Susan L. Klim, Ph.D

"If you are considering making an appointment with Susan Klim, you need to close your laptop and break into a full sprint in the opposite direction. When I was Susan Klim's patient, I needed an adult to ask me questions about my home life, identify that my biological mother was profoundly abusive and her boyfriend was a malignant narcissist, and call CPS so that I could be placed in foster care. Instead, Klim made me participate in a terrorizing exercise where she made me look into a full length mirror and name what I didn't like about my body. I recently read Jennette McCurdy's memoir "I'm Glad My Mom Died" and I felt so jealous that McCurdy saw a therapist who helped her identify narcissistic abuse. Unfortunately, I got stuck with deeply incompetent and coercive Susan Klim. Today, I realize that my female parent (I'm no contact and so grateful to be free, and finally be healing from abuse in my 30s) most likely had narcissistic personality disorder. She coached both my sibling and I into developing eating disorders and encouraged us to diet as early as grade school. I have a very early childhood memory of complaining of being cold when we were outside in January, and she told me, "Good! You'll burn more calories." My female parent attracted a series of predators, men who were interested in her because she was vulnerable. My home was a nightmare and I was constantly pressured to diet. I had a traumatizing experience seeing Dr. Klim as a teenager. I will never understand why she did what she did. Because there was so much gaslighting at home, I wasn't able to lead with, "I am being emotionally abused and neglected." Dr. Klim never once asked me about my home life or about the conditions of a family that produced a severely anorexic daughter. She wanted to talk ENDLESSLY about what I was eating and about my concerns about food. Klim seemed to think that eating disorders were about wanting to manipulate how one's body looked visually. My eating disorder was a direct reaction to my female parent coming up with crash dieting challenges, who made it clear she found me less lovable when I was chubby-- which I thought was normal at the time. In February of 8th grade, my female parent bought me a beautiful dress that was three sizes too small, and told me I could wear the beautiful size medium dress to the dance if I lost 25 pounds in three weeks. (I couldn't lose 25 pounds in three weeks, and thus the dress that hung in my closet for three weeks as a carrot was taken away). I very understandably became anorexic, and had the unique disadvantage of ending up in Klim's office. Klim wanted to talk obsessively about food, calories, and what I didn't like about my body, without any curiosity about what was going on in my home. I was being tortured. At one session, Klim took out a full-length mirror and told me to name the things I didn't like about my body, despite that I never brought up disliking my body. I was used to abusive adults who demanded authority, so I volunteered, "Uh... my thighs?" She made me scrutinize my thighs, examine them in the mirror, pinch the fat on my upper thighs, and say mean things about my body. My feet go numb from the PTSD of mentally revisiting this ordeal. I will NEVER understand this exercise. At our fifteenth session, she said to me, "I feel like I don't know anything about you. All we talk about is food." Klim was the adult in charge and all she wanted to talk about was food! (I sense she had an active eating disorder at this time.) When I said I didn't want to see Dr. Klim anymore, she was furious with my "non-compliance". She said to me, "I want to be clear that us concluding our work together is not because you've accomplished anything." Adults in my world were unsafe. Klim was certainly one of them. Again, I have the sense that Klim, a long-distance runner, had some food and fitness issues of her own-- she talked endlessly about running to a child with an active exercise addiction-- which may explain her deeply ineffective work in this area."