My next-door neighbor became my psychologist. The kind of therapy she provided included indoctrinating me to think of her as the loving mother I never had. She fostered in me a deep dependence on her, and I came to feel I couldn’t exist without her.
After she’d unplugged my intuition, she came close to ruining my marriage, my career, and my life. When I resisted her, she diagnosed me with personality disorders. As with many cultic, high-control relationships, she used methods such as behavior modification, isolation, thought control, and emotional control.
Ultimately, she moved me – and all my belongings – into her home next door to where my husband and I had lived. My world felt like it had made a colossal tilt, and I no longer had agency over my life. The shame I felt was compounded by my psychologist telling me I could never report her to the licensing board because the relationship was all my fault – and that our relationship was special.
After living with her for a short time, bursts of clarity came into my consciousness. The charismatic persona she had been portraying began to slip, revealing her true self. I thought I’d been acting of my own free will, but I started to see that bounded choice is no choice at all.
After much pain and anguish, I managed to escape her grip and flee from her home, which had become my prison. Knowing I couldn’t allow her to groom any other clients as she’d done to me, I reported her to the board of ethics and filed a civil lawsuit.
– Emma, Bixby, Oklahoma