The Keep-You-Sick-and-Broke Cycle
There’s something twisted happening in the mental health world that no one wants to name out loud… People are going to therapy… to heal from therapy.
Yes. You read that right. Survivors walk into a therapist’s office carrying wounds, and they leave with new ones. Then they end up in more therapy to process the damage that was supposed to be healing in the first place.
It’s not rare. It’s not a fluke. It’s the cycle the system was built to keep spinning.
The Trap of Complex Trauma + Therapy Harm
If you live with complex trauma, you already know what it means to carry layers of pain.
- You’ve been silenced.
- You’ve been gaslit.
- You’ve had your survival strategies called “disorders.”
So when you enter therapy, you’re not just seeking coping skills. You’re seeking “repair”… A safe place to be seen.
But here’s the gut punch… Far too many survivors are retraumatized by therapists themselves.
- Dismissing your plurality as “attention-seeking.”
- Misdiagnosing you with BPD instead of recognizing complex trauma.
- Declaring you “too much” or “treatment-resistant.”
- Cutting you off when they retire or move on, as if attachment can be neatly terminated with a referral list.
- Invalidating your lived experience with “memory isn’t reliable” or “that’s just your trauma brain talking.”
- Pressuring you into modalities that serve their comfort instead of your safety.
- Exploiting power dynamics… Making you dependent, sexualizing the relationship, or spiritual bypassing under the guise of “healing.”
Every one of those moments is a rupture. Every one leaves new scar tissue. And then? Survivors often end up in another therapist’s office… trying to heal from the last therapist.
Academia + Capitalism: The Machine Behind the Harm
Therapists aren’t villains. Many entered the field wanting to help. But they were trained inside a machine:
- Academia drills clinicians in frameworks that pathologize humanity.
- Insurance dictates what counts as “treatment”… quick, billable, measurable.
- Capitalism thrives on keeping people in pain long enough to need ongoing services.
It’s a perfect storm. Clients are blamed for “not doing the work,” while therapists cling to rigid theories and treatment manuals. Meanwhile, the system profits off your endless revolving door of therapy sessions.
This isn’t a healing model. It’s a business model.
Clients… It’s Not You!
If you’ve been harmed in therapy, hear this…
- You are not broken because therapy broke you.
- Your pain after therapy isn’t “resistance.”
- It’s not proof that you’re “untreatable.”
- It’s evidence of systemic betrayal.
You didn’t fail therapy. Therapy failed you.
Clinicians… Stop Drinking the Kool-Aid!
If your clients need therapy to heal from you, that is not “countertransference.” It’s not a minor rupture. It’s harm.
And if your training told you to…
- Gatekeep diagnoses.
- Silence plurality.
- Invalidate trauma.
- Treat survivors like liabilities instead of humans.
That training was complicit in perpetuating harm.
You’ve been indoctrinated too. You can unlearn it. But you can’t unlearn it until you admit it exists.
Beyond the Cycle
Healing doesn’t live in treatment manuals or insurance billing codes.
It doesn’t live in fifteen-minute checklists or diagnoses.
Healing lives in…
- Community that sees you as whole, all of you.
- Creativity that cracks open new ways of being.
- Solidarity with others who refuse to disappear.
- Rage and tenderness braided together into resistance.
- The radical act of reclaiming your story from a system that profits off calling you sick.
Stop normalizing therapy harm.
Stop calling retraumatization a “necessary rupture.”
Stop gaslighting survivors into thinking therapy harm is their fault.
Clients… Trust that your pain is real.
Clinicians… Start questioning who benefits from the frameworks you were taught to worship.
We don’t need more therapy to deal with therapy.
We need liberation.
We need to heal.
❤️🩹 Healing from therapy harm is NOT about finding a “better fit” in the same broken system. It’s about reclaiming your story and choosing connection, creativity, and community that see you as whole.
🌙 If this post resonates with you, stay connected. Healing doesn’t have to happen in silence. Reach out to collaborate. Reach out to work with me. I offer one on one coaching for those ready to reclaim healing.