therapists have always made me uneasy, what about you?

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Yeah kittens are the best.

I think when you are trained with these sort of "packaged" persuasion things and vague and wrong models
of how the brain works, that's all you see, for better or worse.

That said... it was this field that brought us together on wrongplanet..

I definitely have struggled with communicating with therapists, or them understanding me well I should say. My most recent one really created an idea of who I am and what my trauma was without asking direct questions. I think therapists have this idea that so much is communicated unsaid, when being autistic I am always being direct.

I get bad vibes from one of my eating disorder therapists. She gives vague advice that barely works, according to her engaging in pastimes like reading books and playing video games will miraculously alleviate all of my unpleasant intrusive thoughts I mean like all of them forever and ever no it obviously won't. And she would imitate the vocabulary I said if she didn't approve of it, I found that behaviour infantilising. And she refers to the act of eating as "fuelling your body", so ugly for some reason it just exudes that false positivity kinda thing.

What do you mean?

I had therapists who where outright dangerous...
My first one told me, when I was about 12/13 years old, to run away from home and hide in the woods. She told me that she had another client do so, and she was helping her to hide from the police...

My second one tried to force me to do stuff and tried to guilt trip me into doing stuff. She was treating me for eleged OCD... I was about 14-17 then.

Also around that time a therapist working at my school, got me without consulting my parents and tried to make me change my posture, because "you can't see anything, when you look down". She did other stuff too. I told my parents, they called the school, and she got fired. Other students later told me, she would do weird stuff with them as well, without knowledge of their parents.

Then I had a psychiatrist I asked to look at other possibilities than my then diagnosis of OCD. She declined and prescribed me meds, but wrote them up wrong. I went to the pharmacy, and no one there seemed to notice the mistake. I was sceptical enough of her to not try them out on a workday but decided to wait for the weekend. Had my first and only very bad drug trip that day. The meds she prescribed me where not supposed to be taken together... go figgure...

My last one I consulted with the plea to take a different look, for I by then was sure, that it wasn't OCD I was facing. She declined as well, trying again to treat me for OCD by forcing me to do stuff. She was writing a thesis on OCD and was using me as a case-example...

Now I have to find a new therapist, since I will have to have my meds newly adjusted, and around here it is mandatory to be in therapy for that (cause: suicide risks during med-change).

A good therapist, like a good GP, is one who either agrees with my self diagnosis or presents a feasible alternative.
I've had both state I was jumping the gun...but I'm still waiting for ANY alternative diagnoses.

On the other hand... Medical professionals are one of the rare groups I can open up to fully, and I can maintain conversation with a group presence, where I have difficulties talking in most situations involving more than one other.

I KNOW! It's always so frustrating. It always feels so fake to me, too.

I can talk to a therapist or psychiatrist (though I've had some really bad ones in the past, but now I have ones that I like) but not to a GP (or primary care physician, as they are called here). The last time I went was about two years ago, and all she did was try to suggest changes to medications that were working in order to try some that were less likely to work. I had to bite my tongue and I was very upset when I left. Doctors take very little time to listen or explain and are very condescending and brusque, in my experience. Also I have an invisible illness (ME/CFS or chronic fatigue syndrome) so in the past they have been very skeptical that I was sick at all, even though I can't function normally at all.

When I was finally diagnosed with Asperger's in 2001 the psychiatrist believed I shouldn't be told I had it. It's not being told I had ASD that was bad, in fact it was the only good thing that happened at the time. It was the fact that I had to hit rock bottom and have my life nearly ruined before I diagnosed. Wh9ich is all too typical when you're a female person.

I have reason to believe one of my past psychiatrists was trying to get me to overdose on Lorazepam because he would tell me to take as many as I needed whenever I needed. He'd say something like, "take two, take three" at a time when I already taking two pills twice a day.

Another past psychiatrist would me I needed to check into the hospital whenever I mentioned something that was bothering me. He knew I completely hated the thought of being put back in there. So I decided not to tell him if I was bothered or upset by anything. They'd only see me once every three months or longer and all they cared about was if I was still taking the pills.

But now I don't see any therapists even though I still take medication. The mental health care where I live is still practically stuck in the 1940s, and thanks to covid it's a million times worse. In a situation when people's mental state was more fragile than ever, go figure.

I have known 4 psychotherapists as friends.
3/4 have gossiped about their patients with absolutely no regard for professionalism.

One of them wanted to know if my relationships were the same as big bang theory...

I am hunting for a therapist and running into this problem myself. Unfortunately, most therapists don't seem to have any idea what to do with autistic adults—either they'll talk down to me like a child or they get visibly frustrated with me, and either way I leave the session feeling very uncomfortable.

The best therapist I ever had had been married to her autistic husband for years and years. It felt like she was fluent in my language, so to speak. I'd still be seeing her if I still lived in that area—but alas, the search continues.

Might sound strange but I really enjoyed therapy when I did it, I looked forward to weekly sessions a lot. My therapist was nothing special but competent and kind, it was psychodynamic therapy I think. I just really liked having someone to talk to, as I’ve got few friends, and my family never listened. I had a lot of issues to talk about so went for a couple of years.

Therapists are weary of a patient’s transference. Transference is when the patient actually thinks that the person who they are pouring out their souls to is a friend. When the reality is that they think of the patients as Frankenstein monsters. After I was diagnosed with ASD it only got more complicated. I’m glad I went in the first place. Glad that I have a clue why I spent a lifetime masking agoraphobia. I’m fortunate that I have a wife who is my co-regulator. We’ve decided that if I start having hallucinations or go off the suicide homicide scale, I will seek a therapist. Much like a dog that needs to be re-trained. So my thought is if someone who truly loves you tells you that you are insane find a good therapist who is actually autistic.