Berscheid Counseling

"Love sharing the Christian views!"

"A dunce. I saw him back in 2016/2017, wasn't gonna talk about it but you know what? I don't think I want other people seeing him. For context, I saw him while I was still in high school once a week for 90 minutes. He spent five 90-minute sessions waffling over what to diagnosis me with even after knowing there was an extensive family history of mental illness, the school social worker calling him telling him I had depression, I was suicidal, etc. Finally I pulled out the DSM-V and walked him through the diagnoses I felt applied to me (Generalized Anxiety Disorder and Major Depressive Disorder), and it felt like I had to handhold him through the whole process because he was unwilling to state anything definitive or be anything but pleasantly useless. He also knew nothing about medication and admitted this several times but had me explain every new med I was on every time I saw him (I'm convinced he was trying to waste time.) He also really enjoyed Bible-thumping me even though I was clearly uncomfortable with it and asked him to stop several times. Yes, I came from a Christian family but NO, that did not mean I wanted it to be part of my sessions! More interested in Christian fear-mongering than being respectful, I guess. Mentioning same-sex attraction was a mistake, he was religiously homophobic and sessions downgraded after that confession. When I mentioned parental abuse and wanted to talk about it, he grew uncomfortable and I felt a need to make him sign a few more confidentiality agreements with me so he'd keep his mouth shut... He did not seem to think the early childhood abuse I described was that big of a deal, even though it was clearly stressing me out and it deeply strained my relationships with my parents. Admittedly, at the time I saw him I was still very afraid of my parents and had a hard time saying anything bad about them (fear of punishment, I worried they'd find out I said something), but one of my parents also ended up going to jail for child sexual abuse about two years after I stopped seeing Berscheid, so yes! It was very serious and it required attention and respect! He was very fixated on doing dream analysis of my nightmares, and that was perhaps the most useful thing he did for me, other than help me get accommodations at my school and coach me into telling my teachers I had depression. Very pleasant but unapologetically detrimental."

"Tom is one of the most caring and compassionate guys I've ever known. He's been there for both me and my family through a ton over the last 12 or so years!"