Dorice irrevocably harmed my marriage…read more
I sought Dorice's help, hoping to save my marriage. I was willing to do anything necessary. My wife and I had already visited a counselor who took sides, so I talked with Dorice beforehand to say that we weren't looking for someone to stir conflict or tear one or the other down; we were looking for insight.
Dorice said this wasn't her style, saying she had worked with the Gottman institute, a well-respected and well-researched marriage counseling and research firm. I was impressed. We scheduled an appointment.
Doris gave us a one-page handout of a happy-home process from Gottman, outlining the strategy she used for working with couples. We never heard or saw anything about Gottman again, and her process was nothing like the brief outline she gave us.
Instead, she continued to revisit the same issues over and over again, creating strife. My wife and I would arrive for counseling sessions in good spirits but nervous, and Dorice would pick at old scabs, stirring conflict and getting my wife angry and emotional. I was then left to deal with her anger for three or four days after. We couldn't move to growing or learning, because Dorice would continue to revisit past hurts again and again. I pleaded with her to not keep coming back to the same issue, but she did, making it larger and more important.
Dorice decided in our first visit that I was full of shame. I don't have problems with shame. She suggested in our second visit that I was insecure; yes, about losing my marriage, but not much else. She suggested in our third visit that I had been abused. No, never. Each week brought out a new theory, and each week she forgot the prior week's diagnosis. When I leaned forward to listen to what she was saying once -- a good four feet away from her -- she stopped our discussion and said she felt threatened by my presence. I'm a gentle man, never violent, but Dorice planted seeds like that with my wife often. I began to think she didn't trust men.
I met with her individually, to ask why we weren't addressing my hurts or my wife's offenses. She said we would get to them eventually. In the meantime, my wife was stirred up weekly about how wrong I was, and felt justified in being angry, never hearing how she was impacting our marriage (nor her family with her.)
I insisted on another counselor. That counselor (a male and female couple) saw that there was blame on both sides and wanted to work with both of us. Justified by Dorice that she had nothing she had done wrong, my wife refused to go back to the new counselors once they said she wasn't taking responsibility for her own actions. (Meanwhile, I've continued to see these counselors with much success.)
I met with Dorice to tell her I wouldn't be returning, and that my wife was filing for divorce. "Uh huh," she replied. She had no empathy. I also told her that I'd recorded our sessions, for my own use. I told her that I'd listened to them again and heard how genuinely poor her counseling was, and Dorice FLIPPED OUT. She jumped up and stood in my personal space, threatening to call the police. I remained calm and asked her to do the same. She wanted to know if I was going to report her. "Someone needs to know about the harm you're doing to people," I told her. She cried about losing her license, pleading with me to not contact the State Board of Licensing. She showed no concern for my loss but was overwhelmed with fear about her own potential loss. It made me wonder if she'd had other complaints to the state. She insulted me, and then again pleaded for mercy asking me to keep my opinion and my recordings secret.
It turns out that a Dorice has some marital disappointment of her own, and I feel like she sees men differently through the lens of her own experience.
I asked Dorice about Gottman and her style of counseling. Does she use any empirically validated methods? "No, some people do, but I don't," she said. So basically it appears that she didn't really have any affiliation with Gottman and is just an old lonely woman meddling in marriages and unable to cope with her own past hurts. I recommend you stay away.
