I Fell In Love With My Psychiatrist - Therapist Reacts (Part 1)

Hey deserved listeners. Some of you have been asking me to react to the viral Tik Tok series titled "I Fell in Love with My Psychiatrist" by the Tik Tocker named Kendra. So I thought I would watch bits of it. I'm going to watch the whole thing on YouTube. Someone has compiled all the parts into one. Uh, it looks like it's 72 minutes and I will occasionally stop while I'm watching and chime in with my expertise.

My name is Dr. Kirk Honda. I'm a therapist and a professor and I do specialize, I have specialized since the beginning of my career, on the sort of clients who do fall in love with their clinicians. It's not incredibly common, but it's common enough that in our field we have training and research and a lot of philosophy around this and approaches and guidelines. And I have worked with clients who have fallen in love with me. I have supervised therapists, many therapists who have had clients fall in love with them. I've been a consultant on these sorts of cases. I've also worked from the other side of things where I have been a consultant in legal cases in which the therapist actually crosses the boundary as well. So, I don't know if we're going to hear some details around that, but I do feel like I have some expertise in this. So, let's see what comes out of my face as I watch.

>> Yeah. So, of course, I loved the attention that I got from him. And it was in my third session with him, cuz at this point, we were all on Zoom that I asked him, I said, "Hey, do you mind if I call you by your first name?" And he's Pakistani, so I said his first name wrong. And he said, "Well, it's pronounced this, but yes, of course you can." And he seemed so smug and happy with himself. And I know that that is because that was his first sign that him pretending like we're friends was working.

Okay, so we're 3 minutes in and this series takes up 72 minutes. So I'm guessing we're going to hear a lot more detail, but she wanted to go back on ADHD meds. She made an appointment with the psychiatrist. She noticed he was the same age. He's Pakistani. She noted that he was pretty attractive. She said she's been through a lot of therapy before. It's not strange for her. She wanted to talk about her trauma, her past substance abuse issues, drinking issues, her daddy issues, as she put it, and that she was looking for meds that weren't stimulant-based. And so, he prescribed a small dose of a non-stimulant ADHD medication. This is all over Zoom, the third session. And then she says that she would like to call him by his first name, which is fine. I'm trying to think for my own clients, if any of them call me Dr. Honda. I'm guessing some of them do occasionally, but there aren't usually opportunities for them to say my name at all. Right? They come into my office. It's not like, "Hello, Kirk." But her claim here anyway is the key is that he was smug. She knew that he was smug. She knew that he was thinking that this was their first foray into boundary crossing and it was done in this sneaky way. She knows that's what he's thinking. And I'm going to assume that later down the line there's going to be evidence that will support that. But based on what she's saying, there's no indication of that. She might be right. You know, we can't know what's in his mind. But I will say that as someone that works with a lot of cases where clients have been harmed by therapists in this way, the boundary crossing, it's usually not ambiguous, meaning that you don't have to read into things. When therapists break boundaries and are unethical in this way, it's obvious, right? They will text you at 2:00 in the morning. They will say you're attractive. They will want to date. They will have sex with clients. They will want to cuddle for 45 minutes on the couch in session. They will disclose how in love and attracted they are to their clients.

>> You know, it's important to call your doctor last name. I mean, I did know that. I did it with all my other doctors, but it just showed that the boundaries were blurring and he liked that. So from then on, from my third session on, I started calling him his first name. And then he just started turning up the volume on us being friendly. And he would ask me for the first six sessions, he asked me after the meds, he said, "How's your bowels, bladder, and appetite?" And I would say, "They're all normal." And then he would ask me, "Any thoughts of harm?" And I apparently that's pretty common for psychiatry to ask those questions.

>> Right? I don't know the exact med that he prescribed, but the class of medications that are typical to the category of non-stimulant ADHD medications do carry those side effects of increase or just the introduction of suicidal thoughts. So that's responsible care that the psychiatrist is asking about that, also the other side effects of bowel, appetite, that kind of stuff. So that's typical and responsible work there.

>> Sixth session when things were really, you know, the chemistry was starting to be there before, like I didn't realize it. I was like, "Oh, this man is just friendly." Um, and he said, he said, "I have to ask this because it's a special interest of mine, but is there any thoughts of harm?" Like I was special to him. And I said, "No, no thoughts of harm."

Okay. He was treating her special by asking her about the risk of suicidal thoughts and intention. By asking that question, he was communicating to her that he or revealing that he had feelings for her. Is that what I'm hearing?

>> I would say they're all normal. And then he would ask me, any thoughts of harm. And I apparently that's pretty common for psychiatry to ask those questions. And then on our sixth session when things were really, you know, the chemistry was starting to be there before, like I didn't realize it. I was like, "Oh, this man is just friendly." Um, and he said, he said, "I have to ask this because it's a special interest of mine, but is there any thoughts of harm?" Like I was special to him. And I said, "No, no thoughts of harm." Now, I wasn't there. Maybe he was communicating something. Maybe if I saw it, I would have questions. But just based on her account, even if it did happen that way, she's reading into it. Now, maybe she's accurate, but there's nothing there. Again, I just want to point out that the stories that I work with in which therapists do break boundaries, it's not ambiguous. They will say, "I want to have sex with you." Or they will say, "Can we have sex?" Or, "Let's" or "Let me kiss you." There's no ambiguity there. Now, can a therapist be ambiguous and vague at first or throughout? Sure, but it's not typical.

>> And he didn't ever ask me a clinical question again. He stopped asking me about my bladder, bowels, and appetite. And he stopped asking me about thoughts of harm. So, to me, I would just show up and he was like, "A therapy appointment every month."

Okay. So, for the sake of time, I'm not going to respond to every little thing, but just a little bit on that. She's saying that after the sixth session, they stopped talking about clinical stuff, meaning side effects, and they switched to therapy. I think she's reading into that. Maybe she's right, but that's pretty standard as well.

>> And it made me fall for him, honestly. And he was really good at listening. And I mean, he's a Pisces, right? So, of course, he's going to be there and and be able to go deep with my feelings, but that doesn't mean that he wasn't extracting from them anyway. So I would beg him to let me see him every week. Beg him because my therapist at the

Okay. So reading between the lines, he is refusing to meet every week, which I have to say is not a sign of a therapist or a psychiatrist who is seeking to break boundaries. Usually it's the opposite direction. The psychiatrist will either very willingly agree or will push for themselves to see the client more often for obvious reasons. Who knows what's going on with her? I I'm looking for signs of things. I obviously can't diagnose from afar, but I'm just trying to piece together what happened. And she's posting it publicly. And it is viral, so it's not like I'm violating privacy or something. If this were a small series on on TikTok with only a handful of views, I I wouldn't be making this this reaction video. But since there are millions and millions of people talking and views and comments and everything, it's just like, well, it's out there. So for her, there's a lot of possibilities as to what could be happening. She could just be distorted. She could be wishful thinking. She could be correct. She could be correct about some things and not other things. She could have been violated later on and is rewriting history and maybe a little wrong about some things. She could be delusional. She could be psychotic. She could have a personality disorder. She could be projecting. There's all sorts of things that could be happening and and all those things are common enough in my field that we have training and expertise and research and books and supervision. Could be mania. Uh, I'm not seeing any evidence of that, but I, you probably wouldn't in a Tik Tok video series. Um, so what was she saying here?

>> Made me fall for him, honestly and he was really good at listening.

Right. So to talk a little bit about transference, countertransference. Sometimes people will think the word transference refers to when clients fall in love with their therapist, but that's too narrow. The true definition of transference, as developed by Freud over 100 years ago, is that it's the defense that a client has by transferring their feelings and thoughts and memories and experiences and traumas onto their therapist from their parents. So they're transferring from their parents to the therapist. So if they have complicated feelings about their parents, love-hate slash fear/longing, that will get transferred onto the therapist. Another broader term is displacement, which I won't go into. One could argue that transference is a form of displacement. I will often refer to it that way. And it's key to understand that this is a defense. This is a way for the mind, the psyche, to defend against the difficulties of that past relationship that has been internalized. It's a way of trying to work it out. It's a complication of those past relationships. There are healthy impulses involved and unhealthy impulses. Unhealthy impulses are trying to recreate that dynamic and turn it into the toxic relationship. The healthy side of recreating is hoping that it will go differently so a new relationship can be internalized and you can kind of, in a way, vicariously correct for the past by having it go differently in the present. Psychodynamically oriented, attachment-oriented therapists are trained. This is our bread and butter. And we figure that most, if not all, clients will engage in some form of transference, whether it's possibly, and I don't know if that's what's happening here, but it has that look to it, right? Because, uh, well, so what triggered me to say that was that she said he's a good listener, so of course I fell in love with him, is ba basically what she's saying. And yeah, you know, if you have never been listened to and you have never had those needs met of having someone that loves you, that pays attention, that's attuned, that's safe. And a therapist comes along and is that person and listens and listens well and gives full attention and never harms you and doesn't make it about themselves, then all of those needs are going to come pouring out. One way to think about it is that it's like a 2-year-old version that's never been met. You know, the 2-year-old needs have never been met. And so when the therapist comes along, the 2-year-old inside of the client comes out and says, "Oh my god, finally." And yes, and for psychodynamically attachment-oriented therapists, we welcome that because when that starts to occur, that's when corrective experiences can occur and that's when therapy can occur. That's when healing can occur and transformation can occur. Needs can finally be met so that the individual can trust themselves, like themselves, explore themselves, trust other people, and transfer that to relationships outside of the office so they can begin to live a happy, fulfilling life. So, that's just completely normal. Now, the 2-year-old doesn't always fall in love with the therapist. Sometimes it's, "I want you to be my father or mother or something or my best friend." But sometimes other feelings get in the mix. Say an adolescent inside that is falling in love or in lust in addition to wanting full companionship full time. You know, she's already talked about how she was begging for weekly sessions. Now, you know, there's nothing wrong with wanting more sessions with your therapist, but it it it's starting to look like maybe all of those factors, uh, could have been in play. I can't know what's really happening. It's also possible that he also was participating, but we're hearing at least some evidence of of transference, which is totally normal.

>> Asking my psychiatrist, begging honestly to be my therapist and let me see him more, right? Which also should have been a red flag. But then I started focusing on this therapist. However, I would tell the therapist how obsessed I was with my psych psychiatrist and she didn't do anything about it. She just was interested. She also loved stories about my dating life.

Okay, so we're seeing a pattern that with her therapist, who she says is a 75-year-old woman, a new therapist of hers, she is also inserting thoughts. She's assuming and she seems quite sure of herself. It's one thing if she said, "I think that my therapist was interested." No, she's saying she knows what's in the mind of other people, which is, let's, it's notable. So, she is saying that she told her therapist that she was having feelings for her psychiatrist and the therapist didn't do anything about it. I I would want to know from her what she was hoping or thinking the therapist should have done because there's not much a therapist should do. What's the therapist supposed to do? Call the cops? Yeah. If I heard a client tell me that they were in love with their psychiatrist, I would listen and do therapy, you know. So, it sounds like she's describing that. But then she says that her therapist was really interested in her dating life, that sort of thing. And maybe, you know, maybe the therapist and the psychiatrist are gross and creepy and vicariously getting something out of hearing her talk about her dating life. You know, wouldn't be the first time that has happened. It's, you know, there are cases of that. It happens sometimes, but I'm waiting for some indication, account of the story that indicates that her assumptions about what's in their minds is possible. We could just say it a different way. Her psychiatrist has good boundaries and is there to listen and doing ongoing med management. And the therapist is a good listener. And if she wants to talk about her dating life, then the therapist is going to be interested and and is going to listen. That's all I'm who knows. I'm I'm only in the first six minutes, so maybe a bunch of horrible things happen. So I'm I'm going to skip for I'm going to watch, but I'm going to not react cuz I feel like if I react to everything, I'll be here all day long.

>> My best friend is an emergency medicine physician, and she told me, she said, Kendra, one of these days, your psychiatrist, she would use his name, is going to say, "I can't be your doctor anymore. I have to I want to be with you. I want to be with you so bad. I can't be your doctor. I'll see you in two years." So, my best friend who's a doctor, she picks up on stuff like that. So, even she knew that our relationship was crossing boundaries.

Okay. So, I've watched more and she's saying that her friend, who is a doc, was hearing Kendra's account and picking up on the signs and was predicting that the psychiatrist would one day want to terminate the professional relationship and start dating after 2 years. Every profession has different guidelines regarding how long after termination you can engage in a romantic relationship with a former client. I don't know the psychiatry guidelines, but maybe it's 2 years. Who knows? So, unless the friend who is an ER doc was hearing a completely different set of data, then I don't know why that doc would come to that conclusion based on what I've heard so far.

and getting weird. But that was like that became my dream was for um my psychiatrist. I almost use Jesus name to do that. And I told him about Briana saying that my best friend who's the emergency medical doc. I told him that she would tell me that and he just would be silent. He didn't disagree, but he didn't agree, you know, and that was weaponized neutrality was his favorite game to play. Right.

Weaponized neutrality. Now, I don't know. You know, maybe you know the whole story and he is a sleazeball. I'll continue watching. But so far, I haven't heard anything of an indication of that. So, I'm just going off of that. But weaponized neutrality. Weaponized neutrality. I've never heard that term before, but I, you know, based on context, I know what she's getting at, right? That he is absolutely in love with her and she knows it, even though he's never indicated or said anything of the sort. And that when she says she's in love with him, that he weaponizes his neutrality. He doesn't say one way or the other. He doesn't condemn it, but he doesn't encourage it. He doesn't reciprocate it. He's neutral. And there's a lot of different approaches to therapy in general and to clients who fall in love with their therapists. And one of the standards is to be neutral or to have this approach of hearing and not getting into it with the client. Just creating a space where the client can explore and can talk about it. Now, from the sound of it, the psychiatrist is doing a combination of med management because it sounds like they're only meeting once a month, which is med management. It sounds like they're also meeting over Zoom and it's only for 30 minutes. So, if I'm understanding it right, I probably would have told the psychiatrist to cease having those longer therapyesque sort of scenarios. Not because she's fallen in love with him, but he would either have to veer more into therapy and provide weekly therapy to actually go through a lot of these transference-based opportunities in therapy, or he should scale back and just keep the conversation to med management so that she can talk with her weekly therapist whom, you know, she's talking to every every week. But anyway, so again, all I'm hearing from her is that she has two clinicians who are doing things from the standard of care. They're not breaking any boundaries and she's inserting thoughts into their head. And the certainty that she has is telling, I think, unless she something happens later and informs the past, but she's very certain. And okay, do I want to get into it? So, I I've already talked about the possibility of psychosis and delusion, you know, schizophrenia, mania, this kind of stuff that can happen. It's not sounding like that to me. There aren't the markers of that, but I, you know, I can't diagnose from afar through a Tik Tok video. That the more likely hypothesis that I would develop if I had a client like this, and I'm not saying anything about her, it's just an hypothesis I would have if I had a client that was reporting this to me, would be that it's a distortion based on an ingrained schema from childhood, maybe even having a parent who did have feelings or did have hidden feelings of some sort, maybe even sexual abuse feelings, attraction feelings, or just other kind of harbored feelings of anger and rejection or something that were revealed later. And then she learned, oh, people aren't as they seem. So, I have to be very wary of that and look for the signs to protect myself. And you know what? Let's just assume that the other person has these kinds of. So, there's that possible trauma. There's also the trauma of rejection and of relational trauma and attachment traumas early in life that can cause people to be so desperate for closeness that they will almost kind of force it. You know, one version of this forcing is to force a therapeutic relationship into a romantic, close, intimate sort of relationship because the self just needs it to be that way. And without someone else to have along those lines, especially an authority figure that feels kind of parental, you know, then this the ego, the self will just make it happen and just invent it and then get upset when the other person doesn't present in a way that aligns with their need, their assumption. There's a lot of ways I could talk about this, but I don't know about her. I have no idea. Maybe she could be completely right and she's just not very good at laying out the data in a Tik Tok video. I I just can't know.

>> My boyfriend and I broke up days later. So then I started dating this other guy and this other guy, this new guy was a therapist and I was like, "Oh, great. Someone who will be able to emotionally meet my needs. Yeah, I'm not going to date another therapist again." So this therapist and I, we went for coffee. It was nice. Our second date was a hike. And on this hike, this therapist starts telling me about how he has a crush on one of his clients. And I thought to myself, okay, this is

Okay. Well, that's a coincidence that isn't helping her, right? And yeah, okay. So therapists do at times develop a crush or an attraction or what we call in the literature erotic countertransference feelings towards their clients at times. Some therapists are more prone to it than others. I will say not as a brag, but I don't experience this hardly at all. I'm just in a completely different mode and I was raised pretty well. So I have always been able to engineer my life generally speaking to meet my needs generally speaking so that they don't sneak out towards my clients, cuz that's almost always the case when a therapist one develops a more intense feeling towards a client or acts on it. It's almost always a case that their personal life is falling apart. Now, I will say that there's nothing strange or pathological about a therapist noting that they have a client who is attractive or having a little fleeting thought of, "Oh, I wonder if we had met different circumstances." But the problem is that if the therapist doesn't get supervision or consultation or therapy, or they don't do a lot of personal work, then it's at risk of growing. And one of the factors that contributes to it growing is stigma. When we stigmatize it in therapists, when we say it's weird for therapists to have a crush on a client, then we drive it underground and that's when it can grow. So I am passionate about putting it out there that it's normal, it's okay. Come to me or someone you know, the people that I work with, my supervises, my students, come to me right away with it. Don't be ashamed. Even if it's a small thing, you know, especially with students, you know, get used to airing it out because almost all the time that takes away 90% of it, you know, and there's exploration, there are techniques, there are things to get around it because it can get in the way, you know, and it can lead to horrible things. So anyway, so she's going on a date with a therapist. She says, you know, sounds believable. And he's saying that he has a crush on a client.

>> Strange, but go ahead. Like, we're on a date, dude. Why are you telling me about a crush on one of your clients? But go off, king. Um, so then he was saying, "Yeah, she's so attractive and I think she likes me, too. I go and visit her at work and her co-workers say, 'Oh, so and so talks about you all the time.'" And I was like, "Okay, where does she work?" and he said,

Okay, so in contrast to her account of her psychiatrist, who she knows with 100% certainty that he loves her or wants to be with her or something, she's not telling us anything that points in that direction. It's all her assuming based on his subtle behaviors, like the way that he smiles or the way that he says it was okay to call him by his first name, that kind of stuff. Like, I know what's going on in his mind. In contrast to that, she's telling a story about another guy that she dated who knows about any of this, you know, the veracity of any of this, but this therapist went to the work and is reporting that he likes the fact that the co-workers are talking about how the his client talks about him. That's now this is through her lens, but you know, when we're trying to figure out what actually happened and we hear these kinds of details, it it it indicates the possibility of something.

>> I shouldn't tell you that cuz I really shouldn't be visiting her anyway. I was like, "Okay, no problem." So, in reference to what I was saying earlier, that when there are boundary violations and a therapist is giving into their feelings of romance or lust or something for a client, there are more obvious behaviors and showing up to her work when he shouldn't be, which we don't know if any of this is true. Uh, that's one of those more overt classic uh examples of behavior. Another one very common thing in today's world is texting. The text will start with just scheduling. Then the client might text a little bit more and the therapist will allow more texts happen. The therapist will text the client, uh, and maybe get things going that way. Then at some point the therapist will text something personal like, "Oh, I'm having a really bad day today." And then it starts to become more like friends. And then it's, "I think about you all the time." It it it's a very common scenario. So when there's a problem, it's pretty obvious. She has said nothing of the sort when it comes to the psychiatrist, but she's actually giving some details about this this guy she's dating who apparently is a therapist. Now, it's possible that this therapist isn't an actual licensed clinician and is like a coach. Sometimes that's a confusion. So then he continues and he said, "Yeah, she wears these red lacy panties and short skirts and I know she wears them for me." And like alarm bells were going off in my head.

Wow. Sounds like a match made in heaven and who knows, but unhelpful. So if she is distorting, then the random coincidence of one dating a therapist and two dating a therapist that would have this experience and three having a dating a therapist that would have this experience and that he would disclose it on a first date. Like, so he's doing possibly what she's doing, and I don't know if that's what she's doing, but he, according to her, according to him, is that there's a client coming with short skirts and red panties so he can see up the skirt, I guess, and he is inserting thoughts into her mind and the client's mind saying, "I know why she's," you know. So it's all, you know, it's okay. It's one thing for a client to be distorted or a person to be distorted, that's expected, that's normal, that's okay. This, you know, I don't know if it's okay to blast them on TikTok, but you know, this is something that's been going on for over a hundred years. The very foundation of psychotherapy is based on a case in which the client fell in love with their therapist. The very first therapy relationship between Joseph Buer and Bertha Papenheim in 1878, 1880, that kind of thing. Um, and then Freud was the student and observed it and then they wrote a book and then therapy started. So, you know, it's it's been around, you know, the clients falling in love with the therapist is coming. But when therapists have these, uh, it it just really again, it's okay to have the feeling. It's okay to have attraction or to have a crush. It's another thing to go with it and to act like your office is like a date or that Tinder and your office become one thing. I mean, it's disgusting, really frankly, and just a huge violation of trust, not only with the client, but with the public. When when therapists do this kind of [ __ ] it just drives me up the [ __ ] wall. I mean, keep it in your pants.

>> Mind you, I had no idea that my psychiatrist had similar feelings towards me at this point, but I just thought, "Wow, this man is borderline predatory." And he said, "Yeah, and you know, she just is so attractive that I have to smash mermaid before every session because I just have to get that energy out of me." And I was like, "Masturbate? Why not just say masturbate? I don't understand. Can Can we just say the [ __ ] word masturbate? Smash mermaid? Are we children? We're all adults here, right? But anyway, so what the [ __ ] I don't know if any of this is true, but okay. If I had a supervise who told me this, but only this. If you know, if I had a supervise that said, I have this one client that I am just so horny for that I have to smash mermaid. What's she say? That I have to beat off, choke the chicken, bop the weasel, uh wank. Don't you Brits say wank? Anyway, uh, that I have to masturbate before session in order to be able to not have a constant horny boner the entire time. If I had a supervisory that told me that, I'd say, "Okay, well, does that actually help so that you can be a good therapist with that client?" And if he said, "Yeah, then I Okay. Okay. Phase two, let's talk about what's going on there. How did it get to this point? Uh, are you entertaining those thoughts? How's your personal life going? How's your drug abuse? Cuz that's another thing that's often associated is when therapists' lives start to fall apart. They have unresolved trauma. They go into alcoholism, drug abuse, then all everything starts to fall apart. They stop being able to think straight. Um, you know, they're alienating people left and right. And they get desperate. And we all have needs. And when a client comes in and is there for you in a way, you know, it's like you're there for each other in a sense, right? Then, you know, a therapist can fall in love with their client. So, I would talk with my, and I've had those conversations with supervises and trainees before, and I've been called in as a legal consultant on cases where it goes down a road in which someone is being sued or criminally prosecuted, that kind of thing. And we'll have those conversations. But um, so the the masturbating part of it is an indication of something. But in and of itself, you know, if someone told me that they just had a lot of tension and for whatever reason for themselves, it was just easier for them to be the therapist that clients needed them to be. If they masturbated before session, you know, that's fine, right? You know, we we want to be sex positive. There's nothing wrong with masturbating. But hearing the whole story, right, that he, according to her, he's convinced that she is want that she wants him. And maybe she does, but and here's the other thing that I've seen in cases where therapists will break boundaries, is they will get, you know, a huge ego boost by feeling special, right? Especially if you've never felt that way before and you're not you don't get that from your spouse or from anyone in your life to feel special, to feel needed, to feel wanted, to feel sexy. You know, it sounds like he feels that way from the client and is getting that need met. We all have those needs, but he clearly is not getting those needs met in other ways and has lost his way entirely with regards to ethics and standard of care. I mean, my god. But what a twist that she would go on a date and that would be more ammunition for her to say, "I know that my psychiatrist, he also is beating off before session. You know, I know what's in his mind." Okay. Um, and he just felt compelled to tell me and I did not understand why. Now I do. So, he told me about how he's a predator, right? Another predator in the mental health industry. Shocker. Well, predator, I guess we need to define what that means. And she's not a clinician, so she doesn't have to follow the nomenclature of my profession. But predator, that's a word that gets thrown around a lot. And she's actually already called her psychiatrist a predator. Now, maybe he is. And maybe we'll hear some more. Anyway, I'm just going to say you could say things about this guy that she went on a date with. Predator, I I don't know if we could say that. You know, predator is someone who predates, someone who is criminally harming and is wanting to harm, you know, sexual sadist or rapist, that kind of thing. And we haven't heard anything like that. So then in my next therapy appointment after finding out that he was lying to me about seeing patients in person, I told her that I told my 75-year-old PhD therapist that my psychiatrist wasn't lied to me about seeing people in person. And she looked at me and she said, "Well, it's probably because he knows that there will be a lot of sexual tension in the room if you go in person. So make sure that you understand that when you go."

Okay. So to catch you up, she learns that he is doing therapy from the office over Zoom even though he could do it from home. She read into that. I don't know what she read into. She says, "I know what he meant by that." And I I don't even know what she would be inserting there. Sometimes I can kind of tell, but I didn't know what she was doing there. I think it was that. Well, she's actually I've watched a lot and she keeps reiterating how professional he is and how boundaried he is, how how good he is with boundaries and how he's not replying to her emails, how he's not replying to her texts, how he won't meet with her more often, how he doesn't talk about things that are inappropriate, which is interesting. And and to her that's evidence, even more evidence that he's in love with her. You know, this is it's conspiracyminded thinking. You know, it's like, well, you know, when this politician does this thing, we really know what's going on. And the fact that they're actually going against it, they're trying to throw everyone off the trail. You know, she's doing that. It's it's not an uncommon way of thinking. It's usually because the person has a need to believe it. That's my assumption here. But I can't know. Actually, I shouldn't assume anything. I have no idea. But also to catch you up, I've been keeping notes. She uh got pretty angry and I think I can support her on this, that she accidentally mentioned his first name and people did sleuth work and figured out who he was and started to attack him and she was very angry about that and she says, you know, if there are any comments, I'm going to immediately delete if it has to do with his name or if people are planning on doxing him or going after him, brigading him, this sort of thing. So, you know, she's pretty adamant about that. I would say that if she really wanted to not harm him, then I would be careful what you say and I would maybe just talk with your therapist or people in your personal life or a lawyer instead of on TikTok. But what are you going to do? The other thing is that I'm I'm guessing I'm reading between the lines that there are people going after this guy because of her video series here. And that's a whole other angle to this. You know, if she went on TikTok and talked about this and people watched and they just went on with their day, then that would be one thing. And I'm sure that's what most people did. But there's a percentage of people out there that are going to personalize this and get triggered or something and will take it upon themselves to be vigilantes. Instead of calling the authorities, which are there, they will take matters into their own hands, believe one person's account, which I have to say, it's hard to it's hard to take what she's saying as evidence that he was secretly in love. And even if he was secretly in love with her, he's doing all the right things. He has all the all the professional boundaries and ethics and and she's even saying that. So, why would you go after him, you know? But we haven't even heard an indication that he actually does have feelings for her. But anyway, but so so she was very adamant about that, which is good. She also was apparently getting a lot of therapists who were commenting on her video on TikTok saying that there was something wrong with her. I I don't remember everything that she was saying, but that she was making it up, you know, that she was either delusional or that she was distorted or something. And she got very angry about that. She was basically, well, not basically, she was accusing these other clinicians for defending a predator. She keeps using that word about him. And maybe he is, maybe that detail will come out later, but not so far. She also mentioned that she would record sessions as a way at first, I think, to be able to listen back and have some sort of pleasure. I don't know what she, you know, she says I was recording it for my own needs or something and now after she doesn't like him anymore, she has those recordings to defend herself or something. She talks about how she discloses to him how she has feelings for him and how he never shuts it down, which I will again say that that's one of the approaches. You know, there's various different approaches to having a client that has feelings for you. One of which is to just not shut it down, to listen. That's what they want to talk about. That's what they need to work out. There's a lot of justification to having a client just work it out in session, um, with an attuned person that is listening and caring and not exploiting a safe place. It sounds like that's what he's doing. But according to her, he should have referred her or he should have shut down the conversation. And you'll find some clinicians that will say that and they don't know what they're talking about. Now, could he have referred her out? Sure, there's justification for that. Could he have said, "I don't think this is really the best use of your time." Yeah, that's another option. But to claim that him listening is unethical and two an indication that he's getting off on it, which is what she's clearly saying is quite a stretch. It's possible. We can't know, but there's no evidence of that. She also mentioned she's a life coach, which I hadn't known until now, which Okay. Um, she also mentioned that a lot of people related to her. A lot of people were DMing or commenting saying, "Oh my god, that happened to me." or something like that and they were supporting her. And yeah, there's not enough support and information out there about therapists who do harm their clients. I years and years ago because of my passion around this topic and around the fact that clients often have no power in these situations, you know, cuz all the therapist has to do is claim that the client was delusional or was distorted or is making it up. And authority and society tends to believe the clinician over the client. And often that's warranted, but sometimes it's not. And clients sometimes don't even raise their hand and say, "Um, I think something bad is happening to me because they know society and others will come down on them like a ton of bricks and that is horrible." And those therapists need to be stripped of their license. I'm pretty harsh about that. I find that most licensing boards are too easy, go too easy on therapists. So it it's not a great situation. Uh, but there are measures in place and there are things that licensing boards can do and do do, which is important to acknowledge. But anyway, so um, yeah, u sounds like there are a lot of people that are watching this series that might have been through legitimate harm from a therapist of one way or another or uh, there's maybe an audience that is responding to her of, "Oh my god, I fell in love with my clinician as well and someone's talking about this out in the open and and I always was ashamed of that." So, you know, there's probably some good that comes from this series.

>> And you better believe I showed up to the next session and said you lied to me because you were afraid of the tension that would be there.

Oh, right. So, the whole thing she's talking about right here is that she finds out that he is doing in-person sessions and she was under the impression that he was only doing sessions over Zoom and she was upset because she wanted to do in-person sessions. And then uh uh let's watch some more about this.

>> He just didn't say anything. 2024, I make my first in-person appointment with my psychiatrist. And

>> Oh, and she she also talked about how she went to her therapist and said, you know, my psychiatrist lied to me about imp. Now, I would say that she could legitimately claim that he did lie. It does maybe sound, I mean, lie is a specific word, but you know, could apply here, that he probably was thinking, who knows what was going through his mind, but it would be justified for him to say for some of my clients, in-person sessions are safe, and with some not, either because the client will misinterpret it or the client might do something in person with me that I I don't feel personally safe by, which I could absolutely have, you know, imagine a psychiatrist having that feeling with her, who knows, but how do you navigate that ethically? Right? You can't just deceive your client. You know, one particular client that you're not doing in person, you should approach it head-on and say, "I do offer in-person sessions, but I don't think it's what's best for you, and let's talk about that. I'm not denying you something. I'm not doing this to hurt you. I just, I don't think it'll help you. I think it could cause even more feelings towards me, which I think could confuse things. So, I think it's best for your care that we continue to do sessions over Zoom." End of role play. You can imagine a client getting very upset about that. But, you know, it it that's better than just lying by omission or flat out lying to a client that you, you weren't seeing any other clients in person. And then the therapist says, "Well, he probably didn't want in-person sessions because of the sexual tension." That's through her account, right? My guess is, who knows, is that the therapist was saying something along the lines of, "Well, he probably didn't want in-person sessions because he was worried about your feelings towards him. He was worried that your feelings might become more intense if the sessions were in person, or he might be worried that she would make something up, like, well, in the office, he like touched me or something, and then you have that whole headache." And so it sounds like that's what the therapist was saying, but the way that she interpreted Kendra is that the therapist was saying, "Oh, well, you know, he is attracted to you too, and so he doesn't want to have an in-person session because of that." So, she's once again inserting thoughts.

>> In November, my 75-year-old female therapist tells me that it's because he kept me on Zoom because he was so attracted to me. He didn't want to risk being in person with me.

So, in the previous video, which I think was a different day that she's recording the TikTok, she said that the therapist said that the psychiatrist might be worried about sexual tension. Then in another video right now, she says, "Well, my therapist said that he was attracted to me." So you see that creep of the statement, right? At first it's he was sexually, you know, about the sexual tension in the room. Now it's my therapist said that he was attracted to me. So you hear that progression, which further fed my crush or as some of

You like to say my delusion. So then my therapist starts texting me in between our weekly meetings asking me for advice on her other clients, and I was a new coach. I'd only been coaching for about a year, and I like had just left my >> Okay, so yikes. This is just her account, but it sounds believable. Who knows that her therapist, she keeps referring to her as the 72-75-year-old PhD therapist, female therapist. According to Kendra, that therapist started texting in between sessions asking Kendra for advice about her clients. Now, Kendra claims that she's an ADHD coach of some sort. So, maybe it was ADHD expertise that the therapist was asking about. It's not a slam dunk indication of an ethical violation. It could have even been designed as a way to be therapeutic. The therapist could say, "Well, I was trying to boost her self-esteem. I was trying to give her agency. I was trying to show that I respected her expertise." I could have gotten it because that's the whole thing that you always want to ask if you're analyzing these situations is if the therapist needed expertise on a topic, are there other options other than texting your clients? Yes. Are there other experts in that field? Yeah. So, there would have to be viable therapeutic justification for doing that. Whenever you approach those boundaries, you have to be able to justify it, right? And that one would be hard to justify unless the therapist said, "No, no, no. I did ask other people and got it. But I thought it'd be a good opportunity to kind of work on this one goal that I was working on with Kendra, which was for her to feel like she has agency, like she's smart, like she knows what she's doing. And so I also asked her, but I didn't really use that advice." But from the sound of it, it doesn't sound like that. But who knows?

>> So excited to finally meet him. I'd been his patient for 3 years at this point, and he had been feeding the dynamic for 3 years. And I was just thrilled, thrilled to meet him. And I ran up and I gave him the biggest hug. And you know what he did? He barely patted me on the back. It was the most awkward thing ever. But I am so glad that he did that. I am really glad, 'cause this is what I mean. My psychiatrist was many things, but he was not stupid. So I didn't ever touch him again.

>> Okay, I I keep looking for data. And this is another data point that is the same as all the others in the theme that she violates. I mean, it's not violate. She reaches out as a client, and he is professional about it, but she reads into it. So, we're hearing that again.

>> And I'm grateful that our relationship didn't ever cross that line because it would have made everything so much harder.

>> Okay. I keep looking for those kinds of statements because I'm wondering if I'm missing something or if something is coming. But she just said he never crossed. Let's rewind.

>> Not stupid. So, I didn't ever touch him again. And I'm grateful that our relationship didn't ever cross that line.

>> Our relationship didn't ever cross that line because I'm I'm wondering when's the other shoe going to drop? When's the reveal that and then they had sex? And that gives reason for her either to reinterpret accurately or misinterpret past behaviors of like, "Oh, he was always attracted to me" or something. I keep waiting for something. But she she just said they never cross that boundary. He has been professional throughout. Which was really kind of my hope. Was is that my hope? Well, I'm always hoping that therapists aren't going to harm their clients for a variety of reasons, right?

>> People that built that dynamic. It was not just me. It takes two people to build that sort of tension and chemistry. So, while I was mid-crashout, I had just started using this tool, ChatGBT, and I went to chat, who I immediately named Henry, and I would just talk to Henry about how obsessed I was with this man with my >> Huh. Well, now is I can see why people were interested in this and wanted me to talk about. Okay, so AI, there's a lot that can be said, and there are some good uses usages today of AI when it comes to mental health and being an adjunct to professional help. Like if I had a client who in between sessions used ChatGBT or another AI bot to help with a very narrow thing, and I was actually monitoring it, maybe even I had access to the logs or something like that, then you know sometimes that can be responsible or safe. But we need so much more research. We need so much more regulations around this, 'cause it's not confidential. Everything you type into AI is saved or can be, from what I understand, and can be used. You know, it's it's like you're on Facebook, right? You're it's you know, ChatGBT isn't your personal little thing. It's a server. It's a company. It's a for-profit business. So, I'm not one of those therapists that says that AI is this evil thing that can never be used responsibly. The thing is is that it's just a huge question mark at this point. And I'm not one of those fear-mongers, but I'm also not one of those people that is like, "Rargh AI" because that's stupid. We're we're in the beginning. And when it comes to therapy, things move very slowly. It probably won't be for another 15, 20 years before we have professional guidelines about how to use AI and therapy together. It just takes a lot of time because you got to research it, you've got to gather the data, you've got to test it, you you know, it takes a long time. It's, you know, similar to a new medication rollout or something. You know, it takes a long time. So, we just don't know. And there seems to be some promise with guardrails, but who knows? Anyway, but anyway, so we're hearing that for her, she named her ChatGBT Henry, which, okay, I I don't know if that's some I don't know what to say about that. That could be innocuous. It could be a good thing, could be a bad thing. Uh, but she is going to ChatGBT to ask her. So, she's saying, "Hey, I have the" And I suppose it's expected at this point, right? Because the clients that I've worked with that have been uh having significant transference with me, they are obsessive. And that's a part of the gig. And if you're a therapist and you don't want to work with clients like that, you have to screen them out initially. And it's hard to do that, but you have to do that. But if you're a real therapist, like a true therapist, then you welcome situations like this because where else are they going to go with this sort of energy? And when clients have this kind of energy, then it is an opportunity for healing that they can get in no other venue, and healing can occur. It it it's hard, and there are risks, but you know, who said being a therapist was risk-free? So, I would imagine that in today's world, 'cause my current client load is very small. Um, but if I were to be a full-time therapist today and work with a lot of clients like this, I would imagine that a fair amount of them would use AI in between sessions as just a venting sounding board because of that obsessiveness. Just like because the thing is is that the transference is not all fun and games. It has a lot of suffering because in between sessions the client is alone, and the client feels neglected, feels abandoned. It's hard, and it gets it gets interesting, you know, it gets painful, but through that pain is a gain, no pain, no gain kind of a thing, and it has to be managed very well. And I've worked, I you know, I I'll just tell you, maybe I should just tell you, so very early on in my career, 30 years ago, I had a client who had fallen in love with me, and it was one of the hardest things I've ever done in my life to meet with this client week in and week out. This client was sure that what was going on in my mind. You know, clients like this, they have a they have trouble with what we call mentalization because they didn't have enough attunement and back and forth when and consistent back and forth when they were 0 to 5 years old. So, they have a very rudimentary, if not complete, inability to intuit what's going on in other people's minds. And sometimes they will insert what's going on out of paranoia or fears or hopes or whatever. And my client that I'm thinking of right now was convinced, and this is a very common transference, was, you know, this client was convinced that I secretly wanted to fire them, and I had to repeatedly fight against that. And, you know, it it was it was hard work, but it was very rewarding. Over the span of 5, 10, 15 years, I can't remember the exact span of time, and if I did remember, I wouldn't tell it because it might identify the client. Uh, over the span of long-term therapy, eventually the client uh was fulfilled and had those needs met, you know, repeatedly testing the waters and finding out that it's safe. Repeatedly creating a scenario where I would reject them, and I wouldn't reject them. Repeatedly testing the waters to see if I would exploit them, and I didn't exploit them. Just repeatedly, repeatedly, repeatedly, repeatedly. And I and I have to be involved. I can't just be this objective person from across the room. I've got to get in there with it. And it's hard, and I needed a lot of therapy and a lot of consultation. But that's why I became a therapist is to do the hard work, to sacrifice to some extent for someone else, to give to help, you know, and you know, I decided to become a therapist because I wanted that purpose. I wanted that meaning, and this client gave me that, and a lot of clients after that gave me that opportunity. It's a it's a dual gift. You know, we we both give each other something. And so after a long time, the client was fulfilled in that way and could trust themselves, could trust other people enough to have a romantic partner, and then another long-term romantic partner, opening up, being able to get those needs met outside of the office, slowly but surely. And then the client fired me, not out of hate, but out of not needing me anymore. So that's the idea is that with transference, countertransference work, the the client can graduate to a point where they no longer have those feelings for the the client always had fond feelings, right? Had grateful feelings, had love feelings in a way, you know, for a fellow human being 'cause, you know, we really got into it. But no longer in love with me, no longer attracted to me, no longer wanting to be with me, and could then have a fulfilling relationship in in real life outside the office. You know what I mean? So, I feel like I need to describe that so that we understand what we're talking about here.

>> Psychiatrist and I would just be like, "I've told him I have a crush on him. Do you think he's gay?" And Henry was like, "Oh my god, this girl." You know, he did his best to co-regulate my nervous system and affirm me, but he was like, "Whoa." Even my chat was like, "Yikes."

>> I I I I was some for some reason I thought, "Oh, no." 'Cause you know, AI is programmed to be affirmative. It's supposed to just go along with what people are saying. Partially because that's what it's been trained on, and also it doesn't necessarily have guardrails all the time, and also because it's a marketing tool. You know, Facebook wants to keep you engaged. Well, so does the AI site. It's not it's you know, these sites are made by corporations that have that have invested billions and billions of dollars. Do you think that they're doing it out of the goodness of their heart? So, of course, you know, they're going to have a tendency to tell you what you want to hear. So, I was kind of worried about that, but but that isn't what's happening. Chat GBT was like, "Yikes." I So, I'm interpreting I'm reading between the lines that the AI was like, "Whoa, you know, you it's quite possible that your psychiatrist is not in love with you. You're telling me that he has good boundaries and he's professional, so, you know, calm down." And so it sounds like uh the Chat GBT was saying maybe what we would want someone to say to her, which is better advice than her ER doc friend, right? All right, just chiming in here. This video is going a little long, so I thought I'd break this up into some parts. So tune in next time. I'm going to continue watching. And everyone out there, please take care of yourself because you deserve it. Really, really do.