Diagram of Clergy/Therapy Abuse; It’s Not an Affair
At one point in my recovery, after being wrongly accused of having an emotional affair with my Christian counseellor, (in hindsight it was abuse), I began to create a diagram as one of the many efforts I took to try and make sense of what had happened.
You see, when you’ve been abused but the loudest and most trusted voices in your world are saying that you had an affair, you believe them. Then, when you learn that’s not the case, it takes a lot of reframing of past events, rewiring the brain to think more accurately and continuously rejecting the faulty thinking that sadly, even many loving Christians encourage you to accept.
I spent hours reflecting and writing and trying to make sense of what had happened. I ran through countless scenarios trying to figure out where I went wrong. Where he went wrong. Who went wrong first?
Having connected with women from these two amazing organizations: The Hope of Survivors! and the Therapy Exploitation Link Line, I asked countless questions and was given emotional support via email and phone calls. I felt such guilt remembering the feelings that I had developed for my counsellor and such confusion as to how it had happened. I had gone to the counsellor for support because I there were some marital issues that I was struggling with and I felt it was time to work through some of my emotions.
I thought my Christian counsellor was the best thing since sliced bread and that’s ok.
As I researched online, I found a lot of evidence that it is not uncommon for a woman to be attached to and even idealize her therapist. Many women will think fondly of the person who counsels them, listens to them and validates them, whether a licensed therapeutic counsellor, pastor or church elder.
This was my experience. There were parts of me that had not been acknowledged or spoken to in over a decade. It was like watering a dry flower. My counsellor began speaking life into me. In the beginning, he used the Word of God and directed me to the Bible; he prayed for me and encouraged me to seek God and use my talents and skills to glorify Him.
These encouragements were appropriate behaviour for someone in spiritual authority over another. It developed the bond between me and him as counsellor and client, and as long as his boundaries remained firm and his safeguards up, it was the perfect environment to pursue healing.
Freud referenced the importance of that bond when he said, “Psychoanalysis is, in essence, a cure through love”. Freud knew that making a strong and trusting connection with another human being would create a safe environment where people could heal.
Months after the abuse from my Christian counsellor ended, I shared with my current counsellor how much guilt and shame I carried for enjoying the early-on back and forth texting and chit chat with him. She said, “You being willing was a normal part of being a human and a client; you enjoying him was natural. He exploited a normal need in you.”
I thought it was my fault because they told me it was my fault.
Professional codes of ethics and the law clearly state that sexualizing a counsellor/client relationship is abuse. Small pockets of the Church are beginning to realize the same for the pastor/congregant relationship and yet our affair recovery program did not recognize this as an abusive relationship when we came to them for help.
The results of that exploitation led to months in an Affair Recovery Program where all the fingers were pointing at me saying that I had been selfish, required a relapse plan and needed to focus on my husband’s healing. I was treated the same as the woman in our group who had been sexually unfaithful to her husband for 12 years and a man who had chronically flirted and engaged with other women emotionally for 30 of their 32 years of marriage!
No one mentioned that hurting, I had gone into counselling wounded and vulnerable. No one seemed to notice that my story was different. No one defended or protected me. There was no comfort and no empathy. Attending that Affair Recovery program was worse damage for me than the actual manipulation and betrayal by my counsellor in the first place.
With the help of the two organizations I named above, I began to compare the inappropriate and abusive relationship that developed between me and my counsellor with a natural and healthy one. I drew the below diagrams as a visual to my reflections:
Of course, there are many layers, but generally, God created human beings for relationship and attachment and so when we share deeply with each other we will inevitably become attached to the other human who listens to us and validates us.
The client gives them access to parts of their lives and hearts that they would give no one else access to. As a result that professional can have great influence over their client. That’s part of the point of counselling!
Professionals know this and in a way it is their “super power” to be used to support their client.
That’s why boundaries and safeguards are put in place and their importance drilled into the heads of counsellors in training. I will add that they should be drilled into pastors as well because the same risks of abusing a client that come with professional counselling also apply to a pastor, Biblical counsellor or anyo one who takes on a similar role.
The boundaries and safeguards protect the client from being taken advantage of. They also protect the professional from abusing his client - even unintentionally. However, intent is not criteria for establishing abuse; behaviour is.
It was my job to relax and spill my guts in a safe place.
When a client begins counselling with a pastor, Christian counsellor or therapeutic counsellor there is an assumed trust knowing that the professional carries a fiduciary duty to act in confidence and in the best interest of the client/congregant. That’s what makes counsellors so appealing and safe in the first place.
We can enter that uniquely sacred space, and spill everything to a total stranger knowing that their code of ethics not only requires them to keep our “baggage” in the strictest of confidence, but it also requires them to use the information that we share to help us reflect, grow, and reframe our thinking.
When a client steps into any kind of therapy, counselling or weekly chat sessions with someone in a position of power and trust, they are immediately vulnerable due to the position of power that the “helper” holds over them. This becomes even more pronounced when the client is hurting or wounded.
While it is common for a client to become attached to their counsellor or someone who counsels them (who wouldn’t become attached to someone who’s focus is all on you, who validates you, encourages you and in my case, prayed for me!), it’s the counsellor’s job to ensure that he has safeguards in place that will protect the client from himself and any behaviour that would cause him to use the client to satisfy his own unmet needs.
With the client’s safeguards down and protection mode turned off, it only takes one misstep from the professional for everything to go haywire.
My counsellor increasingly fostered the respect and attachment that I had for him. Likely, it made him feel special a filled a void of his own unmet needs. A professional who uses a client this way to make himself feel good is abuse.
He over-shared about his own life, emailed me outside of our “sessions”, told me I was more than just someone he “worked with”, suggested we work together on a project and eventually sexualized the relationship through sexting and phone sex, telling me that he loved me.
In my vulnerable state, my counsellor’s words had a big impact on me and did what they were supposed to do: validate, support, encourage and lift me up.
His Words made me feel heard, loved and valued.
My current counsellor told me, “When we think we are being perfectly understood, seen, and loved, it is devastating to lose that. Being told we are loved is powerful even if it’s a manipulation.”
I believe that is why, as he ever-so-slowly crossed professional lines, I didn’t notice. I was already attached, and even though I was later engaging in activities that were completely outside of what I considered morally acceptable, I didn’t end it.
“When we think we are being perfectly understood, seen, and loved, it is devastating to lose that. Being told we are loved is powerful even if it’s a manipulation.”
As a result, the uniquely sacred and safe relationship between client and professional disintegrated. The result? Abuse, not an affair. Whether it’s your counsellor, social worker, doctor, pastor, mentor or any spiritual leader in your life, this kind of behaviour is called abuse.
There are so many layers and nuances to the narrative of how my counsellor went from helping to hurting. I hope to explore more of them in future posts. It’s a muddy business with moments of clarity but I’ve found it to be worth wading through all the crap.
You can visit my resources page. for more information on therapy/clergy abuse.