Cult Education Forum

Is this woman a real registered psychologist?

If so, the people she is harming, or someone, just needs to document what she is doing, like verbally hurting someone by calling them a dingbat, and report her.
Those complaints go on her file.
People gotta complain complain complain.

Also, did her terms of service says posts won't be deleted? If not, she has to delete them.
Report her for that too.

Also, there are websites like RateMD's [www.ratemds.com] which cover psychiatrists, maybe psychologists too.
Maybe there is a RatePsychologist website?
All the people she is hurting can post what she did on these other sites, and they will stay there for years. Someone just enters the info, and then people file reports.


I would not take any shit from this woman. Just because someone is a psychologist, doesn't mean they are competent. She sounds utterly incompetent.
Feel free to post any of this on the other site.

By the way, this Dr. Irene person doesn't know what she is talking about. Byron Katie is NOT cognitive therapy. As I personally proved before, The Work is not listed in ANY cognitive therapy database on planet earth. Its the opposite of CT, if anything. BK is a cognitive distortion.
It sounds like Dr. Irene is in the tank for BK, or some LGAT's.

Is she really licensed? She sounds like a phony, maybe she got her degree from one of those bogus fake diploma mills before they closed them down? Like "Dr." John Gray, and all those other guys?

If I have time, I might check this woman out, and give her the full Anticult treatment.

well, Dr. Irene Matiatos is a registered psychologist.
[www.nysed.gov]

She could be cracking up, shrinks are people too. I know of many shrinks who have cracked up. One shrink who worked with homeless people and addicts, turned into a homeless addict, and ended up missing and then dead.
Sometimes they go into the field where they have personal problems, and it becomes too much for them.

There are some blogs started too about her.

She is not listed on the RateMDs site, but she can be added. They do list psychologists.
Anyone can add the Dr. here, and then people can rate it.
[www.ratemds.com]

Maybe that could be passed around. She will stop being such an ass if she gets some complaints her colleagues can read.

A couple people have contacted the NYC licensing board. Her site is up again and in one thread that she started, about "what happened" she states she had to take the site down while sorting out things and seeking legal counsel.

My abusive doctor talked about seeking legal counsel when I was questioning him. I see that as a veiled threat to anyone who questions these clowns.

she must use that website to try and get new patients?
some psychologists have a hard time getting a full practice,so they need to advertise.

hopefully, her poor behavior will warn people away from her.

Quote:

Hope
I think you are absolutely correct about BK. Though her homepage bookshelf lists all the heavy hitters in the psychology, like Albert Ellis, it is her own assessment of BK's work "cognitive therapy in disguise" and the fact that she recommended BK in her private practive, that is behind a lot of her words and actions, though some actions are dumb-founding. A long-term, adored poster, who suffered emotional, verbal and physical abuse by a boyfriend, asked Dr. I to end her membership (members cannot do that on their own) and delete all her posts. Instead, the doc left her posts up and renamed her user name from D__ to Dingbat. It has not been lost on me that the abuser of this woman was very into Landmark and it wasn't until I started posting about Landmarkians over there that D___ wrote about her own abuser's connection to it. So - perhaps the whackjob doctor is more into LGAT stuff than she has ever let on. It really appears as if she is having some kind of meltdown.

Hey Hope ... It's me D, nice to see you :). I found this Forum and this Thread after doing a search. You know what happened to me personally in all this and in addition with the renaming did hurt me. I don't think I need to elaborate on "hurt". I think you know what I've been through regarding the years of severe abuse in my past. I'd posted on that Forum since early 2003, it had helped me very much, it was my support base, the place was my life-saver I believe, I was a wreck when I found it, I owe the people there so very much for helping me find ways through and out the other side of abuse. I'd worked through the most severe symptoms associated with PTSD due to abuse in Therapy & Counseling ... had a handle on Panic Attacks and such, but just after this happened I had a full blown panic attack. It feels rather silly to say it, but it's a fact, it happened, so there it is. It was like being abused all over again. I think it triggered the name calling I'd had suffered with my X, severe verbal abuse is horrid and the negative affects of it can linger .....

The name change to Dingbat came after I had been systematically shut down. First my posts were put on moderation (this was a mass moderation, it happened for quite a few of us after Dr has put up the Political post). My "crime"? (I only assume this, because I was never told even though I did ask several times in PMs) was that I deleted some of MY own posts and Threads after I could see that the Forum had become unstable. Hey, when all the trusted Admins are packing their stuff and leaving, you REALLY know something is rotten in Denmark eh? Oh another of my "crimes"? I also *bumped* a few X-Admins resignation Threads and made a few questioning posts here and there. Guess they (the Dr and her new Administrators could not cope with that "insult"). Threads and posts were being shut down and being made invisible so fast it made my head spin. No one could speak up but those in "charge". I know that Forum well after the almost 9000 posts I made, I know how it ticks, and what I saw (and felt) happening was so abnormal, so potentially damaging. The Dr was on some mad rampage it seemed. If you spoke up you got banned immediately - no reason, no warning & no recourse. None of us really knew her, but for this to happen on Abuse Forum, with complete disregard for her OWN Forum Rules was mind-blowing. Of course it was natural that opposing sides started to form within the membership with this going on. Someone named this happening as "Catgate08"

Look, it wasn't just me that was hurt, it was many who were. In the first few days of it 11 Members (most were long time posters, valuable Members) were Banned! Others like me, like I said, we were systematically shut down or disabled in our functioning capacity. Anyone who has ever been abused by a controlling person knows just how damaging and scary being "shut down" behind closed doors can be. After my posting abilities were taken from me (I mean I was on moderation, and after that I did try and post, but none of my posts saw the light of day). Then I was unable to edit or modify any of MY posts. Then one day my Private Messaging System completely disappeared - just like that, no warning, no nothing. I started posting about this on the BitchBox - I had been a Member there also for a couple of years, it was set up by another long time treasured Member of the CB. Incidentally, she was the very first to be banned after making a "Thank You" post to the Administrators for doing such a swell job over the years. Her "crime"? She left the Dr off the Thank You note and the Dr lost the plot with her anger IMO!!! Obviously her own advice of 'sitting with things', 'sitting with your anger' and such does NOT apply to her. Of course others objected to this and they too were banned! If you supported the supporters, even a hint of it, and you were OUT! It got very confusing as to what you could say to whom, and what you could not because "The Forum Rules" no longer applied. You were likely to get abused on a Support Forum for the Abused! The Dr her Admins are very controlling, and anyone that knows anything about abuse knows that ~abuse is all about the control of others~ aspect of it.

The Dr started talking in terms of 'Cleaning House' and making the place a "safer & gentler" place to be. How that works I don't know, the place was safe and about as gentle as you can get considering the nature of things discussed there. She said it was her House she could do whatever she wanted with it. She was making threats left, right & centre. She IMO insulted the Admins by stating that the CB was no longer what she wanted it to be and the direction of it was changing: basically get lost if you don't like it, tough and you are not welcome. So many Threads and posts were made by Members who were game enough to speak out, but there were severe consequences for doing that. You have to remember that for some of the people there this place was their "safe haven", sometimes their only "safe place" to talk about what was going on in their lives. So there you have a bunch of exremely vulnerable and confused people witnessing severe controlling and abusive tactics that their own abusers used or use on them. Most of the long term members were relatively OK, they could see it for what it was, some had even experienced this on the Forum before (there have been a couple of "meltdowns" on that site prior to this one, none quite like this one though). Even so, even the long term Members there were hurt as I was, very much so, many of us were and are hurt by what has happened. The loss to the Community has been great, untold in my view

So now the CB is a shell. Some 600,000 posts have been deleted, 200+ (of the most active) Members have moved on to another newly formed 'Abuse Support Forum" called Our Place, which has just been set up by the X-Admins since they left, some have moved on to the BitchBox also. The new Administrators are a few hastily chosen people, ones who have the Dr's "vision" for the place, but quite honestly, not many of them seem to know what they are doing and their advice has not been the best, dangerous in some cases, damaging. One has no personal experience with abuse and quotes/links Wiki & Google as advice, another writes like a patronising Therapist to me (hired perhaps by the Dr, friend of hers, maybe ?) whose advice has been described by some as "damaging", "without having a clue", yet another writes advice like a projecting enlightened reincarnate of Gandhi(no compliment intended) ... you see the X-Admins had been hand picked, chosen over many years. They knew what it took to run that Forum concerning very delicate matters, they kept it on track and humming along nicely, they were trusted and respected. They did it all without very much interaction from the Dr on her Forum, and it WORKED. The people with the most knowledge and experience on there have gone, or been made gone. Now you have a bunch of (IMO) mean and potentially damaging control freak/yes-men running the joint! It's been said it's like "the inmates are running the asylum" there now. I feel sorry for anyone who is being abused in their life who happens upon the CB now. It's a very scary place, a potentially damaging place there now. They in charge are ordering people around and forcing advanced healing theories and techniques down people's throats, people who are just coming to grips with abuse itself, trying to understand and comprehend it. Telling people who just want and need support to "sit with it" & to apply "radical acceptance" and such to their situation when all they really need to hear is "you are not alone, I understand" etc is a concern. IMO, IF you want Therapy you best see someone in real life, face-to-face so that you can be evaluated and treated accordingly. This Online diagnosis and random off-the-cuff clueless treatment by pretend/Wikiwannabe Therapists can be harmful to an already damaged and scared person.

As far as I know Authorities are watching the place now though, some small consolation I suppose. Bannings are still happening, still for no reason I'm reading though. People were allowed a small window in which to access an older version of the CB to enable them to copy their threads/posts (lots of Members history there, some also used the place as an online Journal of sorts, and need that information that they recorded there, they thought it was "safe" and it's clearly NOT). As far as I know the shut off point for that is Today, Sunday .... and if you miss out, too bad! :( You are also unable to delete nor edit your own posts, your own words on this old copy of the CB. Some like me requested that our words all be deleted as we were unable to also, hence the huge decrease in number of posts and content there. Of course it is a huge loss to the Community, all that history and information gone, but the truth is many of us lost trust in the Dr, the owner, and we no longer felt our history was safe in her hands as a direct result of her actions, that really is the bottom line on that. There have also been false accusations made by the Dr about an X-Admin hacking into her Site. This is simply untrue and an outrageous claim. The Forum had a *glitch* in the email notification system which enabled the X-Admins to be privy to email exchanges between the Owner/Dr and her current Admins. It seems they really do not know what they are doing there and saying the Forum was hacked is another cover-up and mud-slinging exercise to make that particular person look bad and the Dr look like some sort of "victim" in this. The portions of emails between the Admins and the Dr that were revealed on the BitchBox said an awful lot about the amount of glee that was taking place behind the scenes in toying and making sport of playing with people's Member accounts at the time. It was all rather sick to read how they were doing it and what was the real motivating force behind it all: CONTROL. It began as a series of poor choices by the Dr, that were then covered up and hidden and snowballed. The true colours of some were certainly revealed in it, expecially the Dr's true colours. Saying there was a plan from the start to clean the place up is a blatent lie IMO.

Please excuse my long winded reply, and of course these are only my thoughts and feelings about "Catgate08". It's of course a lot more involved than what I have written here too. On a personal note I did Email the Dr seeking an explanation as to why she herself changed my name to DingBat publicly. Thus far I have received no reply, no communication from her, no apology for this happening from the Dr at all. I know it was the Dr herself that did this to my "name" there as I have a copy of an Email where she fully admits this, she has admitted it to atleast one other in communication also. Her reasoning? She thought it was "cute", "cartoonish" to do that. Obviously I do not, nor do many others find it cute. I find it to be unethical myself, to me it is abusive. I find other things she has done also unethical - namely beiing: publicly putting a copy of an email containing the full name and personal email address of a Member who was being stalked on her Forum, in full view. Of course ALL evidence on her Forum that it all ever happened has now been made invisible, but I have the proof of it and quite a large number of people saw these things with their own eyes. Copies of it happening have been downloaded, documented and recorded. I also have jpeg page copies of my name change. So much has been deleted from there, it's an obvious cover-up. Now I read on that Forum that Members are NOT ALLOWED to even mention that anything ever happened at all, although apparently Admins can, if they wish to. All very double-standards of course. Why do that if you have nothing to hide?

Regarding Cults, as Hope says, my X BF (after I left him) joined a Cult - Landmark Forum. He tried to contact me (part of some "project" to do with the place I believe about making amends to me (?) ) ..... he did not get very far with that, as usual it was all about him and very little to do with me. Years before this my Best Friend became involved with LF, heavily. I even attended an introduction night in Sydney with her, she talked me into going. It was horrid, I kept wondering when they would bring out the snakes to dance with, some did these strange little confessions on stage, they wailed about infront of a room full of strangers exposing some very intimate stuff about themselves too. Most of the other people bleated & baa-baa'ed along like sheep and clapped loudly with enthusiastic abandon ... I just wanted to run. Obviously that was the end of LF for me! I watched my GF spend thousands (12G I was told, through the grapevine though, so cannot be certain. She even travelled to London to do some advanced course, also hearsay.) Her talk of "rackets" and such made me feel uncomfortable around her from that point on. She was a very vulnerable person IMO, always searching for answers in self-help books I recall. I printed off about 100 pages of information from the Net about LF for her (mostly negative), she was not interested in reading it at all. We are no longer friends and I believe LF had much to do with that. She tried to get family and friends involved in it but none of them did, she became quite isolated except to those who were into it too. I heard this happened to my X also, his family were quite concerned for him at one point, I'm unsure if he is still involved now though. Funny, he said my GF was an idiot for being involved in LF, but then a few short years later he got involved and sucked in himself.

Thanks for listening and I hope it's OK to talk about this here. If it's not I do understand. People are "talking" about this around the Net in a few places that I know of. I hope the truth does get out here and about the place. 600,000 odd posts don't just vanish for no reason. I think the story of it from other perspectives also needs to be told and not kept hidden, I think it will be too now there is no 'threat' to people now. Some have been scared about putting it ~out there~ I believe. I am not, obviously. It's not like Dr I can ban me for having an opinion now. :)

Cheers
D
(I must have a peek around this Site. )

Hi D, just on a technical note on how to get back many of your posts from the CatoBox.

You just need to search the Google "cache" and you can get most of them. One time another website went and censored hundreds of posts, and most were able to get back most of them, and copy and save them.
This is how to do it.

Go to Google's home page, then paste this phrase.

site:www.drirene.com

then right after enter a keyword, maybe one's old Username at the site. Example.

site:www.drirene.com CatBox

that search gives 5,000 pages. To see the page press where it says "Cached".
Then you will get the old webpage which is still saved on Google, for now.
Here is a random one...

[74.125.95.132]

[74.125.95.132]

She's now honoring posters' requests to have their posts deleted. Several were not able to access the Catbox even with the method you graciously provided. If members were banned, they could not access the Catbox and for a while, no one could read unless they were a registered member. Some could not access their own stuff because she had changed their usernames - one to Dingbat! Many didn't want to just copy their posts - they wanted them deleted altogether to protect their privacy, after she outed a member who was being stalked.

The "box" has been wiped clean of any posts that contained comments questioning, protesting or offering up a different view than that of the owner. Just like the narcissists we all know and love, the owner of this board blamed others for playing by her rules (the reason she gave for all the chaos), even though it was she who broke the rules.

[thecatboximplosion.blogspot.com]

Maybe not so much GAT (but I believe that's where she learned how to do what she's doing), but definitely manipulative, deceptive and potentially dangerous for people in a very vulnerable situations.

An excerpt from above blog...

[thecatboximplosion.blogspot.com]

Maybe not so much GAT (but I believe that's where she learned how to do what she's doing), but definitely manipulative, deceptive and potentially dangerous for people in a very vulnerable situations.

An excerpt from above blog...

Let me begin with my customary thanks: Thank you, Dr. Irene, for giving me the Catbox, which taught me to recognize abuse - even when performed by the Catbox's owner, herself.

Private Messages on the Catbox are being read by its admins. So yes, they're not private at all. They are now reading and filtering PM's to prevent, as they call it, "misuse of the privilege" and also the possibility of "wooing new members away." Now any PM including a link to ANY site is prevented from being sent. PM privileges are being removed left and right. Even innocuous PM's like one member asking another how they are doing - denied. Paranoia reigns supreme. Such strict and obvious CONTROL, Doc/Admins!!! Post moderation, reading PMs, preventing private messaging, you seem so intent on making sure that nobody receives any information that you, yourselves, do not provide. That's pretty sick - pretty much along the lines of mind control. Isolating your flock from outside influence, are you? That's a common cult tactic.

Finally, the Catbox's New Direction includes a very specific "recipe" for how admins are to handle posters, to "lead them" into accepting responsibility for their own lives. Sometimes this seems to include the members being coerced into believing they are codependent and/or have borderline personality disorder. The New Regime seems to believe ALL abuse victims must be disordered or flawed in these ways, and is intent on thrusting these diagnoses onto the members whether they like it or not. Perhaps to make them/herself (admin) more comfortable with being disordered, the label is being applied freely to others - or perhaps sometimes just insinuated, with the members attempted to be led to draw that conclusion about themselves.

The New Regime also does not want to allow members to meander from the topic AT ALL. It's strictly VERBOTEN. The New Regime does not seem to realize the extreme benefits of meandering, nor of allowing people or thoughts to flow.

And the New Regime does not want to permit sharing of personal stories on other posters' threads. Sharing of one's own experience is not helpful to the original poster, they believe. It is straying from the topic and bringing the focus onto themselves, the Regime believes. The New Regime does not seem to realize the extreme benefits that all posters have reaped from reading other stories, the "been-there-done-that's," from people who can relate, HOW they relate, what they did, how they understand, what happened to them.

The New Regime wants to give guided advice, leading members to specific (Regime-suggested) conclusions about themselves, without input or sharing from other members.

The New Regime wants to lead members' minds and tell them what to believe. The New Regime at the Catbox wants to force people to believe what they want them to believe - whether it's the Personal Responsbility doctrine, or that they are codependent or have BPD. They are not allowed to share. They are not allowed to PM privately, if at all. They are not allowed to post freely, but are moderated. They are not allowed to receive information about other websites. They are only allowed to do what the New Regime wants, and think what the New Regime wants them to think. And the New Regime will applaud them when they "see the light" - their light. But their "light" is actually darkness. The darkness of control, mind-control, constriction, suppression, coercion, false diagnoses, harmful advice. The darkness of abuse.

The above is scary. It is happening on a website operated by a legit PhD who specializes in abuse issues. The monitoring of "private" messages is so intrusive and manipulative. It was done before the recent meltdown occured, but I don't think the general membership realized it. Since the meltdown, it is being done for the protection and security of the general membership. That's pretty culty sounding.

As far as the rules and steering towards conforming to the belief system, that's pretty LGATty. No one could possibly be healthy and happy and if they think they are, they are not aware of what they don't know they don't know and this board/LGAT is there to show them. If you don't comply, you will be punished.

I am a former patient of Dr. Irene Matiatos (Russo). So I had her information to post on ratemds.com.

They deleted my comment and my rating, however. I don't know if they allow negative ratings.

Hi D,

I have no idea how I missed your post since way back in November. The only thing I can think of is that it was delayed because you're new and I just kept reading the last posts when I dropped in here. I'm sorry I missed you back then.

You've been through hell and to have Dr. I. treat you like that says an awful lot about her. You're description of her sounding like a victim is dead on. Sounds like she went to the same training camp as my sociopathic doctor. He dismissed his bad behavior completely and put the responsibility on his clients for "choosing to go to him." In hindsight, I think our Dr. Reenie was very much into epistimology/LGAT/BK, etc.

WM,

I would think the point of RateMD would be to point out the positive AND the negative. That's interesting. Vitals.com doesn't seem to censor.

Hope