★ (out of five stars)

She was not my therapist, but she treated my mother during the time I was no contact with her, and in turn, that affected my life greatly.  In 2017 I went no contact with my abusive mother who has narcissistic personality disorder.  And for the first time in her life, my mother started seeing a therapist, because she had nobody to give her undivided attention anymore.  At the time, Ms. Jones worked for UIC therapy in Rockford.  My mother had refused therapy before, claiming there was nothing wrong with her, and would only go to family therapy with me if I paid for it (knowing I could not afford that).  But she immediately got a therapist when I finally broke free of her abuse and went no contact, and that was Ms. Hawkins.  

My mother poured her out sob story about me to this therapist and rather than see what was actually going on, the therapist inappropriately diagnosed ME with bipolar.  She had never met me, nor ever would, and that gave my mother the ammunition she needed to start a smear campaign and told everyone in our family and everyone in our neighborhood that I was bipolar and "refused to get a diagnosis", which was why I had stopped talking to her (and had told a friend of hers that my mother was a POS--which, at the time, was for a good reason).  Strange, because while my mother was telling everyone else this, she never once told me she thought I was bipolar.  Granted, I was no contact with her at the time, but still.  I had to hear it from ALL the other people she told instead.

How can a person have a PhD and not recognize narcissism is beyond me.  But she didn't, and I am the one who is still paying for it, eight years later.  There are still people out there who think I am undiagnosed bipolar and refuse to speak to me because of the stuff my mother made up about me because of that.  They all think I am seriously mentally ill and "crazy" (as my cousin put it).  In fact, I do have mental illness: I have generalized anxiety disorder, panic disorder, agoraphobia, and OCD and possible DPDR, all due to the amount of abuse I endured as a child and teenager (and adult--which is why I went no contact with my mother at the time she was seeing Ms. Jones) from both my mother and my father, who were also both severe alcoholics when I was growing up.  

Here is why I am finally posting this: this is something therapists do.  They give out diagnoses to their patients about their family members, whom they've never met, based on their client's descriptions of those people.  This should be illegal, but it's not, but it's definitely inappropriate and immoral.  Bipolar is a serious thing.  It's not something to be said nonchalantly in a conversation from a therapist to a client, as though it's just something to mess around with.  I do not have bipolar (I have zero symptoms and I have been evaluated in therapy for personality disorders), but if I did?  Why would Ms. Jones think I'd want my mother to know that?  Sometimes the things you share with your clients are NOT safe things to be sharing with your client.  Or more so, your client is not a safe person to have certain types of information.  Some clients, like my mother, will twist your words to make it work for them in sort of way, which will hurt other people.  Your job, as a therapist, is to know that about your client.  

So, that's why I am giving her one star.  Did she help my mother deal with me going no contact?  No.  She just allowed my mother to not only blame me for it, but she joined in blaming me.  She didn't even know me.  Rather than help my mother deal with her own feelings and work on helping her move past it, she allowed her to wallow in it (to get the attention she wasn't getting from me anymore) and put ideas in her head that ruined my relationships with people I once had in my life.  Granted, I fully blame the people for believing my mother and my mother, herself, for being the one who twisted the information in the first place, but Ms. Jones didn't see how toxic my mother was (which should have been clear to her, after knowing her for a bit) and irresponsibly put ideas in her head.  Which I think should NOT be allowed in therapy (to diagnose family members or friends with mental illness who aren't there). They need to start thinking about how things like this could affect others and how their clients may not be exactly who they are portraying themselves to be.

In person only (though my mother saw her in person, not me).