Unpacking the TikToker Who Fell in Love With Her Psychiatrist
Last year, we all learned that TikTok is a great place to share a really long horror story about your life in multiple parts. Now, a new tale is unfolding in viral fashion. This one comes from a woman named Kendra Hilty, who says she fell in love with her psychiatrist. Six days ago, Hilty started what is now a 34-part yarn (and counting) unraveling how she spent four years attending monthly sessions with a psychiatrist who she believes manipulated her into developing feelings for him. It’s a doozy, so strap in.
Who is Kendra Hilty?
According to what appears to be her website, Hilty is a life coach and tutor, although it’s not clear what exactly she tutors people in. Her TikTok bio describes her as someone who is “helping ADHDers become empowered,” and based on the videos she’s posted about this saga, it seems like she’s devoted a lot of her life to that.
Her website also lists “yoga instructor” as one of her professions, but according to a TikTok video posted on Thursday by the owner of the Tucson, Arizona, studio where Hilty worked, she’s no longer employed there.
What is she saying?
A lot. The gist, according to Hilty’s videos, is that she began seeing this particular psychiatrist about four years ago in an effort to get back on ADHD medication. She says she found him through Google and noticed during their first intake session (which was done remotely) that he was around her age and good-looking. Per Hilty, they immediately started discussing her past trauma, which made her feel “seen” and also caused the two of them to “trauma bond.” She quickly started to develop feelings for him and would apparently “beg” him to be her regular therapist so she could see him every week, although their sessions appear to have mostly occurred monthly. Throughout her time under his care, Hilty says she told the psychiatrist repeatedly that she thought he was attractive and had a crush on him, and she would “pour out [her] love and devotion to him.”
Based on the way Hilty tells it, the crush became something much more intense. In January 2023, on the advice of a different therapist (more on that in a minute), Hilty says she decided to ask for the psychiatrist’s take on her unsatisfying sex life with her boyfriend, which also involved divulging her crush by way of explaining why she hadn’t brought up her intimate life before. He didn’t respond, but “smiled so big,” per Hilty. Around this time, she also claims she was sending him emails detailing how much she liked him with heart emojis — which she says he didn’t respond to.
Hilty’s POV on all this is that it was her psychiatrist’s ethical duty to end their professional relationship once he knew she had feelings for him, and she believes that he was “manufacturing everything so that [I] could fall in love with him. He was the one with the medical degree, he was the one that knew better, but he loved the attention that I gave him too much to do the right thing,” she says.
How did the psychiatrist respond to all this?
According to Hilty, the psychiatrist was “hot and cold” with her: One session, he’d be friendlier, and the next, he’d be more clinical. As her “addiction” to him became stronger, she says, their boundaries got increasingly blurry — and she claims he didn’t do anything to shut it down. Some of this behavior, she says, included allowing her to call him by his first name when she asked, or commenting on what she was wearing without outright complimenting her. In one particular instance, she claims, the psychiatrist told her he liked her tortoiseshell glasses. (She wore them when she filmed, “just in case he sees” the videos.) Hilty says she felt manipulated into falling in love with him by being a good listener and making her feel special.
It’s unclear if Hilty’s psychiatrist truly violated any clinical guidelines, though she insists he was “really good at plausible deniability.” (He hasn’t identified himself, and in any event might not be legally allowed to share the details of their sessions.) At one point, she recalled telling him that they had a “special patient-doctor relationship,” and he responded that, no, they had a “professional patient-doctor relationship.”
What’s this about a different therapist?
At some point during this saga, Hilty began seeing another mental-health professional, who she claims also took advantage of her and crossed boundaries. She apparently told this 75-year-old female therapist about her romantic feelings toward her psychiatrist, and claims that her new therapist told her the psychiatrist had probably avoided seeing her in person because there would be “sexual tension” between them. Eventually, Hilty says, this therapist also started texting her between their weekly meetings to ask for advice about her other clients. It’s unclear when or how exactly Hilty ended this relationship, but she says she no longer sees this therapist.
Okay … and who’s Henry?
Apparently, in the midst of seeing two different mental-health professionals, Hilty also downloaded ChatGPT and started consistently speaking to an AI bot she’d turned to for counseling named Henry. At one point — again, it’s not clear when — she told Henry she believed that she and the psychiatrist would be together once he wasn’t her doctor anymore, which prompted Henry to explain romantic transference, the clinical term for when a client develops erotic feelings toward their therapist.
Has anyone shared their own story about this woman?
A woman claiming to be Hilty’s former friend and recent client, Emily, has also chimed in. Emily says that she reached out to Hilty in March for advice on getting sober and was immediately sent a sign-up link for Hilty’s coaching services. Emily claims she wanted to speak with Hilty as a friend but ended up paying her $3,000 for three months of weekly sessions that consisted of, mainly, human design readings. She’s posted her own spinoff series on TikTok detailing her experience. Hilty does not seem to have responded to her claims on TikTok.
Okay, back to Hilty. Is she still seeing the psychiatrist?
She says she stopped seeing him five months ago, but hasn’t explained what exactly led to her decision. In one of their last sessions, she says, she told him about an explicit dream she had involving them hooking up in his office. She claims he was visibly uncomfortable and couldn’t look at her while she told him about the dream, but apparently believes this was because “he had probably played out that fantasy so many times in his head.”
In a statement, Hilty told the Cut, “I am proud of myself for telling my story. The internet had a huge backlash because I am exposing something that not many people talk about — exploitation from people in power. I have healed myself and others in this process, while learning I’m stronger than I think.”
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