0 (out of five)

"This women is terrible! My husband saw her 4 times and I went with him for support and she asked him “ if I handed you a gun would you kill yourself right now ? “ I was shocked! She also claims to do DBT and understand people with Borderline Personality Disorder but my husband brought up to her that he wanted a divorce well I was in hospital and she told him “ do what you think is best “ and then told him “ don’t pick her up from the hospital “. I don’t know what kind of therapist says this kind of stuff but she is HORRIBLE! I definitely wouldn’t go to her if you have Borderline Personality Disorder she encouraged my husband to abandon me when I needed him the most. She didn’t even encourage him to work on the marriage either. She even told me she understood Borderline Personality Disorder but encouraged my husband to leave me. She should have her license taken away , she is absolutely terrible and will lie straight to your face !" 

That is not my review of her.  That's one I found on Google.  Yes, there are good reviews of her, but I honestly feel the same way about therapists as I do about books: they are only as good as their worst review.  Not always true (for either one), but usually.  

The reason I am sharing this review here is that the Bren that I saw as a therapist, I can totally see doing this.  Whereas the nice reviews, I just don't understand how that's the same person.  Granted, Bren was very vocal about dying twice, so maybe what came back isn't the same Bren as before?  But this review was six years ago, so I think this was before she died, so I don't think that's it.  

Here's the thing, Bren is nice.  But she's dangerous (as you can see above and as you'll read below).  Which is why I am giving her 0 stars.

Bren and I have a lot in common, kinda-sorta.  She's a HUGE believer in ghosts, whereas I used to be.  She practices AAIT (which i guess is the ONLY type of therapy she does with people now), and I learned about and saw that it's very closely related to IFS (my special interest).  It's like IFS mixed with EMDR (invented by someone who's not a doctor or therapist, etc.).  I think if everything happens for a reason, that I met Bren so I could learn about AAIT, to add to my arsenal of tools.  Did Bren do AAIT with me?  Nope.  She didn't do any therapy at all with me.  Like many of the therapists on this page.  She said she was going to but never did.  Instead, she liked to regale me stories of her Saint Benard.  Like, a lot.  And I am a dog lover, but hearing a ten-minute story of her taking him for a walk in the freezing cold with her waiting for him to poop you can only hear so many times.  

Here's the thing: I keep telling these therapists "I don't like it when therapists take up my time talking about themselves...I mean, I do like to learn about my therapists, but there's a point when enough is enough and I want to get down to business".  And they all agree that that's inappropriate of the therapist to do, yet most of them then turn around and do exactly that.  It's like they have zero self-awareness at all.  And why be a therapist when you have zero self-awareness?  

So, now we've laid the groundwork, Bren is a nice person who likes to talk about her dog (I have two dogs, and only brought them up in relation to her dog--in fact, I had FIVE dogs, but I lost three in a year and when I told her that, she didn't comment on it, she just then related something else to herself to talk about--like losing three dogs isn't trauma???  I was stuck in a state of grief for so long after that I am still at times, something that would be good to talk to a therapist about, right?  Ha!  Only if they care what you are saying!).  

Now, I was having a hysterectomy in a few weeks (from our initial conversation--I won't call it therapy appointments, as none of this was therapy, as most of my appointments with therapists aren't) and I brought it up, many times.  I was terrified, and rightly so because don't forget, I have generalized anxiety disorder, panic disorder, agoraphobia, and OCD.  Do you think that Bren was compassionate with me about that?  Oh my freaking god.  No, she wasn't.  You know what she did instead?  She then regaled me stories about how "Oh yeah, when I had surgery, I died twice!"  She went on and on about how she had cancer and how during surgery she flatlined, TWICE!  

Are you fucking kidding me?  Are you serious right now?  I have SEVERE medical anxiety, something she KNEW, and she told me, in detail, about how she died two times?  What kind of insane person do you have to be to do that do a mentally ill person?  Oh wait, remember the review above?  She asked a suicidal person if she gave him a gun if he'd kill himself right then.  So yeah, that's the type of person we're dealing with.  Someone who has ZERO regard for the mental health of others. 

Here's the thing: Bren loves death.  When I told her my biggest fear in life is dying, she literally responded with "Oh, I can't wait for it!  How exciting that would be!"  (imagine her saying that to a suicidal person!)  I didn't even know how to answer her, because how in the HELL is that a response to a mental health client who says their biggest fear is death?  Because fuck what the client feels, all that matters it that Bren gets to add how SHE feels!  That's what's important here, right?  Sigh.

She has a superiority complex, as well.  When we started talking about psychic stuff (I've been a tarot reader for over 30 years, but I do not believe in psychic readings--which I could not relay to her, because she was too busy interrupting me to talk about what SHE thinks) and she said in response to people being psychic that because she's died twice, she feels that unless you've "crossed to the other side", you have no business calling yourself a psychic.  See, that makes Bren the most psychic person in any room, for the most part, and that makes her feel special.  She also believes that she's special because she's white and these Native American ladies decided to teach her "the old ways" when the rest of the tribe was annoyed that she was white, but this "grandma" lady took her in to teach her because she saw something special in her.  Because Bren is super special, ya know?  And now the ghost of "Grandma" is with her at all times, because obviously Grandma thinks Bren is so special she'd rather hang out with her than her own actual family.  "Grandma" was in the room with her at all of our meetings.  I wonder what Grandma thought of me?  And why didn't Grandma tell her to STFU and actually respond to the things her clients were saying rather than saying nothing about anything other than herself?  I don't think Grandma is a good spirit guide if she's just going to allow Bren to do what she does (I say, facetiously).  

Bren has two modes: she allows you to talk non-stop without directing the conversation or asking questions, or she's ignoring what you said as a bid for help and instead telling you about some story about herself that's slightly related to what you just said.  Like I said, we had "conversations", not therapy.  And they aren't even real conversations, they were excuses for Bren to talk about herself.  A real conversation would ask you questions about what you just said.  It was more like she sat there waiting to for her turn to talk, not caring at all what her clients actually say.  How is that therapy?  It's barely a conversation.  

Well, I had my hysterectomy, and she asked "How are you doing?"  I told her, and rather than saying anything else about me, she related her own surgeries to my mine.  She also talked about her flatlining at almost all of our sessions.  As though reminding that death can happen during surgery was necessary.  Again, I want to remind you, I have severe anxiety, especially about dying and especially about medical stuff.  And she knew this, but I wonder if she remembered anything I told her, ever?  Or did it just go in on ear and out the other?  

Oh yeah, I also got to hear a twenty-minute story about a ghost that lived in her old house.  Mind you, I saw her only four times (just like the guy in the other review).  

Other things happened that made me feel weird, too.  Like when I showed up without a hat on.  She looked at me super funny and said "Woah, someone got a haircut!"  I said no, I did not, it's actually growing out.  I normally wear a hat because it's winter.  And her response was "Yeah, I remember those days."  I was confused by what she meant.  She went on.  "Yeah, when I was bald from chemo I was cold all the time and blah blah blah chemo cancer cold etc. blah blah blah."  I had tuned her out by that point.  What on EARTH did me wearing a hat like a normal person in the dead of winter have anything to do with her having cancer?  She has hair just as short as I do (okay, mine is a tiny bit shorter), which has nothing to with why I was wearing a hat--it was 0 degrees outside, even if I had long hair I'd be wearing a hat.  Sigh.  It was just another reason she found to relate to her cancer (since hers was ovarian cancer, she really found my hysterectomy as a reason to keep bringing up her surgery and how her surgery was so much worse than mine).  It's like I wasn't allowed to be cold, or in pain, or recovering from surgery, because SHE had it worse than me.  It's like I get it, you've suffered, but so do other people!! 

Another thing she did on the last day we met was strange.  I was making a joke about how Facebook knew what I was doing outside of Facebook, because they showed her to me as "people you may know", which I found to be a HUGE breach of privacy.  Little do we all know, it's true.  They have this switch turned on that says they can track you outside of FB that you have to manually turn off.  It's on by default.  I said "I thought I was crazy, because I will be searching something on one browser, but open up another and an ad will pop up for that thing."  Then I said "It's even more weird when I talk about something to my husband and later YouTube will show me an ad for that thing.  It's creepy AF!"  And she responds "Oh yeah, I have another client who we both try to talk about the most weird things we can think of to see later if Google will show us an ad for it."  And it was the way she said it that struck me as odd.  My old therapist Stephanie Carey did the same thing.  She would say she talked about something or did something or someone she knew did something in the same way that happened to me, and I found out later that they were all fabrications (a cute way of saying "lies").  And it was the way Bren said it that sounded like she was lying.  It struck me as so odd that I didn't know what else to say to her.  I was like she wastes time with a client making up weird conversations to play a game with Google?  I highly doubted that actually happened.  I think sometimes people like Bren and Stephanie make things up because they don't know how else to relate to you.  And I think they talk about themselves so much because they also don't know how to relate to you.  Granted, Stephanie at least asked me questions and tried to "help" me with my issues, whereas Bren doesn't even acknowledge I've said something most of the time.  But making shit up is just weird.  And I can see right through it.

And the other thing was that she was super proud of being an AAIT practitioner, which is fine, but she claimed she can cure you in one session and that her AAIT status made her special, compared to other therapists.  YET she never once practiced it on me.  If you read the other review of her above, she also claimed to know DBT yet didn't even try to do it with him, even though he had borderline personality disorder.  When I asked Bren "What all can you do with AAIT?  Other than curing trauma, what else does it cover?"  She shrugged and said "I can fix your golf game!"  And for real, the ONLY other example she gave was when her friend called her and said "My son is having issues, I need you!"  Because Bren is the one to call when someone is having a problem and she shows up to her godson's game and gave him some AAIT and just like that, he was playing well in the game again and went on to win!  Yeah.  Because that happened.  Bren, again, likes to position herself as the most important person in her stories.  Just like my cousin, who has NPD, always talking about what a great artist she was, yet I never saw her work.  Or she talked about what a great writer she was, yet when I read her work, it was awful.  Maybe I am glad Bren didn't try to do AAIT on me, maybe she would have done more damage than good?  

I went to Bren hoping to get help for my OCD and agoraphobia and just like all the others, I didn't get any help at all.  It's like they have no idea how to treat actual mental illness anymore.  Yet they get paid $100 an hour?  How is that okay?  

I saw Bren 4 times, and each time I was like "I will give her once more chance to show me I am wrong about her" and each time she was exactly the same with me.  I still don't get how relating to me that you DIED twice in surgery was an appropriate thing to say to me as someone with anxiety facing surgery.  That I can't forgive her for.  That was BEYOND inappropriate and quite a bit dangerous.  I mean, very easily, if I had let my anxiety take over my brain, I wouldn't have gone through with surgery.  And I needed it, as what was wrong with my uterus would not be healed with anything else other than removal.  

So, I give Bren ZERO stars out of five (she was nice, but a terrible therapist) and a F grade as a therapist.  I would have given her one star had it not been for her trying to scare me with DEATH for my surgery.  

I only ever saw her in person.