is more dangerous than nicotine gum, and I want to cut down my nicotine intake.

Thing is, my GP felt that my home-grown method wasn't worthy of intelligent consideration - he felt that he knew best. Same basic arrogance as that consultant. And by the way, he didn't tell me that he gets a £20 kickback every time he gets a patient to sign up for NHS nicotine gum. I would have failed to quit on their system, but as long as he gets his £20, he's happy.

It's great you were successful in quitting smoking but too bad you have just replaced it with gum The good thing is, there's no tar to inhale.
I didn't have a problem when I was quitting smoking. I just quit and that was it. It mystifies me that so many people have a difficult time. I compare it to my caffeine addiction. Caffeine, to me, is like nicotine to you. I cannot make it through the day without a cup of Starbucks Via Columbian instant brew in the mornings. It has to be that brand because of the caffeine. Addictions aren't fun. I feel like I need the caffeine just to think clearly and not spend the day in a fog.

Strange - I had no trouble when I moved onto decaffeinated tea and coffee, but I took a couple of decades to get off tobacco....I failed many times.
I don't think nicotine itself is particularly dangerous, though the prices are way higher than ordinary gum......as soon as they start selling Glee Gum over here I'll see if I can substitute that for nicotine. I think it's the chewing that's hard to stop.