Has anybody any positive experiences of therapy?

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Dont want to hijack Bumbles tread "Why therapy won't work" so I just wanted to ask has anybody had any positive results from therapy and if so was it specially designed around AS or was it just conventional?
Also how did it help and how long did it take for you to feel you were making progress?

I ve only ever had therapy before I was diagnosed, and was treated as a NT and I could take no positives from it. However following my recent diagnosis of atypical autism, I have went to a specialist therapist who deals solely with autism. I have only went 3 times but as yet, I havent noticed anything really different about the therapy compared to the conventional NT type, nor have I noticed any improvement in myself. I know 3 sessions isnt alot of time but its really expensive and im running out of money. I would just like to hear some positives from some people here about therapy (if there are any), which may encourage me to stick at it

Thanks

Positive? No!
Negative? Yes!

Been in therapy on and off for decades.

Have had bad experiences, and good. But even the good therapists had a limit because -as the latest therapist I had been going too only few years ago said- "ive never even heard of asperger's".

Yes- in the 21st centurey there are still conventional therapists in the USA who have never even heard of the condition.

All therapists, effective and not, were generic therapists ( most from prior to the era when aspergers was even recognized in the USA).

One therapists I went to for years in my mid teens, who I stopped seeing for another in college... years after I stopped seeing him...was briefly in the local news: for being murdered by his own son.

My current psychiatrist can act as therapist as well and he's helped me lots. He lets me know it's ok whatever I'm feeling and I can trust him and speak about things I can't speak to other people about. He's referred me to a therapist who works with people with Aspergers who is helping me with transport issues I have (I have panic attacks on public transport). This other therapist helps a lot too.
Unfortunately I have to pay for both of these, because on the NHS I got no help. I was in NHS therapy for anxiety and even though I was partially diagnosed as an aspie by a NHS psychiatrist, the therapist I saw was horrible and told me off for stimming and not being able to identify my emotions....

Yes indeed, I used to waste much of my life going out, hoping to meet someone to Love, living in a future fantasy rather than making the most of a present reality.

Therapy got me to see I was completely and permanently broken, thereby enabling me to give up wasting my time on hope, and enjoy staying in bed all day, confident that nothing I could do could ever make my life better so why waste the effort?

When I was in an Aspie school, the staff would watch us, and then use small techniques on us to 'help us' come across as (more) 'normal'. I assume that it worked for other pupils, because they used these techniques so often, but they tore me apart..

I have seen a few different therapists. With one of them,most of the experiences involved me saying something and her laughing at me. That was uncomfortable. That therapist was free. Another therapist I had was good and helped me recognise some issues, but you get what you pay for!

I have had positive experiences of psychotherapy.

All they did was say that every experience I told them about was a lie, and that everything was all my fault. Lots of help there.

I had some really horrible experiences with CBT and psychotherapy before I was diagnosed - they really emphasised all my "negative thinking" and made me feel really bad about myself (so much for "non-judgemental" and "unconditional acceptance").

I did enjoy art therapy and progressive muscular relaxation, but I have not been able to get the same benefit when I do them on my own or with a tape - the human interaction with the therapist seems important.

Since diagnosis I have had CBT within an anxiety management group, where the nurse therapist knew about Asperger syndrome. I have also had counselling through an organisation that helps adults with autism. Both have been helpful.

The last lot of therapy I had was 12 sessions CBT last year during a very bad period of depression and it helped me a lot as it enabled me to gain control over my negative thinking so that I am able to switch from negative to more positive thinking in order to change how I feel.

I found psychotherapy and psycho-dynamic therapy more interesting than useful as I like having the opportunity to talk to someone.

I don't think people should see therapy as some kind of magical solution to their problems - it is a tool you can use to help you gain more control over your thinking processes ie you have to do the work, not the therapist.

I think that in order to work well the therapist has to have an above average level of emotional intelligence and be a compassionate and caring human being. If this isn't the case, it's not worth bothering with really.

I had very good experiences with therapy, and it supported me very much. I think it was an advantage, that the one I visited was of a group that was recommended by the autism special center, where I had my diagnosis.

So he studied both psychiatry (which is more about physical internal problems and changes in the brain) and "normal" psychotherapy (which is more about problems because of social interacting) and was common with autism patients.

From the descriptions of the other thread, he also worked quiet different. (Maybe they also have other orders in my country.) So in the other threads the therapists were described as persons, telling you what to do. My therapist never told me anything to do or to think. Instead I had more the feeling that we talked more about philosophy. ^^ So when we talked about things that bothered me, he was not telling me what to think about a situations, instead he encouraged me to question these situations, to ask myself what feelings of myself led to the thoughts I was thinking, and so on.

So lots of those typical NT stuff was bothering me, that I didnt question myself anymore, because "this and that has to be that way or done that way, because this is "normal"" and everything. I stopped listening to my own feelings in many situations, because they did not fit and simply mentioning my true feelings and thoughts, often hurted people I didnt want to hurt and noone understood that anyway, including myself. So I accepted to go to family meetings every weekend, because this is normal, I ignored the feelings I had before that events, because my feelings were not normal. They didnt have to be there. I was not supposed to cry when forced to meet family, I was not supposed to feel fear and sadness when invited to a birthday of a friend, I was not supposed to be afraid of visiting relatives, I was not supposed to have the wish not to see my partner for some days because of me being completely in the ass, because of events, that are anyway not supposed to have a negative effect for me. I couldnt understand them myself: So why the hell didnt I want to visit birthday parties of good friends or got tired already at 22:00, when I normally liked to spend time with them, and when having no wish to visit his birhtday meant, according to NT rules, that I didnt like him, when I knew I liked him, and so on. So after a while I simply worked and functioned and did without questioning myself anymore, and I didnt know myself why I felt so bad, so tired. So everything was fine and normal, so I was supposed to be happy and because of not being happy, when I should be happy according to my surrounding, I had allegations against myself. I felt myself guilty, because according to NT rules you dont want so see someone, when you dont like him. So I felt myself guilty, when not acting in this way, because I didnt want that people I like were hurted from my behaviour, and thought I would hate them, when I didnt hate them and wanted them to know that I like them.

I also learned to communicate my feelings better. So I wasnt myself aware exactly of my problems, because of not facing them, so I also couldnt communicate them properly. So in earlier times, it sometimes "happened" to me, that I acted the way I felt without thinking, and other people were truly hurted because of this. Because neither me, nor the other person knew, that it was simply about communication differences. So as example my mother in law is not very happy about my external looks, so fashion clothing is a very important topic for her, while this topic doesnt even exist in my world. To encourage me to buy some new cloths, she invited me and my partner to go to a shopping mall together, and there I could do shopping the whole day and she would pay it with her credit card. So she expected me to jump around yelling, hugging her and being happy because of my mother in law inviting me to a free shopping and presenting me with lots of cloths I could choose on my own. And my thought simply was, that because of this clothing s**t nonsense, the complete weekend that I really needed after 5 days of working, was completely ruined. Because of one day I was forced to run around this sh***y shopping horror places, and the rest of the weekend I would need to recover from that horror, so I could have no happy time with my partner, making me unhappy and my partner unhappy, letting me start the next working week sad and tired and without energy. I never thought of, that someone could expect me to be happy because of that invitation, and so when my mother in law made that invitation I simply looked at her in horror as if she told me, I would get stoned and tortured to death. So according to NT rules there was no chance, that I could be unhappy about someone inviting me to shop cloths without paying. So according to NT rules it had to be, that I hated my mother in law, that I was acting that way. So my mom in law was terrible hurted by my behaving, I felt myself again guilty for her being hurted when she only wanted to be nice to me, and terrible wrong because of feeling in a way, that people couldnt even imagine, that someone could feel like that and so on...And because of lots of such events, I often stopped to listen to myself and simply acted as I was supposed to act, ignoring the feelings that were not supposed to be there ... leading to a massive Burnout, suicied issues, major depression, ...which lead to me seeking help, which lead to my Asperger diagnosis.

So my therapist teached me to ask myself again. So when I told him about being sad, because of hurting a friend I liked, because of me not being able to visit his birthday party, he simply led me to questioning myself, why I felt bad, if I should felt bad about that, and so on. He never told me what I should think about something, but simply encouraged me to question myself, what I really think and felt of something. This led to me recognizing, that its not the people that I hated to meet at such events, but its the events itself. So I always avoided to meet my partners family because they always met at horror 20 people events. "The more the funnier." -.- So before I started to question myself I simply felt a feeling of deep horror, when family meetings were mentioned, and instead of analyzing why this was so much horror, I pushed it down, tried to ignore it, and focused on right behaving. By analyzing the feelings I started to recognize, that it was simply too much. So instead of all this horror massive family parties, instad my partner and I visit his relatives separated. So we visit his grandmother separated on our own, instead of waiting for the nest horror massive family event. So this analyzing of myself helped me, because in earlier times I simply could say "I dont want that. I dont like that." without myself knowing further why. Now I can say: "Sorry. I dont like that in that way because of ... But I could offer you instead..."

He also never told me to use some medics or drugs. He simply offered them. So he simply told me, that first he would like it if I would so some simple stuff, to reduce stress for me and physical help myself to become happier again. Simply reducing coffeine, try to eat healthy, have some physical movement like going for a walk regularly and so on. So he did not demand it, but he explained why he thinks this to be an advantage for me, and let me decide myself. With the drugs it was the same. He explained them and why he thought them to be an advantage, but the desicion was up to me. So I had some little sleeping helper the first weeks, I didnt like the side effects, but it really helped to get a normal sleep rythm again so we could reduce them to zero after some weeks.

So from my opinion: I do understand that a therapist or psychiatrist without any knowledge of autism can be horrible, because he simply wont understand the problems and this will led him to wrong decisions. But one with knowledge of autism is a really good help.