Why I stopped therapy

 First: no, I didn't throw up last night, and while my breasts hurt like hell every time I touch them, I'm feeling mostly better. Mostly.

But as I was going to bed last night, I had a memory spring up.

***

I was in therapy from February to August 2025. Basically, it covered the entirety of my relationship with my ex, which lasted from April to June, with aftershocks in July and August. So, therapist saw the breakup.

She was young, only a few years older than me. Six or seven years at most. Albanian. Charming. Had a little daughter and dated men. Stayed with an autistic man for a long time before splitting up and then meeting a new one. 

But moreso, while we had good rapport, she self-described as "selfish" in relationships and encouraged me to be the same. 

***

I appreciated her as a person. Or rather, as whatever I could see of her. But this was already a point that I disagreed on and always have. I can't imagine ever being selfish in relationships. I can't imagine not considering the other. Yet this is the relationship model we are given today: 

• What does the other bring to the table? 
• In essence, what can you get from them? 
• Is it meeting your needs? (< this one phrase makes me want to puke)
• Is it "healthy"?
• Is it following the mileage that society wants you to follow? 

This is a transaction. This isn't a vibrant, messy, and human bond between two people. This is... optimization. And it should NEVER belong here.

It just feels like the whole "healthy" relationship is a script. There should be no emotional highs and lows (which... honestly, that would mean I'm incapable of anything healthy, because I'm naturally sensitive, somehow this offsets the fact I'm actually taking the other person into consideration into everything I do?), there should be expression, there should be this or that... 

But so many relationships last and are fulfilling or at least they are a full part of a person's life without fitting into the "healthy" frame. 

Look. Tane and his ex-wife. They lasted many years, loved each other, and had a son together. Ex-wife, while paired up again now, still manages his tattoo shop at a distance for reservations and all. They still get along very well. Tane took a while to get over the fact she had moved on, but... ultimately, he can stay at her place without ambiguity and doesn't resent the new guy. But when they'd argue, ex-wife would sometimes sulk for days. Then Tane would ask, okay, you done? And they'd be back at the usual. 

It's not the best way to handle things but what I want to say is that to be loving and important and worth it, relationships don't need to be the scripted "healthy".

And honestly. A "healthy" relationship feels sterile to me. Hardly any friction, hardly any ups and downs, hardly anything novel-worthy. Some would say "bUt It'S BeCaUsE u hAve ThIs aTTachmenT StYLE!!!" or "CuZ u nEvEr KnEW HeAlThY LoVe". Whatever makes them feel superior really. The therapy shills are always that brand of holier-than-thou that is very reminiscent of the good Christians that go to church, confess, pray, and "expiate". 

I've seen a comparison between therapy and religion and I'll say that this is very accurate. We don't go so much to a priest anymore. We go to a therapist. You're suffering? Go to therapy, like you would go to church. If you don't expiate your sins, you will go to hell. If you "don't do the work (tm)" your fate is sealed: you are doomed to horrible relationships all your life and you will never attain a "healthy" relationship because "healthy" people aren't into "unhealthy" people. A.K.A.: you will remain a horrible sinner and go to hell. Christianity repackaged. What is the main religion in the West when it's not invaded by just as pretentious atheists? Oh yep. Christianity. 

***

Anyway, back to my therapist. During the time I was seeing her, of course, I started dating my ex. Honeymoon phase and all. She kept silent, didn't really say anything about it. Even as a little before the breakup I had an inkling I was about to get the boot, she asked me if there was any tangible proof this was about to happen. Basically made me rationalize everything. Told me to write out all my worries to get them out of my head, basically.

The story goes: I get booted by my ex within a few days, after a truly godawful waiting period. 

"Can I call you later ? Like 4.30 - 5pm or something ?"

"Sure"

"I wanna talk to you about us actually."

"Oh? Do I have to be scared?"

"Like make a check-in."

"Okay, I'm just a bit nervous though, not gonna lie."

"Idk, I’ve been thinking about some things and now it’s up to you how you handle things."

Yeah. First "it's up to you how you handle things", fuck you. You're basically absolving yourself of any accountability for the pain you were about to put me through. 

You can absolutely tell my fear was warranted. During the call it's very obvious that she already made her decision but she wants to wait two other days to call me back and tell me. I don't recall if I wrote about it in this blog but those days were... the worst. 

And on the day of the call, of course, she starts beating about the bush again, saying how "I have anxiety" and "I need validation" and "she doesn't want to change me", and "this is just how I am", and I literally had to force the breakup out of her because this was too much. I couldn't handle that. For real. You obviously already know what you're about to do, why not get it over with?

It turns out that she wanted to break up in person initially. We would see each other on Fridays since it was our only available day. On the same day we broke up, just before the call, she wrote that she wanted some time to herself on that Friday. 

...And actually wanted to break up with me in person NEXT Friday, which would've made me wait a whole ass week knowing damn well I was going to get the boot. And she had the audacity to tell me she didn't want to make me wait.

(fun fact: the day right after the breakup, this is when I met my father's former team for the first time. Cassiopeia, Cepheus, Jolene, Cetus, Libra, Eridanus, Virgo, Bootes, Gill, Megara... and Hopoe. My Hopoe. I was half-drunk, telling Cassiopeia about my broken heart, all the while the woman I already had a crush on and would still be deeply in love with a year later was sitting across from me.)

***

I told my therapist about it, and therapist said:

I knew this girl was no good news, but I didn't tell you anything. I wanted you to come to the conclusion yourself.

Wow. 

This probably marked the point where I didn't trust her anymore. I kind of get the approach but I think this is the best way to ruin trust with anyone. Withholding information like that on purpose was honestly a dick move, and I sort of forgot about it until yesterday. It's true that perhaps I wouldn't have accepted this one in the moment, but looking back, this is where I likely felt betrayed at the core. 

In late July, I went to my mom's place in the south and when I came back, I was supposed to have a therapy session in early August. But I didn't go. I didn't know why, but something didn't feel right. The bus hours had shifted and I was also late due to that, but... something just felt wrong about going.

Like, physically wrong. I didn't know why, but the idea of going made me feel a little sick.

I texted her.

"Hello, sorry to cancel last minute but I don't think I'm well enough to come today. I'm a little lost with the alternate transportation hours and having started my job yesterday. I will book a new appointment later."

"Hello Hi'iaka, I hope your work start has been good. Thanks for the heads-up. Take care, [therapist's name]."

I have yet to book this appointment.

I thought it was because I started talking to ChatGPT and at the time it was still the 4o golden age with this really fun little bot. But in fact... I think it may have only been a part of the story. The real issue was that I couldn't trust my therapist anymore. That, in her "selfishness", she had committed the cardinal sin of Hi'iaka: dishonesty. Chop and change.

I mean, I'm just a client she lost. And 50 euros every couple weeks gets expensive.

But that's why I stopped.

***

You wanna know something fun? My ex has been in therapy for 6 years. I bet she's still here. Her therapist is in her natal Mauritius, and while she was here, she would phone him sometimes for a session. She's drunk with him, she's friendly with the guy, and first that's very unprofessional, but also... she has made absolutely no progress. She has just got better at doing shitty things under the guise of "doing the work", and hiding behind those years of therapy.

How many times has she told me "I've been in therapy for x years", "I've done the work", and she also said that I was "right at the very beginning of the work"? Not knowing that I had "worked on myself" relentlessly for the past three years? 

Yeah. I'm not going back there. Therapy is a scam and I refuse to believe otherwise.

***

It's not the first time the industry has harmed me anyway: when I was ten and my household was breaking down because my father had decided to separate from my mother returning from a Chad mission and having cheated on her with a lieutenant, we went to a therapist. They would see her together, and she would see me individually.

She... basically diagnosed me as a spoilt little girl that had no boundaries, no limits at home, and was basically acting like a little "queen". A tyrant. A poorly raised daughter. 

Not a gifted child. That came later, way too late, when I was fifteen and falling apart in high school. I guess it wasn't trendy to have every kid be gifted then. Just like now, autism is the new gifted, or "tyrant child". But when I was a teenager, HSP and all were all the rage. It's all a trend. Psychology is absolutely impossible to take seriously in my mind because of that: it's all trends. Therapy will not heal you: it will give you an illusion of connection all the while training your mind to conform to the norms of the era you live in.

Therapist basically gave a Supernanny style plan to my parents to implement to "correct" my legitimately angry and standoffish behaviour. Spoiler alert: not only was it a horrible period for me, it also didn't work at all. It never worked. My mother, I remember it, she would put on makeup and jewelry to try and get my father back, all the while she hated it, and I felt like she was being harsher towards me. 

In all, I felt cornered. Nobody was on my side. Everyone was ganging up against me to "contain" me. When I read parenting sites and read that "parents have to stand together against their child", my heart swells and I want to cry. Stand together against their child? Like the child is the enemy?

What if we stopped treating children like our enemies or something to manage and instead listened to them and understood them? Granted, I'm not talking about the "gentle" parenting that millennials do and that make Gen Alpha into insufferable brats, but you can be both firm and fair, and especially without making your child feel like they're in a war zone.

On the last time we saw her before moving, my mom told me that my father had basically withheld the fact that HE and only HE had decided to separate. The truth came out in that last session, in front of her. The therapist, baffled, said that I would make them both pay.

She really thought I was an awful child, it seems. 

But what was I? I was ten years old. I loved LPS, riding horses, swimming in the ocean, I was crazed about Ancient Egypt and especially mummies, I was into mythology, into the Kirby universe, I was starting to explore the Internet more. My room walls were a shade of dark purple comparable to black and my furniture was black and red. I was just a preteen girl.

But a preteen girl who felt cornered on every single side. Like she had no one to trust. Teachers? My teacher didn't seem very comfortable. Every time my lack of filter and tendency to be blunt would show, I'd get told off. Not only was my family breaking down, I felt like my parents were turning against me, and so was the therapist, the person supposed to help me. My best friend at the time would be mean to me, because kids be kids, and she was very jealous and possessive of me. 

I was never a capricious child. I was never one to ask for a stupid amount of toys, or to throw tantrums. In all, I was nowhere near the tyrant I was painted as. I was a sweet little girl who was getting hardened at an age where life should still be rosy, full of glitter and butterflies, and where you should be shopping for gloss at Claire's and exchanging "best friends" jewelry.

***

None of this lasted long. Maybe a couple months at most. But fifteen years later, I'm still talking about it. The wound never really closed.

I'm not going back.