Not All Mental Health Professionals Are Good: Tips On Recognizing Bad Therapists

I’ve had a lot of letdowns by supposed mental health professionals on my journey. Receiving any kind of bad service stinks, but when it’s in relation to a person's health, the consequences can be dire.

A Common Problem

I know my experience is not unique and that many people who have sought treatment for mental health conditions have had bad experiences with the professionals who are supposed to help them. There are a few different popular subs on Reddit for healing from PTSD and CPTSD, where one of the most common kinds of threads I see are stories of bad therapists. The worst part is not that the therapist is bad, but that the patient really thinks it is them because, well, a persistent feeling of terrible guilt is a symptom of a lot of disorders people seek help for. So, for every few stories I have read, there have to be dozens more from people who are too ashamed and too convinced it is them to speak up about it.

I want to share some of my bad experiences with the American field of mental health in the hopes that it may enlighten some to the pitfalls, and if they end up with a bad counselor, therapist, or psychiatrist, perhaps this will help them recognize that it is not their fault.

But first, I need to clarify:

I’m writing this not to be a concrete guide on evaluating care, but it is an opinion from me as a patient based on experiences I have had. I fully believe in therapy, but I know that for many, it does not work for a variety of reasons. There are other forms of therapy or healing care that don’t involve being one-on-one. There are also many different kinds of therapy, and it is not all "ink blots and electroshock". If one form of therapy does not work, I encourage you to try another. If one therapist rubs you the wrong way, dump them. Don’t let one bad egg scare you away from the care you need.

I would also like to note that I will be referring to therapists a lot because a licensed therapist is typically what I have seen. Many different licenses and certifications allow one human to counsel another, but for the purposes of this articles I am using therapist as a blanket term.

And as always, please remember that I am not any kind of licensed mental health professional, and my advice does not replace the advice of one.

Recognizing Bad Therapists: It’s okay to move on from a provider that you don’t click with.

When we choose to seek help to better our mental health, there are a lot of emotions involved. First, there is the stigma of mental health, and the feeling that we will be judged as crazy and ostracized. Many people who seek therapy keep it a secret, and yet others are more open about it. The downside of that is that people don’t often compare experiences with their therapists, and often don’t recognize when the therapist is the one who needs to fix their behavior.

Still, there is a minor problem of people staying with a therapist with whom they just don’t click. Not everyone gets along with everyone, but if you don’t have much in common with your therapist, it is hard to form the trust needed to open up and figure yourself out.

At the heart of it, the driving force of deciding what therapist, counselor, or other type of provider is right for you comes down to recognizing that even if you personally do not pay for services because perhaps your insurance or some type of charity or government funding does, the deal is still that money is exchanged for services provided. At the very basic level, those services are that your boundaries are respected, and your thoughts are heard. If there is no respect for boundaries and poor listening, then there is no kind of therapy happening. Many of the points that I am about to make will tie back to this main idea.

Therapy Shouldn’t Always Make You Feel Bad About Yourself

If you are leaving every single therapy session feeling worse about yourself than you did when you came in, you need to ask why. Is it that this is the work that needs to be done, or is something else going on?

Not every time you see your therapist will you feel like a million bucks. We don’t go to therapy because everything is fine, and often there are a lot of deep and sensitive things we have to work out. So, if you have what you feel is mostly a great therapist, and a few sessions have been rough, maybe hang on. You should also be able to tell your therapist that this subject makes you feel sad, and they should adjust.

One of my bad therapy experiences happened when I first moved to the Midwest after leaving a very toxic living environment and being assaulted by family members. I was at a point in my life where I really needed therapy, and I wonder if a lot of the symptoms and consequences I experienced after this time could have been mitigated if I had a better therapist. Looking back now, I can see the tipoff I should have heeded that I needed someone different was that I did not feel heard at all during our sessions.

Every week, I came in feeling down about myself and my struggle to find a job, and struggling to process what had happened. And somehow every week this therapist said some version of “mmhmm, I hear what you’re saying. The muslims…” as if the Muslims were the source of my problems. I don’t know if this guy realized how incredibly racist he was, and I seriously hope he is long retired now. Also, for the record, I know quite a few Muslims, and I’m friends with a bunch too, so this was being personally insulting to me. Yet, I stuck with him for almost a year because I really needed help and tried to set aside his racist, off-track tendencies for the little help that he did give me. In the end, though, I lost my temper, shouted at him, and stormed out, thus effectively ending my therapy sessions. Unfortunately, it had been such a bad experience that I didn’t seek therapy again for several years. The other big mistake I made was not reporting him to the medical board because I felt bad about possibly getting his license taken away when he was probably so close to retirement. Now that I look back, though, I wonder how much other harm he did to people who came to him in need, and I feel like I may be a little responsible.

Due to this experience, my advice is that if you feel in the first few sessions that your boundaries are not being respected and you are not being heard, then cut your losses while you’re ahead and look for another therapist.

Do Psychiatrists Just Want You To Take Drugs?

Here’s a hot topic of something I am very wary of. I’m so wary of it infact, I will never ever, ever willingly ever, ever ….ever go see a psychiatrist..ever again. I have been struggling with mental health and employment for a long time, just like a lot of people who have a diagnosed mental illness. When it was really bad, and I realized I could not work in the line of work I was in, I figured I should probably talk to someone to see if I should apply for disability. So I asked my therapist for a referral to a psychiatrist because I thought that was who I needed to talk to about getting a full diagnosis and evaluation. Perhaps it is something that could have helped my case, but the problem is that even after I told this psychiatrist all of the medications I tried over the years and how none of them worked fully, and the side effects made a lot of things worse, she told me that she wouldn’t see me unless I took a prescription and went on medication.

There are dozens of studies showing that SSRIs don’t work for PTSD. It is also surfacing now that the side effects and withdrawal of psychiatric medications are way worse than we, as the public, have been led to believe. There is no magic happy pill that fixes anxiety disorders. The tendency of psychiatrists, and I’m sure other medical professionals, to approach mental health as if being anything other than a shiny, happy person is a disease is dehumanizing. I am a person, and I experience a full range of emotions, which I would like to keep experiencing, though perhaps not all of them to the same degree that I do. Medication used to treat these disorders often has a side effect of blunting a person's emotions. Often, with depression and anxiety disorders, when you start to get to know the person, you find out that their environment is also a big issue. Is popping a pill because you don’t want to go to couples counseling to deal with why you’re so unhappy with your spouse really a better decision?

There are many, many disorders where medication is the most helpful, at least until symptoms improve. The field of psychiatry has come a long way since they were locking people in cages like animals and destroying their brains and bodies, thinking they could actually cut the “sickness” out. (Really, not making this up, but I wish I were. ) However, I feel these days, instead of physically destroying people's emotions and bodies, they are doing it with chemicals.

There is a cost/ benefit analysis everyone should be doing before they take any kind of medication or make any sort of changes to their health. If I had known about the side effects and withdrawal of SSRIs before I tried them, I don’t believe I would have used them. At the point in my life where I thought I needed them the most, I was in an emotionally abusive relationship. Everyone who has ever treated me badly has always said it was my fault, and so I tried medication to “fix the problem with me.” Well, what I know now is that there really wasn’t anything wrong with me at the time. I had normal responses to abnormal situations, which is perfectly normal.

Please remember that this is my experience with the disorder and symptoms that I have, and there are situations where taking medication for at least the short term really is the best decision someone can make. But even in situations where a person is committed against their will, they can still choose to change hospitals and doctors. Fight for yourself, learn about your medication, and align yourself with professionals who care about you.

In Conclusion

I understand why people do or don’t go to some kind of counseling, but in my experience, getting with the right counselor/therapist really can help. My experience with psychiatric medication has not been good, but that doesn’t mean that it isn’t life-saving for others. From what I know now about medications I took in the past, I think it is very important to read about the medications you’re considering and weigh the risks and benefits for yourself.

The people who work in the mental health field are also people, and they are subject to the same kind of fallacies that all humans are. Not all of them are looking out for their patients' best interest, not all of them are looking at all angles of a person, and sometimes, there just is no connection. Part of what many people who seek therapy need is coping skills and setting healthy boundaries. It is very detrimental for a mental health provider to steamroll over their patients' needs and not listen to them. We have to be our own advocates and recognize that while we might be a bit ‘crazy’, we still have rights. ‘They’ can’t lock us up and throw away the key anymore.

So if you are thinking about seeking therapy or counseling of any kind, I hope that my experiences help you choose someone who works with you, advocates for you, and helps you overcome your struggles.

I am interested to know what you think about therapy and the mental health professionals you’ve encountered. Comment below with your experiences!

Thanks for reading! I would love to hear what you think so comment below or find me on social media!

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References:

Jia Y, Ye Z, Yang F, et al. Pharmacotherapy for post-traumatic stress disorder: systematic review and meta-analysis. Therapeutic Advances in Psychopharmacology. 2025;15. doi:10.1177/20451253251342628

Stanborough, R. J., & Lee, M. (2024, August 19). How to find a therapist that’s right for you: 8 key tips. Healthline.   https://www.healthline.com/health/how-to-find-a-therapist

The Red Door. (2022, November 3rd). Dr Joanna Moncrieff Chemical Imbalance: Truth or Myth MH360 [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FdbX5JstwgA

The Diary Of A Flopping Fish and any posts or articles published on Diaryofafloppingfish.com are not reviewed by a therapist or medical or mental health professional. Resources are cited, and opinion is opinion. No advice or opinions in any articles replace professional advice from a doctor, therapist, or any other kind of health professional. The author is not a licensed professional of any kind.