Hopefully, you are wondering, dear reader, what exactly was happening to my career. I left out some details with the focus on Lynn's health. I said that individuals who were also getting treated by John Freifeld were suing me and they had filed grievances with the North Carolina Social Work Certification and Licensure Board (NCSWCLB).

The NCSWCLB would have the final say as to whether I could continue to work in my field. So, this was not just about my private practice. This was not like losing a job. This was career-changing, or it could end my career. I was a mess at this point and I needed time off to heal but I had my entire future on the line.

The role that John Freifeld played in this situation is important. Some of what I was being accused of doing either I had heard that he was in fact doing those things or I could see how if there was someone to blame for the deterioration of the mental health of my clients, the fault should go more toward the individual who did not have any training or expertise. I am NOT saying that this means I didn't care about my clients.

As you will recall, John Freifeld had admitted that he was not a trained psychotherapist and he had no degree, had no specialized training, and no credentials. He had admitted to my client Jessica that he had misrepresented himself previously as a therapist.

If asked, he would say that he is "just a support person." My colleagues had readily recognized the problems that I was describing and had advised me to tell my clients that I cannot be their therapist if they are receiving services from John.

However, I have sought to explain how and why his actions were not helping others and were in fact making people worse. I would later in 2020 begin to talk to his sister Ruth.

She said recently when I asked if John would have stopped hurting me if he knew it was hurting another innocent person (a fact I will get to later) and she said "John had no sympathy, compassion, or empathy for other people... if he sought out to hurt someone and he found out indirectly he was hurting someone else they love that was more power to him he lacked empathy."

As a psychotherapist who wanted to work in private practice, I had to obtain malpractice insurance or liability insurance. It is standard practice for this to cover up to $1 Million per claim and $3 Million total. I'm not sure where I heard this, but I heard that Freifeld knew about this insurance coverage and that he expected to benefit in some way from this. It is hard to imagine that a specific detail like that would just happen to be made up by someone.

One could imagine the proceeds of a civil suit being used to set up a treatment center in Wilmington, and Freifeld would imagine a role for himself in that treatment center. I have no proof of this. I can point out that when my client went over to where John was staying, she said, "the place is like a damn treatment center."

I felt like I was on the run during this time.

I regret that I had to end things with my clients so abruptly, but my life was falling apart so fast. I didn't feel competent for the first time in my career. At least temporarily, I was not well.

I closed the office and turned in my key. Some of the office furniture was thrown away or left for someone to pick up. The owners of the building had a say in how that was handled.

As I took one last look at the office I thought, "It was amazing how Lynn had made the office look so nice and comfortable/inviting. I felt so good about how I had fixed up the office without spending too much money. I had gone from renting an office that was used by Chris Hauge, DSW, LCSW to getting my own office fast, within a couple of months. That was an amazing accomplishment and not something my colleagues had expected.

It's hard to believe that that was just a couple of years ago. It seemed like another lifetime.

I tried to store the client files somewhere stable but nothing about my life was stable at this point. My entire life had collapsed in just under two months! So, other than furniture, I packed everything into a car and tried to figure out where I was going to store everything. I brought some of it to our house, but then all of that was being packed up in that first week of September. Plus, the last thing I wanted to do was to overwhelm Lynn with the details of what I was confronting at this time.

I had bought a new car after the car that I previously had was stolen and then totaled. Yes, I felt guilt and shame for having burdened Lynn with that expense because she had cosigned on that car when our life had been "normal."

The company that provided my malpractice insurance had assigned a law firm to represent me. The issues of the grievances and the malpractice claims were both being handled by the same lawyers. Obviously, they needed documentation to review the method and nature of the treatment interventions that I had employed.

This was happening at a time when I was emotionally distraught. I was overwhelmed. I was moving from one place to another without any permanent residence. I had never been prepared for days or events like this.

How do I put together the treatment notes for clients A, B, C, D, and E? I couldn't focus. This wasn't life as I had ever known it to be. My lawyers were not mental health counselors who could help me with the overwhelming stress of everything I was dealing with. They only knew about facts and evidence.

Maybe if my life had been more stable and if I ever had a moment of peace, I might have been able to provide detailed notes, treatment plans, observations and so much more. Plus, we all sometimes get behind in our notes and documentation. In an ideal world, I would be able to document everything and find experts to explain how nothing I did was wrong, unethical, or amounted to malpractice.

My life was a million miles from an "ideal world" scenario.

I also believed it was all my fault that I lost Lynn. I was consumed with guilt for not being everything she had wanted and expected. I had been that way until she got sick in late July or August of 2000... until I broke under the overwhelming pressure.

The fact that Lynn could have understood that was not registering at all to me.

It was not like Lynn and I broke up, there were no goodbyes. I just could not persuade her to find a place for me with her. With Diane selling our home, I was on the run and I didn't feel I could ask to move in with Diane.

Continuously, I kept seeing in my mind examples of how I had not been there for Lynn or how I let her down.

The point is that I was having a hard time focusing. It seemed like I wasn't going to be able to offer evidence to act in my own defense regarding the grievances with the NCSWCLB or in my civil suit. I was having trouble providing what was needed by my lawyers to mount a defense.

I would come to see how the NCSWCLB was not provided with sufficient or complete information that they could use to make a decision regarding my licensure. They were not made aware of the tragic and stressful events that I had just experienced. They were not aware of the role that Freifeld played in the lives of these clients.

How do I know this to be the case? Let me explain.

First of all, with the chaotic nature of my life, I had trouble providing documentation to inform them. My lawyer was therefore unable to present any useful information. Being disorganized and overwhelmed does not mean that my actions were unethical.

It also does not mean one is incompetent or unskilled.

The NCSWCLB also hired two psychologists to do a psychological assessment on me. They were David Ziff, Ph.D., and Dr. Williams. From my experiences meeting with these psychologists, it was clear that they were not made aware of the recent stressors that I experienced. And they did not ask any questions about what might be happening in my life. That fact in itself is rather bizarre because even before I started graduate school, I would have known to explore recent events and stressors.

So, these psychologists had only the information in the grievances to go on.

In just one day, they would come to a conclusion that no one else had ever made about my competency and mental health.

My perceptions about them were that they were cold and indifferent, lacking in empathy and compassion. That seemed odd for mental health professionals, though I have felt the same about some of my colleagues where I had worked – psychologists, psychiatrists, psychiatric nurses, and psychotherapists.

I made a feeble attempt to defend myself with Dr. Ziff which must have come out wrong. I might have stated that I didn't think that the problems that my clients were having were my fault. I know that was misunderstood when he asked, "what about how this affected your clients?"

I was speechless. Of course, I cared about my clients. How had this session devolved into some caricature of how not to build trust, empathy, and a working relationship with another person? I also had assumed that he would have known that I was not living with them and providing therapeutic interventions with them as Freifeld had been doing.

It was clear that Dr. Ziff wasn't even curious as to the veracity of the claims being made. Neither seemed to wonder how I had been so successful over the past decade. I must have fooled every colleague, therapist, and supervisor who came before them.

My lawyers told me that they didn't think they could defend me with the licensure board - the NCSWCLB - at this time and because I wasn't able to provide documentation. So, they advised me to just sign what is called a Consent Decree. I should just sign what is called a Consent Decree. It stipulated that I would surrender my license, but I could dispute the findings later.

This was in March of 2001.

I was profoundly depressed already with low self-esteem and a low sense of self-worth. So, I didn't think I had anything to offer the world. It's truly astonishing that I would believe this based on everything that had happened over the past years.

I felt a profound sense of helplessness and powerlessness. Of course, the loss of the life I had with Lynn was perhaps a greater contributor to that feeling at this time.

Remember this psychological assessment lasted only a few hours in one day.

David Ziff wrote that he thought that I lacked social skills and empathy. That was the most profoundly untrue thing that anyone could say at this point... any of several hundred people would strongly disagree with that statement.

I had told my lawyers that we could dispute that by interviewing 10 or more colleagues and therapists that I had over the years.

It's ironic that he was accusing me of not having empathy. Neither one of them had demonstrated even the most rudimentary capacity for empathy or interest in connecting with me as a person during our interactions together.

I could compare and contrast that to everything I had ever observed from psychologists and psychotherapists that I had ever worked with. While I have known some psychotherapists or psychiatrists who lack empathy and compassion but none of them had the audacity to describe someone else as lacking those qualities.

You might think, oh, you are saying that because you are mad at them or upset with their findings. That's partially true. But as I have said previously, empathy is a dynamic that exists between a client and therapist/psychologist/counselor. It's somewhat subjective and it's something that must be experienced by the other person.

I cannot comment on their abilities in general. I can only comment on how they acted in this situation.

He also wondered if I had a schizophrenia spectrum disorder. Apparently, no one ever noticed that either. None of my therapists, psychologists, supervisors, or colleagues had questioned my reality testing before Dr. Ziff. In the decades since then, no psychiatric professional has ever diagnosed me with a disorder that involved problems with reality testing.

Unfortunately, I didn't think I had any options but to sign the agreement that was drafted - a Consent Decree. And that is how I surrendered my license. It was a condition of the Consent Decree.