My Therapist Quit Because I Wrote Her Into a Novel

When I started therapy, I wasn’t looking for healing. I was looking for material.

This confession might make me sound like a sociopath, but writers—especially the chronically blocked kind—often do strange things in the name of inspiration. Therapy seemed like fertile ground. Emotions, revelations, and someone who legally had to listen? Perfect.

Dr. Jane Kellerman had a soft voice, steel-rimmed glasses, and a gaze that made me feel like a poorly constructed sentence. She rarely smiled, often paused too long before responding, and had an irritating habit of saying, “What do you think that means?” like I had a clue. But she was compelling. A walking contradiction—controlled, but full of the kind of quiet intensity that hinted at a world of inner chaos. She intrigued me. Which, as any writer knows, is the first dangerous step toward character creation.

Three sessions in, she appeared in my manuscript. A therapist named Dr. Jenna Kelmar. Glasses, check. Tight bun, check. Unnerving insight and a backstory involving a childhood spent in a lighthouse? Creative liberty.

Jenna Kelmar wasn’t exactly Dr. Kellerman, but the resemblance was more than passing. And, as the novel took shape, I gave Jenna a secret: she was slowly unraveling, struggling with her own mental health while treating others. The plot thickened—clients disappeared, therapy sessions turned sinister, and Jenna began to question if her patients were real or constructs of her deteriorating mind.

It was good. Dark, but good. For the first time in months, I wrote like a faucet turned on full blast. The words poured. Therapy, oddly enough, helped—both literally and fictionally.

Then I made the mistake.

I printed out Chapter 12 and left it in my bag—my therapy bag, the one I took to Dr. Kellerman’s office. I was running late, flustered, didn’t realize I’d grabbed the wrong notebook until it was too late. She glanced at it when I stepped out for water.

When I returned, her expression had changed.

"Interesting reading material," she said slowly, tapping the corner of the page.

I froze. “Oh. That’s—uh—fiction.”

“I gathered.” A pause. “But it seems quite familiar.”

My stomach turned. “It’s a composite character. You know…creative blending.”

She nodded once, the way you do when someone tells you their dog understands English.

We finished the session in strained silence. The air between us had shifted—no longer patient and therapist, but subject and observer. Or maybe, adversaries.

The next week, she canceled.

The week after that, she emailed: “I believe it is no longer therapeutically appropriate for us to continue. I wish you well in your writing and personal journey.”

It felt like being broken up with in a very professional, cold way. My immediate reaction wasn’t sadness—it was, embarrassingly, the instinct to write about it. The meta-potential was delicious: a therapist quitting therapy because of a fictional doppelgänger? That’s practically literary gold.

But something tugged at me deeper than my writer’s glee. Guilt. Because the truth is, Dr. Kellerman had started to help. Not in big ways, not with thunderclaps of epiphany, but in quiet nudges. I’d begun unpacking things I hadn’t touched in years. Old griefs, identity cracks, inherited guilt.

And now she was gone. Because I’d blurred the line between truth and invention.

For weeks, I debated reaching out. I drafted emails I never sent. Apologies. Explanations. Questions.

Then, in a fit of strange bravery—or perhaps masochism—I mailed her the finished manuscript. I included a note that read: “You were never Jenna. But you did help write her. Thank you.”

I never heard back.

The book went on to be published through a small press. It didn’t hit bestseller lists or get optioned for Netflix, but it found readers. A few even emailed me saying the story changed how they viewed their own therapy journeys.

One message stuck out. It came from a woman in Vermont:
“I used to be a therapist. Reading your book reminded me why I quit—and why I sometimes miss it. Thank you for giving her a voice, even if it wasn’t your intention.”

I still think about Dr. Kellerman. Sometimes I wonder if she ever read the book cover to cover, or if she tossed it aside after the first few chapters. Maybe she hated it. Maybe she saw it as betrayal. Or maybe—just maybe—she saw it as what it was: a writer trying to stitch fiction from the raw fabric of truth.

Therapy taught me boundaries. Writing taught me how easily they blur.

And somewhere in that murky space between real and imagined, I think I finally found something close to healing.


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