When your abuser is a licensed therapist: My story of surviving a boyfriend who was a covert narcissist and a clinical mental health professional
I never thought I’d be writing something like this, especially as a 41-year-old single mother. I never thought I’d be the one warning others about not only someone I loved dearly and thought would be my forever person, but also someone whose career is centered around helping people heal. But here I am — because what happened to me could happen to anyone, especially when the person causing harm wears the mask of a respected mental health professional in an upper-class suburban community.
For nearly two years, I was in a relationship with a man who is not only a licensed therapist but also the co-founder of a large mental health wellness practice in Naperville, Illinois. From the outside, he looks like success: articulate, intelligent, charismatic, driven. But behind closed doors, he was something else entirely — a person who weaponized his clinical training, his reputation, and his knowledge of trauma to manipulate, isolate, and emotionally destroy those who dared to get too close.
This isn’t just a story about a bad breakup. It’s about abuse that hides behind credentials, false niceties, and charades. It’s about gaslighting, so subtle and sophisticated that it left me questioning my sanity. And it’s about a man who should not be anywhere near vulnerable people, especially not as their therapist.
A Polished Mask with a Violent Past
We met through a dating app. At first, he was charming, empathetic, and attentive. He took to me right away, and wanted to know everything about me — my past, my family, etc. He shared all his childhood traumas with me and how hard he had it when he was younger. How he was so emotionally available, but that “everyone always leaves him,” and all he wanted was someone who wouldn’t leave and take him for who he was. We spent almost every day together after we first met, and he told me he loved me in the 1st week of dating — that he’d never felt a connection like this. He told me his divorce was almost finalized, and that he was just looking for something real after a long, difficult marriage. But that was just the first lie of 100s more to come.
I later found out that just three days before we met, he had been kicked out of his family home for physically assaulting his wife. He minimized this to me, saying he “just threw a phone.” The truth — confirmed by public court records that can be found online to anyone who wants to see them, is far darker. There was a restraining order in place against him at the time we met. His FOID card was revoked, and his firearms were surrendered to the Naperville Police Department. The assault did occur, but the order was dropped after legal negotiations due to the risk of losing his professional license.
The truth is: this man wasn’t recovering from a difficult marriage. He was in the middle of a custody battle, ignoring court mandates, and spiraling out of control. And I was the “shiny new toy” he used not only to distract him from his world collapsing, but to feed his ego and show that he was capable of a healthy relationship. I didn’t know any of this then, because abusers don’t start with harm — they start with charm. And boy, did he have charm. Soon, I became a flying monkey, praising his name and how wonderful he was, and countering any negative things that were being said about him throughout the divorce… because, how could someone so wonderful be any of the terrible things I was hearing about him? Absuive? Narcissistic? Mentally unstable? You couldn’t convince me for a second that he was anything but an amazing man who loved me and my children with all he had.
Clinical Gaslighting and Emotional Abuse
One of the most dangerous things about being in a relationship with someone trained in psychology is that they know exactly how to twist reality — and they can do it under the guise of “helping.” That’s what happened to me. What I experienced wasn’t just manipulation. It was clinical gaslighting — and it left deep psychological scars.
As the relationship came out of the brief honeymoon phase, I noticed that he used everything I had ever confided in him — my childhood, my trauma, my vulnerabilities — as tools to control me with guilt and shame. When I began to question his erratic behavior, his anger, silent treatment, or his emotional withdrawal, he would calmly suggest that maybe I felt this way because I’d never had a healthy relationship before. That I didn’t understand what love looked like. That I should trust him more, because he was a professional and worked with couples all the time, and HE knew what healthy looked like.
At the time, I believed him. I started to doubt myself and my intuition. I looked at my past and thought, “Yeah, he’s probably right. I have had a couple of failed marriages, and he’s a professional in this area. Maybe I should just follow his lead on this.” Plus, I truly was in love with him, so of course I was willing to reflect and try to be better for the sake of the relationship. I tried with all I had to follow his lead — even when it felt completely wrong and my gut was screaming at me to wake up and listen — because I thought he knew better. I thought he was my person. He told me over and over how I was his forever person, that we were meant to be together, and I wanted to believe him. But the truth was — he didn’t know better. He just knew how to control me by using my love and commitment to him as his most powerful tool.
Passive comments were constantly made about my weight, my looks, how I spent my money, how I dressed, how I parented my children, how my family structure was unhealthy, how my friends were unhealthy, how he was the only healthy person in my life, and that all my free time should be based around him. Slowly, I stopped interacting with those in my world. I started only seeing him… I was being isolated, but at my own free will for the sake of “creating a healthy environment” for myself, guided by his direction and subtle suggestions. If I ever questioned his judgments, I was punished or attacked, so I learned to stay quiet and not argue. I based my entire world around his schedule to make it work. To keep him happy. And to keep the peace. Yet, peace never would come.
As I continued my graduate studies in the mental health field, I began to notice something chilling: the very same therapeutic tools we are taught to help people access their truth were being used to distort mine. He guided conversations in ways that led me to question my reality and eventually always ended up me blaming myself for every emotional outburst he had. In the times when I tried to speak up, he dismissed me entirely or gave me the silent treatment until I apologized or dropped the topic. I was told that I was too aggressive. I was too reactive, I was too sensitive, and I was overthinking things.
At the end of our relationship, on the final night we were together, he screamed at me that I had Borderline Personality Disorder. Mind you, this was not in a clinical session. He was NOT my therapist (he never was) — but he used his “diagnosis” of me as a weapon. As a way to invalidate everything I was saying. This wasn’t a clinical assessment. It was an emotional attack, disguised as “expertise.” What I didn’t realize is that he has been planting the seed to others in his world that I was the mentally unwell one. He had been devaluing me behind my back for months and months, talking about sex with his contracted employees via text message while we were taking trips together, spending time together with our children intertwined, while we were planning our future together. All the while, I was being set up as being controlling, manipulative, and mentally “unwell” so that when he made his final discard, he looked validated and like he was the victim.
In reality, I have been diagnosed with Complex PTSD — a condition caused by repeated emotional trauma over time, particularly in situations where escape or resolution isn’t possible. It’s common among survivors of long-term abuse, manipulation, and coercive control. Complex PTSD isn’t just about fear or anxiety — it’s about the collapse of your sense of self. It’s the confusion, the shame, the self-blame, the emotional flashbacks, anxiety attacks, the feeling of being trapped even after you’re free.
This relationship didn’t just break my heart. It hijacked my nervous system at its core. It made me feel broken, unstable, and lost, even though I have always been a confident, independent, successful, and extremely social person. I developed symptoms I didn’t recognize in myself — hypervigilance, panic, memory loss, complete emotional shutdown. I withdrew from graduate school due to a lack of ability to concentrate from the abuse and the non-stop conflict. I stopped functioning, almost completely. I no longer recognized the strong, driven, self-aware woman I once was.
And still, despite all of that, I apologized to him. I apologized for trying to protect his children. I apologized for going to his business partner out of concern when he admitted to mixing multiple substances while his children were in his care. I begged for his forgiveness, even though I knew I had done the right thing in trying to not only get him help, but to protect his children. That’s the kind of power abusers have when they wear a mask of authority and success. They convince you, and everyone around them, that you’re the dangerous one.
The Therapist Who Shouldn’t Be One
His public image couldn’t be more different from the man I knew privately. He’s a self-proclaimed leader in the mental health space. He runs a large therapy practice and parades his title like a badge of moral superiority, but tries to come off as “humble” and not showy. What the public doesn’t see is the bipolar disorder he was self-managing (and often denying) during his divorce, the substance abuse, alcoholism, violent rages, and suicidal spirals he had behind closed doors.
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He uses his title as a shield — “I’m the professional. I help people for a living.” — as though that alone should make you trust him. He presents himself as the victim of two “crazy exes.” But ask yourself: how likely is it that the only two women he’s dated in over 16+ years both describe him as emotionally abusive, controlling, and manipulative — and he’s still the one being victimized?
He told me I wasn’t therapist material and that I should consider being a “coach” instead after I had re-enrolled in graduate school. He wasn’t supportive of me returning to school, and the more I learned, the more he subtly tried to make me feel small. Unqualified. Confused. His ego couldn’t tolerate my growth. Because someone intentionally “growing” can’t be controlled. I was learning more about the field, the lingo, the techniques… and he was unable to hide his manipulations from me as well as he could before. He started saying he had “fear” in regards to me… fear about what, he never would say. But I believe he was fearful that he knew that I knew what he was. And he was terrified of being exposed. I was no longer viewed as a partner in his eyes anymore — I was a threat to his image.
Why I’m Speaking Out
I am a single mother. I am a graduate student. I am a small business owner. I am a community member and a survivor. I am not a bitter ex. I am someone who escaped emotional abuse at the hands of a man who wears a license, a title, and a big smile as a mask.
I kept quiet for too long — partly out of shame, partly out of fear. But I’m here to say that we can’t keep pretending that just because someone has a degree in mental health, they’re a safe person.
I’m telling this story because I know there are other people in his orbit — clients, colleagues, friends — who are sensing that something is off. Trust that feeling. Trust your instincts.
To Those Still Under His Spell
If you believe that those of us who have been in a relationship with this man are manipulative, unstable, or “crazy” — ask yourself who benefits from that story? Ask yourself who keeps repeating it?
No one is immune to narcissistic abuse. It happens slowly, subtly, and by the time you realize you’re in it, it’s already cost you pieces of yourself. But you can get out. And you can heal.
What I’ve Learned
- A therapist who uses their title to silence you is not ethical.
- Being trained in psychology doesn’t make someone emotionally safe.
- Gaslighting doesn’t always sound like yelling — it can sound like expertise.
- If your nervous system is screaming, listen to it. That’s your truth.
- Real professionals don’t use their knowledge to dominate — they use it to empower.
Final Words
This man may never be held publicly accountable. People with power rarely are. But that doesn’t mean those of us who have endured this abuse should stay silent. Abuse doesn’t have to be physical to be life-altering. Emotional abuse, especially from someone who knows how to hide behind therapeutic language, is deeply dangerous — and it is real.
To anyone who suspects they’re being manipulated by someone in a position of psychological power: you are not alone, you are not crazy, and you are not the problem.
Speak. Even if your voice shakes.
— Anonymous, but healing.
