I don't like the way my therapist talks to me.

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I don't think the statement that CBT can't work for people with AS is true, however it needs to be factored in (which means the therapist has to be aware of what AS means and how you specifically are impaired by it).

Personally, I take issue when people simply dismiss my own research just because I don't have formal training in the field - doctors tend to do that a lot in my experience, as if they feel threatened in their authority, which frankly for me translates to "I'm not willing to give up control and not confident enough to openly discuss the facts". I've seen medical "professionals" who were clearly wrong about something try to impose their authority and basically telling me to accept it or to go away.

I guess it's possible that they teach the relaxation technique in groups to reduce cost - I can understand your hesitation though. In any case, relaxation techniques are easy to learn on your own or with a book / audiobook. Even if she didn't directly call you stupid, what she said sounds dismissive and like she's already engaged in a power struggle with you. I may be reading too much into it, but from what I hear, she doesn't sound very professional.
Ultimately it's up to you, and my recommendation is to go with your gut feeling.

I don't know anything about the Swedish health care system, but there may be a certain number of sessions that are specifically for figuring out if the client-therapist relationship works (in Germany, it's 5 sessions). Only after those sessions, you formally enter into therapy. These are things that should've been explained to you by the therapist, in my opinion (but things may be different in Sweden, maybe you could do a search for the typical procedure).

But saying it's stupid to do something that you are in fact doing is calling you stupid, isn't it?

I agree she doesn't seem very professional.

I asked someone about it and they told me you usually only book a couple or three sessions with a new therapist at first to work out whether or not you think you can work together. No one's told me anything about any of that. All I know is I got referred for 20 sessions. I've got my next session on Wednesday morning. We'll see how it goes and if it doesn't feel better I'll really try to be brave enough to tell the psychologist who referred me that this isn't right for me. Freaks me out even thinking about it but I guess it has to be done.

I think ultimately your health insurance company has to know how this is handled (unless you pay for it directly), so you could call or e-mail them about the procedure as well. Maybe your health insurance only covers certain therapists and if you reject the one they assigned, they won't pay for another one, so it might pay to double check.
It just occured to me that because of the feedback in this thread you may now be primed to think that your therapist isn't a good one and your evaluation might be biased, so I feel a bit guilty for planting that idea. Then again it feels like I was mostly echoing back something that you already felt, so I consider myself largely guilt-free.
Don't worry about telling the psychologist - just prepare a few sentences, something simple like "I don't feel this therapist is right for me and I think it would be best to try another one" might suffice. If that's not enough you can explain that you're looking for a therapist that can explain herself and her methods. If the psychologist is any good, they'll listen because they know that these things matter for the efficacy of therapy.

I agree that it would be best for you to not see this therapist. If the psychologist you need to see about changing gives you flack, mention what the therapist said about the diagnosis being up to her and that you find it very confusing to have the professionals working with you disagreeing with you in the middle of it all.
BTW, she sounds like a really bad one, glad you came here for input so quickly and didn't try to stick it out! I did once with a therapist I couldn't feel comfortable with for too long. I didn't mind the waste of time since I didn't need the "therapy" and was simply complying wiht voc rehab requirements, but it took me a while to realize how her comments, vague putdowns, and condescension were chipping away at some of my confidence.

Best of luck with this and congrats on taking steps so quickly to remedy what you felt was a less than ideal situation for you!

I don't have health insurance. You don't need it here. Healthcare is pretty much "free" in Sweden (we've got quite high taxes but healthcare and education etc are free). You only have to pay a small amount of money for some stuff. For example: you have to pay about 17 euros/23 dollars to see a psychologist. But you only have to do so until you've paid a total of 126 euros/168 dollars (which isn't a lot). After that you've got free healthcare (at psychologists, normal clinics etc etc) for a year. When that year's over you start over again and later get free care again. So right now I'm not paying anything to see my therapist or seeing anyone really.

Anyway, don't worry about you having "planted the idea" of my therapist not being a good one. I thought so before posting here. I'm having my next session in less than two hours. I'll probably write here later this afternoon with an update.



I'm just scared they won't believe me or that they'll think my reasons aren't good enough. Scared they'll see me as annoying and stupid etc.

Thanks by the way.

I've a bit the same problem as you at the moment, also with my therapist who uses CBT (and I don't think it's because of CBT, what helped a lot of autistics to deal with certain problems). I think it's because my therapist is NOT specialist at all in autism, maybe it's the same with your therapist?

I can't really connect to the advice he is giving me and then I also don't know what to talk about, because I kind of know by now what the answer will be.
I think I need autism specific advice because autistics view the world different than NTs would. What's difficult for us is easy for NTs and vice versa.

Too exhausted to write much right now but I just wanted to let you know I just met a psychologist at the place where I'll eventually get assessed (just got to know I won't get assessed until earliest January by the way. Then I will have waited for almost 1,5 years. So tired of this.) and she asked me how therapy was going. I told her about it and she said she's going to speak to the psychologist who referred me and try to fix this. She understood how bad it was and how important all of this is. Thankful for that.

It doesn't really matter. I'm a therapist and I'd sooner quit than tell a client something like that. It's not difficult to imagine many clients interpreting that comment as meaning that they, themselves, are stupid.

The relationship between client and therapist is probably the most important ingredient of all. If you don't have that trust and mutual respect then the therapeutic encounter, so to speak, has nothing. I would also suggest that a therapist working with ASD clients needs to have had some significant experience with ASD, or at least to have done some serious reading.

In the UK our health system relies overly-heavily on CBT. It's supposedly quick, it's measurable and it's relatively easy to train people in using it. It is, therefore, cheap. There are other therapies you could try. One I'd recommend to ASD clients is solution focused therapy. Mindfulness is also great. Both together are good and that's pretty much what I do with my ASD clients.

I wish you all the best

Paul