Do all psychiatrists/therapists sugarcoat things?

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My psychiatrist sugarcoats just about everything I say.

I could tell her about something in the past that I did that was clearly wrong and she attempts to defend my actions.

How am I supposed to improve myself if she doesn't admit a problem?

All my therapists in the past seem to have done this.

Is this everyone else's experience with psychiatrists/therapists?

It has been my experience that once a patient has been diagnosed with a mental illness, a lot of people (not just counselors, therapists, psychologists, psychiatrists, psychoanalysts, etc.) tend to explain away any aberrant behavior by blaming it on the illness rather than the choices the patient makes. "You aren't responsible for the mass murders you committed because you have a mental illness, and you had a difficult childhood." Before the 1960s everyone was responsible for their actions regardless of their mental capacity, unless they were obviously incapable of making any decisions at all. Today, everyone has a diagnosable mental illness, so no one is responsible for anything. Instead, the victims are the ones who are responsible, because they were knowingly in the wrong place at the wrong time. - LJS

I think all therapists sugar coat things and Dr. Phil doesn't. I think that is why people go to him because they want to be told the truth, not be told BS real therapists have to do to save their careers. Sure there are ignorant ones who will say stupid things like how it's all your fault and you just need to try harder and you will be normal or how it's all your fault how people treat you. Maybe those ones don't sugar coat but it just shows how ignorant they are just like Dr. Phil tends to be ignorant because he gets judgmental and makes assumptions and it's not the truth he is saying and he becomes a brick wall. Sometimes I wonder if people go on his show to get attention by airing their problems out in the world or if they just make them up to be on the show. But I also think they go to him for tough love.

I've been to so many bad therapists. I've had only one good one, and she left to work in the schools. Otherwise, I've haven't had much luck. Most therapists I've been to weren't well-versed in Asperger's, and the problem was either I hadn't been diagnosed at the time I was seeing them, or they didn't know I had it. Most of them would tell me I was lazy, selfish, that I spent too much time with my mother, and that I needed to make friends. No sugarcoating there. Except for one, who told me my mother needed to hand out cookies (metaphorically speaking), and that I needed to spend more time with her. Of course, he only worked with 6-year-olds. Otherwise, they've responded pretty negatively towards me.

Mine didn't sugarcoat things, and that's why I didn't like them very much.

Up until recently my shrinks didn't sugarcoat what I said much, in fact they hardly talked to me until I was done telling them what was going on with me that month, then they would shove another prescription for drugs into my hand and send me out the door. But they lied to me a lot. They said the drugs that they pushed would not give me awful side effects and would make me calmer and less likely to have violent behavioral outbursts (they didn't call them meltdowns back then) at the group home I was stuck in. Instead the exact opposite happened. They knew nothing about Asperger's or that I might have had it. Before then I was called behaviorally dysfunctional, hostile, spoiled by my mother and mildly mentally ret*d. And even the shrink I see now doesn't believe it's because of Asperger's when I tell him about a situation that caused me to have a meltdown. Of course I don't talk to him often since I only see him every two or three months.

When I was a child, my therapist made it very clear that she did not like me, though she never went as far as to say it. But she always told me that if I didn't act like I was stupid, people would hate me and I would have to be a waitress for the rest of my life.

With the power of hindsight, I believe what she meant to say was that I should stop parading my intelligence around so that people would not feel bad about themselves, and that I should focus on the concrete rather than the intellectual so I can be attentive enough to hold a job. But she didn't say it that way. She mentioned every one of my talents, but each one was skewed so that it was viewed with a negative light. And it never actually occurred to me until after I had stopped going to therapy that I was even smarter than other people; I actually thought I was relatively stupid, and that's why people didn't want to talk to me.

I found out later, by the way, that my mother put her up to this, in order to deflate my ego. My ego that was a desperate cover for my abysmally low self-esteem. Yeah, good job, guys.

A lot of headshrinkers do sugarcoat things. It's annoying, because there's no point in going to them if they're going to sugarcoat all your problems into non-existence. The reason they sugarcoat so much is because NTs require this sugarcoating from external sources in order to feel better about themselves. Autistics probably just want practical solutions, like what the OP said about improving oneself, which you can only come up with if you, and the non-compliant headshrinkers, admit that there's actually a problem. I don't call it sugarcoating. I call it krapkoating, because it's useless, frustrating, and detrimental in the long run.

I think some psychologists/psychiatrists/therapists are attempting to help "reframe" the negative thought patterns. They may not be doing an effective job of it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reframing

Tell them to knock it off. If you did something wrong, you want them to acknowledge it and help you figure out how not to do it again; not pretend it wasn't wrong.

Their goal is to make to feel better, I've found alot of them sugarcoat it "It's not your fault this happened" etc etc.. seeing alot of us spend a lifetime blaming ourselves for problems we might've had we don't really want to accept what they're saying. It's always possible.

Sometimes it isn't our fault. Sometimes it's only partly our fault. Sometimes it's our fault, but only because we didn't know better. Sometimes we could've prevented it, but it still isn't our fault because it was due to someone else's decisions. It's useful to know the difference between those things and willful choices.

Over the years I've been to quite a few for various reasons. Some do, some don't. Some have been condescending, some respected my intelligence. Professionals of all kinds are just as human as everyone else.

The important thing is that they LISTEN, and take everything I tell them seriously. I've had some that made value judgments. Them I avoid like the plague.

I don't like any that are dismissive, but the opposite extreme isn't good either. I don't want one that acts like everything about me is a serious problem either. Those that listen, learn from me, and don't act as if they friggin' know everything about whatever it is I'm there for, and treat me like an individual, are the best.

Umm it depends. My experiences have depended. I've had a bad history with most psychs. Every psych I've ever been to that wasn't a specialist in the autism/ learning disorder area (cept for 1) has thought I was a brat. Even if I just saw them once, just trying them out. I went to a couple Asian men and they seemed scard of me. I saw this conceited psychiatrist who thought I was a brat 100%. I saw a school psych(some eastern european women) who was getting frustrated at me and she was pretty conceited too, not as conceited as the psychiatrist.

I've went to see a couple autism specialist who who had a pretty neutral ground with, they werent all that helpful. The only ones that were helpful were a few females who were specialist in autism/adhd and other learning disabilities. They helped to explain social norms to me, they emphasize with me yet they help me to see from the other perspective. Its a balanced approach.

I had a psychiatrist once who refused to diagnose me with anything because he "didn't believe in giving mental illness a name". What a jerk.