Awkward silence during a therapy session

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When every shrink I've dealt with treated me the way a butcher treats cows, damn right I'm paranoid. And maybe therapy helped you because you knew what shrinks wanted to hear. If I knew back then what I know now, I'd memorize a bunch of emotion words, and spew them out at random. They don't even need to be right, they just need to sound like soap opera.

Honestly, I think the shrink profession should fade out into obsolescence, like stenography. Their jobs are suspiciously easy and cushy. A 10-year-old child can do they do, like parrot back the patients' statement and ask rhetorical questions about feelings. You know, like "Aww, you felt hurt when they called you stupid" or "How did being bullied make you feel?"

I had two counselors. One repeatedly mocked me and patronized me. The few times she gave me advice, it was laughably naive, like "Just tell your parents how you feel, and they'll stop being so strict." Really, now? And when she gave me sympathy, it came off as real as Kim Kardashian's personality; it was clear as day she was on my parents' side. Her sympathy consisted of: "Aww (cooing tone), you feel sad when your parents yell at you."

The other one drove me into a two-week depression, where I was crying every day for 8 hours non-stop. She did psych tests on me, and deliberately acted in ways to make me do badly, like intimidate me by acting like a cold psychopath. I took up drinking alcohol because of her actions and the other therapist's lack of compassion. I drink heavily to this day.

This conversation has gone a bit weird, so to reply to OP, I think it's ok if there's pauses, but I agree with those who have suggested you talk to your therapist about that. If you don't feel like that is helping, it's ok to find a new therapist. Not every therapist is a good fit. It's not a poor reflection necessarily on either of you. It just means it's not a good fit.

The only thing I'll pick up from the remainder of the thread is definitely do not take the advice of the person who suggested you play dirty. If you want this professional to help you, there needs to be mutual respect and trust. Without that it's definitely not a helpful therapy relationship.

I'm in Australia, and we don't have therapists. We don't seem to do the kinds of therapy described in some of the posts above, which sound a bit wishy-washy. At least not in my experience.

Meh. I tried telling my therapist how I didn't like what she was doing, like smile patronizingly. She gave me the runaround to basically tell me I'm wrong, and kept doing it at the next session. I couldn't terminate, and had to keep coming back; I was afraid to tell my parents, since she was on their side and I might get in trouble for complaining.

Sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do. Including fight dirty with someone who won't think outside their personal agenda and/or textbook training.

You're very lucky. I guess the type of therapy I went through is an American thing, like baseball and 4th of July .

I'm not doubting for a moment your situation has been really tricky. Especially having to continue going to a professional if you and your parents weren't able to hear what you needed, but I'm not sure one can write off the whole field of psychology on that basis. Nor write off all mental health professionals as of like kind.

She has helped me so much. My anxiety has gone down a ton. She has given me tons of strategies that have actually been helping. My last therapist just made my anxiety worse. Its just those small moments that I feel a little weird. She is also real if that makes sense. She doesnt sugar coat anything. I hate when people sugar coat things!
I think I will just talk to her about them like most people are telling me to do.

I will NEVER respect an industry that's built on deception and withholding information. Consider the family drawing test. I asked perfectly reasonable questions for what I thought was a drawing skills test. Like "Who needs to be in the drawing: just the people I live with or everyone I'm related to?" The therapist said: "Draw whoever you want." I knew right there and then that she was hiding something. Because it's always been OK to ask for guidance on a test, as long as I'm not asking for answers (the ones I'm supposed to know to pass the test). She also tried to get me to the believe that it doesn't matter how well I draw, even though it was a TEST. When in reality...

Someone's fingers are a millimeter too long? It means you think they're violent. (When in reality, your drawing sucks.)
Someone's mouth is a millimeter too big? It means you think they're angry. (When in reality, your drawing sucks.)
Someone's drawn sideways? It means you're not close to them. (When in reality, it's easier to draw people that way.)
Too many black lines are present? It means you're depressed. (When in reality, you like the "chalk and charcoal" look.)
You drew family members in a certain order? It's a ranking of how much you like them. (When in reality, it's arbitrary.)
You forgot to draw the sun in an outdoor scene? It means your family is sad. (When in reality, you like cloudy days.)

In order words, every little detail matters. But you're not told that! You're made to believe that it's just a fun drawing game. When it's clearly not! Ditto for other tests, like "What if..." questions. You're made to believe that it's just a fun Q&A game. When in reality, not only are you kept in the dark about which results your answers will produce, even a wrong tone of voice while answering can be used against you. A tone of voice that you're not even told about!! !

That's why I hate those tests, and think they shouldn't exist. The shrink withheld information from me, and intentionally intimidated me to make me get a bad test result. As opposed to the result I'd get if those tests were honest and transparent, and the shrink wasn't such a dumb bimbo or a dangerous psycho.