Mandatory Therapeutic Disclosure Act for therapists

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Pfft! That wasn't "sympathy"! The tone of her cooing was the same as if I brought a puppy into her office. She thought me getting emotionally abused was "cute", and therefore nothing to be taken seriously. I mean, would you expect a puppy to save your life or protect your home from intruders? Same concept! It's cute, but it's still a puppy.

When I tell my doctors today about my illness symptoms, they NEVER say "aww". They either say "oh no, that's awful!" or give me clear suggestions to help make them go away. But not her; she was really my parents' therapist, not mine.

If she indeed felt "sympathy" for me, she'd call my parents and tear them a new one. But she didn't. She was on their side. So she gave me a hint to stop "whining", and instead tell her about how I help my parents with household chores.

I found this very helpful. Many of my issues when I was younger were because I didn't recognize social cues where I was actually being patronized and talked down to, and I didn't recognize when people were being fake. I think it is very helpful for people to know about this "cooing" signal.

This can be incorporated into the MTDA. Like, "When you tell me about your problems, I'm going to coo at you. It means I'm expressing sympathy, and I want you to keep talking about it." Or, "When you tell me about your problems, I'm going to coo at you. It means I want you to stop complaining, because you're a loser and I'm here to help everyone except you."

Of course, the therapist can always lie, and say it's the former when it's really the latter. But the MTDA is better than forcing the patient to use their social skills (an aspie's weakness) to read the therapist's hints while paying $100+/hour for it.

I'd certainly support anything that would help to rid the profession of top-down egocentricity and dishonesty. Personally I prefer nondirective therapy to the other sort, generally speaking, though I can see its limitations - some clients simply want to be directed. Even I can feel that way sometimes. Sometimes I just feel I've dug myself into a hole I can't get out of and I just want somebody to take control and tell me what to do because I've run out of ideas. But normally I just presume I'm the boss of my own life. It's not that easy for kids to do that though. Society tends to presume that certain adults should run kids' lives for them until they're old enough to think for themselves. Unfortunately that presumption isn't entirely wrong, though it's certainly not entirely right either.

As for paying a lot of money for any kind of therapy, I'd expect a warranty before I did that. Does it do what it says on the tin or not? Does it even say anything on the tin? But just like with physicians, if they make things worse for you then they're practically immune from recrimination unless they make a blatant mistake that you can prove.