Anyone else struggle with Therapists?

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I just got back from a therapist appointment. I am so deeply hurt I can hardly stand it. I am struggling to know if it is me or her. She seemed distant and cold and sometimes would not make any remarks after I told her something important. I know I have a ton of rejection issues but I think she does not like me or does not like counseling me or something. She once suggested I consider another therapist in the clinic (cause someone recommended I counsel with a women due to a lack of a mother figure in my life). At the time I thought she was just really trying to be helpful. Now I wonder if she wanted to terminate the therapy back then... I feel horrible, like no one likes me, not even someone getting paid. I don't know how to read this situation. Any advise would be appreciated.

It's kind of weird that she suggested you get another therapist. But if you feel nervous around her and that she doesn't like you, you should definitely switch.

I really dislike therapy much for the reason you describe. Every therapist I've had acts this way- they don't show any emotion and seem very detached from me. This is how they're trained to do things though, so don't feel like it's because she doesn't like you. Therapists are supposed to seem detached from their patients. I think it's weird, that's why I don't like going to therapy but it can be helpful sometimes I guess.

I have the opposite problem; therapists trying to get things into an emotional place and pushing me really hard and saying things about me that aren't true until I have a meltdown in the office and then telling me I'm the most depressed person they've ever seen and talking abou hospitalization. Which terrifies me -- plus I'm not so depressed when I go in as when I come out of a session. And part of it is allt he false things the therapist insists about me. If I wanted someone to misunderstand and misinterpret eveyrthing abuot me, I would save my money because I can get that anywhere on this planet for free. And without threats to take away my freedom.

Not struggling literally, of course. Seriously, they come in all shapes, sizes ant textures, and you are the customer, not a captive audience. One guy I walked after one session - abusive abrasive, his big techntique to open me up. A bandsaw will open me up too.

Shop around and find some one you CAN talk to.

The feedback is appreciated, thanks. Not going back to her and I think books are a much better way to gain insight, at least they do not judge.

I feel very lucky with my current counselor, even though I mostly bounce ideas off her and ask what "normal" is. She maintains a professional detachment, but still cares about her clients. A lot of it does come down to compatible personalities and interests. Not having a PhD, she is still allowed to say "I don't know" when appropriate, which is rare. We learn from each other.

The worst experience I had was with a pair of counselors, one of whom had a natural talent but wanted to retire, and her apprentice, who tried to get by just by imitating her. Neither one believed in Asperger's or any other "nature" condition, and they lied to get my money. I'm still busy posting warnings about them. Prairie Haven, Saskatoon.

I have seen three different pshycologists in my life and they were all as you described. I think they are just nosey people. They make a living from sticking their nose into your head. Not only that they are all useless. The three I have seen never guessed I had AS. I always feel very uncomfortable with them. The last one I saw used to sit directly opposite me staring at me at the start of each session until I said something. She would not prompt me and seemed quite confrontational in her responses to what I was saying. They have never made me feel better. And yes I come out worse than when I went in. I reckon unless they understand you have AS they just confuse you more and overload your head. But I reckon even if they knew you had AS they would still try to overload you. They are snide and I think their motive for doing that job is questionable.

Personally, I find therapy to be the wrong approach. It seems to be intended to people who never learned to rationally disseminate their problems and let their emotions do the thinking too much. That is NOT my problem. Their goal is to give you insight into how to best help yourself, but none of them have even gotten to the starting line where I'm concerned. And it seems like I can't even successfully explain to them how matriculated my point of view has become from what I find to be the rather basic common sense they continue to tell me.

I want some old-school Freudian shrink to look at me and do things like the Rorschach test and figure out from all my matriculation and complexity just how screwed up I am

For most of my life, I would change personalities whenever a shrink started to look like they had a diagnosis in mind. They would then leave me alone, which was the best outcome before AS was a valid diagnosis. Since it did hit the Book, I'm pretty disgusted that nobody picked up on my classic symptoms. An ongoing problem is the influence of the drug industry. If some expensive pill was helpful, we'd have had a DX decades earlier. Now, a lot of MDs function mainly as marketers for the pill profiteers, and still ignore us. My counselor is someone who likes people, and is fascinated by the variety, so she enjoys her work. If she had an insurance company demanding fast results, we'd never get to the root of anything.

When I was young, I used to get in a lot of unexpected trouble, until I learned to apply logic to the Golden Rule, which was easy to memorize, and unchanging. I just assumed that everybody else had made the same discovery. Only this month, I realized that life evolved and persists just fine with no logic at all. It is only a pattern that can appear where language and big brains have already evolved, and it only helps with a few types of problems. It is spectacularly successful at making technical news, but far to slow for everyday use.

I think it's weird, too. I always thought that the thing most people need in those situations is a friend. Well, obviously, a therapist isn't really your friend, but they can act as a sort of surrogate friend.

That cold, professional detachment is just the opposite of what's needed, in my view.

Do NOT go to a therapist unless they are trained in dealing with Autism and Aspergers!

I wasted seven years of my life going to a therapist (before diagnosis). He would ask me all the time how I felt about this or that and I would reply, "I don't know. What are the feelings?" or "how am I supposed to feel?" It was frustrating for him and for me because no real progress was made in the seven years. I quit about a year ago upon diagnosis from a psychiatrist and just recently explained to therapist about my Aspergers. He was clueless! Errrrrrh!

They can do more harm than good if they are unfamiliar with Autism/Aspergers. Seriously find someone who has Autism experience.

I would very much tend to agree. I started therapy at age five and went constantly straight through to age 15. Thereafter, I periodically would try therapy again when I hit a desperate point in my life. I feel that my ten years of childhood therapy did every bit as much damage to me as my father's verbal (and sometimes physical) abuse, my mother's emotional abuse, even my grandfather's sexual abuse of me.

And as for my dips into therapy as an adult, they were very damaging but it just took me a while to learn not to go to them because they always made my problems and suffering worse (and always at a time when I was already most vulnerable and easily damaged because I'd only go to the therapist when I was "at the end of my rope.") I think partly it took me so long to learn that lesson because it was always so intense and traumatic that my mind would wipe a lot of the memory away and only bring those memories back in the heat of the moment when I was being damaged again.

I've been so damaged by therapy that I have a Pavlovian response to it now. All I have to do is enter a therapist's office and I start sobbing uncontrollably and can't stop until I've left again. This possibly worked in my favor when I had to go for disability recertification but it defintely worked against me when I last tried to visit a therapist. At that point, I finally knew about my asperger's and I was in a decent place in my life and not desperate or distressed but wanted some assistance and guidance now that I knew about my autism. The doctor who diagnosed me was several towns away so I called locally to see if any of the therapists I was able to see on medicaid or through my student status had any experience with adult autism. None of them did, but one strongly encouraged me to come in anyway, saying they could learn and work with me.

I went in and the crying reaction started against my will after a few fairly clumsy questions from the therapist and even more clumsy refusals to accept my honest answer to her. I just got so upset at some stranger trying to tell me that I was lying and that she REALLY knew the truth about me after meeting me for less than five minutes! Because of the crying. the therapist decided I was "the most depressed person she had ever seen" and refused to accept anything I said about myself or why I was crying. She scared the holy heck out of me and I thought for certain she was going to try to have me committed to a hospital! She was even calling my home and leaving messages on my answering machine after I'd checked the box on the intake form that said that I didn't want to be contacted at home! That was a major violation of trust!

I was terrified and hid in my house for several days, not answering the phone or door, until I felt the threat of being put away had passed. And that's when I swore never again to go to a therapist who doesn't have extensive experience with my kind of people. Having such an awful experience when I had gone to a therapist in a fairly good mood and not desparate and last-hope-y really sealed the lifelong pattern of iatrogenic therapy-induced damage and finally convinced me to stop self-injuring by proxy through visiting uneducated therapists.

I saw a counselor for a long time and it was often bad, I feel it ended bad. Me supposedly being difficult and uncooperative but I don't think she understood what I was trying to ask her (which I'm not going to try and explain fully but I wish I could.) But she did help me to learn to talk to someone, not that I couldn't literally talk beforehand. And I learned how to express my feelings, say needs, ask questions better than I could before. But it could also feel hostile at times and I would feel worse but kept going.
I didn't know where to go after it ended. It was really terrible and very hard for me. I had no one to help me really and I was afraid of going to counseling again. I tried to contact a pastor (not a fan of religious leaders either) and left a voice mail and wrote a letter and no reply. I couldn't understand people.
It seems I've needed some form of assistance as an adult. Sometimes it's hard to function but I could force myself to go to work and lucked out because even though it feels real stressful for me, there's down time for me to recuperate some, and it's also a non-profit. And I got away with not really talking much. It's still been hard even though a lot of people might look down on it.
Well, I was going to say more but deleted it. I think things would make more sense if I did.
Anyhow, my new counselor has experience with autistics and those with aspergers. He works with screening learning disabilities as well. The first day he saw me he asked if I had been in special ed (I'm not stupid) which I said no to. He said it would have been better off for me if I had caused trouble when I was younger rather than being quiet and withdrawn because I might have gotten help then. He's talked to me about the autistic spectrum ever since. Although I have my doubts about it. I don't relate to some of the things people say here but it seems I relate more to any other people than I've ever felt. Sometimes I don't think there's anything really wrong with me though, which doesn't make too much sense to think that, I guess. I'm not sure what to think. He doesn't come across as hostile to me and I haven't felt pushed and challenged and then angered/frustrated like it was before...yet.
He's helping me focus on the details of my own life because I have hard time doing that.

Last edited by Jediscraps on 31 Oct 2010, 10:49 am, edited 7 times in total.

Or you might not have. I caused a lot of trouble and all I got for it was made to sit in a box during class, tied to a chair, paddled twelve ways from Sunday, and finally expelled from the entire country school system. The only thing I didn't get was help or understanding.

yeah, maybe so. Maybe you live in a different area or went to school at a different time than when I went. My area probably has done bad things like that but seems that would be unusual here. I see your point though. I think this guy may work with this school system in some way. But I might be remembering wrong.

My worst experience with therapy was at Prairie Haven in Saskatoon. It was supposed to be an all-inclusive deal, with unlimited visits to follow-up sessions in a support group with other "graduates." I should have quit cold when I was charged extra for an "Intake" interview, but they also lied. The interview would have been worth the price if they had told me why they would actually ignore the safety rules they had agreed to, not expecting to have me test them formally when I began to have serious trust issues. They were afraid of creating too much attachment.
They also did not even believe in asperger's or anything else. They were from nurture uber alles and hadn't done any reading in decades. Worst of all, the talent was retiring, and being replaced by the secretary, who was just trying to imitate the effective therapist by memory to save her job. They also listed guided visualization as one of their techniques, far down in the brochure, but actually began the session with it, which was a disaster for me. As well, they often assumed experience as a parent for their examples.