Has anyone here ever benefitted from seeing a counsellor?

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Its not for me but my almost 16 year old. He saw an AS specialist psychologist for a year 2 years ago with no success whatsoever.

Saw a psychiatrist a month ago who seemed nice to me but he didnt like her and has refused to go back. Now my GP wants him to see yet ANOTHER counsellor and I just don't know what to do.

He suffers from PTSD from school bullying and has hardly left the house now for almost 2 years. Also has OCD and social phobia. I feel I should be doing something but deep down I know these counsellors dont help him. is it a bit like forcing an alcholholic into AA when they dont want to go?

he totally doesnt want to go but I just dont know how to help him anymore.

Any suggestions?

I've had some experience with counseling. I would suggest too you that you make sure that your consoullor has some experience in the field of psychology. When I did counselling my counsellor was what we call a "pastoral counsellor", meaning that she had a degree in theology and really did not have any expertise in psychology. It really helps when you have a professional who has some experience in that field.

I've had counselling twice and I have to say it depends on the counsellor. Your son may not have had success in the past, but if he sees a different counsellor this time, they might just click and this could be the one that helps him.

My first counsellor was really good. She was the first person to notice that I had problems desicribing my emotions. She gave me a task to do. I had to write down where I was and how I felt when I was feeling bad. I wrote I was shopping and my feet hurt. I was at college and my head hurt. She smiled when she got this and was amused that I had translated "how you feel" as what my symptoms were. She sent me away again to record how I felt emotionally. She really helped me to work out how I was feeling and what to do about it. I saw her privately and couldn't afford to go back and see her this year so was refered to a counsellor by my GP. She wasn't so helpful.

I agree counselling is not likely to do any good if he doesn't want to go in the first place. I'd be tempted to tell him that nobody's going to force him into it....sometimes it's just the feeling of having no choice that puts people off. A little bribery might help too. And it could bring out some useful info if you ask him why he hates the idea so much - was it a bad experience with one particular individual, or does he just not feel safe with anybody he doesn't know and trust? It might also be helpful to find out how exactly a counsellor would help - if the GP feels so strongly that it's a good idea, then the GP ought to be able to explain why it's so good. I don't mean "they are trained to help/they are good at these things" - I mean the details of what the counsellor might do that would be useful.

I've known counselling to do me a little bit of good here and there, but I've always been strongly interested in finding out what I might be doing wrong. And the good has mostly been stuff that any good friend would probably have been able to tell me. For example, I happened to tell a counsellor about something my girlfriend had said to me, and the counsellor said "that was quite a put-down for her to say that, wasn't it?" - I'd not previously seen it as that.....I'm often quite blind to that kind of interpretation, and tend to think that people are just informing me when they're actually trying to build me up or bring me down in some way. Another counsellor commented that the list of things I'd said I'd like my wife to do/stop doing seemed like a call for more fair play in the relationship - I'd just seen it as a list of things I wanted, so it threw a new light onto our problems...not that I'm entirely convinced that our problems are simply a matter of my wife being unfair to me, but it's an angle worth exploring. The best counsellors seem to be the ones who are happy to back off when their idea doesn't strike a chord with the client. The worst ones seem to have their potted version of reailty and they just keep pushing it in spite of overwhelming evidence that it's inappropriate.

I once heard from a Zen buddhist that psychiatrists basically try to hold a mirror up to the client to show them how they appear to other people. The idea is that you need to know yourself, and that you can't do that unless you have some idea what you look like from the outside to other people. But I think that psychs are only people, and often they reflect not what you loook like to most people but what you look like to them, i.e. there's a bias in what they tell you. So I agree with you that counselling can often be a waste of time.

Has he been diagnosed with AS? AS is subject to cross diagnoses, that it, it is sometimes mistaken for schizophrenia, schizoid personality disorder and other things that are sometimes treated with medication that doesn't work if those aren't what he has. I tried the socializing thing, and it didn't do much for me, so I have very limited but wanted contact with other people. I found that when people push things off onto me, it is very difficult for me to even formulate an opinion and I feel like it's out of control because it's not being generated by me. I can find better use for the large amount of money that can be spent on this.

In some regions, putting one's problems out in the open is frowned upon, and great care is taken because the showing of imperfections is seen as quite a damning thing, socially. One does not just walk up to strangers and say "Hey mister, you want to hear some sick stories from my twisted youth?"

http://www.stickam.com/viewMedia.do?mId=178230963

But for what it's worth, I don't think Ren has AS.

I don't know whether I would have been able to go to a counsellor when I was 16. I wasn't able to talk about myself and about emotional stuff back then and was a lot older by the time I had the courage to go and seek help by myself.

I think you need to take a different approach because sometimes people don't understand how intolerable it is for people with AS to talk about themselves and their feelings.

I'm not sure but it might be better to take a much slower approach.

I mean, obviously your son has difficulties but do you actually know why he doesn't want help with them?

I found talking to a psychologist and psychiatrist horrendous at first and had lengthly meltdowns every time. It's really hard so maybe it'd be best just to say that he's not going to start counselling if he doesn't but that you think that it could help him and maybe you could help him to think about ways that it might help.

Or maybe he's just not old enough yet and needs to be ready?

If they are a "down to earth" type and don't chastise me for being a loner or for my special intrests and accept me for who I am...then yes.

Yeah, it's pointless if you don't want to talk. In the end my parents left me alone with my hobbies, and a few years later I'm getting better.

Try to explain how it would help. And if he still doesn't want to, don't nag about it, that only makes it worse. Maybe introduce him to WP?

The only thing is that you have to be sure that the reason that you don't want to talk isn't because you don't know how to?

I wanted to talk when I was younger but had no clue how to go about it and couldn't talk to anyone I knew because I couldn't admit that I was asexual and had lied about all the people I fancied / went out with and stuff like that just to try to fit in.

I was basically worried that people would think I was even more of a freak than I already was.

This is a good point. When I was younger, I found that counselors/therapists really liked to latch on to the question "how does that make you feel?"

"I don't know" was never an acceptable answer, so they'd start feeding me choices:


"Does it make you feel angry?"
"Uh, I don't know. I don't think so."
"Does it make you feel resentful?"
"Maybe. No. I don't know."
"I hear you saying that you don't want to acknowledge your feelings."
"Mmmph."
"Are you being manipulative?"
"I don't think so."
"What are your goals in life?"
"I don't know."
"Why do you think that is?"
"I don't know."


It would go like that. I really didn't know the answers to any of those questions, or even why I was there.

Finding a counsilor that is good for a person is hard. First difficulty is finding a good one, second difficulty is finding a good one that matches your needs.

If a person doesn't want counsilling, as said by others here previously, it won't work. Asking why he doesn't want to may be helpful. It could be that one of the counsillors kept on trying to tell him what they strongly believed his issues were and didn't listen to what were really his issues. This has happened to me, I still have problems with being counsiled. I've been to good a counsillor and it helped, but be aware that there are some bad councillors.

Also remember what I said about matching, as everyone is different, every counsilling style is different (by type Freudian, Jungian or Adlerian and also their individual personality). So a counsillor that would be able to help me lots may not help you near as much. Personally, I think the Adlerian approach may be well suited to us on the Spectrum but that's just my view.

lol I still do that...

If my psy asks me what I want to happen I'll just be like 'i dunno'...

And if she asks me how I feel I'll say 'i can't describe'...

And then when I do try to describe... most of it involves feeling anxious or feeling sick...

I don't know what you expect a counselor to be able to do. Oh, I know they think they can help a lot, but they get paid for thinking that. Life is what it is, you muddle through it as best you can, and if you're slightly broken due to genetic brain damage, then you have difficulties that psychotherapy and meds are not going to fix. You can't talk away a brain dysfunction. That's like telling a paraplegic to 'walk it off'. Its just cruel.

Of course, being allowed to hide in the house and refuse to engage the world at all is not going to make you any better, either. Our learning disorder makes it difficult and tedious to pick up social skills, but if exposed to them long enough, we do begin to acquire some of them, at least well enough to function as chameleons. I doubt you'll ever find an Aspie car salesman, but we can learn to pass well enough that those around us don't think of us as Autistic - just odd.

I know I often sound callous and unsympathetic, but having survived the real world for 45 years ignorant of my own disorder, I know it can be done without counselors, therapists, psychologists, advocates, anxiety meds, special diets and self-help books. Self-pity is not very helpful, either and I had plenty of that.

I'm not sure. Once I've started therapy I'll be qualified to comment on whether it helps or not.

It's known that there is no cure for AS so I guess it's more a case of how much we can expect to improve.

I had more luck with a good psychiatrist (dispenses meds) than with a psychologist. The last psychologist I went to that diagnosed me with AS actually said it would do little benefit to meet regularly. He suggested that I only meet with him for situational things (if I needed it). Pre-diagnosis I saw someone else that did CBT weekly. He basically thought I could better socially integrate with society through exercises. I only got so far on the exercises and I think he was perplexed why I wasn't desensitized. He meant well but I hit a break wall. My psychiatrist suggested I get checked for AS way earlier but I wanted to make sure it wasn't something else.

There are a lot of nuts out there. Try to research the psychiatrist/psychologist before going to them. It is also a lot of money (the three insurances I was on never fully covered) but it can be worth it if you're miserable.

I have recently started seing a counselor, and I'm finding her really helpful.
However, you only get out what you put in, so if he is going in completely against the idea it is unlikely to help him.
Have you spoken to him about why he didn't like seeing the others? What he thinks about the prospect of seeing someone? Maybe you could also explain why you want him to see the person. It could be that by talking it through with him, he becomes more willing to go.
I definately wouldn't force him though. He's nearly an adult, and should have some choice in the matter.