Being a therapist means being exposed to a wide range of personality types. Part of their job is to examine these cases objectively, but they’re only human, too. And because of how absurd certain situations can get, some cannot help but pass judgment.
These responses to a recent Reddit thread may provide further insight into what these professionals deal with from time to time. The stories tackled disturbing parenting practices, questionable romantic relationships, and people’s life choices that may make you shake your head in disbelief or second-hand shame.
If you’re a mental health professional, your work and services are greatly appreciated. Feel free to share your own experiences in the comment boxes below.
#1
I evaluated a child and had to testify in family court. During the court session I learned that the mother had “rented” her oldest daughter to her friends when the daughter was 15-17. The mother told the daughter she “had to do it” otherwise her siblings would be homeless and hungry. Mother used most of the money for d***s. Father pays rents and brings grocery every week because he knew mother didn’t have money. Custody was 50/50 when this was happening.
The judge did not terminate the mother’s parental rights and mother got supervised weekend visits. The judge said it wasn’t clear the mother’s intention was for her friends to r**e the daughter so she wasn’t going to terminate the mother’s parental rights. She went on about the importance of children having a mother in their lives. Till this day, I judge both the mother and the judge.
Image source: unicornofdemocracy, Kaboompics.com
#2
I once had a man who was attending family therapy with his 3 children, admit that his last child (a girl) was an “accident we tried to abort – we only wanted boys”. The sad thing is, the girl didn’t even look bothered; she had clearly heard it all before. They were attending family therapy as the girl was actively s**cidal and they “didn’t know why”.
Image source: TheAnxiousPangolin, Dev Asangbam
#3
A lovely teen girl was brought to her first appointment with me by her dad. Her mom had, as diplomatically as he could spell it out to me, recently up and left the family to go live some selfish new age lifestyle with a “reiki healer.” Just abandoned him with two kids to raise solo, and he was doing his best for them.
Therapy was the daughter’s idea; she had been having troubling intrusive thoughts lately about school shootings, like…how to plan and execute one, and these thoughts were upsetting to her and she did not want to act on them. I can still picture how scared and sad she looked telling me this. I just wanted to wrap her in my arms, but instead I offered so much praise and encouragement for her seeking help and trusting me with this information. She also met most of the diagnostic criteria for onset of a schizo-affective disorder.
We pulled dad into session, caught him up, explained the most urgent part of the plan: he was going to take her for a full eval with a great psychiatrist colleague of mine who understood the situation and was going to get her in stat. Daughter seemed relieved, dad seemed relieved, we scheduled time to talk soon.
Well, mom woke up from whatever festival ditch she had passed out in to angrily call my office and flip out on me.
How DARE I?!
Am I trying to poison her child with pharmaceuticals?!
Did I EVEN draw her blood and check her vitamin levels?!
Do I want a bad google review or worse yet, a warrant issued for my arrest?!
Do I even understand herbal supplements?!
I need to stop now because my head hurts remembering all of this.
Image source: justheretoleer, Kaboompics.com
#4
As an intern, I had a couple where the woman was chastising the man because his mother is in an “a**sive cult that tortures children” (mormon). The guy had ex-communicated and doesn’t interact with his parents and hasn’t for years. She thought this is a good reason to not let him parent his children, like he’s not allowed to go out on his own with them because his parents are Mormon. She says she’s worried that he will let his mother kidnap her kids and was asking me for support for her beliefs. She was also just calling him names, it was weird.
The whole time he’s like “… I don’t even talk to my parents and I love my kids”.
In the end she said “I guess I’m just a b***h, aren’t I?”, looking at me as if to get my reaction and I accidentally blurted out “your words, not mine”. Woops.
Image source: Dull-Fisherman2033, Antoni Shkraba
#5
Had a patient in a group ask for advice because she was feeling pressured into s*x she really didn’t want to have. A “friend” had traveled 2 hours to see her and gotten a hotel room for them. The group heard her out, asked questions, and the consensus was something to the effect of “yeah, you probably owe it to him.”
It remains one of the only times I’ve dropped any effort at experiential/socratic questioning and just flatly told people “absolutely not.”
Image source: Not_the_tractor, Antoni Shkraba
#6
Used to work in an acute child psych ward. Saw a lot of angry preteen/elementary (think 8-12 yo) mostly boys, and most often than not, parents treated the kid really harshly and were *shocked* this only made the kid worse. Also worked in an area where they did NOT want to hear their “old school” parenting could be a problem.
Had one dad who said “well ya I will spank him (11yo son) when he gets angry, look I know everyone nowadays doesn’t like that but I was spanked my whole life and I turned out FINE.” It took my entire ability to bite my tongue and not to say “….sir, you just got out of prison 3 months ago after serving 5 years for a violent felony.”.
Image source: Just-lurking-1122, Getty Images
#7
I worked with a teenager who was struggling with eating disorders, to the point she’d been hospitalized for organ damage at one point a few months before. I went to dinner with the girl and her mother. Her mom spent the entire dinner counting the individual pieces of rice she (the mom) was eating so she could accurately count the calories she consumed. I asked the mom to stop and she just stared at me and asked why she would do that because she had to watch her figure. I wonder where the 15 year old got her eating disorder from…
Edit: for those of you wondering why I was eating with the kid and the mom, the teen was in patient and the mom was visiting. I was working as a psych tech, and the kid wasn’t allowed to eat un-observed since I had to document her food intake to make sure she was eating sufficiently as a part of her treatment plan, so I joined her and her mom in the cafeteria for the meal. I definitely passed along the info about the mom’s eating habits for the therapist to follow up with in family therapy.
Image source: othybear, freepik
#8
I work in prison. Anything to do with child s*x offenses or animal a**se pisses me off.
Image source: psychissick, Getty Images
#9
I was a therapist pretty briefly and moved on to another profession, but I’ll never forget one client in particular during my internship.
My internship was at a site that primarily did court mandated therapy sessions for people who were going through the criminal justice system. This client was in the system because he had m*lested his girlfriend‘s 12-year-old daughter while the mother was in the bed as they slept one night.
As a therapist, they drive it into you pretty hard during your training that we’re all basically good as human beings and I believe that with very few exceptions but this man was an exception. He felt no remorse or guilt for what he had done and what’s worse is tried to justify his actions.
It was clear in speaking with him that this wasn’t the first time something like this had happened not just with this child, but with others. Sitting with him for an hour at a time was difficult and he stopped coming after only a few sessions.
The email I sent to his parole officer stating that he had missed his court mandated sessions was the only one I sent gladly in my time there. I’m sure this man had a terrible childhood himself and perhaps over several years could get to a better place, but in my view, the only place for him was in a jail cell for the time being.
Image source: PhilosophicalBrewer, cottonbro studio
#10
Worked with a former therapist. Most memorable she had was a guy with serious emotional issues. His hands were all scarred up and always had fresh scabs on the knuckles when he came by. He said when he got mad, he would go to his shed and punch the “soft” concrete he had or do the same to a dumpster when he was at work. In his words, he did this to avoid doing it to his girlfriend and kids like his dad to him.
Image source: SheZowRaisedByWolves, cottonbro studio
#11
I had a woman once bring in her child for scholastic issues. The child clearly had Fetal Alcohol Syndrome. I asked her gently if she consumed alcohol while pregnant, which she confirmed. When I told her that is likely the cause of the scholastic issues, she said “I don’t feel bad about it”.
FAS in general gives me a case of the WTFs.
Image source: Complete-Hurry-7160, Justin Aikin
#12
A man in substance a**se group was telling a story and casually mentioned:
“Yeah I grew up in the country.. we were always outside as kids, building forts, playing tag, drowning the stray cats down the well…”
It took the group a minute to absorb the info… and honestly, I just let them have at him.
Image source: Reasonable_Art3872, Antoni Shkraba
#13
I heard concerning information about the way a child was being treated (not my patient, but a sibling of the patient that I had never met), called CPS and reported it that day, and the following day found out the child had died. It was traumatizing, and 6 years later I still think about it a lot.
Image source: rorypotter77, Andrea Piacquadio
#14
NA therapist, but a PO. I worked exclusively with s*x offenders for a long time. Lots of incest and bes******y stories come out during testing. I had a client who had a sexual relationship with their twin, which was…shocking. Other clients engaged in long term sexual relationships with their mothers – I don’t really think there’s much hope for someone who is involved in that kind of a dynamic. I don’t really judge – after 20 years in the business I’ve seen some version of it all by now. I just feel sad for these folks, and their victims.
Image source: hotlettucediahrrea, Andrea Piacquadio
#15
I’m not a therapist, but I did volunteer for a year for a s*****e prevention line. I once had a white male client who was essentially seeking help for his sadness relating to POC/queer people.
He was a white supremacist who wasn’t seeking help to y’know, not be a neon*zi anymore. He was sad/disturbed at the state of the world not fitting his racist worldview. Dude tapdanced all around it, but said essentially “I’m upset/sad because not everyone is straight and white” .
Image source: separatebedhead, sarah b
#16
One of my now adult clients told me about the “child fight clubs” their dad would run. Whoever won got to eat that night.
Image source: Possible_Ear6115, cottonbro studio
#17
I’m an addictions therapist so I’ve seen people from all walks of life in all sorts of conditions, find it hard to judge anyone for anything as a result.
BUT
I do judge when I’ve got a doctor/lawyer/wealthy individual in my chair, acting like their a*******n is somehow less damaging because of their income, profession, or social status. That their “bad” behavior somehow gets a pass. Respectably, no.
Image source: mightymous9, cottonbro studio
#18
I had a client report she was happier than ever in her new relationship. She had a stable partner who would help provide for her son. And the best thing was there were no awkward introductions because her son already knew him! He’s her half brother.
Image source: ABTH88, Elina Fairytale
#19
When I was an intern in my MSW program I had a 19 year old client tell me she was pregnant, didn’t know who the dad was but had narrowed it down to 3 guys, was NOT going to stop smoking m**h and had no intention of attending her obgyn appointments. However, she was going to keep the baby to let her mom raise it, like she did with her other children.
Image source: SpareToothbrush, Nataliya Vaitkevich
#20
I had a week where I had multiple male clients who said they couldn’t understand why their wives were upset after they cheated on them/hired s*x workers. It was more so all of those cases together where I was like they can’t ALL be this dumb and insensitive…right?
Image source: Maximum-Vegetable, Andrea Piacquadio
#21
I had a 11 year old patient proudly show me the tattoo his uncle gave him. I definitely judged that uncle in my mind.
Image source: hmmmmmnmno, Sergey Meshkov
#22
A kid came into inpatient hospital after burning down the house with his family still inside, and when asked if he meant to k**l them, all he said with a blank look was, “They got out, didn’t they?”.
Image source: ekellyhan, Vitaly Gariev
#23
I worked with a man who expressed support of a violent reinstatement of chattel slavery.
Image source: FreshPressedTofu, Jussara Paulo
#24
For me, it was more of a series of moments- I can’t help but to feel some kind of way when a parent brings me their teenager who is s******l and/or depressed, and clearly does not care, and the kid knows they don’t care. I can have intellectual empathy that something happened to the parent for them to behave that way, but I really struggle when parents bring their teens to me with the intention of “fixing the kid” rather than providing support and guidance for the family. It crushes my soul when I see a teen who is so used to being cast aside that they don’t bat an eye when the parent throws a fit because the teen needs to be assessed for safety/s**cidality and it was an inconvenience to the parent, and it’s REALLY HARD to withhold judgment in those situations.
Another holy sh*t moment is when one of my clients openly admitted to being racist, homophobic, transphobic, sexist, etc., and he felt good about the fact that he could claim those labels. That was only one of the reasons I had to transfer him, but it sent a chill down my spine when he looked me in the eye, knowing I am a queer therapist, and proceeded to tell me all of the ways in which he hated my community. So ya, there have definitely been some interesting moments.
#25
The dad that told me I had 2.5 sessions to “fix” his daughter.
Teenage client who got a giant tattoo of a band she had never heard of.
An extremely a*****e (like I got physically sick reading the reports of what she did to her children) mother who had her children taken by CPS, complaining about the food at the foster home not being fresh enough.
Image source: Mission_Muscle812, Kaboompics.com
#26
A client once proudly told me they brush their teeth once a week because ‘they don’t want to wear them out and i was likeeee… oh s**t 🤣.
Image source: lollie22x, National Cancer Institute
#27
There was a car accident, Mother was drunk driving and ended up in a ditch, mom’s friend and 8 year old had mild injuries and were admitted to ER for check ups. Medical information for the child didn’t match up to what the mother was saying, for some reason a blood test was done and they found out mom wasn’t mom. Mom’s friend was the actual mother but gave away the kid at a year old due to being tired of being a parent (her words not mine).
It was one of those wtf moments.
Image source: Sea-Rough-5874, Pavel Danilyuk
#28
Sitting in a couples session. First session ever with them. And they are openly discussing how they have 10 children between them (from previous relationships) and regularly physically fight each other.
Both described raging so hard they would black out and not remember fights.
Unfortunately after they were unwilling to make a pledge that they would no longer use violence I eventually had to end our therapeutic relationship.
Image source: Flimsy-Opportunity-9, Getty Images
#29
We can judge, in fact we have to judge harmful from helpful to be effective at this job. We also have to do no harm and provide the greatest beneficence to our clients.
With that said…I’ve worked with child a**sers and domestic violence perpetrators. On a number of occasions I’ve worked with m**ders and even a few folk involved in dog fighting. The thing that always struck me was not the sociopaths or how many former cops I saw but how easy a few changes in your life and/or brain can lead to someone being just as susceptible to pretty terrible impulses.
Image source: ProfessorofChelm, RDNE Stock project
#30
A client left their pet rabbit on their balcony and knowingly let it starve to death. Didn’t feel bad about it at all.
Image source: Important_Dark3502, Ансплэш Степана
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