Aspies For Freedom

I may have posted about this before- can't remember and apologies if I did!- but something recently brought it up again.
Years ago in high school I was sent to the resident counselor in school, who acted in an almost laughable manner, so contrary to any semblance of a counselor in any sense she was. At one point she almost lost her temper at my calm, collected and polite appeal to her to listen to the problems I had been having-- this is a counselor who among other things did all the talking, didn't allow me to speak, cut me off completely and had zero interest in even hearing-- even as a preliminary-- any of the problems I had been facing at all.
Looking back (and I had a good idea even then), what I had was almost certainly clinical depression-- a constant 'flat' feeling regardless of circumstances, and added to that, severe acne and sudden unexplainable weight gain that perhaps could indicate that the depression might have been in part caused by so many hormonal changes going on. I advocated for myself, realising she was doing me more harm than good, and on the advice of a very good teacher, was finally transfered to a counselor out of school, but it took a long time for me to actually get another one. For that, the form teacher (not the same one) gave me an awful report card stating that I had resisted all efforts to help me. The simplest, most basic thing a counselor could have done-- give just 5 minutes to let the student give an overview of what was going on in their lives-- would have changed a lot.
Not getting the help I needed at school at the time I needed it had a domino effect that had far further reaching consequences than it would seem.
I have moved on, but it still does feel like there's something left for me to do.

Years later I find this counselor is still the resident counselor at the school; she has been in a comfortable position all this while, seemingly relying a lot on her position in the alumni/old school tie. Now, the best of counselors etc can make mistakes or wrong judgement calls, but the way she dealt with me was to the point that I was questioning her ability and suitability to be a counselor at all, let alone the sole counselor of a school, to whom the most vulnerable students would be sent to for help. She had previously demonstrated amazingly poor (almost hostile/suspicious when totally uncalled for) interaction with the student body. I have since then heard things about her from other students who were 'helped' by her, which has only confirmed my suspicions.
I know it's too late now, but is there anything that can be done (not talking lawsuits or blowing this out of proportion)? Given the passage of time it's highly possible she has changed and these concerns are now rendered irrelevant, but given a whole other list of things, I'd say, probably not. I don't wish to rock the boat-- but if you were me-- what would you do?

Hi, pardon me, I don't know your circumstances, but if you are an adult and out of the school and repercussions can't be made against you, I would say to do something - absolutely.

What can be done may be the question you are asking.

Seriously consider forgiveness and letting go?  
Devil's advocate-- if this were a pattern, yes, it could have caused a few suicides, but on the other hand, she is a human being, and she can't follow everyone around to stop them from trying.

Maybe pray about this, and who knows, maybe there will be a new counselor?

Not everyone has the right gift for the right job.  The New Testament says God gives various gifts to various people: healing, ministry, something called speaking in tounges, no clue what that is, maybe having a genuine heart, maybe I have a clue there.  Maybe your counselor is in the wrong job.  Maybe the position needs to be filled by someone else with the right gift, hmmm, maybe listening.  God gave two ears and one mouth.  God also said judge not lest ye not be judged.  (that it hard.......... it seems so hard to understand why not people do not what they do not)

Honestjohn is right: Listen to your intuition and write that letter you've been dying to write for years now. It is perfectly ok to use your real name and I think that is preferable to "anonymous". It carries more weight I think.

Chris is wrong about compassion: Compassion is called for when you may need to give the person the benefit of the doubt. If, however, a person is causing harm left and right then it is your duty really to be a whistle blower.

Many businesses need a paper trail before they can fire someone, especially someone in a protected category.

Good luck and let us know what happened!

What harm has the counselor caused other than to cant think of a username?

OK we have established that the counselor hurt the feelings of cant_think_of_a_username and was grossly insensitive and was a poor listener to one person and missed an opportunity to help and instead of DO NO HARM made it worse.  

It happens every single day.  The best of us hurt people's feelings.  The best of us try to say we're sorry.  Maybe the counselor is only guilty of ignorance here because cant_think_of_a_username never called her on it.

What evidence do we have that the counselor did anything else?

Let's not have an Adlai Stevenson moment- the counselor is not in an American courtroom.....

I think there are some people who have the need to have "special care" in their professions.  Counselors, physicians, lawyers, judges all come to mind when I think of this "special care" that should be exhibited, in my opinion.  

I realize it has been a lot of years.  However, the harm was still done, and it obviously is still affecting her.  I think a well written letter, to the counselor, and carbon copied to her supervisor, would be a good thing.  It would clear up those feelings and provide the closure she needs and would also possibly prevent more people from being harmed.  

Forgiveness is a great thing.  But you have to be ready to forgive.  And obviously, to do that she needs something more than just the passage of time.  

I can tell you that something similar recently happened when my husband and myself saw his regular physician for a referral to a specialist who deals with Autism.  The doctor provided such poor care that my husband, who had gathered so much courage just to attend the appointment, was nearly in tears when we left.  He accused me of "self diagnosing my husband" and told my husband that he needs to have his thyroid checked for his "severe depression" and yet he refused to refer us to any psychologist, psychiatrist, anything.  (Just a side note, the clinic that we went to who specalizes in Autism and AS said that my husband had the lowest score on the depression scale that they had seen.) I walked in with all kinds of information on AS and talked to him about it rather directly, with my husband contributing what he could.  He was dismissive, rude, and upsetting.  He left the room several times to attempt to speak to another doctor who "knew what Asperger's was" and never talked to her.  When we left he said that he would call us back with more information.  I gave him the day, and when he did not, I called him back and let him know how upsetting the visit was, and what a poor physician I thought he was.  He apologized, but still offered no help.  I filed a grievance on behalf of my husband at his request, with the insurance company against this physician.  How many more people need to be harmed by the "trusted" professionals before we stand up to them and ask them to actually CARE about their patients?

Just my thoughts...

No, she is in a school where she is not doing her job properly-and whether or not she is forgiven- she should be held accountable.

This 'counsellor'-I use the term lightly-  sounds as if she is unable to counsel. She is in a unique position of authority as an advisor-and by definition is supposed to be a 'safe' person. It doesn't matter if she was having a bad day, or only harmed one person. That would be one person too many. She sounds quite toxic.

Forgiving someone helps the person doing the forgiving-it's so that they can not carry around the hurt, resentment, anger, etc. Often the other person doesn't know they even need to be forgiven..Perhaps this 'counsellor' needs to know.

I agree with all this and cannot understand why GuessWho would even think the possibility that this lady's actions could have contributed to suicides is anything to be taken lightly.

I've had some bad experiences with counsellors and found that the only way I could move on was to write them a letter telling them how I felt about their treatment. One lady apologised but it was a bit late because I had already told the people I was never coming back.

Counsellors have a distinct duty of care to listen to their clients and treat them with dignity and respect. If they are going to let "bad days" affect them a lot, they'd be better off going into some other line of work where they don't have to deal so much with people.

Thanks so much honestjohn for your thoughts and advice (and everyone else). Yes I think probably just involving the counselor herself would be the best thing for me to do, I thought about what exactly I wanted to achieve-- I have no wish to actually have her removed from her post-- also I have a lot of fond memories of my old school, and don't wish to do anything that might make my association with it strained, more like to just for some kind of acknowledgement/knowledge that this happened, this was the effect and hopefully as you say, she might realise what she's been doing, if she's still carrying on the same way (which, because of her comfortable position and the way the system seems to work, might well be possible). I guess the thing now is to figure out how to word it in a way that will get the message through without seeming petty, and actually be productive.

Guesswho, yes I agree that the best of us have bad days and we shouldn't judge people purely on the occasions they do slip up or make a wrong judgement call. I have on many occasions as have most other students been treated very unfairly by teachers etc -- but despite my unhappiness with the situation understood that people make mistakes, especially in a high pressured environment and dealing with so many kids.
Maybe it isn't a fair comparison because with teachers you can observe them in a more holistic context and sort of take in how they as a whole, and with a counselor you can only base it on your own experience and what other people tell you of their own experiences, but there was just something very different with this in that there just seemed something so fundamentally wrong with her entire approach and outlook, it wasn't just someone making a wrong judgement call or having a bad day, or not being as sympathetic as they should. The word 'toxic', as mahler5 used it, sounds a good way to describe it. Alarm bells were just going off in my head.

Yuck. I understand what it's like to be in the hands of a bad counselor. My 7th grade counselor told me I had to just expect to be assaulted because I dress different and rock and was having seizures. She blamed everything on me and would lecture me about missing class. She made me feel completely inferior for "acting weird". Then she wouldn't let me file an incident report, not until the next school year, by which time she let me file only one incident and said, "too bad you didn't file a report last year, or I could've done something about it."

What a stupid stupid person - people like that shouldn't even be counselling as they are so incompetent and even abusive!

I started at a new secondary school mid way through the 2nd year in a new town. I didn't like it and I had already been told by some boys in my class that no-one liked me, etc. Then in one English lesson the teacher singled me out and told the whole class I was unintelligent because I fidgeted alot and avoided eye contact (this was in 1989). He obviously didn't realise that I was infact terrified of being in that class room and feeling alot of stress and anxiety. Years later I saw him on a station platform. The temptation to go over and confront him was very strong, but I didn't bother. The reason was that I feel for certain that he wouldn't have remembered the incident at all and so why remind him, infact it was probably more likely that if I'd said 'Hello remember me...' he would have probably said yes or no and then asked how I was getting on...So I don't bother too much about the past now, but I do try to use the experiences I've had to make the present and future better.