Silent No More, Part 1

Silent No More 

Early Indications of Boundary Violations

 As I watched her smile during our first session in 2011, I knew I had found the right counselor. Not only was my counselor in my hometown, but she had personally told me that she specialized in treating women with my past history of abuse. I looked forward to the sessions each week because there was something comforting about seeing her but I couldn’t have put it into words at the time. Now, though, I can see that my own pain and trauma took the back seat to her expressing her own past hurts, abuse, and troubled marriage.

This was a familiar pattern in my life…giving others power over me. But, as the weeks turned into months a knot in my stomach began to form as her personal story often over shadowed my needs during our sessions. What she shared in no way related to what I was in counseling for. She easily shared about:
 ~the “love of her life” (not her husband), and how to this day he is still not married and loves her dearly
 ~her sex life with her husband (I won’t go into details here)
 ~her husband’s non-existent spiritual life
 ~how she considers her husband revengeful because he wouldn’t attend a funeral for the child of a former client
 ~how she’s thinking about divorce
~her abuse that was worse than the abuse I received at the hands of my father because hers “happened in the teen years”
~her husband being unforgiving towards her since she had an affair with the “love of her life” and that is why all the finances and the house are in his name
~ her husband “makes a lot of money” and their house is “too big”
~her husband not liking her driving her convertible because he thinks she’s trying to draw attention to herself ~his refusal to get the convertible fixed when it broke down so making her drive her son’s car ~her fibromyalgia that makes her completely exhausted after work
~her husband not going to bed at the same time she goes to bed
~the strained relationship she has with one of her children
~ how her husband misses the mark as a father

 As I saw it then, my only option was to speak to her supervisor about her personal sharing. But, I was afraid that would make Kim angry at me and then what would I do? She had already told me that she was the perfect counselor for me because she had experienced the same type of abuse as a child and healed from it. She spoke frequently, with tears in her eyes, of how her husband would say things that wounded her such as telling her one night that she talks too much. Since I knew this had hurt her, how could I then turn around and say the same thing? I wanted that healing, too, so surely I could over-look her excessive talking to get to it!

So, I swallowed my concerns, ignored my intuition, and continued to march on through the journey to my hopeful and soon to be had healing.

“My son is really missing me at home so I’ve decided to start my own practice so I can be home when he is”, she started one of our sessions with tears in her eyes. She told me that I could follow her to her own practice which would be ready in a few months. Later as I was leaving the session it didn’t make sense to me. Her son would be leaving for college before she even finished her move to the private practice. Once again, I disregarded my nagging doubts and continued seeing her at her new business.

As the months wore on, depression settled in, anxiety began, and panic attacks started appearing. She kept telling me that in counseling things get worse before they get better. Little did I know that seeing her meant that the worst would continue to get worse and I would eventually become a hermit in my own house. The care that she demanded by her excessive sharing started the Unseen Pain that I kept buried deep in my body. A great fear enveloped my heart and I started hiding from life.