Jeanne Felicia Mayo, M.F.T., L.M.F.T

Unfortunately, there was no real effort made to connect with me as a client. I don't know if she treated me that way because I was an immigrant but it felt that way. She was even blatantly rude at several points dismissing my concerns in the marriage regularly, but we felt uneasy moving on because we had already revealed so much about our lives in hopes of getting help in our marriage. It was also just shocking behavior and at our age we weren't sure how to address it. We are a couple in our 20s and she did not treat our marriage or concerns with the respect needed to help us improve. I found her manipulative because she was sure to be nice to my white American husband so he wouldn't notice how she was treating me. It was almost as if she used the sessions just to gauge our weaknesses and capitalize on them to hurt me. She would ask me questions then roll her eyes at my responses. This was when in our sessions I already only spoke 10% of the time. I tried to trust that she had a method but her true negative feelings were revealed with time. Instead of encouragement, when I gained insight that improved our marriage, she shamed me because she didn't think I learned them soon enough. This was after I revealed to her my extremely abusive upbringing and admitted that there are things I have needed to learn later than others. That just felt cruel.
Certain pieces of advice she gave were just bad and seemed ill-intentioned when I put them in context with her other actions. It felt like an extreme violation for someone who we trusted to target me that way(simply because she felt she could get away with it) and keep taking our money for sessions knowing she didn't want us to succeed. A mental health professional could not possibly be so incompetent, so I feel she knew better but still chose to act that way.
A disappointing experience but it helped me learn to ask a lot of questions before moving forward with a counsellor. Also to notice the red flags. Just because a person makes money as a counsellor doesn't mean they really care about helping people. I never take the time to review mental health professionals like this. But I want others to have this experience in mind and guard their lives appropriately. We could have made so much more progress with someone who cared about creating a healing space for us both.