THERAPIST REACTS: I Fell in Love With My Psychiatrist Tiktok Fiasco

[Music] How's it going everyone? Welcome back to Viral Virtue. It's your favorite apostates. I'm McKay.

>> I am Jordan.

>> And Jordan is channeling fall vibes despite the fact that there's still all of basically all of September to go. So, she is going to be going against the grain. August comes and it was fall in my mind.

>> She can't wait any longer. Yeah, school's starting back up.

>> Who gives a [ __ ] if it's 100° out still?

>> It's cold in our basement. Hello.

>> Whatever.

>> Let's jump into it. If you've never been here before, hi.

>> Hello.

>> We are ex Mormons and we usually talk about where religious and influencer culture clash on the internet, if you will.

>> Hence viral virtue. Hence, Spiral Virtue. But if you are here for this video, this is a little bit of a departure from our typical topic, but it is by far the most requested topic we've probably ever had. Um, numerous emails, numerous DMs, like by far. I think this is the most we've ever been requested for a topic. And that might have something to do with the fact that I'm a licensed therapist. So, this is in my wheelhouse. No, I am not a psychiatrist, but I am a licensed therapist. So I do have a lot of thoughts on this >> that I think you know would be beneficial to discuss and would be interesting to the likes of you apparently. So I am happy to sit here and chat with you about this. So if you are unsure of what the we're talking about, don't worry, we will get you caught up. But if you are here for Kendra Falls in Love with Her Psychiatrist, which is on like season 27 on TikTok, then you're in the right place.

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>> Okay, so if you're here and you have no idea what we're talking about or no clue what's going on, essentially we were requested to make this video because this person on TikTok has gone viral because she made a like 20 plus part series about falling in love with her psychiatrist. And during this whole series, she describes exactly what I just said, which is all the ways in which she fell in love with her psychiatrist. But not only that, all of the ways that he allegedly acted unethically, unprofessionally, inappropriately in her opinion based on their experiences. I have a lot of thoughts about this, but let me give one disclaimer from the very beginning before we jump into anything, okay? I want to make it very clear that I have a lot of empathy for people who feel wronged by health care and licensed mental health professionals because I am not a therapist who is out here who is going to deny that there are shitty therapists out there because there absolutely are and we're literally in a documentary talking about one at the end of the month. And so very obviously there are shitty ass therapists who exist around, right? And I've talked to plenty of people I've seen professionally who have also had bad experiences. So, we are not denying bad behavior by therapists because it's out there.

However, what I also want to bring up is because this has garnered so much attention, each one of these videos that she has posted has millions of views. Like there are millions of views on each of these like 20 plus videos that she's done. And she's going live every night. In one of the lives that I watched, there were about 10,000 people watching her live stream, which is

>> We're sitting down to film this course. And she's live right now.

>> She's literally live right now. So, this is garnering a lot of attention. And so what I don't want to happen, at least not for me, you can do whatever you want with this in your own opinion, but for the sake of this video and trying to maintain some professional ethical boundaries around this, I'm not going to throw out a diagnosis for this person because I just think it's inappropriate. I think seeing somebody on the internet and seeing one slice of their behavior out of the 360 that is their life and being able to say this person is borderline or this person is bipolar or I think by doing that I think we more than anything just recon like we contribute to the stigma around all of those diagnoses and seeking help in general. And so I'm not going to throw a diagnosis on this person. So if you're watching this video with the hopes of that it's not going to happen. And I'm not going to diagnose her with anything, nor in my opinion should any other therapist. I will say things like this might be concerning behavior that's indicative of like further treatment or this is behavior that might be indicative of a mental health episode that needs attention. And anybody can do what they want with that information, but I don't think we serve anyone by throwing out diagnoses for no reason. That being said, if you have your own opinions on that and you see things or patterns or whatever, you very well could be right. But the fact of the matter is labeling her those things isn't going to help her because she's going to reject all of those outright. And we're gonna make the other people who might have those diagnoses, who don't feel like they align with Kendra in any way, shape, or form also might take offense to those comments. So that's not my goal for today. So if you're speculating in comments and things on diagnoses, I'm not going to tell you how to live your life, but you're not going to find me doing that here.

Ultimately, something that we have discussed at length between just the two of us is like whether we like it or not, even when we're trying to be our most genuine on the internet, when you're like making videos and you're on live stream and stuff like that, even if it's like with every ounce of who you are as a person poured into it, it's still a performance at the end of the day. people aren't seeing anything that's happening beyond your live stream or your videos and they can't make any assessments on that. They can base, you know, make assumptions or conjectures based on the kind of behaviors that you're exhibiting and things like that. But

>> sure,

>> in the end, we can never really tell. So that's

>> that's why Jordan wanted to say those things about that.

>> And I think there are times where things like that may be pertinent. Like when you think about, you know, we've talked about Jod and um Jodie Hildebrand and Ruby Frankie and I've talked about diagnoses in those cases because we've got a pattern and things are very severe and these people are in prison now. And so I I treat that situation personally a little bit differently than this where it's like

>> I don't I don't know this person. And then like I don't know Jod or Ruby either, but when you've been arrested for a crime, there's a lot more patterns and information and behavior that exists out there than like me watching, you know, 4 hours worth of Tik Toks from Kendra is still not enough for me as a therapist, nor should it be for anybody because again, what we are viewing could all be fake. Maybe she's doing all this for attention. I don't think that's what is happening. But she could have made this whole [ __ ] thing up knowing it would blow up and is just now super leaning into it and like none of this is her actual experience at all. And that's why it's dangerous to like throw out diagnoses and things around this because you just we don't have the full picture. We don't know.

In order to get you familiar, I mean essentially if you have no idea what we're talking about, you're mostly caught up to speed. That is the plot line that we're running with here. She fell in love with her psychiatrist and she feels that her psychiatrist acted inappropriately towards him or towards her. We are going to show you clips from all of these videos. If we were to show you all of the clips,

>> it's too much.

>> It's too long. It's too much. Okay. So, I try like we sat down and watched all of them and tried to pick out the things that we thought we could most speak to essentially or points that I feel like would be important to raise or bring up. And so, that's what we're going to do. So, if you're like, "What? We're not watching all of that." Like, this would be like a 5 hour video. Like, I'm not even kidding. So, that's not what we're doing today. All of them are still available on her TikTok. And when you go to her Tik Tok, she'll probably be live, so you can get all the content that she has out there that you want. So, let's start with literally part one, and we're going to let the whole thing play just so you get a vibe for the very beginning of the story.

>> Just a note, they start off being like a minute to a minute and a half in the beginning, and they become increasingly more long. So, the first one is short. Don't worry about it. I fell in love with my psychiatrist and he kept me anyway part two. So in this intake, you know, I kind of clocked that he was attractive and my age, but when I tell you that I've had a lot of couch time in my life, a lot of therapy, you know, I just went right into it. I trusted him enough, of course, why wouldn't I, to tell him about my childhood trauma, my daddy issues, if you will, um what I had went through, all of the relationship trauma that I had. I was 6 months sober at this time, but like all of the drinking and substance use I used to do. And um he just listened and nodded. And that's the thing about psychiatrists is that they're good at pretending to listen. They can appear connect.

>> Confession time. This came across I mean I'm a therapist so sometime I get mental health content, right? So this came across my for you page and I was like I feel like this is going to become a massive thing. But I was like you know what I don't have time to get invested right now. I'm in Halloween mode. I'm in fall mode. I'm leaving it alone. I try not to engage with my steps sometimes when I'm not working. And so I left it alone. But then the second this one popped up on my for you page and I watched it, I was like, "Oh boy." Because automatically there are some things for me and the way that she talks about this that are that sound bizarre, that sound a little bit weird. And I think this one is a perfect example when we're talking about psycho or psychiatrists are um really good at pretending to listen. Immediately I have alarm bells going off in terms of like what does that mean? Why do you feel like he's pretending to listen? Like is he disengaged in session and you feel like he's not paying attention? But all of this is her perspective or schema if you will about this scenario in this situation is already constructed and very solid. Like if we imagine a house that she's built around this situation is concrete. It's solid. There are no cracks in the foundation. She has already formed her opinions. So she's standing outside of her house with a microphone talking about the house. So this isn't she's constructing her opinions and still processes processing the experience. She already has an idea of what has happened and that is evident to me based on the emotional intensity that's not even coming off emotionally intense like necessarily in terms of body language or tone but very much the vocabulary that she like that she chooses to use. And so instead of like saying oh he was maybe disengaged and I feel like he wasn't as in tune with me anymore. I feel like he was distracted during our sessions. Like she's deliberately choosing the vocabulary of he's pretending to listen. So already we have her narrative around what he's doing. And I don't it I don't really know what it looks like to pretend to listen in a therapy context. And the other thing to keep in mind with this is the person that she's seeing is not a therapist. So she's seeing a psychiatrist um like actually licensed psychiatrist. Um, and if you've never been to a psychiatrist before, there are some psychiatrists who do talk therapy. Some of them do,

>> right?

>> But the majority of them generally don't. I won't maybe I won't say majority. A vast amount of them don't tackle therapy. Like I think they have some training around therapy and I think some of them do more advanced training so that they can do talk therapy, which if you can bundle your psych and your therapist in one, I think that's fantastic. But generally speaking, therapy is not their specialization unless they've made it their specialization, right? So like most people jokingly talk about their psychiatrist is like, "Are you on your meds?"

>> Yeah.

>> Did you take them? Are you having any problems? Cool. I'll see you in 6 months.

>> Right.

>> And that's

>> if you want an additional anecdote, I have ADHD. I go to a psychiatric nurse practitioner for Viveance, which will pop up in the story a little bit further down the road.

>> True. It will. and our conversations are 30 minutes and most of it is just [ __ ] shooting the breeze. Uh but you know

>> because especially if you've been with a person for a long time if there aren't really any concerns like most of the time insurance dictates how often you need to see your psychiatrist

>> and what they're willing to cover and then you have like in the in this case

>> you know drug administration who's also making decisions about how often if you're getting like a controlled medicine. But anyway, that being said, this is relevant to the story because she has said their appointments were 30 minutes long, which is in therapy terms is very short. I can't do much with 30 minutes. Like, it's generally not enough time, but 30 minutes is not a long time. And I don't know if he was actually doing talk therapy with her. Like I don't know if that was one of the specializations that he offered or if that just kind of turned into kind of talk therapy because of how Kendra was showing up in the room.

>> So like I want to give that context because I think 30 minutes once a month or every two weeks or is is really not a lot of time. So just to give that perspective,

>> I was in love with my psychiatrist and he kept me anyway part three. So, I hadn't ever seen

>> I also just want to mention this. The way that she parcels this out over 25 parts. What [ __ ] year is it? Is it 2020? You can do a 10-minute video.

>> You can. You can. But also, I already am my curiosity has already peaked at the beginning of this video by again this narrative that she has that he should have dropped her.

>> No. So now we have another kind of part of the story which is she believes that he should have not continued therapy anymore because of how she felt for him. And we're going to come back around to that in a minute. Before when I was on meds in my early 20s, I didn't I only got meds from my primary care physician. So I didn't understand how psychiatry works. So because he was figuring out my med dose, I saw him every month and he just made me feel like I was his friend. He was really really funny and cracked jokes and um told me he was impressed with my running that I would do. And yeah, so of course I loved the attention that I got from him. And it was in my third session with him because 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 and to be fair to me I had only ever been to therapy before I didn't realize that you know it's important.

>> I'm already confused because it seems contradictory to use the word seems. She says it seems like he's and then she launches immediately into I know he was doing that because he's so smug him and his smudgess about it.

>> And there's our smudgess.

>> And I'm like, okay, so like let's let's back up a little bit. Let's let's back up slightly. bring it in.

>> All of this, like again, I'm listening with the trained therapy ethical ear, right? Like I'm a social worker. I abide by a code of ethics. Like all of that's kind of constantly playing in the back of my mind.

>> So I'm listening to things that are like, "Oh yeah, that's unprofessional. Oh yeah, this is reportable. Oh yeah, let's

>> you should have support and navigating this, like let's look for that."

>> And him cracking jokes, him being impressed by running, which I think is impressive. um all of these things. Like again, I'm trying to give her the benefit of the doubt and really hearing out where this dude [ __ ] up because I think it's entirely possible that he has. But at this point, I'm still not convinced that there's anything that he's done that is unethical based on the description that she's giving me. Now, the only person who knows the truth of this interaction, and I will reiterate this a thousand times, like the only person who knows are those two, and those two have completely probably different perspectives on what was happening in their therapeutic relationship. But based on what she is presenting me right now in this moment, cracking jokes, that's how I mean a sense of humor generally speaking is how a lot of therapists build rapport. I use a lot of humor in my sessions. I use a lot of humor especially when you know things are feeling difficult, things are feeling heavy. It brings some levity to the room when it's appropriate. Like I'm not hearing anything that jumps out at me as like, ah, don't be doing that. That's bad. Like I'm not hearing that yet. Well, and even the way that she's like I was just getting meds through my primary care provider. I had no clue what was what was different with psych or psychiatry or whatever. And I'm like, it's the same process, but psychiatrist is going to be more geared toward

>> meds that are mental health and general medicine is going to be more just

>> general use. Cuz I did the same thing. I went and I got meds at my PCP and they didn't really work. but I didn't explore it or whatever. And then

>> it's a different experience, but not that much.

>> It's still kind of the same process.

>> Yeah.

>> It's just different specializations. So, I feel like her saying something like that is trying to like take this entity of psychiatry and he's involved in psychiatry and kind of make it different. Like, this is something I never should have opened the door to.

>> This twisted thing that he's doing,

>> right?

>> which the the big one of the bigger concerns that I have about this and as we will go on is I feel like we're kind of sewing distrust in mental health professionals by way of this story and I don't know if doing that is really fair when you hear the whole thing. So let's keep going.

>> Call your doctor doctor last name. Oh,

>> I did know that. I did it with all my other doctors. But,

>> and the name thing, the name thing was the other thing. I'm not a doctor, so like I, you know, I don't have a PhD, so I don't go by doctor, but I like all the psychiatrists I've ever had, I've called them by their first name. Like, I'm still a professional, but none of my clients have ever called me anything by my first name.

>> Like, I don't find it immediately a red flag, especially if she asked. Like, as a therapist or like a mental health professional, somebody's like, "Can I do this?" and like you give them permission like that's even better.

>> I feel like the people who I in my life have encountered the most that give a [ __ ] about that only are people who teach at university who are professors. I feel like outside of that it's just like

>> I don't think they really care. But like she's like everything is loaded, right? Like this isn't just she's saying, "Oh, I talked to him and asked him if I could call him by his first name and he said it was fine." It's like he said it was fine. Do you see what I'm saying? Do you see what I mean? And it's like no, I don't. I'm still confused because what she's trying to sew here is that there's something inappropriate happening by way of this behavior,

>> right?

>> Which I'm still again I went into this fully ready to go

>> to the bat for this woman.

>> We believe victims

>> like let me let me go to bat for you.

>> I know, right?

>> I got your back. I will show up. I'm report but when you're not even given breadcrumbs,

>> but when I'm still confused, you know, there there's more to the story. 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 I'm sorry, I just got to clarify. What is the boundary that's being blurred here? I would almost agree with her on this. Maybe I would almost agree with her on this if she didn't ask to call him by his first name and she just started calling him that and he didn't correct her. I would say maybe. But there is not a boundary here that has been crossed that I can see because she actually asked for consent. She actually said, "Can I call you by your first name?" And he said yes. But again, we still have this underlying narrative that she's trying to sew that something he's doing something wrong by allowing that. But where where are the boundaries being crossed? I don't know. Maybe there are boundaries that were crossed, but she's not talking about them. That doesn't make any sense. I don't know. 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. 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." 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. I was in love with my psych.

>> Again, I'm so confused,

>> right?

>> I'm I'm deeply confused in trying to make sense of what's happening here. So, she's right. It is normal in therapy and psychiatry to ask somebody if they have thoughts of harm, especially when you're establishing a relationship with the person. Every therapist and psychiatrist does this differently. I don't know if the psychiatry standards are different. I'm not a psychiatrist, but like for a lot of people, a lot of therapists that I know, we ask in the beginning kind of consistently or if there's something that kind of points us to maybe there's a risk there. And then, you know, if I have a client who doesn't ever have that experience, doesn't have depression, has never had suicidality, is not having anything that points to having any kind of suicidality, then it's probably not something that I'm going to ask every time. Now, this is largely dependent on the therapist and the client. There are some people who ask all the time, no matter what. Sometimes I feel like that's appropriate, sometimes I feel like it's not there. I don't think there's a wrong way to go about doing this because I can't possibly give you the nuances of why or why not for each individual client. But if she didn't have anything that was like pointing towards a risk factor of suicidality, if she consistently reported that she wasn't having any, nor did she have a history of it, maybe then maybe he just didn't feel the need to ask anymore because there's not a risk. Like a lot of times we ask when there's risk. when there's risk present, then we're kind of pointed towards that's something that we should explore. So, I'm not necessarily interpreting that as a red flag that he stopped asking,

>> right?

>> Also, what is a clinical question? Cuz like she says, he stopped asking me clinical questions, but then every appointment thereafter was just like a therapy appointment. Isn't that what it's supposed to be?

>> Like, I'm confused. Well, and

>> there's also the added thing, the implication that she's making here where she's with his phrasing of it. I have to ask because it's a special interest of mine and she's interpreting that as or at least she appears to be interpreting that as

>> I'm special.

>> She is special. She is his special interest or whatever. And when I hear that, I being an annoying funny guy myself, um, all I can think of is I have to ask you this every time. And maybe you don't really want to talk about your poops or your peas and other things like that, but I'm going to pretend that's a special interest of mine because I have to ask you every time.

>> So maybe there was like a hint of humor, something that wasn't picked up upon. an attempt to maybe like not be a robot when they're having to do like their actual job and everything or something.

>> I don't know. Are are you confused? Are

>> like I said,

>> is it clocking?

>> Is it clocking to you that I'm standing on? You know what I mean? But like

>> I don't want to come off that my purpose here is to question Kendra's story, but here's my thing is I want you to think critically about every single thing that you come across on the internet. Okay. And that includes people who are telling you things about their life because just because this is the way that Kendra feels that she has experienced this event does not mean that it's accurate. And all of us have that. The way we tell stories, what we include, what we leave out, we lie. We like, you know, we make exaggerations. We're hyperbolic. Like that goes for every single person. So I don't want you to feel like I'm like singling out Kendra here and trying to poke holes in her story. But here's what I don't want to happen is Kendra has gotten on the internet and shared all of this and has positioned herself as a victim in this situation because she feels that she is and I'm not here to argue that. But what has happened as a result of that is somebody who may or may not need mental health support or may or may not be going through a mental health episode or may or may not may need treatment for a variety of other things. Who the [ __ ] knows? Somebody in that position is now getting fed constant reassurance by 10,000 people all the time. 10,000 people live, hundreds of thousands of people.

>> People are paying her to participate in her chat, which I'm like, girl, get that bag. If people are going toinging money off of it, you do you, whatever. But like, all of these people are in her comments. She has filtered the comments now. So, the only people who can join the live streams are people who are paying to watch. So, you can't comment unless you've paid. Doesn't it get kind of dangerous when you're filtering out the perspectives of people who might be going including lots of mental health professionals that are saying

>> there's there's some things here that are standing out to me that maybe are worth exploring. Not even like a you're wrong. It's a like maybe let's get curious about this. Maybe we should explore this from a different angle. Can we possibly consider that there is an alternate perspective that I'm not taking in in this particular situation? Can we do that in a very non-confrontational way? Right? And then there are people who are just bullying her and harassing her and I'm not encouraging that on on in any way. But like what does it do to the human psyche? I don't even know that we can this has been studied. Like what does it do to the human psyche when you have a perspective like this around something that might be inaccurate and instead you are tuning out all of the people who might get you to think a different way and instead inviting everyone in who will only reassure your perspective. I don't have any scientific evidence to support this because I don't know that we have any evidence around this phenomenon yet. But I imagine this can't be good for your brain. I imagine it cannot be good for your brain, for your body, for your mental health as a whole. And that's where this gets kind of concerning to me where sometimes we can just let sleeping dogs lie. But in situations like this, I don't feel comfortable. I don't feel comfortable because this is scary to me. Like what if everybody who might be experiencing a mental health episode tunes out everybody who might be telling them to get help and support and instead only allows in people who affirm their only beliefs and stuff. like we've created an echo chamber instead around mental health and what is that doing? I mean that's

>> but and not only that where people maybe are agreeing with her and things of that nature but also people who are trolling

>> and trying to feed into her ego and trying to be overly agreeable to give her attention and things like that.

>> Not helpful. Yeah,

>> I'm of the firm belief that this should have been an experience that she shared with other mental health professionals, family, people close to her and that should have been it

>> or the board

>> or the board. So, I was seeing him every month and just gaining more and more respect for him because he would just tell me these little things about his successes and all of the cool things that he was doing in his life. 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

>> he's good at listening because he's a Pisces. No, he's good at listening because we're literally taught how to be good listeners, right?

>> Psychiatrists and therapists, I mean, I would say therapists more so are taught how to be fantastic listeners because that's what I'm doing a lot of the time, right? But like

>> how Yeah. How are you going to tease out what could be going on in their brain if you're not a good listener,

>> right?

>> Because they're talking to you. That's pretty much the only way they're communicating other than their body.

>> Hello. But yeah,

>> 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 time, he was fine. You know, he wasn't a predator, but he was fine. He just wasn't doing very much for me. And so that therapist retired and I got a new therapist. And this new therapist who is a 75-year-old woman with a PhD, she was pretty helpful. So I stopped 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. And what's funny to me about this is for someone to say, "My therapist loves stories about my dating life." I hear that and I go, "Yes, because you know what I hear in your dating life? I hear how you act relationally with other people. I hear how your attachment trauma for any individual person, not Kendra, but any individual person, how your attachment stuff shows up in the room when you're dating or your type or the type of person you're attracted to or who you might gravitate towards or why you might be more interested in somebody who doesn't reciprocate or like that's what I hear when I hear someone say, "Oh, my therapist loves hearing about my dating life." It's not because we're like, "Give me that goss girl. Like, I want to hear about it." I mean, that might be like, you know, it's fun to like have your little light sessions here and there sometimes or like, you know, keep things surface level sometimes. But when people are telling me things like that, I'm always pulling from there. Oh, isn't that interesting that every time like you know you have this more emotionally available person who seems to be really into you, but you seem to be feeling like you're more magnetized toward this person who doesn't want to give you the time a day. That's really interesting. Has this happened before? Let's talk about it. Might just be a dick. Might just be a fluke. But like that's what's happening when a therapist is asking about something like that. But with Kendra, she's always insinuating that the mental health professional is doing something insidious by doing that. which is concerning to me when every single mental health professional that you ever talk about, aside from the one random Tik Tok therapist who has affirmed your opinions, that every single one has an insidious role in your life story. I start to get suspicious. Okay. I start to get a little bit weirded out when it's when it's all of them and they're all like in cahoots on this together.

>> That starts to seem more unlikely to me. Could something like that happen? Sure. Sure. Could you have a shitload of random therapists that have all been terrible? Of course, anything's possible. But when it becomes all of them, that

>> all my alarms

>> are the are all doing the same shitty [ __ ]

>> Yes.

>> And that even comes in later on, but

>> and yeah, she she also was getting supply from me in her own way, but that's for another part. So yes, so I got a new therap.

>> So this is why I wanted to include this is the idea of getting supply. We have kind of pop psychology narcissism in our society. And that's not to say that there are plenty of people there aren't plenty of people out there with narcissistic traits or narcissistic personality disorder because there are. NPD by instance rate is actually pretty rare. But people with narcissistic traits

>> absolutely

>> you bet all kinds of people in your life probably have narcissistic traits, right? But I think we've kind of popped psychology narcissism to kind of a dangerous turn. Not every person you've ever dated, generally speaking, is going to be a narcissist with narcissistic personality disorder. Just statistically,

>> it's just not going to map out that way.

>> You could have narcissistic traits. What you watching this right now,

>> every I feel like everybody has a narcissistic trait or two that comes out and we either learn to work with that and deal with it and get curious about it and figure out what's happening there or it takes over our life. Additionally, there's like this idea that, you know, some of the ways that we talk about narcissism is like narcissism takes supply from people. Like their supply, how they kind of fuel their narcissistic tendencies, their narcissistic beliefs and schemas about themselves is through other people, right? So, like people kind of become their supply, which I think is a fine way of talking about it. I think it makes sense. I think it's

>> intuitive. I like I don't have any problem with that. But it starts to raise red flags for you when you feel like your therapist is getting supply from you and your psychiatrist is getting supply from you. Because now we have an implication that not only is your psychiatrist doing something inappropriate and unethical, but now your therapist is too. And your therapist is also kind of a narcissist. Okay. Again, I'm open. I'm I'm still waiting. I'm still waiting for for the thing where I can I can hop on her back and ride at dawn for her. Okay,

>> I got it. After I risked my life to see him, that's when he really started turning up the intimacy in our appointments. However,

>> just to catch you all up, we're skipping five because it's really long, but she was in a car accident and she was told that she needed she went to

>> an urgent care

>> urgent care in the morning and was told that she needed to go to the emergency department like immediately, but that would have interfered with her appointment seeing the psychiatrist. So, she risked her life and went to the appointment and told him, "I actually should be at the emergency department." And allegedly he did not have any reaction to that and he just continued on with their session anyway.

>> Was really smart and knew the professional lines like the back of his hand. So he would comment on my appearance but not compliment my appearance. So I would come on screen and he would say, "Oh, you curled your hair." or I would come on screen and he would say, "Oh, you're wearing glasses." And of course, I felt seen and excited that he was noticing these things about me. I didn't realize at this time that he had feelings for me, too. I thought I was holding them all by myself. Huh? What? Okay. So, I want again I I am truly I have empathy for Kendra. I really do. But I think there are some things that are worth pointing out here, right? So maybe if you're new to therapy, the thought of a therapist commenting on your appearance might sound kind of bizarre and I could see that especially if we're talking about a gender difference, right? So I think, you know, when I I I see primarily women, I I have a handful of men, but I don't see men very often. So I will like compliment or make comments about my client's appearance where I feel it's appropriate, especially if we're working on self-esteem things and especially because I think women just don't get complimented on things enough. And I think it's it's helpful to hear those things, but it more comes from a place of observing because I see these people all the time. Like I see most of these people like once a week, every week, for sometimes for a really long time. So when they show up on screen and they're wearing glasses, I'm going to be like, "Oh my gosh, you not you got new glasses. It looks really cute." Or, "Oh my gosh, you've dyed your hair. It looks really good." Like those are not necessarily inappropriate things for a therapist to do. However, if your therapist saying like saying something like that makes you uncomfortable, tell them. Make it known. There are like there's not necessarily a line that I see being crossed there. Maybe if we're if she's got a whole lot of feelings for him like transference things happening, maybe this is something he should have avoided. Maybe this is something like maybe this an is an area that he should have just not touched in terms of making observances about what she's wearing or what she looks like. Um but again, I don't necessarily see anything wrong here, especially if Kendra didn't make it known that she was uncomfortable with him saying that. Well, and how would he have known at this point? She has not made it known to him that she has feelings for him at all. So,

>> at least not explicitly. At least what from what she's told us, she's never made that.

>> So like he's not

>> confession to him.

>> He's not necessarily picking up on that. So again, she's uncomfortable with this, then say something. But I just don't see where the issue is here. But if she already h again this is the danger and again I'm not assigning this to a diagnosis but this is the danger of somebody who might form um like unbalanced perspectives about a scenario um and not be willing to take in current events as evidence to prove or disprove the scenario. So instead of going, okay, I think my my psychiatrist might be in love with me and then when he sets boundaries with me or he just maintains professional ethical boundaries like she says he does. Instead of taking that and going, "Oh, we just have a professional relationship like he's not into me. He holds boundaries. It's not a big deal." Instead of taking that and kind of disproving her theory, she takes it, wraps it in a way that still fits within her narrative, and then kind of stuffs it back. So, it's not the fact that he doesn't have feelings for her. It's that he does and he's just going about it in a very weird way because she's very attached to this narrative that she has.

>> So, I was so excited when he noticed my glasses that I ran and showed him my other pair and he said, "I prefer turtle shell glasses." So, even though I usually wear contacts, I'm wearing these turtle shell glasses in these videos because I just in case he sees them ever, he'll see me in his favorite glasses. He did tell me he likes the turtle shell. Anyway,

>> tortoise shell

>> number one.

>> Number one.

>> Number two. Again, just getting curious about this. Like, what does this point to? To me, this does not point to a done deal, closed up, walled off situation.

>> Is obsessed with me.

>> This does not and this does not um like she's called him a predator up to this point, right? Like she's literally called him a predator. And I don't see somebody who is in a pred like who has somebody who they feel like has predated on them who is in a has treated or abused them in some way then getting on the internet and saying I really hope he sees me in these tortois shell glasses. It's giving contradiction. It's

Giving, I might be telling you one thing, but there is also a part of me that hopes that he's going to see this and maybe want me back. Well, and just the the leap from I'm wearing these tortoise shell glasses. Tortoise shell. Uh, because they're his favorite. He said he prefers the tortoise shell. How do we get? They're his favorite glasses from. Oh, I prefer the tortoise shell over.

Maybe because he has some that look like that. You know, again, I don't see anything that's like a red flag here, but you know, a mental health symptom that needs to be treated and needs to be dealt with, which some people do this, some people don't, but it's a pattern that if you notice it is something that you should talk to a mental health professional about, is if you pedal, if you pedestalize somebody, if you put them really high, like you're idealizing their behavior, who they are, you're sticking them way way way up there, and they're the most amazing, fantastic person, and then they do one thing or they hurt your feelings, and then you have you have ripped them off that pedestal so fast, and you have shoved them to the ground like they are six feet under to you. They are dead to me. They are horrible people. I hate them. And rightfully so, if somebody treats you in a certain way and you want to do that with somebody, that is not what I'm talking about. If it if it has merit, this is not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about somebody who has a pattern of doing this with somebody in their life for reasons that do not seem justifiable, reasons that do not seem valid to have that big of a shift in behavior.

Because two videos ago, she was calling him a predator. Now she's telling me he she hopes he's seeing these videos because she's wearing his favorite glasses. Like, do you see how we're going from here to here and here to here and here to here and we're switching. I'm not assigning this to any kind of diagnosis, but I'm saying that this is a behavior. If I were to see as a the like as a therapist, I'd be like, "Let's talk about that. Does this happen with other people in your life? Has this happened before? Do you have relationships with people who treat you like that? Like, let's investigate." Like as a psychonamic therapist, like that's one that I just want to like sink my teeth into and go, what's happening here? But if she's just doing that all the time, then this whole series is going to make a whole lot of sense to you because that's what she's going to do this whole time. Like she's going on about how much of a predator it is. And then I was on her live the other day or I saw a TikTok that somebody recorded of her live where somebody had made a wedding video. Somebody made an AI wedding video of her and her psychiatrist and she was like, "Oh, I've been making the craziest AI videos." Oh, you know, this is kind of the sad thing is like, "Oh, has anybody seen this one?" I thank you Kendra Lover for putting that together. I love the content you make me uh you make about me. Good.

She was like fawning over it. So again, we have this switch. Idealize, devalue, idealize, shove you in the ground. Ideal. Like we're having this hot back and forth. Again, I'm not assigning this to anything. I'm just saying that if this is something that happens or you have somebody like this in your life, you know, it's really hard to have a relationship with somebody who struggles with that. But it's treatable. Like it's something that like we can work on in therapy. It's a pattern. It's a behavior. We can do something with that, but instead we're just watching it play out like on TikTok.

Just inappropriate things like that. Little teeny things that he let me in. And all this time, 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 2 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 and getting weird, but that was like that became my dream was for um my psychiatrist, I almost use his name, to do that. And I told him about Briana's saying that, my best friend who's the emergency medical doc. 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.

I think this is not even something that I I am I I'm just thinking about this as she's talking. Notice how much she feels the need to legitimize the people in the story. So, it's like it's not just her therapist, it's the therapist with the PhD. It's not just her best friend, it's her best friend who's an emergency medical doctor. Like there's something here I think that is interesting and I think we all have a tendency to do this sometimes especially if we hold an opinion or if we've had an experience that we feel is going to be invalidated. I feel like we will find ways whether that's through other people whether that's through credibility qualifications people who maybe know more than we do will we will kind of borrow their expertise as a way of kind of validating our opinion. And is that wrong all the time? No, I don't think so. But I think it's interesting that it's a repetitive pattern that comes up in this story.

My therapist who is saying is encouraging this behavior. My friend who is the MD and everything, what's that called? Appeal to authority. Yeah. Like there's more legitimacy to this than just my regular person, if you will, opinion. But your regular person opinion, your regular opinion is valid, but doesn't mean that it's going to stand up to water in every single case. 100% of the time, most of ours won't. Favorite game to play, right? He didn't disagree with Briana telling me that.

Well, also there's also she's talking about her friend Briana who's telling her all of this one-sided story. So, she's talking about her friend who has expertise, but her friend is operating solely off of whatever Kendra is telling her. So, as far as we know, she could be saying, "Oh my god, he's confessing his love to me and he's saying because she's under the impression that this man is infatuated with her."

My psychiatrist had feelings for me. But he also didn't say, "That's inappropriate. Let's change the subject." It was also around this time that I asked my psychiatrist if he had diagnosed me with anything other than ADHD when I had my initial diagnosis. And he said, "Yeah, I did." I said, "Oh, what did you diagnose me with?" And he said, "Well, you had a lot of traumatic things happen to you in childhood because of your dad, and so I diagnosed you with other trauma and stressor related disorder." And that was the first little ping that I got of like, "That was weird. Why would he keep that from me?" I asked Matt like, "Why wouldn't he tell me that? That seems important." He didn't tell me because he was using that information to manipulate me. He knew I had trauma and stressor disorder and instead of helping me heal from it and telling me about it, he used it against me. Okay. So again, I come to a point of confusion. That's going to be a theme of today is like ongoing confusion.

Um, okay. Everybody, every I again I'm a therapist. I can't speak to how a psychiatrist does things. But as a therapist, everybody that I know handles diagnoses differently. Like some people will explicitly talk to clients about the diagnosis. Some people will not talk about it and that will they'll bring it up if they feel it's revalent or relevant or they'll bring it up if the client asks about it. Like I think everybody does it differently. I don't know that there's necessarily a right or a wrong way to go about it. Um, you know, I could understand the desire to want to know and maybe some unfamiliarity with the typical process, maybe she was expecting that if she had something else that he would tell her. I don't know. But to then take that again. So, we have something that's like questionable and then launch that into he's using it to manipulate me. He's using it against me very explicitly.

To pretend that he's not in love with me or something. I don't know. Like I don't know how a diagnosis that he hadn't told her about manipulates her because just because you don't know what your diagnosis is doesn't mean that he isn't actively working on what's coming up in the room necessarily. You know what I mean? Like it doesn't mean that he's just like, "Well, we're not going to talk about that because I haven't told her about it." It's like, "Well, if you are somebody who struggles with trauma, like past trauma manifests in our behavior, our present behavior all of the time." So whether she knows it or not, it's probably manifesting in the room and maybe what he's working on. I I don't want this to come across as infantilizing because I'm using an example of talking to my kid, but when my kid comes to me, he's laying in bed, he should be going to sleep, and he's asking me what the purpose of lines of latitude and longitude on a globe are. A lot of times I don't feel that instance is the pertinent time to explain that to him. I know full well that if I do it during the daytime when I have the time, I can explain that to him and it's probably a concept that he's going to be able to grasp and use later on. But right now, at the ripe age of five, at 8:30 at night when he should be going to sleep, it's not a time that I really want to do that. And I feel like we do this in our jobs a lot of times. When you're talking to somebody who is not a professional in your field, maybe it's not the most pertinent information to share at this moment and so you don't because there are other things that you need to talk about.

Like your ADHD is probably you come to him for your ADHD. So if he was focusing on that, there's probably a good reason why he didn't feel the need to share all of his observations at the same time in a 30-minute session. Sure. And that's the giving him the benefit of the doubt angle. Maybe the not giving him the benefit of the doubt angle is you should have just told her. Sure. How relevant is that? I don't know. I mean, again, we're a big issue with this that I see as a therapist is there is only one side of the story that is being represented in this entire narrative. And I don't know that the person who is giving that story is a reliable narrator. As is with anybody who's telling their story when another person is involved, right? Like every person has their perspective. They are all subjective. But there's danger in that when the other person like a huge element to this is the other person involved in this discussion cannot defend themselves. And that to me is kind of icky in this instance. Somebody like Jodie doesn't deserve the opportunity to defend herself.

Well, and she was operating outside of the boundary license anyway. So she could have def she could defend herself in in these cases because she's not with she's not holding. So there's nuance. Right. Right. But the thing is with this is like you're making accusations that somebody is predatory, that somebody is acting unethically, those are all things that if somebody comes to me and says those things, I will say report to the board immediately right now. I will help you. I will show you how to find it. We can make it together. I will walk you through what it looks like. you know, you can include my name on there if they need to contact me like whatever it takes like I will support you in that process. So the concern becomes when the other person isn't like such accusations heavy accusations about a mental health professional I mean this could impact his livelihood right like this could impact his ability to see other people professionally like that's a really deep thing but because of HIPPA because of privacy protection he can in no way defend himself really now I don't know what the legality of this would look like I would be very interested to hear from like a a lawyer who deals with like mental health type things specifically I don't know if they could do kind like a Jane Doe situation or like what that would look like. But I feel like there comes a point where everybody hits their limit with what you're saying about me as a professional, right?

Especially when it's getting millions of views and you've dropped my name multiple times. And I think this is always like this has become a concern I feel like for therapists including myself including myself who of you know I have this platform where I talk about my personal opinions on things which are sometimes not held by the vast majority of people and makes people really uncomfortable. So this kind of dynamic, what Kendra is doing right now is always something that has concerned me because if something like that were to happen, there's no way that I can really defend myself against somebody who made like a fake review or somebody that I've never seen in my life, I can't confirm or deny. Like there's there's nothing I can do in that situation. And when you're the professional who hasn't done anything wrong, that really sucks. That really sucks because even if this dude made some missteps, like maybe he should have been more clear about the diagnosis. Maybe he should have had maybe he should have talked with her more explicitly about certain things, in no way does that mean that he should be called the predator. I'm sorry. Like in my mind, I've listened to all of her stories. I know the full thing. It just does not compute in my mind. So, I think his role in this, even though he is not like this innocent little person that we're going to like put up on a pedestal over here, I think it's worth mentioning that he cannot come out here and say, "Kendra, that's an inaccurate perception of what happened." Or, "Kendra, that's a lie. That's not what happened." He can't. And she knows that. She knows that he can't and that he won't.

January 2023, at this point, I was full-blown obsessed with my psychiatrist. And my therapist wasn't helping me. Wasn't helping me. He was feeding it. And then I got a boyfriend. And at first my psychiatrist wasn't really that keen. But then my psychiatrist realized that my boyfriend was a lot like my psychiatrist. And then I started talking to my psychiatrist about my sex life, about tracking my cycle, using the fertility awareness method. Um, and my psychiatrist loved it. He didn't never say, "This isn't inappropriate to your care. Let's pivot. Oh, he just let me talk and talk and talk about my sex life. And I didn't get too deep, but about a year and a half in and I would send my psychiatrist these emails just about how much I liked him and how I was so grateful for him and put in a bunch of heart emojis. And this is really when he should have transferred my care, but you know, he waited. He he liked what I gave him too much. And so, even though my boyfriend did not meet my needs, my psychiatrist and my therapist both were like, "You have to stay with him. There's nothing wrong with him not meeting your needs." I'm like, "Okay."

Okay. So, let's go back a little bit. First things first, she's talking about how she's talking to him about her sex life. Now, again, not a psychiatrist, but as a therapist, clients bring up their sex life with me. I do a lot of work around it. So, especially as a couple's therapist. Absolutely. So, is that inherently a red flag to me? No, it's not. I think what becomes a red flag is your purpose for bringing it up. You as a client, what purpose is this serving when you're talking to me about it? Because I don't think that she went to her psychiatrist to talk to him about her sex life because there was something concerning that was happening or she had some shame that was coming up or there was a body image issue or there's some kind of, you know, sexual dysfunction that's happening. Like, I don't think it was for any of that. I think it was solely to grab his attention and continue to push his boundaries to see how he would respond. So, if that's the case, then yes, it's inappropriate, but it's inappropriate because you're bringing it up in an inappropriate way. It's not inappropriate to bring up sex with a psychiatrist or a therapist. It's not. Now, the context around that really matters, right? But I think that just on its own is not a red flag to me. But yes, as the psychiatrist in that room, if you were saying that and you were just going on and on maybe about like needless details or, you know, you were getting excited about it for some reason or like there were some other things that I was picking up on in the room that I would bring it to your attention in the moment like what's, you know, is there, you know, I'm happy to keep talking about this, but you know, is there is there a concern here? Like, is there something that you've been thinking about or something that's bothersome or something that I can support you in to kind of like reroute her back to where we're trying to go? But again, because we don't have perspective, we don't know if he did that. We don't know if he was like waiting for her to get to the point about why she's bringing it up.

Because in his mind, he's like, "Surely she's gonna get to the point of like why she's bringing this up with me, right? Like she's gonna come to something that I'm going to be able to help her with." And he waited and she didn't. And then he was like, "Oh, this was not for the purpose of me helping you. This was for the purpose of you getting something out of telling me." But is that still workable? Can we still talk about that? I think maybe. I also think it's important to note that like she's kind of already set up that she is open to the idea of being with her psychiatrist via what she's been telling her friend and how she is telling the story in a way that it sounds like he's going to fire her and wait two years so that they can have an ethical relationship which is generally really not how that works anyway.

Yeah. I don't know how. I think there I think there maybe is a rule around that in some places and maybe not others but I mean as a social worker unfortunately as much as I adore many of the people that I see it's it's just a no like there's never going to be a point where it's not weird because I was once your therapist like that that power dynamic is still there right it's still going to be kind of weird. Ethical or not I think socially it's just it's dicey water you know it's dicey water.

But the other thing that she brought up was, you know, she's sending him emails and saying how much she loves him and all of these things. And she goes, "That's the point that he should have transferred me." And this is where his perspective on this would be really helpful because here's the thing. Transference or feelings about a therapist or a person having what we would call like erotic transference or like sexual or romantic feelings for a therapist is not uncommon. Actually, it happens fairly frequently. And so this is something that can come up and actually be addressed within the therapeutic relationship in a very intentional and careful way. Um, but if you think about somebody like Kendra who says she has trauma, has a traumatic background, really feels like she's experienced a lot of trauma, has so-called daddy issues, she probably has attachment issues. And so, is it going to be the instinct of the therapist the second something like this that has the potential to get messy but can still be handled ethically? Is my first instinct going to say going to be to say to her, somebody with attachment issues, I can't see you anymore? Because we're working on attachment here. That could potentially be very painful for someone. And sometimes, is it the right thing to do regardless of whether has somebody has attachment issues or not? Absolutely. Absolutely. But without his perspective, we don't know. Like maybe he's trying to work through that stuff that she feels for him because he actually feels like they're getting somewhere and maybe that's why he continue and like when somebody's in this situation there's a lot that's happening.

Therapists are making a lot of intentional decisions there's a lot of documentation supervision consultation like you're doing a lot to make sure that you're doing what you need to be doing in the situation but I do not believe that attraction to a therapist to a therapist automatically means that that therapist needs to transfer you to somebody else I think it is absolutely something that you should be involved in. I think you should be involved in that decision. So, like, thank you for bringing that to my attention. Here's what I think about that. I think this is maybe something that we could potentially work through and still maintain professional boundaries given our work together. I think that's possible. But I also want you to have the option if you feel like this erodes too much into our work or it is not productive for us to have a therapeutic relationship while you have these attractions towards me. It is absolutely up to you to transfer to somebody else. And maybe that is a point where again if that's what he was doing because we don't know he could have said that. I don't know. Maybe that's the point where he could have made a different suggestion or at least given her the option of transferring to somebody else because of the feelings and her own her therapist at that time also should have been bringing this up with her. But again, sometimes depending on what's coming up for people in therapy, their trauma history, their behavior, their patterns, their diagnosis, sometimes that's going to be that's going to get in the way of you being able to do any of the things that we're talking about right now. Sometimes people don't have the insight to see that at that point in time. Be that because of trauma, because mental illness is impeding behavior too much, because they're in a crisis, like whatever the situation might be, all of that. It's generally possible that these people could have been trying to bring this to Kendra's attention and it went right over her head for whatever reason, right? That happens to the best of us. Our own stuff clouds our judgment, clouds our decision-making. We have a warped perspective on things. So, I just think it's unfair to say that he should have immediately dropped her. I think he maybe should have given the option to transfer to another therapist if he didn't, but I don't think he necessarily did anything wrong.

And when we're just operating from the framework of what we know, like we know she has ADHD and rejection sensitivity is really common. And I'm sure if he's taking at least that into account, it's a very careful decision. There's probably a lot of other things that he might be taking into account that we don't know. Nobody's privy to that. Right. So, there's there's so much to be considering before you're just like, I'm going to just drop you onto somebody else's desk cuz I don't want to [ __ ] deal with that. Cuz I mean, if that happened to me, if my my uh nurse practitioner was just like, "Yeah, you need to see somebody else." I'd be like, "That's traumatic." Huh? It can be traumatic. People. I mean, we talk about abandonment, like client abandonment in a therapy context because sometimes therapists just do that. And there's a reason that we have ethical codes that say we shouldn't be doing that because it's traumatic. It's very harmful to the client.

Welcome back to another installment of I was in love with my psychiatrist and he kept me anyway, part eight. I just we're on part eight, which is technically nine because she made one in between. Um, because people had found where she was working and I don't know if they fired her or they did fire her. She's no longer working there now. Um, because she brought her personal life into the workplace and the workplace didn't appreciate it. Hi. We had to uh cut and start filming on another day. Surprise. We're in new clothes. It is a labor of love. We try to do our best, but sometimes sometimes it can't happen all at once. Sometimes it can't all happen at once. Anyway, let's get on with We were in the middle of part eight last time. Let's just get on with it and I will cut it to the right part.

You all did some nasty work last night and I had to turn off comments. Um, people started posting my psychiatrist's first and last name, his picture in the comments. That was a jump scare. So, yeah, a few bad actors who wanted to be super sleuths got the privilege of commenting. Mostly hate. Let's be real. Super sleuths when you've basically given them all the information that is needed to find this man. But, okay. Uh, taken away for everyone. So, at this point in the story, there are two main players. My psychiatrist, who's my age, who crossed major ethical boundaries.

This might be just me reading into things, but when I say that, I think she has a very well articulated and developed narrative around this experience. This is what I mean. Because intentionally or unintentionally, she's talking about this like it's a story. A story that's very well rehearsed in her head. And I'm not saying she's making anything up, but I'm saying the way that she's interpreted the events that have happened, she has a very particular way, like we all do with events, a very particular way that she has interpreted things. But it is, it almost seems like there's too much levity to a situation where you feel like you've been abused by a predator to then be like, there's two players in my story. And like, I get trying to bring some humor into it, but it just reads as off to me. Well, especially like we talked about earlier when it seems like you don't offer him the opportunity to introduce levity or being a human into the situation when he was like, "Oh my, these are my special interests." Sure. Because that's how I took it. Yeah. And we could all be wrong. Who the [ __ ] knows? But again, I'm trying to have empathy for her here, but I think her attachment to this narrative might be superseding the reality of the situation at hand. Or not even necessarily the reality, but acknowledging a different perspective about this situation. And we're all we all get to a point where we're so entrenched in our own stuff that it becomes hard to see other perspectives. But in a situation like this, especially when somebody is being accused of something very serious, I think it's important to consider the role of trying to bring in other perspectives without getting too deeply entrenched into your own narrative.

And my therapist, who is a 75-year-old woman with a PhD. Neither of these people at this point in the story, I knew were crossing boundaries. I thought that everything was hunky dory and that I was just in love with my psychiatrist and it was totally normal. Little did I know he was manufacturing everything so I could fall in love with him because it was on him to set the professional boundary and not let attention build. So in this situation I'm a little bit confused because when she describes the story it's in its entirety I see a lot of examples where he's trying to set boundaries. The first one that comes to mind is when she will later on talk about how she wanted to see him in person and he didn't really make in-person appointments readily available to her. To me, unconsciously without telling her, that is a boundary. Or when he later says, "We have a professional relationship, that's a boundary." So, it seems to me that there are things that he is doing and probably other things that she won't even mention because she was not aware of them that were boundaries, but it's her discomfort with the boundaries that is the problem.

Days after my psychiatrist's Christmas morning appointment from a few videos back where he got a crush confession from me and then 30 minutes of nonstop intimate content that he did not stop me. 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 this is the introduction of a third mental health professional in the story. In the story, this is kind of like a side quest, honestly, if I'm going to liken it to something. This this the story that she's about to tell has almost nothing to do with any of the other stuff, but it is really important to include because of the pattern that we're seeing with mental health professionals who is possible that they are acting unethically or outright outright just morally wrong. Mhm. Like you'll see in this one. Yeah. But I don't think it's at the instance rate that it seems to be occurring in Kendra's story of her life. Seems like we have a weird instance rate incidence rate happening here.

And I was like, "Oh, great. Someone who will be able to emotionally meet my needs immediately." Right? I want you to have a partner who can emotionally meet your needs. But who is responsible for meeting your emotional needs? You, you are. So the idea that like that this is how she's looking at relationships and this is no shade to Kendra because this is the majority of us like the majority of us fulfill our emotional needs via relationships and then when all our childhood stuff comes out to play and the relationship dynamic we're like oh my god why is this happening? There's emotional needs right that are unmet. So like yes your partner can meet some of your emotional needs but if you're relying on your partner to solely meet your emotional needs then I'm concerned. And I'm 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 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, "Well, I shouldn't tell you that cuz I really shouldn't be visiting her anyway." I was like, "Okay, no problem." 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. Mind you, I had no idea that my psychiatrist had similar feelings towards me at this point.

But what evidence do we have of that? Like what is happening that she's drawing that conclusion from other than his boundaries because what I see is her interpreting his boundaries as he's hiding his feelings. So like he's instituting the professional boundaries because he actually loves her and he's afraid that if he doesn't have the boundaries there then he's going to act on it when in reality that's not the reason for a boundary. The reason for the boundary is to pro like to protect the professional relationship. But I think that's how she's interpreting the boundary. Like he's doing these behaviors with me because it's the only thing that's keeping him from like falling into my arms and falling in love with me. You know what I mean? Which is not necessarily the reality of why a therapist would institute boundaries like this. It's for protection for you and them. But also, if this is real, like this is all very obvious boundary crossing, reportable, dual relationships, inappropriate contact, like all of this is huge. No, no, no, no, no, no. In terms of therapists and he could actually be reported for this behavior and with confidence, I could fairly say with confidence that it would probably be investigated because it is sexual in nature. So, like this is very black and white, right? Like we look at something like this and go, "Oh yeah, there were definitely violations here that were inappropriate and not okay, but with Kendra's situation, we're all left kind of confused." You know what I mean? Like, don't do a drinking game with how many times I say confused in this video cuz you're going to die. But, you know what I mean?

It's also interesting that the the story that she's telling in this instance is reflecting the story that she's already been telling us where he's saying I just know that she's wearing these pink frilly undies. Maybe she got maybe she got them for me undies. I don't know. Uh for me, which she said she was going to wear the turtle shell glasses for him because he said he they're his favorite. Isn't it interesting? We have mirroring going on.

So, when I'm talking about things like this and it being really unlikely, what are the [ __ ] odds that one, she's finding three professionals who are supposedly crossing crazy boundaries, major ethical violations and that also one of them is describing a situation that's exactly like hers supposedly. It just isn't that bizarre? Sounds fishy. Sounds fishy. But I just thought, "Wow, this man is borderline predatory." And he said, "Yeah, and you know, why is that borderline predatory? Why is that not just predatory?"

Another reason why this is just really hard to believe is it seems like she's creating a foil character for. Yeah. Because this guy after this story does not come up. No, but he has a weird role in the story, but only to like reflect it back. To the audience essentially. Right? If this is true, that's [ __ ] awful and this absolutely should not happen, but it should. I mean, it's hard for me to sus to suspend my disbelief when I hear like such interesting coincidences.

Well, yeah. And I mean, here's the thing is I believe that Kendra believes that these things happened the way that Kendra believes that they happened. I believe that. I believe that these are her interpretation of the events and I believe that she feels that she is wronged and I believe that in any situation if you feel you are wronged you should explore that and get curious with that and see what needs to be done like do we need some restorative stuff do we need some repair work like what is happening to take care of myself and maybe seek justice something for the situation that happened but the problem becomes when your interpretation of events might not be accurate. Right. Well, and if you're coming to the internet in order to warn people about situations like this. Wouldn't you want the people who are perpetrating like major ethical violations to also be held accountable instead of just coming on here and like having a lot of eyes on your story and getting validation like I don't know just something to consider.

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 what the Okay. Um, and yeah, 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. Are we Well, we did a little joint head movement there. That was great. I know. I'm gonna But are we are we clocking that? There's kind of a theme here. This is dangerous. Like we talk about we talk about mental health stigma a lot, right? Like we society in general, I think we're getting better about recognizing mental health stigma and trying to aid against it. But what she's doing unintentionally is directly contributing to mental health stigma. And unfortunately because of her role in her job, there might be secondary gain or benefit or purpose to shaming people or like making people leery of pursuing somebody in the mental health industry which is deeply deeply deeply concerning and literally the opposite of what we do on the show. But you know that I will not not acknowledge that there are shitty ass people out there. Unfortunately, this is a reality in every field, doctors, everybody. Like there are shitty therapists out there. It seems ironic because you got to work on your own [ __ ] to be a therapist, but a lot of people don't. Some therapists don't. So, I'm not saying that there's not bad mental health professionals out there, but to blame the whole field and just be like, "Oh, well, all mental health professionals are predatory, so this is what you can expect." Like, that's doing harm. That's doing harm. I understand that that's your experience and I understand that you can warn people about when a therapist crosses boundaries that that's not the right therapist for you and you can report that and you can find somebody better. I'm totally on board with that. But to say as a whole that mental health professionals are prot are predatory, you've lost me. That's why we're making this video. That's why I have an issue with this.

Because what is the difference between this and someone who is out there preaching that vaccines cause autism whole on the whole bad that they're going to harm people that they're giving you a virus that you know if you don't get them then you'll be a pure blood all this whatever based on anecdotes of their child being vaccine injured or whatever they're throwing everything out because of bad experiences with doctors and so forth. Wow, keyboard warriors in the comments. I can hear. How yeah, don't come at me with that on that subject. But like, how is this really that different from that subsection? Because I know a lot of people in our audience definitely don't like that side of things. And now we're kind of seeing a different side of things where a woman who's an ADHD coach, which already kind of a red flag with the coaching, but like we're doing coaching and it's very expensive and I don't know that she's trying to paint she's trying to paint mental health professionals. Isn't that convenient? Like isn't that kind of like a a business or like a marketing strategy almost of where I can say don't go to a therapist for ADHD? Don't go to a don't go to a psychiatrist. Don't go to a psych. Obviously, these are terrible experiences. Go to a coach. Like I am a firm believer that personal experience brings a lot to the table in terms of expertise. I am a firm believer therapists who have ADHD and treat people with ADHD, I think you have a unique position to help people because you understand it more deeply than somebody else or therapists with trauma. That is my personal belief. But to be like, no, don't do any don't get help. Don't get research supported, evidence supported, actual help. Go to a coach instead who has no obligation to protect your privacy, your like any protected health information, any of your issues, who is not reliable or held responsible or accountable to any board anywhere for any kind of unethical behavior. Like, isn't that kind of ironic that she's talking about crossing boundaries and [ __ ] where there's you're not abiding by anything but your own personal values, and that doesn't mean [ __ ] to me if it harms me. I don't know. Y'all know not to get me on my coach soap box.

So, this is when the chemistry really started going off the charts with me and my psychiatrist. And I held it alone for months, like after that Christmas morning. And then after I innocently told him about my date with the therapist, um, he really started letting me in more and showing more parts of himself and, you know, turning up the intimacy. And I don't think we really explained it and she didn't touch on it as much as I thought as she did. Maybe later she will, but when she talks about the Christmas morning appointment, she was talking about how she described to him that she was having intimacy issues with her boyfriend and then he was apparently like, "Let's explore that." And then she just like dumped on him like 30 straight minutes of like very intimate like sexual experiences and everything like that. And she's implying that he really got that So anyway, that was exciting to me and it made me fall for him more. And I noticed that he was working in an office and I asked him, this was like July. I asked him, I said, "Hey, um, are you working from home?" Cuz I was under the assumption that he was only doing telehealth. Okay. And he said, "No, I come into the office." I was like, "Oh, why do you do that if you see all of your patients telehealth?" He's like, "Oh, I just I like it that way." And even though I could kind of tell he was lying, I just gas lit myself. I was like, "Okay, what is he lying about?" And then um I start emailing him my fun little emails, but he stops writing me back. He does not write back to my emails anymore. Um, cuz once again he was really good at plausible deniability. But what he did do is he would take my emails and mention them in session. So he would this is exactly how you approach this as a therapist in an ethical way. I have done this. I personally believe that this is a fantastic way to go about it. And if you've never been in therapy before, you don't know what to expect. Like can I email you between sessions? Do you respond? Like this is a conversation that generally people have and if it becomes an issue I will address it or bring it up in terms of like you know when I'm with you I am on the hour you have my undivided attention I am yours for the hour and we are here to discuss anything that you want to discuss but in between I'm seeing other people I am doing other work. I am being a mom. I am being a parent. I am juggling 30,000 other hats. I'm being a YouTuber. So like obviously I'm not going to have time necessarily to respond to your email. What I will do is make note of it and then I will bring it up in session with you. And this is really good if you're dealing with somebody who, you know, is struggling with the therapeutic boundary or therapeutic boundaries is like you keep it you keep it really tight, right? Like I'm not going to converse with you outside of therapy sessions. Like that's not the kind of therapy that I do and I don't think it's the kind of therapy that he does. And so it is not inappropriate or unethical or like a reflection of him doing a bad job as a psychiatrist that he's not responding to her emails outside of session. This is pretty standard unless you're like a DBT therapist who engages with a client a lot out of session. So like generally speaking, the idea that like he's and maybe this is part of it is she feels it sounds to me like she feels wounded because he's not responding like he's not reciprocating. And again, what I see here from looking at this through a therapist lens is like this is a boundary. Like she's potentially pushing for too much contact and he's trying to rein it back in. I'm not going to respond to your emails. I will respond to the content of your emails in session. That is a fantastic way as a therapist.

To handle that, especially from an attachment and trauma-informed lens. Like I'm not going to sit here and like dwell on the fact that you've emailed me on a session outside a session and make a big deal out about it, like a big deal about it. Let's talk about it in session. Like I think that's truly is a good way to handle that.

Well, and even just looking at it from labor wise, like it's important to have boundaries and when you're not on the clock.

Right? Is it really fair to be expecting anybody a professional that you are paying to see?

Yes. To be responding to fun little emails from you.

Yes. In any other context, would that be appropriate? Especially a professional one. Unfortunately, that's just the way it is. Yeah.

You know, like unfortunately I as a therapist also exist under this horrendous capitalist structure that we all exist under, right? So, like I also have to be mindful of my time and I don't get paid to respond to emails. I don't get paid to do clerical or admin work. Like I don't get paid to do any of those things. And I yes, I took that on by doing this job. But I think it models as a therapist good boundaries in the essence that I'm not going to respond to you outside of session because that I'm not on the clock.

That isn't my time. If it's something pertinent, if this is like an emergency or a crisis, then yes, I will address that as it's warranted. But he didn't do anything wrong here by not responding outside of session. And if she had an expectation about that and was disappointed in that, I would want her to bring it up with me. Bring it into the room. I get really disappointed when you don't respond to my emails. Okay, let's talk about that. Like, this is all opportunity for therapeutic work to be done. And maybe that's why she's not bringing it up is he is trying to do therapeutic work around that, but it's not clicking for her.

Well, and above all, it's a professional relationship.

Yep. You should not have a personal relationship with your professional.

Yeah. Like texting about scheduling or sending emails for clarification about something is one thing.

Um or like something here and there, but like beyond that, generally speaking, most therapists don't communicate with clients outside of session.

give me the attention that I was craving, but only under his structure, under his control, where there was no. So, this is where I also have a hard time with what is he doing wrong in this specific instance. Like, the attention that she says he's giving her is the attention of them communicating in therapy and session because what else is he supposed to do there? Like I don't like she's implying that he's doing something wrong by giving her this attention, but I don't see what else he could be doing in this situation. That's what confuses me.

Betrayal. And I loved that, too. So, I would show up to these sessions with my notes app and just throughout the month as I was thinking about him, I'd write down things that I wanted to talk to him about and I would just come and bring him lots of content. And then every week I would go to my therapist and tell her about how much I loved my psychiatrist. And she didn't help me at all. She just kind of like enjoyed hearing about it honestly. So October again I What does that mean? Like she enjoys hearing that you're in love with your psychiatrist. I don't on what planet? Like I'm confused by I'm confused by what she thinks these people are getting out of this.

Right? Because like again and we only have one perspective. Her therapist could have been trying to bring this up in varying ways and trying to bring it up in a non-confrontational or a less direct way so it doesn't harm the therapeutic relationship or that cause an attachment injury. Like we only have one side of this story and it just doesn't sit right with me that this therapist was just like, "Yeah, [ __ ] love hearing about how you're in love with your psychiatrist. Tell me more." Like I I don't I don't know. And if she really was doing that, like, good thing you don't see her anymore because yeah, that sounds like a shitty therapist. But again, I have a hard time believing that.

24 rolls around and we're just vibing on Zoom. And then I realized that I didn't have my next appointment with him. So, I called this office staff and I talked to the office manager who was awesome. We really got along. We vibed.

And the office manager asked me, "Do you see him psychiatrist in person or on Zoom?" And I felt so angry in that moment. I was like, "He sees people in person?" And she said, "Yeah, he has been for years." I was like, "I want to see him in person." And I understand like some people may think that this is part of my crash out or part of me harassing him, which is what I've gotten lots of um accusations of. But I just would like to remind everyone that of course it seems that way. Um, but I was just responding to a dynamic which my psychiatrist fostered. There was chemistry be between us because he allowed it.

And so then the next time I saw him in Zoom, I told him I was like, "Hey, your office manager outed you and told me that you see people in person." But did he I mean this was only a few videos ago. Did he not tell her that he sees some people in person and some people on Zoom? Is that not what he said or am I remembering correctly?

I don't think he did that. He Cuz when she asked him, he was like, "Oh, I just like to come into the office."

Oh, okay. See, this affirms my belief that this is a boundary that he has without communicating it to her.

Right. Because you know, if you're dealing with attraction in a therapeutic relationship, a strategy that might make overcoming that easier if you want to continue the therapeutic relationship and both people are on the same page is to not meet in person.

Right? Like if we remove the imperson element, if that helps the person that wants to move out of the attraction and get into the therapeutic work, again, lots to be discussed in there consensually, but if that's what's happening or if it's just his personal boundary of I don't see certain people or certain things depending on what the boundaries are, what my concerns are or what the presenting issue is or if it's more effective. Like there could be lots of reasons for this, but she automatically assumes it's because of a certain reason that means something to her.

Right.

Right. It's he's hiding his attraction to me because he couldn't resist me if he saw me in person. Whereas I think the most likely scenario in this is he's aware of how she feels about him and is trying to mitigate that by keeping some decent separation in the room.

Well, and she's talking about the environment that he's fostering because he knows that there's chemistry between them and she is pushing to be in the same room as him.

So, if she's violating that boundary, like she's continually pushing if this is truly his boundary. And again, nobody knows

if she's if he's fostering this situation, then she is also seemingly actively working toward having a relationship that is more than just professional.

Yeah. why didn't you tell me that when I asked? And he said, "Oh, I just didn't think you'd want to come in." And that was such a weak lie from him from someone who is so scripted and controlled. He didn't even have a plausible thing to say.

Of course, I don't necessarily disagree with her here. I think he was unsure of what to say.

Right? Which is fair because he's if he has that boundary in place and he hasn't talked to her about it and now she's bringing it up and she's already feeling a little bit antagonistic about it, he's going to have to think really carefully about how he wants to handle this.

She was really confrontational in the way that she brought it up too in danger mode.

If he feels like he needs to handle this with oven mitts and very carefully like a little birdie or whatever, then he's probably like, "How do I say this without really hurting you?"

Exactly. He knew I wanted to come in. I had a crush on him. I told him that often. 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 and you better believe I 100% believe the therapist said this and I understand the intent with which she said it. But do you see how easily this was misinterpreted.

Right? Because she like Kendra is taking that and going, "Oh my god, the sexual tension is between both of us."

Well, and you saw the face she made about it. She was giddy.

She's giddy over that. Versus what the therapist is probably coming across is like, "Your sexual tension is going to be present in the room, which is probably going to be uncomfortable for him." Hello. So, I don't think the therapist necessarily did anything wrong here. Could she have maybe described this a little bit better? And maybe Kender tuned all of that out and only listens to this piece and that was it. Who knows? But all of this again, we just have a weird mix of events that is lining up really weirdly based on the narrative that she has.

I showed up to the next session and said, "You lied to me because you were afraid of the tension that would be there between us." He just didn't say anything. October 2024, I make my first in-person appointment with my psychiatrist in November. my 75-year-old female therapist 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, which further fed my crush or as some of you like to say, my delusion.

So then my therapist, I don't necessarily think it's a delusion. Like I don't want to come across like I empathize with Kendra, but I think what the issue is is she's unable to take in these other perspectives as possibilities.

Right? Like if we're unable to even engage with them, like if somebody brings up an alternative and you get super defensive, super wounded, it's bringing up a lot for you. Not going to say that the feelings aren't valid because they are, but like why does that cause that reaction? Why am I getting so defensive at a possibility? Because if we're not defensive about the possibility, we can look at the other things and go, "Yeah, maybe not. Yeah, that's something I could maybe consider. Maybe I do need to explore that a little bit further." But she is very much attached to her perspective of things. And if there's an inability to take in anything else with levelheadedness, with neutrality, then I think we're like there's something to that. Like there's something there emotionally that needs to be explored. And I think this is also I mean people are like you're delusional. This is those comments are not helpful.

No, they're the same comments that I see. There's a guy who comes up on my Instagram pretty regularly. He's a little too into numerology. He believes that his ch his child was kidnapped by the courts because they're controlled by a satanic cabal. It's the same amount of helpfulness as the person who's at the top of the comment section saying get this man a registered firearm.

Like it's unhelpful. What what is to b and I mean this is a larger conversation, right? Is like what is the role of social media in these kinds of things? And is this just like a Gabby Hannah effect all over again? like, you know, we stigmatize mental health, but then we love to watch the people who are crashing out. Like, you know, I think

if it's a lull cow, then we're going to overlook anything that could possibly be contributing. We're going to shut down our empathy because they're acting inappropriately. In this case, I think she's acting inappropriately. If, you know, if people think it's funny or it's entertaining or whatever, we're going to overlook a lot of those things that normally we would be very concerned about.

Sure. Which is really disappointing.

Yeah.

starts texting me in between our weekly meetings asking me for advice on her other clients. And I was a new coach. I had only been coaching for about a year and I like had just left my full-time job to be a coach full-time. And I was flattered that she would ask me advice on her other clients. I just thought, "Oh my gosh, a 75-year-old woman with a PhD wants my advice on what she should do with her clients." Here's another situation where I feel like she's appealing to authority to bolster her reputation as a coach

because she's saying the the message that she's conveying to us is that I am so good at what I do that even the 75year-old PhD therapist is going to cross ethical boundaries and want to essentially use me as a sounding board for her own clients. So,

I would call this inappropriate. That is interesting cuz who really knows? But if this is what happened, it is inappropriate because I mean other people might have different perspectives on this. But I would file this under like things that we try to avoid in therapy, which is like a dual relationship. Like I am your therapist. I am not somebody I am not a client of yours. I am not a coaching client where you can give me advice about how to deal with my other clients. Like asking a current client for advice of how to deal with your other clients is just really inappropriate anyway. Any therapist worth their salt I feel like knows better than to do something like that because it's just inappropriate.

Someone with one a PhD but also such a long she's been in this field for a long time presumably. So like all that is just weird to me. So then November rolls around and I'm about to meet my psychiatrist in person for the first time.

Well, notice how she just inserts that boom. Absolutely no connection to the the story.

So I wear a really pretty dress. I do my makeup. Of course, right. Um, and I show up and I get to talk to the office manager. We're having fun. And then my psychiatrist comes into the foyer and I am just so excited to finally meet him. I'd been his patient for three years at this point and he had been feeding the dynamic for three years and I was just thrilled thrilled to meet him and I ran up and I gave

I'm thinking about this right now. three years that would and she's meeting him one time a month uh with a couple more times before then at the beginning of when she was trying to get her meds dialed in. So like we'll call it 40 appointments of 30 minutes each. Like they've only talked to each other for 20 hours total in those three years.

It's really not a lot. Like when you think about therapy or when you think about somebody who sees me on a weekly basis for an hour

for like six months, like that is really not a lot of time.

Yeah. And over 3 years, like it's even less.

Yeah. The biggest hug. And you know what he did? He barely patted me on the back. It was the most awkward thing ever.

This is a boundary violation. Fair and simple. it. Now, every therapist is going to have differing views on how they feel about like a hug in a therapeutic relationship. Now, I am not the moral authority on this. Every therapist gets to decide what they want to do here, but I would venture to guess that he was not comfortable with that, particularly given his reaction. And generally speaking, like I'm more of the belief that like I will hug a client after, you know, we're ending the therapeutic relationship. We've worked together for a long time and it's kind of the culmination of everything, right? And I will not initiate. They will ask me and I will give permission. Right? But these are like, you know, I'm talking about this circumstance and these are very rare, right?

Like these are very rare, very specific circumstances where all boundaries are maintained. my door is open to our to our entryway like in the lobby. Like there's no there's no wrongness here. But again, there might be some therapists out there who are like anti-touch, don't do it ever, right?

Just not my vibe. But the idea that she immediately went into this appointment by doing that after he was already not advertising that he could see her in person. and the fact that she has it in her brain that oh there's going to be a lot of sexual tension. Let's start it out with some physical contact

right

like

right that is completely if she's maybe this guy is v violating boundaries ethical or personal or whatever but she is 100% doing it as well.

Yes. Yes.

I am so glad that he did that. I am really glad because this is what I mean. My psychiatrist was many things, but he was not stupid. So, I didn't ever touch him again. And I'm grateful that our relationship didn't ever cross that line because it would have Are you though? And also, this is another thing where I take issue with her describing his behavior because she's even describing this hug as manipulative when he did not initiate. He did not initiate this hug. This was not his choice. It happened to him and then he responded probably the best way he knew how in the circumstance. Again, if you have somebody who is struggling with attachment, who has a lot of trauma and maybe they accidentally do that because they aren't aware of the therapy boundaries, and if you were to like push them off or be like, "No, we don't do that." Can you imagine what might come up for them in that moment? Now, sometimes with some people that might be appropriate, but again, this is kind of taking into account therapist, psychiatrist, people in mental health are always very intentional about what we choose to do and the way that we do it. And so how we handle certain things, how we approach certain things, body language, verbage, vocabulary, like all of those things are very, very, very intentional. And so I don't think it's fair to him to be like, oh, he was manipulative because of the hug when like this is not something that he asked for or initiated.

Well, and I don't think it's fair to tell to say that she is not on or she's not aware of kind of

his discomfort. Well, not only that, but how therapists operate because she's been seeing this whole three years that she's been seeing him. She's been seeing another therapist weekly.

For probably longer than 30 minutes.

Yeah. And she at the beginning of all this, she was like, I've had a lot of couch time. I've seen a lot of therapists. So, she is well aware of the dynamic that is appropriate.

Everything so much harder. Anyway, so we go inside his office and I tell him that my therapist had texted me asking me for advice on her other clients and he just looked at me and he said, "Kendra, that is a huge boundary violation. She should not be doing that." And I was like, "Oh, okay." And cuz once again, my psychiatrist did not like sloppy people. He did not like sloppy people. And you know what my therapist did? She got sloppy. Yeah. Um, using me as her advisor for her clients. It It got weird. And I was very grateful for my psychiatrist for pointing out that boundary violation because that was the thing. He didn't ever message me in between appointments because he was too smart to do that. But did he ever

again his maintaining an appropriate boundary in any therapeutic relationship, not just one where there's attraction is normal is what he should be doing here. So like, but she's interpreting that as like this is what he's doing to manipulate me to make sure that it doesn't show up on paper when it's like no, this is like standard. Like this is what we all do. And it's it's not because I don't want my clients to have a paper trail between us. It's because we maintain professional boundaries around the therapeutic relationship and each of our time.

Stop me from disclosing extremely intimate details. No. In my first inerson appointment, I just asked him for some pointers for my own ADHD business. And he's so smart and so wonderful and in many ways, honestly. And I was just so grateful that he was honest like a mentor to me in these moments. And I'll I'll still treasure that about him cuz

you see the pingponging, right? Well, and she described an inappropriate dual relationship with her therapist of her therapist is adi she's advising her therapist supposedly on her clients

potentially. And now here's another situation where he's like he's my mentor that

well this is where I'm confused like and I know that abuse in general is multiaceted, right? like you have people who have positive experiences with their abusers or positive memories or like that's all true here, but in how she talks about him, it's very much like it's not I had this necessarily good experience with him. It's like he was so smart, but he's also a predator, but it's like

right the story takes shape different ways and it almost seems contradictory at times.

Hard thing with sophisticated predators is that they're not all bad. Like my psychiatrist helped me with many things, but he was using me for the whole time that I was his patient. And for that, I won't ever forgive him. We have our first in-person appointment in November of 2024. And I did ask him for consent to come in person. I didn't just show up.

That's good. This is a boundary.

We like that. No issues there. I'm glad she asked and didn't just show up.

And he said, "Sure." And the first inerson appointment went great. But that is when I really started to spiral. Some of you think that I'm spiraling now. And that's okay if you want to think that because the reality is is that when I was spiraling was when I was this man's patient. When I had comments turned on, so many people said, "You need to take accountability for your own feelings." I spent years taking accountability for my own feelings for holding the weight of a relationship. Any woman who has been trained to overfunction in relationships knows about holding the weight of the emotional dynamic. And that was what was going on in this moment. And it may not seem like I'm taking accountability now, but that's because I spent a long time taking accountability for something that had two people that built that dynamic. It was not just me. It takes two people to build that sort of tension and chemistry.

might be controversial to say, but it doesn't because not all feelings are mutual. Like I I understand why looking at this narrative from where she's coming from would be very difficult to do because I would not want to look at this situation and look at the pain and the wounding from the fact that he did not return the attraction. I would not want to look at that as like self-inflicted. I would not want to look at that as like I caused this problem for myself. It is painful. Like I would want to look at this from a self-compassionate point of view of like, oh my gosh, I had intense attraction that created these feelings. Attraction, especially things like limrance or even sexual arousal can cloud judgment. Like there's a lot of things that contributed to maybe the way that I felt about this situation. And you know what? I'm going to have self-compassion and understanding and empathy towards myself for the fact that I ended up in this situation and maybe this is worth exploring with a mental health professional of like how I ended up here and has this happened to me before and does this bear any resemblance to things that I experienced in my childhood. Like there's room for growth there. But I wouldn't like I think the problem is is she thinks looking at this and saying, "Oh, it was one-sided. I created this narrative that he was attracted to me when he wasn't." is like admitting that she's like bad or wrong or like you know naive or something like that which I don't think I think this is a classic thing that happens to everyone where they have feelings for some like think about the analogy in our culture and how we treat like the one that got away or how we treat situationships because we as a society get really stuck and especially some of us with trauma or attachment issues get really stuck with people who do not return the feelings. or those feelings necessarily aren't mutual or maybe they are for a little bit and then they go away. Like this is a very common thing. So I think the problem is is she thinks that like it's bad or she's wrong or like she's a bad person or she's stupid or something like that for this situation happening when in reality I see this as a like especially as somebody who's experienced trauma or abuse or those things. I could easily see someone falling into this.

Right? But like I don't like I think that's the issue is she thinks there's something wrong with her for doing this which is why like her body and her brain are not allowing herself to come to that conclusion because it's it's possibly too painful. Whereas I'm like girl we all have the situations where we look at it and we're like there that was not I was a little bit too in like think about our young relationships. Think about high school. Think about college. Think about situationships in our 20s and 30s and 40s where we all get into situations and we're like, "Oh, I vastly read that wrong." Or like, "I got way too invested into this dude into this woman who was not giving me anything back or I lived off off of breadcrumbs in a relationship for way too long." Like those are things that happen to all of us. But it's like, you know, if you have trauma, if you have abuse, if there's certain mental things that are going on that are present, like it's going to protect you from that very painful possible reality, right? Like it's I think all of this is just a very protective part of herself trying to keep her safe from the hurt of acknowledging that maybe I did something here to create this and maybe it was more me. Maybe I had a role. That's hard. Nobody wants to do that. That just sucks. God, I can empathize with that so deeply. But I think that's the thing here is we're the protector part of herself is going to vast vast vast efforts to create to like to create a barrier from her and potentially the reality of the situation and the pain.

Right? Which is understandable. I get that. But like I would not blame her if she got on here and was like I got way too invested and I think I read things that weren't there. And I look back on it now and I'm like maybe there were some opportunities where he could have been more like I needed him to be more explicit with me. Like I needed him to say straight up, let's talk about this or let's talk about this more. Like I I realized I needed that and it didn't happen. And so that's why he wasn't the right therapist for me. And I would have been on [ __ ] board. But instead, we run with this narrative that he's a predator. And I just don't know that that's the case. And so then you lose me when I could have been on your team. And you don't have to give a single [ __ ] about me. And she probably won't even watch this. But like that's that's my read on potentially what's happening. And I think that's such a normal human experience.

Right? Normal human experience that I can have a lot of empathy and compassion for. Well, and especially if you want this to be like something that is for the masses as like a cautionary tale or things like that.

But instead, she's she's comparing this relationship situation to albeit shitty realworld relationship situations that are appropriate. Wherein this one, this is inappropriate from the get-go. you. It's inappropriate to enter into a romantic relationship with your provider with a professional. Yeah. It's it's socially inappropriate. It's, you know, ethically inappropriate and all those things. And so to recognize that it's inappropriate and that what she was doing was also inappropriate, totally devoid of power dynamics and everything like that. It's tough to acknowledge. I'm telling this story where someone was shitty to me, but do we really want to acknowledge the part that we played that was also shitty?

Well, yeah. Well, and that's tough. And mind you, I think how social media makes this in particular worse is those things that people are saying on the internet might be true, but because like they're going to create emotions in me and I'm going to get defensive. And then I'm going to do the worst thing that you can do when we're questioning a situation or getting curious is double down on my original position and essentially not let any other possible thoughts or possibilities enter onto the scene. Like that's when we get into danger is if we're not willing to consider other perspectives. Even if we reject them all, even if we reject them all and we're like, "No, I don't think any of those apply." Like the fact that we considered them, but like this is a scenario where instead of her maybe talking through this and processing and going, "Oh [ __ ] like it's not that nothing anything is necessarily my fault." like this is just something that happened. It's a pattern that I fell into. Like this isn't necessarily anybody doing anything wrong.

Right? But instead of getting to that conclusion, the internet has jumped on her back questioning and getting curious about this story and some people just outright bullying her and then she's she's going to double down. Like what do you expect her to do? And then this isn't an authentic healing experience anymore. Now we have this weird thing that I don't even know how to describe in a therapeutic way.

I don't even know how like

Right? the impact of something like this. I don't even know if that can be like explained or measured on a situation like this. Like I don't even know the entrance of social media into this dynamic is just I like as a therapist I don't even know how you begin to unpack or explain that. But it certainly doesn't help her. Like I can I can say that much. I feel like

I was mid crash out. I had just started using this tool chat GBT.

Great. I Okay, so full disclosure, we're gonna piss off people in the comments and I can hear the keyword warriors faintly in my ear. Um, we are like very anti- AI in this house, okay? Like we are in my job, in my profession. And it's not even like it's going to take my job. It's not. But like we are just very anti-AII. the environmental racism, the environmental impact, like the terrifying lack of regulation, how it's impacting the mental health field, its connection to capitalism and venture capital and like all these things. Like, we're just anti-AII over here. So, I will give that disclaimer going into this that anybody tells me that they're using AI and I don't love it. I'm not going to bring it up in a therapeutic way if it's not relevant because that's my stuff, not yours. But just full disclaimer, anytime AI is entering the scene, especially if somebody is struggling with their mental health, I think it might serve a purpose or have a positive impact. I've heard people who have said it has positive impacts for things like skills. What AI is never going to be able to give you is the relationship. And in my opinion, because I'm a psychonamic and very interpersonal related, rooted therapist, the therapeutic relationship is part of the healing. And you cannot have a relationship with a language learning model. So, I question AI's effectiveness in terms of providing mental health support. Plus, we're starting to see things like AI induced psychosis. We're starting to see things like um AI encouraging delusions or hallucinations or and I can't even begin to describe how scary that is. Or my personal beef, OCD and AI.

Bad news. Bad bad news. I say that as somebody with OCD. Reassurance is toxic for us OCD people. Reassurance fuels OCD and makes it bigger and worse. And AI can essentially be a constant loop of reassurance. So those are just some examples of why we have issues with AI. But the fact that AI is entering onto the scene here in a very weird way, I'm already concerned. I'm already concerned.

Not to mention the way that people are using it to uh just completely replace critical analysis and

Yes, things of that nature. Anyway,

I'm a boomer about AI. Like I know.

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 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

They can't do that. There's no logic.

They can't a a language learning model can't co-regulate you.

Also, the low-key homophobia. It's not that he doesn't like me and has set professional boundaries. It's that he's gay.

Yikes. Me, but he was like, whoa. Even my chat was like, yikes. So I could tell that my psychiatrist just liked being my doctor and I was like okay maybe I can name this dynamic so I don't have to carry so much of it in in our next session. So our next session was in December on Zoom and I told him at the end of the session it was another great session. I told him, "Look, you and I have a really special patient doctor relationship." And he glared at me with just venom in his eyes and he said, "You and I have a professional patient doctor relationship." He was so angry with me. And I was like, "Oh, okay. Set a boundary." And immediately I took it on and I was like heard. Okay, I won't go there again. My video that was taken down for harassment and bullying.

But she didn't though. Like this is I mean to me it doesn't really get more direct than this. I mean, we could probably get more like down to the wire explicit about like very specific scenarios, but in my mind as a therapist, this is very direct. To have a client say that to you and to respond, "We have a professional relationship," is a very direct comment to make.

Right? But the problem is is she didn't take that and go, "Okay, we don't have a special relationship." Understood. or talk to him about her feelings about like what's coming up for her about that because like as a therapist that's what I would be asking is like we have a professional relationship but I want to hear your thoughts around why this feels more special to you and maybe we need to kind of revisit some boundaries and talk about that and talk about what's coming up for you around that. Like I think it's possible to be direct but still gentle and clear in this and maybe he did and maybe she's just not telling us any of that. But like she doesn't stop the behavior here. Like there are other things that she does beyond this that seems to kind of continually push back at this. And so it's like it doesn't really feel fair for her to be like my therapist is just crossing all these personal boundaries when it seems like he puts boundaries in and she pushes them back.

Well, and she's earlier she's talking about, oh, he won't respond to my emails cuz he doesn't want the paper trail. Don't you think that in this situation when you're in his office and he's asserting that boundary with no paper trail, if he was trying to manipulate you, wouldn't he put that part in the writing or a paper trail?

Well, she probably he could gaslight you or or whatever. I don't know.

She probably hasn't seen his notes and there are like a few elements here. I mean, if I were him, I would be documenting all of this very clearly. But again, it just seems like her perspective is like he has these boundaries because he's like trying to keep himself from her when in reality it's like and she's operating off of like his desire instead of the boundary. like she's essentially ignoring the boundary and operating under the fact that he is desirous towards her and that's what's motivating her behavior because it's like how far can I push him before he'll cross a boundary.

Right. Right.

Or you know sometimes if we are people who have experienced trauma or abuse sometimes our brains unintentionally will recreate situations we've experienced before sometimes to kind of play out a different outcome or sometimes to play out the same outcome. Um, and maybe if I have a lot of rejection trauma or if I have abandonment trauma or if I have those things, this is an opportunity to unintentionally create a feeling of abandonment when my therapist eventually says, "I can't work with you anymore. You've pushed too many of my boundaries." And then I'm left feeling abandoned and like [ __ ] So, I'm not saying she's bringing these things on herself, but like this is a larger conversation that we like that I like to have with clients in therapy is like what is the unconscious things that are happening that might be motivators that might be impacting our current and present behavior? Because those are the things that usually get us into trouble. And it's not a thing to like shame you because you're doing that. It's like, oh my god, I have a pattern. I can take some power back in this situation and realize that I'm doing that and I can correct or I can repair or I can provide some empathy and validation for the part of myself that feels so wounded by my past experience that continues to play this out again and again. Like it's a real opportunity for like taking back control and taking back power. And so I think that's a fantastic thing to do in this kind of situation. But if you don't realize that that's what you're doing, then sometimes we just end up in these repeated situations continually and we're like, "Oh my god, why do I keep doing this? Why does this keep happening to me?" Without recognizing, "Oh [ __ ] am I doing anything here?" And this isn't like a blame yourself for abuse type of situation. Don't misconrue what I'm saying. This is like high level in terms of therapy, but like thinking about crap, do I do anything that unconsciously, like am I attracted to something like this unconsciously? Am I attracted to the unavailable men? And I'm like, "Oh [ __ ] I end up with the unavailable men." And then they leave me. And then I'm like, "Fuck, I'm back here again." And it's not like a shame thing. It's like, "Oh, I know why I do that now. I can do something with that. There's something that I need here. There's an unmet need. There's some repair work that needs to be done. There's an inner child in me that needs attention or direction." Like, then you have power back and can take control of that situation and go, "Okay, like I know that those are the things that feel familiar to my nervous system." Your nervous system is going to cling to what's familiar because it's familiar. It's comfy. Doesn't mean necessarily it's good, but your nervous system recognizes it and will go there. It's hard to create the other path. It's hard to make a conscious choice to pick the thing that's new and different and harder. And so, again, I can empathize with her so deeply because these are commonly held issues and I think more of the public would have resonated with her if she was able to explore it in that way. But again, she's also under no obligation to do any of that. She's just on the internet. So,

she's just a person on the internet and she doesn't owe us anything or any explanations. But here she is. And I'm like, man, I think she would have gotten a lot potentially more out of this and maybe even a lot more support instead of just like random online bullying if she approached it that way.

Yeah.

So, there's a lot to the AI part of this. um like you know people like I've seen from other Tik Toks like she has her AI call her the Oracle. Um she's super involved in like this kind of spirituality group if you will called human design which kind of has its own kind of weirdness and controversies. You know I'm not going to call it a cult. I don't know enough about it but there it has some things about it that just give weird vibes to me. But again,

Right, everybody has their weird things that they participate in. I don't have enough time to dive into the whole human design of it all. If you want to add information about human design in the comments, like be my guest. I don't know much about it. Um, but the AI thing with this is like it's very involved, right? Like she's communicating with her AI during the Tik Tok lives. Like she's talking back and forth with it kind of like it's a person. like she acknowledges the impacts of AI but like compares it to like being vegan or like you know everybody has their choices. I don't think that's a great way to look at this. I think AI is a whole different animal in this conversation. But that's just me and so you know AI being a concern in mental health is really its own kind of content video. It really needs its own time if we were to dive into that. But just know that I'm aware of those things and I I personally think that AI does a whole lot to worsen people in scenarios like this. Um, especially since, you know, I think it's changed since the most recent update, but especially since the last one was like reassuring people and gassing people up so heavily, it's really hard to even find alternative perspectives around that unless you're very specifically asking for it. And so I think there's a lot of danger in that.

Well, and notably with the most recent of chat GPT, the update, um when the update happened, they um essentially removed access to the the older versions, all older versions of chat GPT40 and and everything like that. And there were a lot of people who were very upset because of that kind of dynamic that they had with this with Chad GPT. And notably, Kendra when that update went live and she no longer had Henry as she knew it was no longer using Henry for a period of time. So, do with that what you will.

Yeah. Oh, hi there. The last two videos and this video was all the same session in February of this year. The counter transference slip happened in January. How I decided to end this session was I

so important context here. So she one she's bringing AI into sessions with her psychiatrist and saying my AI thinks that you're doing XYZ which is interesting to me that it t like it says something I think about the therapeutic relationship that I would want to be curious about if a client were to bring like AI says this about how you're treating me in therapy versus just telling me. Um, I don't think that that's necessarily a wrong thing or a bad thing, but I think it is an interesting thing to note as part of their therapeutic relationship. But essentially, Henry, her AI made her familiar with the concept of transference, which is like, you know, your own personal feelings about the therapeutic relationship or things coming up in session, which everybody experiences transference. Counter transference is the idea that the therapist is having feelings about what's happening in the room or having feelings about the person in the room.

Like your own stuff is coming up as a result of the content. So, like, you know, a client talks about something, like, as an example, a client brings something up and it touches on something from my childhood and it's triggering, like something like that would be countertransference. Now, it's my job as a professional to manage my countertransference and deal with my countertransference. So it's not impacting the therapeutic relationship in a way that's not productive.

Countertransference can be useful sometimes. Like an example that I give is if I'm feel, if I'm working with a client and I'm feeling like we're, we're stuck or we're like hitting a lot of dead ends. Like, that's the feelings that I'm getting about what's happening between us. I will, if it's productive, I will bring it up in session and be like, "Man, I feel like all these solutions that we've been trying, we're getting stuck. Like, I'm feeling stuck. How are you feeling about that?" Like, again, very specific situations and scenarios, but can be productive overall to utilize in the session.

So Henry made her familiar with this concept and he said, "Oh, so like she brought it up to the psychiatrist and he said, 'Oh, so like, are you familiar with countertransference then?'" And so I don't know what the rest of the conversation looked like, but she refers to this as the countertransference slip and she refers to this as an acknowledgement that he has feelings for her. So my therapist's thought on that is that every therapist ever experiences countertransference various times, numerous times, all of the time. Like, countertransference is something that happens to every therapist. It would be impossible as an emotion-experiencing human to not have countertransference come up in therapeutic work. And so, to me, the ad, like this idea that there is an admission of countertransference implies that one, she doesn't understand it, and two, it's again being used to kind of support the narrative that she already has about their relationship with the psychiatrist.

And I said, "Couple weeks ago on the full moon when I was ovulating, I had a dream about you." And he was like, "Oh yeah." I said, "Yeah." So I told him this and I said, "Yes, we hooked up right here in this office." And he all of a sudden just looked so uncomfortable. Bingo.

"I wonder why that might be." Like, really, we don't need to read or assess into this any more than that. He was uncomfortable because you're making him uncomfortable with what you're doing. And she's already established what she has told us with her Christmas morning appointment with him where she was describing, you know, sexual interactions that she'd had with her boyfriend and all this. Apparently, he's interested in that kind of thing, as per what she's been saying. And now she brings the idea of that happening between the two of them and he's uncomfortable. So, it's not lining up with what she's already told us.

No. The body language. If that were true, would he not be ecstatic about her saying, "I had a sexual dream about you last..." a couple weeks ago?

And again, it all comes down to intention. I'm not saying that if you have a sexual dream about your therapist, to not bring it up because, as a therapist, depending on your intention, I could see exploring that. What's happening there? Like, sometimes dreams are sometimes just dreams and they mean absolutely nothing. Sometimes it's a subconscious thing. Sometimes it's a trauma thing. Like, there could be a lot of things happening there. So I'm not saying don't talk about your sex dream with your therapist, but I'm saying Kendra's intention in bringing up the sex dream is very specific. It is designed to elicit this relationship that she thinks is happening between them and to get a reaction from him. Right?

"He didn't say anything. He couldn't look at me. He couldn't breathe." And you... hello. He's so uncomfortable. You're noticing, like, an emotion, like a nervous system response, and your reaction is to assume that it's that he's reciprocating this. Comfortable because he didn't like me saying that I had a dream where we hooked up. But he could have said that, but he didn't. You want to know why he was uncomfortable? Because he had probably played out that fantasy so many times in his head. And there I was speaking it back to him. And it was like I had psychically downloaded one of his fantasies.

I'm sorry. I can't endorse this. I can't because there is no reference point for reality. Right? Because she cannot, like her saying that is not reality. I'm not calling her crazy. I'm not saying she's making anything up. I'm saying that this is not reality. Him responding in this way where she psychically downloaded one of his fantasies is not reality. Saying that she's confident that she's speaking his fantasies to life is not reality because she doesn't know. He's never talked about it. It's never been something that's been brought up in session by him. Like, this isn't me invalidating her story. This is point blank saying she cannot say this is reality because it's not.

Even if he said that was the case, that's just not possible. What? Like, how did we get here? And I said, "Yes, we hooked up in this office." And I really liked it while it was happening. He could not move or breathe. And then I told him as he was still looking very uncomfortable. Then when we were done and I left, I was distraught with sadness because in the dream, I thought, "I cannot believe that he crossed boundaries in that way because his boundaries are so important to him." And then I told my psychiatrist that I w...

That also leads me to believe that they have had more conversations about boundaries than she has let on. Up and thought, "Oh my god, it was just a dream. Thank God." And it was like my psychiatrist turned into a little boy and he looked at me and he said, "So you do like my boundaries?" And I said, "I love your boundaries. I hate your boundaries, but I love them more." There's the push and pull, the trauma bond, because once again, now you've lost me. Now you've lost me. What? Like...

We've been lost this entire time. We have been lost this entire time. But like his, in my opinion, reading the room based on nothing else than Kendra's narrative, his response that was perceived by her as excitement is probably because she's acknowledging the boundary. He's doing a lot of probably unacknowledged or indirect boundary keeping as the therapist and managing the container of the relationship. And so for her to acknowledge, to bring it up in space in the room, "I like your boundaries." That's an opportunity for discussion, right? We can explore there. So like, I've always wondered how you have felt about the boundaries that I've put in place. Maybe, you know, it was wrong of me maybe to assume that you didn't like those. I I would assume that these would be hard for you, but it sounds like that hasn't been your experience. Can you tell me more? Like, this is an opportunity to bring the thing that is causing so much discomfort for him into the center of the room. Not like the weird elephant sitting in the corner.

Bring it into the room. Sit it in front of us and let's have a conversation about it. And yes, he's probably doing some things because again, if we're dealing with attachment injuries and trauma, how he is handling this is probably very delicate, very specific, and like very intentional. Like, that's what we're looking for. And so it's not just, I don't think he was ignoring the things that were happening. I don't think we're getting the full picture and the full story. And if he is ignoring it, then yes, that's a problem. Like, that's a problem. He needs to bring this up. But again, we're getting a very skewed version of events, I think, of what was actually happening. And so it's hard to even come out here and make an assessment of who should have done what or been doing what because who the hell even knows?

Used his boundaries as protection while exploiting me. Huh?

So, I told him about what happens when I ovulate and my desires, and he listened, cuz of course he did. And then I decided that it seemed like enough time had gone by and I put my shoes on and started heading to the door, and he met me at the door, which he does not usually do. He didn't ever do that. You just let me leave. And we stood at the door and I was like, "Will you get the door?" And he scrambled. He was like, "Oh, sure, sure, sure." So he went and got the door and then he followed me down the hallway to the foyer and watched me exit. And he asked me, he said, "See you next month." "See you next month." He hadn't ever asked me that before. And I looked at him and I said, "Maybe." And I walked out the door. And I saw that man had let us go 15 minutes over session. And that is when you know the special treatment started. The longer sessions. He usually gave me an extra five minutes, but yeah, the sessions got longer.

Do you see what I mean in terms of pushing boundaries? Like, session lengths are a boundary. We don't necessarily like to think of them that way, but they are kind of protective in that it's protective for me, it's protective for you. We both know what's expected. Like, that time is important. And so, yes, could he have maybe done better with time management? Sure. But could I also see a therapist in this position being totally thrown off their game and kind of having to take a minute to regulate and figure out how you want to handle it? Because what people don't understand is when you're in that situation as a therapist, you're you're thinking on your feet. You're thinking on your feet and you're having to be very intentional about what is coming out of your mouth and how you're handling a situation and how you want to handle it delicately. And so I wouldn't be surprised if he was just kind of like having to reorient himself and figure out how he wanted to handle this, and it meant that they went over time. As a therapist, I have gone over time before. It is something that I actively work on. So like, is this in essence unethical, like going over boundary-wise in terms of like session times? No, not necessarily. If we have a repeat pattern and something else is inappropriate is happening, then maybe. But like, the contents of that session would make sense to me why they went over because she's just saying her piece, but she's not saying how he responded, the conversations they were having, cuz she's saying he's not saying anything, but yet they're somehow going over time.

Right? Like, how is he not saying things, but like you're still managing to go 15 minutes over session? And I also see a concern about boundaries again with him walking her out of the door because he wants to make sure she's out of the building. That's my thought.

Right? Is you just had a revelation like that? A client is sharing something that is very sexually charged. This client is interested in me. There's sexual tension. I want to make sure that when I close the door to my office, the door to my office is closed and this person is not going to come back in. I'm just thinking about a possibility of why he might have walked her out of the building.

Well, and there's the, uh, the human aspect of this. He is still a human, like doing his job. Yeah. Yeah. And she comes into his office and drops what in pretty much any other context with a professional relationship would be constituting sexual harassment.

It's inappropriate. Yeah. And like, so for him to have a, a lot of trouble dealing with that and maybe not being able to think straight and things like that, I don't fault him for that. And that seems to me what would be going on. Yeah. In that moment.

Well, I mean, let's be clear. We're not saying that she sexually harassed him because sexual content in a therapy session is fine with what's the intention.

Exactly. What are you bringing to me as a result? Like, what is the intention behind that? Because the intention is not to, I want to explore this in a therapeutic relationship sense. To me, this reads as, "Will you push your boundaries for me? Right? Will you drop boundaries for me? Will you do what I think? Will you acknowledge the feelings that I think you have? Will you do it?" And that is not an appropriate way to bring up sexual content in a session. Now, if it happens, is it the responsibility of the therapist to deal with it in the moment? Yes. Yes, there's still a power dynamic, but something that Kendra always talks about is like this power dynamic that exists between them and like how he holds all the power in the relationship. And I understand that there's a power dynamic there because there is. There always is in a therapeutic relationship. However, it, I feel like we're not spending enough time on the fact that just because he has more power doesn't mean she's automatically a victim.

Mhm. Or just because she is the person with less power in the situation does not mean that she can cause harm because the person with more power can still be harmed in a power dynamic. Right. And I got to my car and I was just like, "Oh my god, that was the most intense session we have ever had." The last two videos and this video was...

I also want to note, she says this is where the sessions start getting longer. But that was the end. Yeah, this is the end of my, in the, the caption, this is the end of my second to last session with him. So...

Also, again, I think the read and interpretation here is important because one of the TikToks that we didn't show you was a message, an email that she had gotten from her 75-year-old PhD therapist. Like, she told this therapist that she didn't want to work with this person anymore, like she was ready to move on or whatever. I don't remember her reasoning. And the therapist emailed her back and Kendra said that she was begging her to come back for another session. And then she made the mistake of sharing the email that the therapist sent her and there was no begging. Like, this therapist did what she is ethically required to do in this situation, which is offer what we call a termination session or a closure session, which is just essentially kind of like summing up our work, talking about what your options are, talking about should you continue therapy with somebody else, talking about do I need to give you some referrals? Like, that is our obligation. We are obligated to offer you a termination session. You are in no way obligated to agree to it. You can say, "F--- off, I don't want it," and I'm not going to be offended. That's your choice. But she sends this email very nicely and eloquently stating like, "I didn't have advanced time to think about the fact that you wouldn't be coming back. I would really, I was like, I would like to offer you a termination session. Obviously, it's up to you whether you want to continue with that or not." And she was like, "She's just begging me to come back and do another session." This is where I'm like, this is where we get kind of unreliable narrator, right? Because it's like, I read that email and I go, "Yeah, that's that's what she's supposed to do in this situation. That's what I would have done in this situation. I know it probably doesn't make sense because it's kind of weird and formal for a relationship that might not feel that way, but in general, it's what we're supposed to do." Like, per our ethical code and like the things that we've been taught as therapists. And so, there's nothing there that is outlandish or boundary-crossing or bizarre, but to Kendra, it was, which is again where I think we start to see a theme of like, what is my interpretation of these events versus what are they actually?

There's also another, and we're trying to wrap this up so it doesn't get too lengthy. There, there was also another occurrence where, as we mentioned before, Kendra identifies herself as an ADHD coach. Where a former client of Kendra's got on TikTok to air some grievances with what Kendra was doing as an ADHD coach, which is an interesting dynamic because that's what Kendra is doing with her former psychiatrist. Although the difference in this situation, her psychiatrist isn't able to go on TikTok and respond or even acknowledge that Kendra was ever a client of this... or not a client or not, either way... because of ethics. He's bound by ethics and and HIPAA. To this date, has never done anything of this sort. But Kendra is able to get on TikTok and come out and set the record straight, so to speak, and say, "This person is replicating or or you know, just fabricating outright things that never happened. It wasn't like that." So, it's interesting the dynamic that is at play here that she is allowed to have because she's a coach. And when you apply that to the situation that she's describing, does not get the same kind of privacy or or anything of that note. She has all the power telling her story about what happened between her and her former psychiatrist, and he doesn't ever get to talk about that. Whereas she gets to enjoy the privilege of being able to fire back at somebody who was criticizing her on the internet. She does not offer that privilege to him because of the ethical code that he abides by. And this is why this is reason 1 million of why I don't like coaching because Kendra got on TikTok and described this person's exact situation. She described what she was dealing with, what she was going on, what she was struggling with, how she behaved in their session, their coaching sessions. Like, she just aired all this information about this person. And I, there is no coach that can offer you a certainty that they won't do that, right? Like, I don't care how much you like the person, you don't know how they're going to behave if you criticize something that they do because how is it going to feel for you if they hop on TikTok and they air out all your business, all your grievances, all your problems, vulnerable private information to millions of people, to millions of people? And granted, maybe your coach that you're seeing isn't that famous, but this is, and I say famous, but this isn't notorious. This isn't something that this is a reason why I don't recommend this because even if a client has beef with me or if a client hates me or whatever happens, like I can't get on here and be like, "Well, guess what, guys? Sit down, grab your coffee, cuz let me tell you about this person. They're f---ing crazy." And like, because that would be one, I would never do that anyway, even if I could ethically, because it's just so f---ed up and inappropriate. But that's part of the, like, I hate to use the word sacred, but that's part of the sacredness of the therapy space is that I hold on to all of these things for you and I hold them in confidence. And so you don't ever have to worry that no matter what you do to me, that I will ever share that information. But in a situation like this, doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. Like, that's crazy to me. And I, like, I can't ignore the fact that Kendra stands to benefit from like putting down mental health professionals. It seems awfully convenient, right? That this is her job, which is like adjacent. And now she stands to benefit by putting them down because if they're unlikable, if people are uncomfortable with mental health professionals, then coaching might seem more safe or like more comfy. But for this, for her to get mad at you and air your your personal life on the internet like... Now, let me say, there are probably coaches out there who would not do this. I'm sure there are. I'm sure there are nice, lovely coaching people out there, but it's always a risk.

And she didn't act, there's nothing that she's doing that is technically wrong.

Yeah. Which is something to keep in mind.

Yep. So, while I am saying there's a double standard, technically there really isn't because she didn't do anything wrong because there's no ethical code or anything that she's supposed to abide by. Just something to keep in mind.

Yeah. Like everybody has their morals and values until they're wronged, and then sometimes that behavior doesn't necessarily align. And do you want to be like wounded in that process because of that? Like, this is, I mean, this is 101 why I have such a hard time with coaching. And again, I know there are people out there who don't behave like this and maybe take more of an ethical standard to holding client information, but again, there's nothing that can like certify that for you with certainty that this won't happen to you. And that's what scares me.

Like, the majority of my feelings around coaching is out of fear for people.

And we could talk about this for like seven more hours, quite honestly.

There is so much here and this isn't even touching on half the s--- that she's brought up in like her live streams, honestly.

Oh yeah, cuz she's getting on live stream like every, every night, for hours, for a long time. So, I don't know. This is kind of a developing situation. If there's something that we didn't touch on, you would like us to, I, we were trying to condense as much as we could down. And obviously...

Yappers, I'm sorry. We be yapping. Um, but if there's something in particular that everybody wants to hear more on, definitely let us know down in the comments. You already know the deal. Tag us in things on TikTok or in Instagram or whatever. I'm getting ahead of myself. Let me bring that back around in a second. But...

All the empathy in the world. Yes. Um... to Kendra. I hope she finds what she is looking for via this journey. This, this is more, we obviously, we don't want to be contributing to Kendra having a hard time. Obviously, the internet is already dogpiling on her and everything like that. Um, and we hope that you guys also are... compassionate. Compassionate and and everything because what we perceive as mental health and along with what we perceive as wrongdoing, you know, it doesn't really help if they're getting on the internet and we're playing along.

A lot of times it's just better to just, to leave it alone. I will rest on the fact that we can be compassionate and empathetic and mindful of someone's experience while also pointing out areas where there might be harm being done. I firmly believe that, you know, that is something that people are able to do. It might seem controversial and it might even seem scary sometimes, but I think that's really important because like otherwise we all just feed into each other's blind spots, right? Like we all have blind spots. We all have areas where we could be seeing things differently and if we didn't have perspectives of other people and mental health professionals, and I'm not saying that she needs to listen to people on the internet. I don't care if she knows who I am or listens to what I say. But like talking to a mental health professional about these things, and I can understand maybe why she wouldn't because of her perceived experience up to this point. But it is not wrong to call somebody out on harmful behavior or call somebody in on harmful behavior, even if they have a mental health issue. Like...

Right. It can be done in an empathetic and compassionate way, and that's that's what we aim to do.

But if you would like to know when those things are happening, you can hit the subscribe button down below. That way you know of stuff that's going on in the future. If you didn't know already, um, we're going to be part of a documentary about Ruby Franke and Jodi Hildebrandt titled "Jodi and Ruby: A Cult of Influence, Sin and Influence." That is going to be on Investigation Discovery. And then after that, it's going to be on HBO or not HBO, it's going to be on Max. It's the same thing. Whatever.

You know, September 1st is when it premieres. So check that out. We spoke with one of the producers. She wanted to check in on us. She said that we're in there in a couple different episodes. So, it's not about us, but it's, but if you want to see us, obviously, come and check it out. You can also find us on social media. If you're not following our Instagram, do that. You get some of the most up-to-date stuff there. Um, and then also TikTok. We don't really post very much on there if at all, but Jordan Doo be reposting.

I repost some hilarious s---. So... So her reposts are good. So check us out. You can find us at Jordan and McKay on both those. And then we also have a cool Discord community where you can join, find like-minded people. And if you join, join our Patreon or become a member of the channel, that's where we do...

Watch parties. Watch parties, which we are going to be doing more watch parties starting next month. Yes. For, um, Real Housewives of Salt Lake City, new season that's going to be starting up. So, if that's something that you would like to be a part of...

It's like the Secret Lives Girls, but like on crack. It's like... Yeah. Why are we describing it that way? Usually, it'd be the other way around. But, um, yeah, if you were enjoy the Secret Lives Watch Parties, join up and we'll go over there. You can join at the the bottom tier, $1 a month, and then yeah, you can uh tag along with us on the watch parties. Love people despite what they might have going on in their life, to the best of your ability. Uh, and stand up for what's right at the same time. And we will see you next time. [Music]