I am a clinician who is in an abusive household. I have been assaulted multiple times by a family member. This winter they slashed my tires and I feared for my life. I went to WAC to see what my options were. I was ashamed and scared, but I knew I had to get help. The front office staff, as mentioned by another was very uncaring. They didn’t talk to me or plain things very well. They talked with one another but mostly ignored me. I was left in the lobby and didn’t know what was going on. But that is not why I gave one star, though that did make my experience start off on a stressful note. I wasn’t able to meet with anyone but a clinician that day as no one was there. As I told the clinician available for the day my story, she was very uncaring. I am a clinician and I know it can be hard with clients, but she made me feel very judged. As I recounted calling 911 to report needing help due to a mental breakdown, she immediately responded with, “why didn’t you call 988?”. I was afraid for my life after being abused over a long period of time. To say my mental health and decision making abilities were impacted is an understatement. I felt guilt, shame, and like I did something wrong. She wasn’t mean, just had an air of detachment and lack of concern, but I did shut down after that. I can only imagine if a client went there and was questioned about why they didn’t do something when they had a mental breakdown how damaging it would be. She continued to be not much help, though apologized after I mentioned how hurtful what they said was, and unhelpful. Please get more training for your clinicians. Please take vacations or breaks, even if you feel like you can’t. Please sit in and do reviews with them. I would have rather come back a different day for a clinician, rather than talk to someone who seemed uncaring, possibly feeling countertransference, or experiencing burnout. Even if another mental health professional comes in, we are people too. I did not deserve that treatment and feeling like I should have done better, or known better because of my position. I wonder what others experience that don’t understand human behavior as I do, or feel like they did something wrong to begin with, and so absurd that treatment. I left this entire situation completely mortified, and feeling embarrassed. Maybe it was this way because I am a clinician, I do not know. I do not believe in carelessly blaming clinicians, it happens too often, we are under extreme stress and ridiculous working conditions, and we are treated very unjustly. That being said it is important to know when you need to change things up, have boundaries, take time off, and leave situations to not harm another. I don’t want to dissuade people from coming here, it looks like they do wonderful work, I just happened to be there the wrong day, with the wrong profession possibly, and maybe at the wrong time. Or I am highlighting a blind spot they should look into.

Get over they are helpful to people in are situations that male are to victims of the issues at hand everyone very understanding of the situation and effort of this happening to individuals!

Everyone who works there was very nice and brought toys I collected for 2 months for my drive it's my Honor drop off the toys