Have any of you had an bad experience with a therapist?

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I'm almost 39 and I have extremely bad pms where I'I've been crying a lot lately. I also have extremely low self esteem.
My mom mentioned maybe I could see a therapist but only because suggested seeing a psychiatrist because I haven't seen one since 2020. Although I now think if I see a therapist it will be a negative experience because if the therapist mentions self esteem, then I know I will get very upset with the person who is counseling me. Do any of you had bad experiences with therapists before?

I have a problem with therapists who are too directive. I usually can tell after a few sessions.
Some I have worked with for years, others I fire after a month or less.
If you remember that you can fire the therapist it might help you to take a risk with a new one.
All you have to say is "I think this will be our last session. I think we have gone as far as we can go."

A psychologist had the nerve to put "clinical depression, with psychotic features" on my medical record.

Next session, I asked him, what kind of "psychotic features"?

He answered "is your thinking always accurate to reality?".

"No, my thinking not always accurate to reality" I said.

"List an example," he said.

"Nobody's thinking is always accurate to reality." I answered.

On the medical report for *that day*, he put "without psychotic features".

But the original medical report still says "with psychotic features".

So I tried emailing my primary physician about it and the answer was that the primary physician does not have a right to change someone else's report, and the original psychologist doesn't work there anymore.

(Plenty of jobs have had the nerve to make my worthless corpse redundant for mistakes much smaller than this one. And nobody even apologized or said thank you.)

(As a result, I am paranoid of getting prescribed medications aimed for my nonexistent "psychotic features", or maybe the court will subpoena my medical records for a civil or criminal case.)

I have had several bad experiences with therapists. To be fair, I have also had a couple of decent ones as well. The bulk of the really bad ones were when I was still a kid living at home with my parents and lacked the say/control to stop seeing that therapist. Now that I'm grown, I can cut the losses and wasted time and decide to find a better fit or stop going altogether.

The last therapist I had was a nightmare who only had one tool in her box...she was obsessed with journaling and I told her from the start that journaling didn't work for me. One time I asked her a question about something in my records that I wanted clarification on, and she asked me what I thought about what was in my records. I was like, uh, I don't know, that's why I'm asking for clarification, the wording seems weird to me and I'm confused. She freakin told me to journal about it. I was like what? Journaling isn't going to help me understand things in a chart that are confusing to me. I was having to find a ride across town and pay a copay for that. No. Just no.

I had a terrible weekend group course put on by a practice where a successful "natural" counsellor was trying to turn over the business to her assistant, who was just trying to do what had worked for what looked most similar to her, but she had no clue.
My best counsellor is also a "natural." She had just enough school to get a job, and I'd describe her work as remedial parenting. She was eventually so loaded down with reports to fill out that she quit.

One therapist mistook another "walk-in" person in the waiting room for me and spent the entire session listening to him as if he was me -- on my third effing appointment!  He offered to reschedule.  I refused.  Then I reported him to his senior business partners instead.

Another therapist (whom I was only dating) went into a rage against me because her best friend tried to seduce me.

Another therapist tried to convince me that I was lying about not being a junkie (those were mosquito bites on my arms).

Still another therapist (whom I was also only dating) tried to recruit me into her communist social club (or was it a socialist commie club?).

I've had problems with therapists who made a lot of assumptions and didn't listen or simply didn't believe me.

For instance, when I told a former therapist that it was difficult for me to interact with people, she assumed I was just anxious about it and encouraged me to do it anyway, on the assumption that once you try something you realize that your fears were exaggerated and that it's actually fine. Of course, I had the opposite experience. I found that trying to interact with people (more than I had been) was very difficult and actually caused me greater stress, and it was embarrassing because I was awkward and weird, which also was stressful.

When I told her that interacting was difficult because I found that I was very awkward and didn't really know how to do it, her reaction was to try to reassure me and to tell me that I was doing fine when I interacted with her. This too was wrong, of course. Interacting with a therapist is not like having a normal conversation. You can say whatever you want and you don't have to reciprocate by asking the therapist how her day was. So she actually encouraged me to do things that only added to my stress without offering any coping strategies or actual information on how to do better.

To the OP

There are good and bad therapists. But surely if you find a good one you WANT to discuss your self esteem issues? If that is an issue you are dealing with, then surely the whole point of therapy is to find ways of dealing with that issue?

I've had low/bad self esteem since I was in high school and that was 20 years ago and I'm very much use to it. I've talked to my mom about me getting a therapist and I realize it wouldn't be worth it. I was blame the therapist if I felt worse during or after therapy. I can live with bad self esteem since I have 2 decades at least.

took 4 tries to find a therapist I could work with "back when" most of the others kept trying to dig at my emotions and asked me "how did I feel" leaving me a confused sobbing mess with no insights at the end of each session. When you are told how to think or how you think and feel all your life you are unlikely to be able to find what thoughts and emotions you have hidden all your life. When I tried the 4th counselor, he got the background info and could tell it was a matter of my not having learned healthy communication and how to recognize I was being abused and manipulated. He set about teaching me how to recognize healthy behavior, make healthy choices, and communicate in healthier ways. Problems solved. If at first you don't succeed, keep trying! getting the right therapist saved my life and my sanity. There are many out there, keep looking until you find somebody who "gets you".

Far too many to mention. I think I only had one or two good one in my entire 36 years of seeing them; and those were when I was a child. As an adult, I don't think I had ANY that had any lick of understanding about autism in adult women. "Oh my coworker's sister's boyfriend's aunt's hair stylist's neighbor's nephew's five year old son is autistic and you're nothing like him! You're bipolar or borderline, not autistic!" I was diagnosed at 7. You're just a therapist lady, you don't get to change my diagnosis after ONE meeting with me.

I had therapists in my life, I had one that I really really could not understand, he was talking with big words, like doctors talk, my mom was with me, she explained to me what he was saying. My last therapist didn’t believe me that I had Aspergers, she made me cry, I wanted to hit her, she was making me upset, I walked out on her.

I've had a therapist fall asleep. I thought it was a test to see if I'd wake him I failed if it was.