Louisa B.
1/5
If you want to be gaslit and traumatised, use Care First. 1 or 2 âokâ phone counsellors but most are an absolute disgrace, ill-equipped to deal effectively with anything other than mild wellbeing issues, in my opinion. If you want someone to parrot back to you the exact sentence you just said, leave awkward long silences after youâve finished talking, say nothing constructive, validating or supportive and just stare at you in a creepy way, silently nodding, then discard and gaslight you when you ask them to do a little better, or fail to massage their saviour egos because you are self aware and have your own mind and thought processes, then use this company. My experience with them was traumatising, Iâm not exaggerating. It actually HARMED me. I had several dreadful phone counsellors, lacking empathy, who sounded checked out, werenât even listening properly, or acted like horrible âKarensâ when I even slightly challenged them. I was referred to 2 face to face and zoom counsellors who âdid counselling TO meâ, rather than with me, involving their basic âmindfulnessâ exercises that I would say did not resonate with me or didnât work, and that all I wanted to do was to talk and process my feelings. Both of them people showed lack of professional integrity, skill, empathy, or understanding of person-centred approaches, trauma, domestic or emotional abuse, even though they all insisted they were âspecialistsâ in these areas. When slightly challenged, âno that doesnât work for me, Iâd like to talk about this insteadâ, I was frequently gaslit that this, âwasnât the right service for me,â and âwasnât helping me,â without even asking me, code for, âI donât want to work with you because youâre not doing what I want you to doâ. Several have a condescending, power-trippy defensive attitude and none of them put me first or actually cared about me and my experience of their shoddy work or their arrogant, âmaking it about themâ type attitudes and argumentativeness. On the whole, a completely unprofessional collection of people, alien to any real mental health practitioners or therapists I have had the privilege to have worked alongside over the years (I am a mental health professional who expected a decent level of professionalism and competence). The first counsellor was hostile to me as soon I walked in the door for failing to print out a form before the session, then when I started crying, totally ignored me, continuing to angrily print out her precious form on her computer. When I called her out for he abject lack of empathy, she defensively pulled the, âmaybe this isnât the right service for youâ power move, then backtracked, allowed me to spill my guts for 40 minutes, then said NOTHING after Iâd done blubbing, stared at the floor, avoiding eye contact. When I challenged her to show some empathy or respond, or make eye contact, she coldly said she was âprocessingâ what I just said (I.e. hadnât been listening) saying again, âthis is not the right serviceâ but then couldnât tell me what the right service was, nor cared about re-referring me anywhere, allowing me to leave and get into my car having a panic attack, crying my eyes out. I have reported her to BCAP. When I complained about this to the clinical lead at Care First, she gave an ambivalent response, took no responsibility, apology nor showed any validation to this disgraceful unprofessionalism, her attitude ambivalent and her responses robotic. She nonetheless agreed to re-refer me to another counsellor, on Zoom. Whenever I talked about the person who affected me she shut me down because, âthey were not in the roomâ and she did not want to âpathologiseâ anyone, which I was not asking her to do, and became defensive, bickering about this she coldly dumped me, session 3/6, as I was crying my eyes out about the emotional abuse Iâd suffered. I phoned the next day and was told by phone counsellor, my case was âclosedâ because I was âcriticisingâ her colleagues. Vile, unaccountable control freaks with no duty of care to clients who are seeking help and support. Reported.
