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I did something stupid last year, when I was looking for work. I asked my counselor for her permission to use her as a personal reference. But here's what's even more stupid. She said yes. She even told me what she might say to the employer. Confidentiality is the problem here. Because my information is confidential, I shouldn't have asked and she shouldn't have said yes.

So now i'm mad, because I got an interview and the employer had problems getting anything out of her. My counselor should have known then that she couldn't do it! >.< So now I have a bone to pick with her.

The good thing is that this didn't ruin my chance at getting the job. All I had to do was give my future employer or hopefully future employer what the number is for the last place I worked.

Have you ever had a counselor fu** up with you?

Well, I'm not talking high school counselors. I'm talking about therapy counselors.

She didn't have me sign anything when she said that. And today she told me that basically, I'd have to sign a paper for permission for every place I use her as a reference in order for her to say anything.

I talked to her and I'm not mad at her anymore.

Which one?

lol. That one. I put that up there for laughs. Mostly I put up pictures of my favorite anime girls.

I had a horrible counsellor once when I was 13. From the start it was bad but I didn't know much about the system so I didn't know how to get a different one. She was really scary, and never believed me about anything from the start which kind of makes me wonder now what the point was. Quote: "I mean, my son still goes on about how I threw a log of firewood at his head when he was a kid, so you can see how people can imagine memories. Ha ha..."

A couple times I was sent to a institution for young teens that was supposed to give a psychiatric assessment as the teens lived there day in day out. That since has been acknowledged as a big mistake. I have problems with that particular place itself, but the counsellors' big screw up came out of a decision that they tried to push there. Even though it wasn't neccessarily a place for kids with behavior problems, I had never had behavior problems, it was still in constant lockdown and very institution-ish. I thought it was a scary place. Anyway, after they had drawn what conclusions they could from me they had a meeting and decided that they wanted to see what was really going on and the way they were going to do that was to involuntarily take me off my medications and lock me up there for a couple months so they could see my psychosis problems for themselves. I was terrified! I never wanted to go back to not having medications, that was hell, and the place itself was horrible, it was a nightmare, not to mention I could see no real merit to what they were proposing. I was just 14 and very unhappy, and it seemed like they wanted me to be a lab rat or something when what I needed was the comfort of home. I was very upset and I appealed to my mother and my counsellor to please not do this. My mother saw me crying and being very frightened about not being allowed medications after that meeting and decided to bring me home, I lived a long drive away and she was up visiting me. So, I stayed a extra few days while I waited to be formally discharged, and my mom and my counsellor went back to my home town. On the way back my counsellor flipped out at my mom, she had been all for this in the meeting, like she was really angry, really yelling at my mom. She was yelling that the institution knew best and my mom wasn't a professional so she didn't know what was best and my mom was allowing herself to be manipulated by me and we would be sorry we didn't experiment a bit to see if I was telling the truth about psychosis because what if I was just making it up because that's what teenagers do... on and on. My mom actually has been a counsellor, but that's beside the point. This lady was just completely trashing every boundry, saying my mom was stupid, and clearly did not even like teens, let alone want to help them. My mom, though, is a class act and went and got me when it was time and then let my counsellor know that we would no longer be needing her services, as my mother felt that her attacking on a personal level was a sign that it was time to move on, so goodbye.

Ooops! I didn't mean to ramble about that, it's just talk of counsellors got me remembering. sweatdrop

Anyways, yes, she was scary. She was all for locking me up and experimenting without my consent. She never listened to me and disliked me for no reason. I have speech problems with both psychological and cognitive causes, and she said that when I was upset and didn't say anything it wasn't because of that, it was because I was being mean to my mother. Just mean. She said I must have a real cruel streak to not say anything like that. I was very upset about that, too, I've never been called mean by anyone else ever and always try to be a good person. Unfortunately, due to the speech problems, I was unable to say anything back when she was accusing me of this.

How do these people even get their positions? I guess she was just in the same place too long and ran out of compassion.