Why I Wrote Mending the Shattered Mirror

​  I Needed to Tell my Story!
​     Writing Mending the Shattered Mirror (MTSM) was a life-changing experience for me.  As a person diagnosed with Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID), commonly referred to as Multiple Personality Disorder, the book chronicles my very difficult journey out of life-threatening despair after I was betrayed and abused by a beloved mental health therapist. As I grew stronger, and regained a sense of my own good self, I realized I needed to tell my story about abuse in the mental health system, and others needed to hear it.

Therapy Exploitation Link Line - TELL
          I was not alone in my recovery. I had the great blessing of connecting with Laurie Steiner, a retired psychiatrist who had also been abused in therapy. I met her when I sought assistance from The Exploitation Link Line, TELL. We lived thousands of miles apart, but corresponded daily through email.  As I looked back at those emails I realized there was a remarkable documentation of my struggle to recover. The idea of putting those emails into book form became a singular goal that took over my life for 4½ years.

​A Labor of Love
          Of course, there were times when I was tempted to walk away from writing MTSM, but it was a labor of love and I always went back. As I re-experienced the anguish of those early days, and lived through the day by day growth, I came to understand, at a very deep level, the horrific reality of abuse by a therapist.

 Shocking Number of People Abused in Therapy        
​     Thousands of people are abused in mental health therapy each year. TELL reports 40,000 people contact them with concerns about abuse in therapy. Victims of emotional abuse in therapy feel as if they have no voice. The mental health counselor, psychiatrist, or psychologist has the assumption of being competent and caring. When a patient seeks therapy for emotional distress or mental illness, she is perceived as broken. It is an unequal relationship that happens in complete privacy.

​Most Therapist are Ethical ... but
     I truly believe that most therapists are good, ethical, and caring professionals. However, therapists must always be open to listening, and trying to understand, the experience of the patients with whom they work. I hope that therapists will open their minds and hearts to MTSM and that it will serve as a clear and compelling voice within the patient/doctor dialogue, as well as the mental health community. Perhaps they will read my story and understand the consequences of even small boundary violations.