Tiptoeing in counselling therapy

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hey yellow

it's a job people get into to help people, im sure the majority of people do their best to do so there's just a few bad eggs

My specialism is one-on-one therapy, groups are pretty tough to handle asks different kind of people. I know too little about the situation and her motivations but my general experience with fellow autists is starting gently and graduatly over long periode of time increasing to harden and thus be able to withstand more rougher & tougher situations. Talking about periods of months, with pace depending on person self - lots of patience and space given.

It's always been very frustrating to me that therapists don't come out and say what they mean. I've wasted a lot of time in therapy with therapists who had completely wrong interpretations of the issues I was trying to address, and it took me months to find out, because they wouldn't say anything about it or about what they were thinking. I find it maddening!

Because of the cautious nature of the proffession and looking to verify assumptions by carefully formulated questions (not every therapist is good in these techniques, thus in-lacking questions)
and verifying the therapists thoughts with the client (automatism fills in alot of the information blanks with assumption if not partly aware of own thoughts).

Well the lack of competent and able therapists is thanks to demand and availability scale, where demand is higher and the availability (read education) is lacking that demand - So quantity over quality.

I do want to make clear there are good men and women active in the profession and a mismatch between client and therapist are also attributing to a situation.
I do not know the details and motivations in this situation, it makes it hard to make a sound judgement.

Cheerfully,
Wallourdes

You've had bad luck then, as mine is very good at feeding back to me, and communicating with me in general.

I'm afraid of counselors.
The first counselor helped me in some ways but it often felt hostile to the point I'd get frustrated and angry and it ended badly. I didn't want the main help she was trying to give and it took me a long time to realize that. From my perspective I was being integrated and I didn't want that. I remember I told her I felt like I was being tamed by her, haha. Even though it sort of sucks being on the outside, I like my viewpoint of looking at society from the outside, it's just that my thoughts and viewpoint are really hard for me to handle. I feel like a kid in some ways. I was asking how to deal with that and I was told that's "coping" and not getting better. I told her I never said I wanted that. I looked like the difficult uncooperative patient.

She said counseling is for challenging. When I originally went to the clinic they were glad I'd just go because they never saw such a bad anxiety disorder and 'severe social phobia' before. I was really bad at talking to people back then and I felt like she was frustrated at me for not moving faster. I don't hate her though. She did help me to learn to talk better and be assertive, if no one else, at least to counselors. And counseling isn't even a back and forth conversation. I'm not even sure I know how to have real conversations. In fact, I prefer doing things with someone rather than talking for the sake of talking per se.

I had nowhere to go and no help and was going deep inside myself but instead of that I ended up coming up with this great interpretation of Jesus Christ on the cross which I constantly thought and think about and helped me survive. I was so isolated I didn't have anywhere to go. I was going mental.

But this new guy talks to me about the autistic spectrum all the time, has experience with autistics, worked in special education and screens for learning disabilities. This guy seems to be explaining things better to me and it makes more sense when he tells me I have a social learning disability. All this also helps explain how during this last summer I was comforting myself watching youtube videos of high powered blenders chopping up up food at an amazing speed.

oh oh! i highly recommend searching through youtube for "will it blend"

I've been to several therapists (14, but only 4 that I saw for several months or more) and it's always been the same way. I think the idea is that the therapist is not supposed to interject his or her own perspective so as not to influence the patient's thinking or ability to express the patient's own perspective. Some don't even react to the things the patient says for that reason. I actually begged one of my therapists repeatedly to tell me what I should try to talk about during therapy, and she always refused categorically, saying I could talk about whatever I wanted, until I told her I wanted to talk about the history of merry-go-rounds and she admitted that that wouldn't be useful. But that's the most I could get out of her.

I have been so frustrated with therapists that I have had to give up altogether. I don't think there has ever been an occasion in which therapy didn't leave me worse off than I was before.

Like all things I think it takes a nice medium and consideration of the individual person...
For me, I don't like it if a topic is forced once it's brought up. I need to be allowed to talk about it in depth in my own time, but I do like people who ask a lot of questions to make me bring up topics I wouldn't have mentioned on my own. I hope that makes sense... like, say I was in a bad mood about a certain event. If a counselor asked me, how have you been? I might say I've been good and bad, or terrible, or just some honest answer -- but I won't elaborate on it unless they ask me why I'm in that mood. I don't tend to offer up information unless I'm asked a direct question. So I need someone who will bring things up but not force me too much if I obviously don't want to talk about it.

Both counselors had/have to initiate the conversation and often bring up things for me. I often can't keep the discussion going and I just say, "I don't know what say" and then not say anything.
They have both told me they could stay silent but they wouldn't do that to me.

I think I would be like this too. I generally don't give out more information than what the question explicitly requires of me. But I would want the therapist to ask more probing questions, because I'm more than willing to elaborate with the right prompting.


Paraphrasing back is very very important. We had to do a "mock session" as our main assignment for the subject, and although I didn't do too badly, I did neglect to say back to the client what I thought they meant, to make sure we were on the same page.