Athena Staik, Ph.D

I went to see Athena several times to address marital problems and my own problems, which include sex addiction. She is very knowledgeable and intelligent. Perhaps that gets in the way of her actually asking questions and listening to the patient. She spent too much time lecturing and too little time asking questions and listening, in my opinion. I wanted to understand why I had certain recurring fantasies, and she offered a theory, but did not help me delve into anything in my past that would help me understand. I felt sometimes like she had me put into a box in her theories without even knowing much about my history or feelings. I felt a little like when you go to a tailor who has only one suit to fit you, and keeps telling you how great it fits on you, even though it doesn’t fit to you.
The last straw was her telling me that I didn’t know my own feelings and not to trust my feelings; kind of a reverse Obi Wan Kenobe. I had left a woman I was with for a year after I realized that I still love my wife and that I needed to address my sex addiction. I told Athena that I still had feelings for the former girlfriend and that was causing some emotional difficulty. I wasn’t saying I wanted to go back to the former girlfriend, just that I was having difficulty. She told me I didn’t love that woman; she said it couldn’t be love because of all of the problems that relationship had caused. I agree that the relationship caused a lot of problems, but I don’t think that means I couldn’t have loved her. That’s like saying my wife couldn’t love me because I have caused her a lot of grief, or I couldn’t love my father who caused me grief. I don’t see the point of her insisting that I deny my own feelings; it doesn’t seem like good therapeutic practice to me. She also told me I was cruel for telling my wife that I was having a hard time after my former girlfriend texted me on Christmas day. I didn’t text the girlfriend back, and I was only telling my wife because I was reaching out for help. Like an alcoholic who doesn’t want to take a drink or a drug addict who doesn’t want to go for a hit, and reaches out to keep himself from doing it. I know it did hurt my wife to hear that, but I don’t think I was being cruel, and I don’t see the value of her insisting on that with me.
When I wrote and told her why I was stopping therapy with her, Athena’s response was basically to blame me. She felt that I was not sufficiently committed to the process to be successful, despite my having read an entire book and completed several written assignments for her; none of which she did much to follow up on. I wondered why she had my wife and I read Harville Hendrix’s book on Getting the Love You Want, which teaches about Imago Therapy, then had us practice it only once, and certainly did not practice the techniques of mirroring, validation, and empathy herself when listening to me. I wish she had accepted a little bit of responsibility for the failure of her therapy to be very helpful with me. I accept my share of it, but I think she should also look at her own ego.
I accept that Athena is well trained and probably did see things about me that I don’t always see about myself. But on some things I think she was mistaken, and was very stubborn about continuing to insist on them when it was obviously not helping me. Her style of therapy may work with some people, but I would not recommend her to anyone.