How has counseling/psychotherapy helped YOU?

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^I think the quality of mental health therapies is the less admirable side of the socialised healthcare system we have in the UK.

Because most of us don't bother with private medical insurance, because we know in a pinch the NHS will be there, we don't plan for mental health issues.

The NHS does its best, but it simply can't afford to provide decent mental health care. In my experience what it does provide is short-term, ineffective and in the case of neurodiversities, inappropriate.

And it's inconsistent across the UK too.

It's one of the reasons I actually think a hybrid system of socially funded healthcare and personal insurance would probably result in better all-round care for people. And I think it's where we will end up, eventually.

What about the people who cannot afford personal insurance? That sort of system can become a slippery slope, if not carefully handled.

I agree with you on the quality of mental health treatments in the UK, particularly in the realm of therapy - they tend to be of poorer quality than what one might find if they searched a bit for some more specific private therapies. And the waiting lists are obviously just silly for NHS mental health care in a lot of cases.

By the time you have waited 1 year or more to be seen, your mental health episode might have progressed into a different phase, or may have temporarily been relieved. A mental health crisis needs immediate attention for most people, not a long waiting list.

While I never had any form of therapy in a formal sense...
My sped teacher so far, helped me with how to be aware of my own hormones affecting me.

Because back then, I'm already contending with several sources of chronic pain and continuous discomfort until randomly happening around my 20s (a toothache that hadn't solved since teenage years until by a surprise visit to the dentist, completely unmanageable chronic rhinitis, not having my own space and not having a secured space, not realizing photosensitivity, sleep and thought disrupting gut, etc...)

I don't even take pain meds. That never crosses my mind except in a disabling level of pain.
The best I do in response to it was basically put eucalyptus oil on wherever it's applicable or close to it. I like the feeling of it anyways.

I don't need anyone to point this out to me. There wasn't anyone who could ever pointed this out for me, and it was more of a problem that I've been trying to ignore for so long.


I don't think counseling alone would help me. It's as good as changing my attitude towards being in pain.

Maybe with certain medications, but nothing so drastic or strong.

And probably with a prerequisite that said psychologist is a good fit only to make up with the lack of prerequisite in my own part -- which is the skills related to do and practice inner work, which is not something easy to attain apparently and supposedly what therapists aides a person to do it, but...


Because my main problem is more to do with how noisy everything is from within and without and not having a break in between to actually process my emotions.

... Even the feeling of true nothing didn't solved it. Yes, it quiets everything including the very problem I'm trying to find to a point of ego loss -- but not necessarily processed it cognitively.

So either one or the other only either relieves it for a moment only to come back for no reason, or worsens it.

I need both and more.

Since I don't have anyone who can actually understand; or made talking itself pointless since I need a more regulated body to be able to reach my mind better and thus the stuck emotions that refuses to leave me since childhood.


It's really, really, stupid.
I don't need any psych session anymore.

Just more knowledge over the human nature and actually knowing psychology.

And since I got the skillset to heal myself, I may never need a session beyond than someone actually just getting me, hinting me or reminding me.


I need something to regulate my hormones cycle. My body, not my head.
My body first, before my head. I cannot do both, I cannot to the reverse.

I already tried the reverse for basically a decade long and turns out I'm only doing half of the whole thing, if not skipping an entire crucial step if it had to work for me.

I don't need something to compensate from the effects of said hormonal issues -- I need something that just flat out prevents undesirable effects from my hormones.

Psychotherapy can't do that.
The best it can possibly tell me after all this is prioritize what's in front of me than prioritize ignoring everything inside me.

... Well, sure, it definitely works against any glimpse of daydreaming and screentime, taking the discomfort overall. It helps if there's something to look forward to.

But it doesn't apparently work with utter basic needs -- yes, hunger, thirst, needing to empty my bowels or bladder doesn't want me to take everything I want to enjoy in precedence; my interoception taking these sensations into precedence over my conscious decision to do whatever I want or intend to do which was to enjoy whatever moment I'm sure would want to make up the most of.

Or anything around sleepiness and just waking up. Or that it can only reveal that I'm rather dependent over sugar.
Meaning there's still really something off there somewhere; my only clue is that I grew up hating sleep. That's an avenue I'll consciously pursue soon.


And lots of learning that I've yet to catch up and left off since pubescent years or earlier no thanks to whatever crap created the unwanted emotionality that never gave me a space to learn stuff that mattered in this reality.

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I've had very mixed experiences. I like the therapist and the psychiatrist I have now (except for the expense, which is significant) but I've had very bad experiences with both therapists and psychiatrists in the past. Mostly bad, to the point that they did damage and encouraged me to go in a direction that was bad for me.

I was never offered counselling or psychotherapy for ASD (or anything else), but I got counselling for relationship problems at times, and I got a series of personal counselling sessions at one stage.

I think the first relationship counsellor helped me to understand a bit more about myself, such as the streak of low self-esteem I had at the time. I was lucky enough to get somebody who was into the nondirective therapy thing. In spite of often feeling the need for somebody to offer solutions and tell me what to do, in practice I seem to accept and benefit from that kind of counsel a lot better when I find out for myself, even though it takes a long time. I remembered several things that had been said and over the later years I think they helped. The importance of emotions was one of the most notable things that I got from the therapy. Before I went, I was pretty much convinced that cold logic was the only thing that mattered, and as I said during one session, I thought that feelings were redundant with modern humans. I couldn't have been more wrong.

After the first counsellor, the others were of mixed usefulness to me. One was a disaster. I called him Mr. Rock Bottom because he had this great belief that everybody needed to hit an all-time low and then reassemble themselves from the pieces. That philosophy didn't suit me at all. I don't see myself as mentally ill or in need of any drastic, "big bang" therapies. He knew a thing or two but was annoyingly didactic and full of himself, talked too much and didn't listen enough. So I'd say something and he'd interrupt and give me a lecture. Looking back, I don't know why I persevered with him. I was undiagnosed in those days and my difficulty in recognising my feelings got mistaken for repression.

I accompanied a spouse to her personal therapy sessions from time to time because they asked me to. That particular therapist seemed quite good. Possible faults I noticed were too much niceness and a certain lack of understanding of ASD which made the flow of the sessions go too quick and glibly for my thinking style.

There was never any sudden profound change as a result of any of the sessions I ever went to. Like I say, I'm not mentally ill - I don't need any urgent repairs. For me it's more a matter of small, gradual increases in my awareness of how I tick. I think I'm a happier person as a result. I might have got to the same place without any counselling at all.

What I've never had, but think I would like, is sessions with somebody who really understands ASD well, to help me to hone coping strategies. But a suitable counsellor hasn't been found and I don't suppose I ever will find that.

Yes my therapist is helping me work on myself and reach my goals!! !

I got here from the opposite direction. While expressing some life experiences in a therapy session I finally just told my therapist "I almost feel like I must be autistic!" I was looking away from her as i said it and then looked at her. She seemed to be having an AHA! moment and said she was wondering the same thing. That conversation led me down this rabbit hole over the last year or so and i finally just got on a waiting list to get an assessment.

My need for therapy was over some personal trauma and therapy has helped there, mostly from not just going round and round in my own head over all the issues. It has been good to have someone safe and supportive to talk to. That would be the case even if there was no direct "therapeutic"" benefit.

I believe that there's been a lot of therapeutic benefits in coming to terms with the fact that my brain is wired a certain way that includes adhd, autism and some pretty severe cptsd. It explains a lot of my life experiences.

Improved my coping skills to some extent.

I have tried psychotherapy and counseling for decades. The only way it has helped me is that the therapist is not supposed to gaslight or invalidate me and some of them have been actually good about that. Other than that, it has never helped me with anything. But, OP, you and I are very different. I think that if you find the right therapist that you can really connect with, therapy might help you very much. And don't worry about a therapist having his or her hands full with you. A good therapist should have no problem with that. That's their job.

I know that socially I don't fit in, but have your ideals made life even harder? For me sticking to what I believe in is without a doubt, but after about decade I realised how money was lacking, opportunity and now with my burn out I anticipate this whereas in past I didn't.
So I watched Hollywood discredited, rich and famous people in scandals and tried to make sense of it all.

I've received invites and offers that were withdrawn, a number of issues about what I'm not prepared to do. For example I was just programmer but online porn conflicts my views and boss didn't like me because I was very hard to train in my opinions and inclined to blurt out truth and so I ended up living like a church mouse. Then I wasn't sure if it was my ways of being Hungarian or autism that meant people didn't include me in many conversations and only half accepted later as I was considered a normal person but still my otherwise views lead me to life of isolation.

Interested in anyone elses autistic journey and experience.