trouble connecting with therapist - anyone experience this?

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I get the chance to talk out of it. I can talk about some things that bother me. Even if I can't understand exactly what it makes me feel, it makes me feel better to actually have a place to talk it out. I just say everything.

I often worry I'm wasting the therapist's time. I've said that to a few therapists and they usually tell me not to worry. I've only paid for a therapist once and I stopped seeing her quickly because we didn't connect. I'm lucky to be going to a school that lets me see a counsellor.

A good counsellor will sense when the client is not feelng ready to share something, such as feelngs, and move off to another thing. the women who coached me were very experienced and I really listened to them, they taught me to never force someone to give information they didnt want to as that would be tantamount to a violation of them. I remember some of the girls in my group just didnt get that and were really pushy and forceful with some of the clients.

My number one priority was having a comfortable caller, and if they really didnt want to talk to me I would suggest that they call back another time- they may connect better wth a different counsellor.

I did notce a few of the callers didnt want to talk about their feelngs, if that happened i would try and focus more on circumstantial events and information. I wish I had known about alexithymia back then though, I thnk it is an important thing for counsellors to know. Counsellors tend to be such emotonal people that i dont think they could imagine what it would be like to not be able to understand or express emotions.

i wonder if therapists trained in this type of therapy can tell the difference between someone not being ready to share something and not being able.

sounds like if they assess you as not ready they would come back to it later instead of trying an approach that might better suit you

^ That is why i think people with AS or autism should go to specific therapists trained in working with AS adults, it is so much easier to explain to them about being unable to communicate feelings.

i went to a great one last year who was really curious about the experiences of AS adults and just wanted to learn more and more... she was great to talk to, the reason I stopped going to her is that I realised that my problems werent something that she, or anyone could help with, and the psychiatrist who diagnosed me wanted me to go to a psychologist in his practise for CBT, and felt sort of obliged to try it, even though I would have much rather stayed with my counsellor.

But about different approaches, there are therapists that have different approaches. Some focus on feelings and some are more directive, and some are more practical.. it would be good if they gave out brochures about their approach and philosophy to read before deciding whether or not to see them, it might make the decision easier. I have decided not to go to certain therapists based on what I read on their website. I wish the last psychologist I went to had such a website, would have saved money and time.

When I was getting therapy years ago they did the same thing to me. Never really solved my problems and I felt like in the end we weren't really getting our money's worth out of it so I stopped going.

It took me a while to find a therapist I liked, and now I think I'm ready to move on. We seem to be stalled.

I know the silent routine that someone mentioned very well. A few therapists have tried it on me. The idea, or so my current therapist says, is that normally people don't like silence, so they'll fill it with whatever comes to mind, which can give the therapist insight into their real issues. I have no problem sitting there silently, but it's frustrating to me because it's a waste of time. Both of us just end up confused and irritated at the end of the hour.

I don't mind the "how did that make you feel?" bit as much. When I was a teenager, my sister went on a kick about giftedness and not being able to identify emotions, so she would drill me on using "emotion words" to describe how I felt. I supposed it helped, because I can identify and describe my emotions pretty well.

The turning back the question stuff is still irritating, though. As Merle said above, sometimes I just want concise answers to questions so I'll know what to expect. Maybe next time I should lead with a question about their theoretical perspective.

And, yes, as I write this I'm laughing at the likely response. I know the stuff I want to know is sometimes weird, but at the same time, it seems logical to me.

It's more like I have trouble listening to people who try to help me because I'm afraid of change. Even though *LIFE* is change.

I have the same issue and have been through 2 therapist before i started with my last therapist. The previous ones i was taken to figure out the meltdowns which my mom could not figure out. The last one i went to as i wanted to work out how to connect to people as i always felt i was outside the circle and have no relationships aside from my brother and mom.

Before approaching my last therapist i had found the interactions have been on a AS forum via email very helpful. Also i was freaking out about going in the session as it was too unstructured for me. So i told my therapist that i could not do the back and forth in the session and suggested writing. So we would meet up, where i would take points and then go back think about it and then reply. It helped me the most. My second therapist (who was my lecturer) did the same by just leaving a point for me to think but never forcing me to reply at that moment. She was possibly the one who helped me the most.

My last therapist helped me a lot, but we kept on getting stuck as she had this assumption that i was not actually having a difficulty but it was a consequence of trauma. She refused to accept that all those challenges were present even before the "trauma" and that i have no signs of "trauma". She refused to help me come up with strategies, but expected me to figure it out, which made me go back to my family as i genuinely dont pick up how to do things socially. I have learnt every thing by observation. She could not get it. But i have realised some people just dont get it. Someone here mentioned this to me recently, it is theory of mind in reverse. As i cant see their mind, even they can see how it happens with me.

Hope this helps.

Amen to that

I remember many silent hours of sitting with my therapist when I was at a day treatment program in a mental hospital. I have no problems with being quiet so if she didn't start things I wasn't going to say anything.

I think my current experience with therapy might be helpful or at least give you some food for thought. It is highly subjective though, so it might be utterly useless as well.

I did a "traditional" psychotherapy some years back and I couldn't really relate well with the therapist either. Many things remained unsaid and I was afraid to speak about other things. All in all, that therapy was not very helpful to me.

About half a year ago, I had a different therapist recommended to me and I went to see him. I told him from the beginning that I suspect I have Asperger's and he told me that he had no experience with the condition at all, but also that he didn't think a therapy should be based on a self-assessment of that magnitude. To my utter surprise, he proposed a group-therapy to me, something which I would never have considered because of my ASD-ish-ness.

The therapy has been going for about half a year now and it is working surprisingly well for me. I still have trouble talking about some issues and I still get confused by the therapist's questions, but now there is five others there with me (at least four of which -I think- are NT and all of which are struggling with the same general range of problems as me(apart from ASD, of course)) and they get confused as well and also have problems describing their personal issues. It is quite re-assuring to see others struggle in the same way as I do.
Having five others there also means that there is hardly any pauses in the conversation as somebody always has to add something to the discussion. I actively participate and try to help the others figure out there problems. My high level of rationalization helps with that. On the other hand, their displays of emotion and the way they interact with each other often shows me that there is other aspects to my own issues that I would not have realized on my own.
There is other times when I cannot connect well with what the others talk about, but just listening to them and mulling it over (between group sessions, as well) helps me to figure out things. I've had quite a number of moments already when somebody said something that led me down a silent, but helpful road to some personal enlightenment, big or small.

I know that group therapy for autists sounds like a weird idea at first go, but having others there has proven a real help to me and maybe it could be helpful to others here on WP as well. I just brought it up because it is so totally counter-intuitive that many may not have considered the idea at all.

Sweet Pea hugs

I was seeing a therapist when I was a teen. Despite the vent-like tone of this thread, I'll start on a positive note and say that she was quite decent. She offered me useful insights on how to act in social situations. However---and it's a pretty big "however"---there were things in her methodology that caused the working relationship to degenerate into "who can outsmart who".

One, she was very much focused on feelings. Yes, that means "how did that make you feel?". I never knew the "correct" answers, and when I tried answering truthfully, she would say that it was not a proper answer. So I borrowed an encyclopedia from the school library, found an article on emotions, and memorized the whole list of emotion words and their definitions. My off-the-charts rote memory skills, thanks my to AS, worked in my favor. So, during therapy sessions, when she asked me about how something made me feel, I'd just spew out the right word from the encyclopedia article, matching the definition (what my therapist referred to as "thinking") to the correct word ("feeling"). She praised me for making progress on identifying my feelings, and I avoided endless questions about my feelings that I could never answer correctly. In the end, it's a win-win situation; everybody's happy.

Two, she took my parents' side far too often; maybe that's just the culture where she was from. So when I talked about unpleasant situations where my parents did or said something to me, she offered sympathy pouring like lava from a volcano, but never gave me anything to work with, something I can do or say to stop my parents' actions. For example, she'd say "I'm sorry they called you a helpless baby", but stopped there. I wished she'd tell me something I can say back to them, even something cliche like "and you're old farts". So I stopped talking about difficult topics altogether, instead fabricating test anxiety, and having her "help" me with that. Then again, on a purely objective note, my parents were paying for the therapy, although she charged on a sliding scale. So I don't blame her for not wanting to work against an income source. Sad, but that's capitalism for you.

I supposed I should do the right thing and give her credit for not turning me in to the police when I said the S-word one time (that's "suicide", not "sh__"). She asked me a few questions, and left things at that. Most therapists would have had me arrested on the spot, it seems. Instead, the police never came to my door.

I think, at one point, my parents got a hunch that the therapy wasn't as helpful as once thought, so therapy was phased out from once a week to once every two weeks, then ended altogether. I did benefit from the therapy somewhat, but not as much as I should have. It just doesn't seem right that I had to memorize emotion words and fabricate "easy" conditions just to get through each session.

Yeah I get confused when therapists start doing that whole asking your own questions back...because its like 'uh I don't really know, you tell me.' it gets frustrating.