If you’ve searched for “affordable relationship counseling near me,” it’s important to know these five things before you schedule an appointment. FIVE THINGS TO KNOW BEFORE SCHEDULING AFFORDABLE RELATIONSHIP COUNSELING NEAR ME 1. A RELATIONSHIP COUNSELOR PROBABLY WON’T TELL YOU THEY CAN’T HELP YOU Most relationship therapists genuinely want to help, and they believe they have the right training and tools to help you. If helping couples overcome issues is their business and livelihood, it’s natural they don’t want to turn people away. However, many relationship counselors don’t really understand how emotional abuse works and how to screen for it. No matter what they do to help you, it will not help, and that lack of clarity can keep you in harm’s way longer, which benefits the counselor and the abuser…not you. So it’s really important to learn about emotional abuse first. 2. A RELATIONSHIP COUNSELOR WON’T TAKE SIDES, EVEN IF ONLY ONE PERSON IS THE PROBLEM A core part of relationship counseling ethics is that the counselor is not supposed to take sides. And that makes sense. But if your husband is abusive then it’s unethical to treat this as a couple problem when it’s not. Even if the therapist says, “This is emotional abuse and I can still help you.” That’s not a thing. Because if he’s lying, he’s going to use those couple sessions to continue to lie and manipulate. 3. TALK THERAPY WON’T HELP IF HE HAS A HISTORY OF LYING OR MANIPULATION If your husband is lying, deflecting, or rewriting reality then, therapy is just gonna be more of that. There’s no way to convince somebody not to lie and manipulate, and you won’t know they’re doing it. Stay to the end—I’ll show you what the women in our community say they wish they’d known sooner. 4. MANY, MANY WOMEN HAVE BEEN HARMED BY “AFFORDABLE RELATIONSHIP COUNSELING NEAR ME” After more than a decade of doing this work and hearing from hundreds of women who started by searching “affordable relationship counseling near me” or were referred by a friend, a clear pattern shows up. Many, many women have been extremely harmed by couples therapists who did not know that they witnessed emotional abuse inside their offices. In some cases, what the women shared in sessions was later used against them at home or in court. 5. PROGRESS CAN BE MEASURED BY YOUR FEELINGS, NOT BY HIS CHANGED BEHAVIOR Therapists rely on what they’re witnessing inside of that session. So if your husband says he’s improving, if he says he gets it, if he says he’s sorry, then the therapist is like, “Look, he’s sorry.” They can’t witness his behavior over time, like you do at home. So you know more about this than they do, and you can trust your instincts about it. To find out if your husband is using any one of the 19 different types of emotional abuse, take my free emotional abuse test. In this interview, Aliya shares what it looked like when the “expert” she trusted blurred lines in ways that felt increasingly difficult to make sense of. TRANSCRIPT: ONE WOMAN’S STORY OF UNETHICAL AFFORDABELE RELATIONSHIP COUNSELING NEAR ME Anne: We have a member of our community on today’s episode. We’re gonna call her Aliya. A so-called domestic abuse expert exploited her. Welcome, Aliya. Aliya: Thank you. Anne: Let’s start with how you met him. Aliya: I met him online through his network, taking classes and such. After I took a couple of classes with him, I started splitting time with him or co-counseling with him. Which was designed to help people discharge emotion. So if you have stuck trauma or PTSD experiences, you can get with a co-counselor and listen to each other, and hopefully discharge all that stuck trauma by crying, laughing, screaming or trembling. Anne: Were you paying for his services? Aliya: There was no payment. No, not at all. In fact, the attitude was, “I am doing you a favor. You’re the special chosen one. You get to help me. Everybody would love to be with me, but I chose you.” Anne: Oh, so he chose you to be his client? But you didn’t have to pay him and you were special, and so you also got to work for him. HE SAID, “I’M THE BEST CO-COUNSELOR HE HAS EVER HAD” Aliya: At first, I was co-counseling with him as though he were a counselor, but I was also taking turns as the “counselor”. Ultimately, I ended up moving to the state where he lives. There were supposed to be a lot of in-person events. Started helping him teach these classes and do administrative tasks and things like that, in addition to now co-counseling in person. And that’s where things got a little weird for me. Anne: So there’s a double relationship happening here where you’re working for him, but he’s also your counselor in this arrangement. Aliya: Exactly. Anne: In therapeutic circles, this is called a dual relationship. It’s unethical. It’s against the therapeutic ethics rules and is something people need to know before they search for affordable relationship counseling near me. But in his case, he’s not a therapist. This marriage therapy isn’t working. Can you talk about how like it first felt? Aliya: Sure, it felt great at first. Here’s this guy with all this knowledge and expertise, and he’s flattering me. He’s doing the love bombing thing, although we’re not in a romantic relationship. He is telling me how smart I am, and how inspiring it is to know me and all those kind of things. I’m just wonderful and can do no wrong. And I’m the best co-counselor he has ever had and all that. He would reach out and touch my hair and tell me how great my hair looks, and say, “Any excuse to come over and see you.” When he would come over to work on administrative stuff. So there were some double messages. “My life is so much better now that you’re in it,” things like that. HE STARTED CROSSING MORE ETHICAL BOUNDARIES Aliya: It felt very personal. He was constantly flattering me and complimenting me. A male friend had to point this out to me. “When was the last time I reached out and casually touched a man’s hair? Never.” And if I did that to him. He would’ve been offended, because now I crossed a boundary. But it was okay for him to do that to me. And then it got really hairy for me, because we started cuddling. We were on the couch together a lot and I was soaking up all this affection and warmth, and that worked on me emotionally. Anne: I am so, so sorry. He’s the expert, preying on vulnerable women. To hear that he’s cuddling people, that he’s doing pseudo professional coaching slash therapy. It sounds like a mess. I am so sorry. This is definitely affordable relationship counseling near me gone wrong. There were lots of signs of an abusive therapist in this situation. Aliya: When things took a turn, it was subtle at first. He used a few subtle put downs, and then not show up on time or cancel. Anne: Just for our listeners, so that they can hear what maybe a subtle put down might sound like, can you think of any examples? Aliya: The first one that came to mind, we served on a committee with one other person. She was on Zoom, and we were here in my house. and I said, “I’m getting milk to put in my tea.” I used Muscle Milk. He gave this disgusted look and went. “Well, is it even milk?” Just things like that. Why are you sitting over there instead of over here with us? I mean, things of no consequence whatsoever. But he felt the need to say something. I COULD FEEL THE SHIFT IN AFFORDABLE RELATIONSHIP COUNSELING NEAR ME Aliya: One time when I said something to him, he got very distracted and started looking at his phone and doing all kinds of things that typically abusive men would do. That he had never done before. So I could feel it shifting a little bit at that point. I was still co-counseling with him, and we co-counselled just about every single Friday. I helped him teach classes, helped him do his calendar and plan for the future, and maybe do a retreat. There was supposed to be a retreat, twice a year. I think there was one retreat in two years. So none of it was really panning out. There was not a single in-person event for two years. That was the administrative work. But during sessions, we would typically take 45 minutes each and take turns talking. And there’s a no advice rule, so you don’t give anybody any advice. But he would encourage me to get in touch with the pain, trauma and fear. And it could get pretty intense at times. I felt like he was getting bored with me. This affordable relationship counseling near me wasn’t feeling good. EVERYONE IN HIS ORGANIZATION IS VOLUNTEER Anne: How soon did you see that his actions and his words didn’t match? Aliya: He maintained his facade for maybe five or six months. And then it was, “Oh, I’m busy. Oh, I’m going to be late. Oh, I have to cancel, et cetera.” There was a time when the other person on this administrative committee with me, we were meeting every week supposedly. But he canceled at least half the time. And she said, “Why don’t we just meet once a month? Why don’t we schedule it differently?” And he got angry about that. He wanted us to be available every single Tuesday. In case he felt like showing up. Anne: So when he starts to be like, maybe you should get another co-counselor. So you would start paying this new co-counselor, or is everything in his organization volunteer and nobody pays anybody anything? Aliya: It’s all volunteer. It’s peer counseling. You’re doing it together. Everybody’s supposed to be equal. And no power hierarchy, although that’s a false premise. Because he’s somewhat of a well-known guru, and lots of women look up to him. He said he wanted a different co-counselor. Like he was done with me. He was gonna look for somebody else. But he didn’t actually address that properly. In fact, we did not stop co
