Tianna Pena, LCSW
Please do the ethical thing.
After a year of trying to get my questions answered about your role in harming my mom, I'm publishing this letter online.
As someone working in the same field, I’m deeply concerned about her wellbeing and your role in her life, and I feel a responsibility to raise these concerns in a clear and honest way.
Over the past several years, my mother has described a set of experiences that any experienced clinician would recognize as psychosis, paranoia, and delusions. I have to believe you know this. She talked in vivid detail to us both about the dead people who visited her and, sometimes, told her the future. Eventually, she thought these spirits were trying to harm her and became fixated on them. Then things got scary when she fixated on your former partner. According to my mom, you supported her and reinforced her fixation and these beliefs. Why?
In her book I'm sure we have both read, she describes being attacked by demons through her insulin pump, being visited by the dead, and being able to discern when demons had replaced her family members. She talks about demons making her get lost. She describes being attacked in bed by demons.
Things became especially scary when she went from fixating on ghosts trying to hurt her to focusing on your ex-partner. She claims that he, despite being at times homeless, became a high ranking official in the Church of Satan. He was threatened by my mom's special powers to combat demons, recruiting several followers to travel hundreds of miles and stay for months in order to kill her. For months, she claims they watched her in her house. She frequently spoke to me about killing them and your ex-partner.
In her book, she changes your name, but there is no doubt that she is describing you. In private texts/emails, she discusses you explicitly, making clear her book is talking about you.
She claims you endorsed and reinforced her beliefs that your ex-partner had bugged her phone and started tracking her car and where she was going. AFAIK he never had access to her phone or any plausible way to control it. She started using other text platforms because she believed that he could read her text messages and would try to hurt her if he inferred where she was going. Again, she claims that you encouraged these beliefs.
Why didn't you contact the authorities if you thought a woman experiencing psychosis and delusions was in danger? I did, but was told I could not file a report from another country.
As she became more and more paranoid, she stopped sleeping so she could prepare for when they tried to kill her. She purchased more firearms. She spent thousands on a safe room. She frequently discussed killing them and your ex-boyfriend with me. She claims you spoke with her regularly and, at times, told her you felt they were coming to kill her that night. If what she says is true, why would you hurt her like that?
One day, she called me while checking into a hotel to tell me she believed a woman in the lobby was going to hurt her. From what she told me, she barricaded herself in the hotel room with a firearm, hiding in the bathroom. Someone could have seriously been hurt because no one else in the family was telling her this might be a health condition.
These frequent conversations about her being killed and stalked truly bonded her to you. Perhaps my mother's account is wrong. But if true, I cannot understand someone with clinical training enabling these beliefs and harming my mom, even if it led to a larger inheritance and more control.
Another ethical issue is her written statements about being assaulted in bed. Her husband claims he has been in their bedroom when the demons attack her, saying she really is being persecuted for her special powers. They live alone. Why does he become aggressive when I ask for my mom to get checked out? I've never given him a reason to dislike me or even had a conflict with him. Your ethics code may be different, but my understanding is that we both have an ethical obligation to rule out domestic assault/abuse, even if it is not a clinical relationship. Why, according to her, have you encouraged these beliefs?
After my mother told me she was disowning me because she believed I could control her phone, edit messages on it, and send them on her behalf, I reached out to you for help. I live in a different country, on a different mobile phone network, and do not have access to any logins or accounts for my mom. She then told my family she had repeatedly tried to get a restraining order against me for years because I had been controlling her phone. Given how much she talked about killing your ex-boyfriend when she thought he could control her phone, this was terrifying. I followed up for a year to make sure she was okay.
She then told me that she had made you executor, given you backup medical authority, and that you had agreed to break the law (AFAIK) in notifying me of her death.
I was shocked to discover that you would not even take my calls or answer my questions, given the trust she had placed in you and our positive relationship of several decades. I tried reaching out every several months, but you ignored her only child, trying to advocate for her to get medical care and find a pathway to see her safely.
I fear my mom has a progressive and serious medical condition. All I want is for my mom to be honest with her doctors, get assessed by professionals, and receive medical and psychological treatment for her condition. I am also concerned that her decision-making is impaired. I can name several examples. Most recently, she claims her lawyer is charging her $200,000. If what she says is true, your affirming and reinforcing her beliefs played a very destructive role in silencing anyone who was trying to encourage her to get medical care and prevent this.
Please reach out to answer questions about your role and use the influence you have built with her to encourage her to get the medical care she needs. If we work together, we can support her in getting better and having the highest quality of life possible.