u/Radiant_Weekend_4924

I’m looking for perspective from therapists, especially those with experience in family systems, trauma, reunification work, or court-involved therapy.

I’m involved in a high-conflict custody case involving a nearly 16-year-old teen, and the court-appointed family therapist has become deeply concerning to me. I’m trying to sanity-check whether these concerns are legitimate professional red flags or whether I’m too emotionally involved to assess clearly.

This therapist was presented to the court and family as a highly credentialed expert in childhood trauma and reunification work—a PhD, LCSW, published author, board member, and “internationally recognized” expert.

Recently, I started looking more closely at her credentials and found multiple concerns. Her doctorate appears to be from a non-accredited institution and does not appear to be in counseling psychology as implied. Multiple affiliations and board memberships are difficult or impossible to verify. At least one organization listed appears not to exist. Her books were published through a pay-to-publish model, not traditional publishing or peer-reviewed academic channels.

That alone concerns me, but honestly my bigger concern is the clinical work itself.

This is a case involving longstanding allegations of emotional parentification, role reversal, coercive control, neglect, alcoholism, and emotional abuse.

The teen is highly articulate, thoughtful, and calm. She does not globally condemn either parent. She speaks in nuanced, specific behavioral terms and can clearly explain both what has happened and how it affects her.

Part of what makes this especially troubling is that serious concerns about this therapist’s competence and clinical judgment existed from very early in the process.

We were repeatedly alarmed by what appeared to be major lapses in continuity, recall, and judgment. She often seemed to lose track of major facts, prior disclosures, and critical case history from one session to the next. Important details were forgotten, confused, or inconsistently represented.

There were also serious concerns regarding confidentiality and boundaries, including situations in which sensitive disclosures made by the child appeared to be communicated directly back to the parent accused of abusive behavior.

Many of her interventions were clinically confusing, counterintuitive, or potentially harmful, particularly in a case involving allegations of parentification, coercive control, emotional abuse, and trauma.

At the time, we repeatedly second-guessed our own concerns because we believed she had psychologist-level credentials and advanced doctoral training in counseling psychology. She was presented as a highly credentialed expert in trauma and reunification work. We assumed there must be a sophisticated clinical rationale behind what we were seeing, even if we did not understand it.

In hindsight, learning the true nature of her credentials fundamentally changed how we interpret those earlier concerns.

What we initially dismissed as “there must be something we are missing” now increasingly appears to have been exactly what it looked like: poor recall, poor judgment, weak clinical reasoning, and an alarming tendency to rely on superficial impressions rather than substantive clinical analysis.

More concerning, the teen reports she has been explicitly discouraged from discussing “old stuff,” meaning the historical trauma and longstanding family dynamics. Joint sessions have focused heavily on present-day low-stakes issues rather than core trauma.

The teen’s individual therapist also reported that when this family therapist called for collateral information, she barely asked about the actual family dynamics, trauma history, or parent-child relationships. Instead, much of the conversation reportedly focused on light, surface-level topics like the teen’s personality and interests.

Despite this, after only about three weeks of joint sessions, this therapist stated in writing that most goals had been substantially met, meaningful progress had been made, and only two to three more sessions would likely be needed.

What stunned me most was how progress appears to be measured.

One example of progress that was specifically cited was that the parent and teen sat physically closer together on the couch during session.

That genuinely floored me.

Am I crazy, or is that an alarmingly superficial metric in a trauma/family systems case?

The teen herself reports that yes, things feel calmer right now—but she attributes that almost entirely to having significantly reduced contact with the parent in question and to the fact that the parent knows the court is actively watching.

Her position is essentially this: things are calmer because there is less exposure and more oversight, not because the underlying dynamic has actually changed.

She believes the core dynamic remains intact and worries things will regress once court oversight decreases.

My biggest concern is that this therapist seems heavily influenced by surface presentation—body language, visible warmth, affect, performative cooperation, and superficial harmony—while underweighting longitudinal patterns, trauma adaptation, parentification, power imbalances, coercive family dynamics, and underlying structure.

I’m genuinely asking therapists here: are these legitimate red flags? Is it normal in a case like this to avoid historical trauma almost entirely? Is physical proximity or body language ever a meaningful benchmark for progress in a coercive or enmeshed family system? And how concerning is credential inflation or misrepresentation in court-adjacent therapeutic work?

I’m genuinely trying to assess whether these concerns are clinically grounded or whether I’m overreacting.