Therapists Reveal The Stories That Quietly Broke Their “No Judgment” Rule

I’m not a therapist, but was a patient after my mom passed away and needed someone to help me sort out everything I was experiencing in the wake of her death.

We were discussing some major trauma (I was abandoned by both parents), as well as severe neglect/abuse at the hands of caregivers. At one point, I looked up and saw my therapist had put down her notepad/clipboard, and was staring at me, wide-eyed. I thought she was going to diagnose me or tell me I was crazy. There was this awkward silence and she said, “You need to realize how special you are. You did it. You could’ve been a statistic but you beat the odds. Do you mind if we dig back into your childhood? I want to see what you were thinking when all this was going on, because it might help me with other patients.”

So that was a remarkable moment for me. She told me that, not only was I normal, she found me to be exceptional. We worked together (CBT) for eight months on my triggers and attachment issues, and put me on a path to healing. I love her, she’s just an awesome person who found value in my damaged past, and in a way, allowed me to help others.

I feel like a lot of the comments saying that they NEVER judge their clients might be working in voluntary services or they’ve been very fortunate in their client base.
Judgement isn’t an inherently bad thing. It’s how we know that m*rdering people is wrong.

So when a convicted pedophile client told me, “nothing gets me going like a pair of little girl’s worn panties”, you better believe I judged the f**k out of him. I continued to work with him and I treated him with compassion and respect because he’s a human being worthy of both; I did my job because I’m a professional. But I can’t honestly say that I didn’t judge him. I judged that he should never be around children. I judged that he is not yet ready for change. I judged that his access to his own daughter should be closely supervised. That’s a lot of judgements.

Understanding your own inherent biases and how they influence your work is a very important part of training and practice.

Okay, real therapist here. I got one.

Some of my clients are SHOCKINGLY BAD at giving themselves credit, holy s**t!! Like they might get a nearly straight A GPA in a brutal major while battling depression, or overcome years of phobia and get behind the wheel again, or write a literal novel, or raise a kid as a single parent with low income, or build new relationships after being burned, or cope with OCD well enough to hold down a job. And they'll talk about themselves as if everyone on earth is better than them, as if their accomplishments are worthless. And I know it's because of depression or anxiety or another condition, but I'm often stunned by how differently I see them compared to how they see themselves.

I was counseling a 13 year old girl for anxiety and she reported SA from her step dad. I called her mom and told her mother I needed to call child protective services. Turns out that CPS was already aware and the abuse was first report around the patients age 7. Mom was aware of the abuse and stayed with her husband anyway. It was a complicated situation, and it wasn’t. How could she not do more to protect her daughter?!sorry lady... I’m judging.

When i was a teenager, i lived in a very emotionally and mentally a*****e household. I know people don't take that stuff seriously, but it was so bad that i was later diagnosed with PTSD from a psychiatrist.
Anywho, my a*****e parents and i got in a verbal fight in the car. My stepdad stopped the car and told me "get out we're leaving you on the highway". I wasn't scared because i knew i could just call the police, say i was an abandoned child, and theyd get in loads of trouble, so i said "sounds good" and got out. My mom then came out and started attacking me. I refused to get back in the car after the attack, so my stepdad got out, dragged me by the hair, called me a "bipolar b***h", and threw me in.
They made me see a therapist, they told her that i jumped out of a moving car and then i attacked my mom when she was trying to help. This therapist didn't believe anything i said and tried getting me to take bipolar meds. I knew i wasn't bipolar, i was being abused and i knew that the anger and sadness i felt was normal for my situation. She glared at me and said "you're not nearly as smart as you think you are". I refused to say a word in any of our therapy sessions after that, i would just go in, sit down, and she'd make snarky sarcastic remarks for a few minutes then dismiss me. She wasn't trying to help me, she was trying to help my parents.
I moved out when i was 18, went to college all on my own with no financial help from my family, got a job and left the country to be as far from them as possible. I'm on antidepressants for my PTSD and luckily the therapists ive had since my teenage years have been nothing like that horrible woman, but it still upsets me deeply thinking about it.

I was once in my psychiatrists office—a bi monthly, 15 minutes med check. She asked me what was going on—more as conversation.

I told her that my in the last six weeks: my three elders (aunt and two uncles) I was guardian/conservator for had died—one right after the other.
My wife had a heart attack.
My daughter attempted s*****e.
And my mom broke her hip and had laid on her floor for a week before being found (she drank and ate from the dogs bowls).
I got that call within ten minutes of setting up the last funeral.


She stopped the meeting, got on the phone with a therapist in the office next to her and had her postpone her next meeting to speak with me.

I was so f****d up, I had no idea. I think she saved my life.

I work at a residential group home. We had a kid who we had admitted about four months prior, when in a family session they mention they had parasites......I’m like what??? Mom goes “oh yeah our whole family has them, we don’t believe in getting rid of them since they’re part of our biological ecosystem” and I’m just dumbstruck.........we spent three weeks afterwards convincing this family it was an infectious disease concerns as other residents have fecal eating behaviors and various other unsanitary issues that could cause a unit spread. Three weeks of education, planning, and worse of all convincing this kid and mother that their IQ wouldn’t drop because they had agreed to irradiate the parasites!!! Lots of CBT work, but Jesus it took way longer than any of my team expected!

I'm a dude. I was brutally r***d multiple times between the ages of 7 and 10. My one and only attempt at try to get help from a therapist was one of the most awful experiences of my life. I attempted to get help in my early 20s. Upon first going in I was asked what had happened to me, after explaining a basic outline of the abuse. I could already see that she was very dismissive and seemed not to really believe me. She then asked about my relationship status. At the time I was in a long term relationship with a woman who had 2 kids (boys). Upon finding this out she immediately demanded the names and address of my girlfriend, names of the kids and said she would be immediately getting in touch with social services to ensure that I wasn't abusing them... I can't put into words just how much that destroyed me mentally, that she could obviously see something in me that I couldn't see! That somehow she was certain that I would be an a****r! I started to cry... She told me to pull myself together. I also can't put into words the pathological visceral HATRED I have for p*****hiles and r*pists!! If I could get away with m*rdering them i would! I would NEVER NEVER EVER inflict the absolute nightmare I went through on any child.

I got up and left, i came very VERY close to the edge of s*****e that day. I also immediately ended the relationship because I couldn't deal with the thought that the kids might be at risk because of me. It's now 21 years later and I'm tearing up typing this. Because of that experience I have never sought therapist help again. I survive mentally, but its not good survival.

Edit :- Wow! Just wow! I am absolutely blown away by the Internet strangers who are sending love and care to me. I am currently alone, in the dark, in tears, reading all these replies. To answer a few questions. I'm in the UK. I heard she was fired a few years later after a patient of hers committed s*****e and mentioned her 'therapy' in the note he left. I am in a position where currently I'm in such a fragile (very heavily medicated) mental state that If I saw another therapist and got the same reaction that I know my mind would break and I'd take my own life. Every day is a struggle to find reasons to stay alive. I'm sure I have ptsd as I feel the need to be armed with a knife constantly (despite being a big dude, 6'4", 110kg) i sleep with a knife under my pillow. I often wake up screaming. I tend to be 'stand offish' with everyone, deliberately keeping people at a distance. I know I'm a broken person... I've even avoided relationships with women with kids because I don't want my broken mental state to somehow effect those kids in any way. I have attempted s*****e twice and both times I survived. I just want there to be a pill or operation where I could completely wipe out the past, even wipe me out, wake up and just have a new me, minus the depression, anxiety, fear, ptsd, crushing hatred of myself, it would be nice to wake up one day and actually be able to see some value in myself. I'd love to br married and be a dad but currently I'm in a state where I can't ever see or allow that to happen. I'm too scared that my mental state would f**k up my wife and kids lives. I can't allow that.

Can I answer from the other side? I had something close to a mental breakdown after a painful breakup. Started seeing a therapist. It was going more or less well. At one point I had a sort of revelation about all my b******t and about my own responsibility in the whole mess. So next session I'm actually thrilled to share this with the therapist, about how I finally see a bunch of my own problems in the way I interact with women, and which caused a relationship that wasn't really healthy from the get go. I'm halfway through trying to explain this and the therapist goes: "Oh, you know, women are weird". So that was that. I never went back, f**k that guy.

My professor once shared what a patient said that made her quit her job: “I didn’t r**e my daughter, she liked it.” The daughter was _six_.

She couldn’t take it anymore. She worked in a rehabilitation centre for people who have been sentenced for serious crimes and were forced to get mental help. Really difficult job and this pushed her over the edge.

Lots of people discussing p********a as an example of the toughest stuff to not judge despite our training. I haven’t yet treated a p****hile thankfully. At least not an identified one.

I did run a men’s anger management group though, and some of those men had done some terrible things to women. Most of them I found ways to like and admire for their positive aspects, but there were two guys in that group I just could never find “unconditional positive regard” for. One guy basically never spoke in group. He would give one word answers and occasionally just discuss how unfair the “system” was to him. I worked really hard to open him up and find things to connect over but he never opened up to me or the group. He left the group after he strangled his girlfriend and went to jail. She survived thankfully.

The other left group early routinely, showed up late, participated minimally and similarly never wanted to open up honestly. He left early one group after we had discussed him staying to the end and threatened me when I told him he wasn’t going to get credit for attendance (something the court required). Oddly, I eventually moved into the apartment below him (completely without knowledge) and listened to him scream at his girlfriend and break s**t while I called the cops.

I judge these men. They’re s****y. Maybe they’re redeemable, but redemption requires self-exploration and they both refused to do so. It’s worth noting how differently I felt about them than so many others in the group; men I found ways to help and admire and respect even in spite of their awful behavior in the past.

Patient side here. I had been seeing a therapist for a few months to help with chronic depression and self harm with some pretty intense s******l ideation. I had tried Suprax in the past, didnt like the side effects and put it down, but I was ready to try something new to supplement therapy. Everyone within earshot was calling Wellbutrin a miracle and life saver, so I figured I'd give it a shot.

Since my therapist couldn't prescribe d***s, I got an appointment with a psychiatrist. My first appointment, I explain what I've got going on, what I'm doing to work on it, and what I'm looking for in seeing him.

I do a pretty good job holding myself together in public. I dress myself, I hold down jobs, at that point I lived on my own (now living with my partner); all in all, I've got a well-polished mask. I guess it's too good, because pretty early in our session he looked at me and said, "I don't think you're depressed."

Bro. This is the first time we met, I've been here for 20 mins, and you're ready to reverse my diagnosis? Cool bro.

Gentleman sat down for the initial consultation and said “I’ll get right to the point, Doc. I’ve been married five times. My question is, what does it take to find a decent woman?” No humor, no hint of irony. None.

Once had a patient whose wife shook their baby to death. He wanted help reconnecting with his wife.

At the time I was a young father of a newborn myself, and he triggered a lot of fear in me for my own child, a deep loathing of his spouse, and pity (the "how pathetic" kind) for the patient.

I tried for 3 sessions, met his spouse and everything before handing the case over to my supervisor (who knew about my initial reactions, and tried to help me through it).

Unfortunately, it ended up being more about my feelings than his, and I was new to the profession at the time. These things are expected to crop up from time to time, but I was still taken aback by my own reactions.

It's not often I get to talk about my profession, but here goes: I was working at a d**g and alcohol rehabilitation center and had a client come in who was a self proclaimed "d**g lord". As we worked together, he told me about his history. Included in this history was how he got to where he was currently at.

During the conversation, this man admitted to selling his sister into s*x slavery, forcibly injecting her with several sedatives and narcotics, and having several people "teach her a lesson" (what this meant, he never shared). He told this story with a blank face, smiling only when he recalled the "good times", which he referred to as times when he had enough h****n to get through the day.

I'm not sure where he is at now, but this man inspired me to work with victims of s*x trafficking, because not only do they deal with the stigma of "selling their bodies", they often manage d**g addictions. People would honestly be floored of they realized how many people were addicted to chemicals that they were forcibly given.

Not a judgment - you kind of train your brain not to judge, because you are seeking to understand and help. When you do those things, you can’t simultaneously judge. We could all use a little more of that in real life, I suppose.

I’ll share this though. I do feel concerned about this recent phenomenon of young people I worked with self-diagnosing, sharing, and identifying very closely with mental illness; as if the pendulum quickly swung from “never, ever share your feelings” to “OMG, you’re depressed? All of us are too!” Life’s challenges can be tough and they don’t need a scientific-sounding label to be valid and real. You are not your diagnosis. We can find validation and support in healthier ways.

Edit: thank you for the gold and awards! And thanks to everyone for some really nice discussion.

Not a therapist, a doctor. Had a patient apologise for crying during a consultation, saying 'I know I shouldn't be sad, I've got so many great things going for me'


Dude.


Three months ago you had to move back to your parents after an unexpected breakup.

Back to the environment which contributed to your official diagnosis.

The same place where your sister was living- before she died, one month after your return to that house, of the same diagnosis you have.

And because she died during a pandemic, not only could you not visit her in hospital before she died, you had difficulty organising her funeral.

In addition to all that he felt financially responsible for both his parents as they'd both lost their benefits- a loss which they couldn't appeal as their mental health was so poor the concept of fighting that decision was making them s******l.


I want to hug a lot of my patients, but this one made my heart ache.

Clinical psychologist working primarily in forensics here. This means my clients are usually involves in legal proceedings (family court, juvenile court, criminal court, etc.) My job is usually to evaluate or provide treatment. I'm not there to judge, that's the judges job, but of course I have my thoughts.

I am usually impressed by the justifications people make for s****y behavior. The one that irks me the most is when parents manipulate their child against the other parent. I've had to do therapy for a 5yo who said she doesn't want to see a parent because they haven't paid child support. Excuse me? What 5yo knows, understand, or needs to be worried about child support.

Obligatory not a therapist and this will probably get buried, but as a ya know MAN I really struggled with going to therapy. But it was the absolute low point in my life, and I have always dealt with depression but I can from the "just get through it mentality". Well, I was closer and closer to not getting through it.

I remember the first time I told my therapist that I was planning on killing myself. I expected the same reaction that men showing their emotions and vulnerabilities get. But she never did. Never even acted like it wasn't an option. She just talked me through it, never acting like my thoughts or feelings were invalid.

Sorry, not exactly the point of the question, but if fear of being judged or anything is holding you back from going, please go. It could save your life.

My mom was a psychologist, she past away and those 2 stories are decades old:

1 : After 2 years of sessions, one lady still felt she wasn't able to overcome her dogs ears failed surgery. (Your dog need to have certain specific traits to be able to do dog shows, hers had flappy ears when pointy ones were required).

There was obviously an underlying personnality problem, but even though the lady really wanted to pursue therapy further, she refused to work/talk or address anything else.

2: Parents of a "troubled" child, which turn out to be the problem themselves. Total refusal to do any kind of introspection, try to convince everybody (cps, police, psychologist, doctor) the kid was the problem, complain the kid was... A kid (a teenager a that point) by growing too fast and costing money to feed and clothe.

He had smashed their t.v. with an axe. Turns out they hadn't speak or pay any attention to him in several years and they spent 99% of their free time watching t.v. Kid had no other behavior problem, great in school, very calm. He just reach a point where he couldn't stand being ignore any longer so he had what she called a "Fried Green Tomatoes" moment.

Parents dismissed their responsability,only problem they saw was the wacked t.v. Kid got emancipated at 16 and moved to f*ck out of there.

She had a private practice and the only times she expressed any judgment was when someone seeked therapy but refused to do any work or partake in the process. Paying a therapist is not paying someone to agree with you. You need to show up, you need to -at least- try.