therapists have always made me uneasy, what about you?

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__Elijahahahaho
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23 Aug 2024, 10:10 am

They usually formed sort of simplistic
ideas about what was going on and tried to push me this and that way.

I never really found one that helped.



Brian0787
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23 Aug 2024, 10:31 am

It's not easy to find a good therapist. I currently have someone I can relate to in terms of personality, background and shared experiences. It can sometime take going through several before finding one that makes you feel comfortable. It's not an easy process sometimes which I know can be frustrating. I hope you are able to find one you can relate to!


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King Kat 1
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23 Aug 2024, 10:39 am

I was going to counselor for a time, not really due to ASD but stuff from my childhood, stuff an EX-friend had put me through, and work were bothering me. I stopped going because I couldn't afford $80 a visit. Honestly, I probably need to go to one, but I don't want to go into debt doing so.


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bee33
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23 Aug 2024, 7:46 pm

I've had some really terrible therapists, and they were the way you describe: they would make up their minds about something and see it in very simplistic terms, and then insist on it. But it was even worse than that, because in the beginning I listened to them and made some very bad decisions that still affect my life 30 plus years later.

I have a therapist that I like now, though lately she has not been very helpful and I'm not sure what to do. I would feel lost without her but she also isn't really helping.



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23 Aug 2024, 8:09 pm

I've had one therapist like that. She was trying to get me to give up on Sweet Pea and Germany and she pushed me to the point that I told her that I will not let her make me hate Germany to the point of hating myself just for being the way that I am. She finally got it and said, "So you romanticize Germany. I thought your version was the knife in the table Germany." She didn't bother me about that country ever again. She did keep going after me about the Sweet Pea thing. She didn't want me identifying as a pea.


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23 Aug 2024, 8:12 pm

I think that therapists think that they need to make you hate yourself so you end up looking at things that have to do with your special interests and when you look at those things, you hate yourself so much that you end up changing. When that happens, the therapist is happy and she thinks that she's reached her goal.


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cyberdad
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23 Aug 2024, 8:37 pm

I think it's important not to have high expectations from a therapist. Realistically agree on goals that you intrinsically feel yourself are attainable rather than a. expect great things or b. throw all the burden on the therapist. talk therapy has limited value and is largely based on how much you (as the patient) are ready to listen and put into practice constructive things that are discussed.

Unfortunately as a parent I have seen 10 different therapists over the years for my daughter and in terms of meeting her therapeutic needs I would rate the success rate so far as 0/10.



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23 Aug 2024, 11:15 pm

I REFUSE to see a therapist unless said therapist is also autistic or ND.


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bee33
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24 Aug 2024, 1:53 am

^I saw a therapist not long ago who was ND and it was not good. She was disorganized and I couldn't make sense of what she was trying to get at. It's not always helpful. I had to just walk away.



IsabellaLinton
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24 Aug 2024, 2:24 am

My current one is ND with ADHD. I'm not sure if she's autistic because I'm too shy to ask but she knows a lot about autism, relates to everything I say about autism, and has a PhD in Psychology for NDs.

We mostly just shoot the s**t and relate to each other back and forth in casual conversation even though it's technically trauma therapy. Just being heard and understood, and understanding someone else, has done wonders for me. (Yes, she does do clinical stuff too but it doesn't feel clinical.)


Bad experiences:

- My former psychiatrist lost his licence for sleeping with patients.
- I made the mistake of reading all the sordid details on public record. Not nice.
- One of them made fun of me for having a trauma response to the location of his office.
- One had a TV with the news playing in the waiting room, and the news was about a sadistic rapist.
- One said I was a junkie if I accepted meds, and that I was "refusing treatment" if I refused meds.


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24 Aug 2024, 3:17 am

Since I'm not privileged enough to ever gamble for a good therapist and eloquent enough to layout all my individual factors to make do with any of that; I'll just do them myself than trust the whole thing to anyone...



My sped teacher tried.
Mind that she knew me for more than a decade and should've known better.

Failed spectacularly because her goal is normalization (me becoming more NT) by forcing me to see everything and react like an NT (by getting over it quickly or coping with all of it in ways NTs do like 'agreeing' without contexts or terms that I understand; nothing in between and none of the nuisances of emotional processing), and my goal is just to get rid of this stupid subconscious emotional hung up. :roll:



I don't know.
Talking my feelings out just doesn't work with me at all.
Partially because I am looking for solutions, directions and explanations than whatever constitutes as 'have someone be there for me'. :roll:

The latter is at best, it's a temporary cope. It can be validation, it can be whatever justification that I already can tell myself.
It creates false trust, false growth in me with just more attachment to the other party.

At worst, might as well betray myself and worsen everything.
Ranging from the guilt of 'neediness' to just outright shame or even ruin a relationship.


Yet never an actual emotional processing let alone any semblance of healing. At all.

I have better luck with meditation and connecting deeper with my subconscious aspects.

My standards of an ideal therapist would be at least just like my newly found conscience; nonjudgmental, wise, can actually tell me right from wrong, tells me to be brave and be better, grieve without shame, guides me into processing feelings, when I stand my ground and when to surrender, sees but does not fight nor validate my ego, and no stupid condescending shite and comparisons with NTs.

Except that's virtually not possible. :lol:
My newfound conscience is in my head, and no one else is.


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24 Aug 2024, 5:22 am

Mostly mine have been fairly nondirective and client-centred, and I was fully adult by the time I had my first session, so there wasn't much pushing around and I've rarely felt uneasy. I've sometimes felt disappointed though. There was one who seemed to think everybody had to go through a "rock bottom" stage, get completely depressed, get dismantled, and get rebuilt. But I don't think that's always appropriate. Sometimes the client is more or less OK already and just needs to explore a specific problem without any great drama.

I think it usually helps to see the therapist as an advisor whose ideas may be rejected if they don't seem right. If the therapist can't cope with that, you probably need a better therapist.



__Elijahahahaho
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24 Aug 2024, 7:34 am

Honestly they have done so much damage, directly and indirectly.
Directly they have just caused so much self-doubt.

Indirectly they propagate this bandaid-solution type "everything can be solved by therapy"
when really it's money or some form of people being a dick. They also
provide a fantastic excuse for people to label others as "needing therapy" instead of
taking responsibility or collaborating to solve problems.



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24 Aug 2024, 11:12 pm

I always had difficulty finding the right therapist. I have had bad experiences and some good ones. I never found someone I would say was "perfect", but once I learned how to separate good and helpful feedback from bad information it has helped my sessions a lot.



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24 Aug 2024, 11:32 pm

It seems relatively recent (like maybe the last 15 or 20 years?) that three has been an acknowledgement that therapy is often unhelpful and sometimes harmful, not infrequently. There used to be this monolithic message that therapy is good for you and if you have problems it will help you, and then if you complained that it didn't help you, or harmed you, you were just dismissed outright.



Bestiola
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25 Aug 2024, 4:13 am

They're very quick on pigeon-holing you to some "condition" that suits them and even faster to proscribe some medications, usually 30 min after seeing you. They're nothing but servants of pharmaceutical industry.

I find our kitten way better therapist than those suckers.