My thoughts on therapy and counseling.

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I don't think it's a scam, but I do think it's often a poor use of money. But I'm grateful for psychiatry because I've benefited a lot from it indirectly... by reading. Much cheaper to borrow books from the library -- or even occasionally buy one -- than to pay a psychiatrist or therapist or counselor.

I haven't ever tried therapy, but from what I've seen said on message boards, I'm thinking, yes, sometimes it can be very helpful, a very good thing. But, other times, it doesn't provide enough help to be worth the money spent.

No, self esteem is not thinking you are better than other people. It's thinking you are as good as everyone else.

maybe this is what i need.

i can't read therapy like i can't read people in real life.
i have no idea if it's helping, if i'm getting bamboozled, if interpretations of my "emotions" in sessions are accurate. i'm far too lost in terms of interpreting myself to know whether someone is hearing me, whether i am saying anything (accurate, or anything at all), whether i am "working on" the right things, what my therapist means when she asks me certain questions. i get terrible anxiety all through the session, i have meltdowns in her office.

i'm trying, because i know i need help. but i don't know what i need.

anyone who will answer: how do you know what you need? how do you know if it's helping, or if someone is interpreting you correctly??? i don't know what i feel. so i don't know what's going on in therapy any more than i know what's going on the rest of the time i try to talk to anyone else.



i think this is what i need???



it is, and welcome.

I think finding the RIGHT therapist is about as hard as finding the "right" best friend. It doesn't happen over night, and for me, it took 30 years to find one who really understands me, and whom I can trust.
It's a challenge, but worth the effort when you finally get a good one, and you begin to learn about yourself. All of a sudden, you begin to understand things you never did before. It's too hard to explain in a paragraph, but trust me please. Don't give up trying to find a good one, and don't cut one off too soon either to dismiss him/her as a candidate.

Yes there are scammers, young doctors on ego trips, there are all kinds of psychologists and psychiatrists out there, as there are all kinds of human beings.


Charles

oh my god about time, i hate physicist and physiologist, and I don't ever want to have to see one again seen enough form when i was little.only thing i can say was in my school i had a consuler that i could tell really cared about me, so her i made an acceptation. but out side people no no. i know a women who had one and told him some personal things in people found out about it because of him. . i guess i have to say i don't believe in them, they real but i don't believe in using them.

I think it's harder to know or understand what's going on in therapy than it is to talk to anyone else, because the therapist won't tell you, which I find maddening.

With my current therapist, I don't have the faintest idea what she is trying to accomplish, if anything at all. When I asked her recently, she said (and I was surprised she gave m any answer at all, since they usually refuse outright) that she thought I wanted to figure out how to act in ways that are more mainstream when talking and interacting with people. That is the last thing I want. I don't want to change who I am, and I certainly don't want to become more conventional or mainstream which I consider to be offensive concepts.

I told her what I wanted was just to not get bricks figuratively thrown in my face by other people, who have adult-bullied me on many occasions. So she thought I had a victim complex and that I though people were out to get me! I had to tell her I had a petition circulated against me and was voted off the board of directors in my absence before she would believe it wasn't all in my head. Even though I had told her previously that I had absolutely no victim complex, I didn't find out until several sessions later that she didn't believe me.

It feels completely useless and hopeless, and this is the 13th therapist I've been to.

I don't have the answer to your questions, other than to ask the therapist how she is interpreting you and what her goals are for the therapy, and what she thinks your goals are. It may not help, because she may not answer, or answer in a way that is not understandable, but I think it's worth trying.

yes, that is completely maddening, and not at all what someone on the spectrum needs.



she didn't hear you. she interpreted you (incorrectly). not helpful ..

i am beginning to think we are just inscrutable to others, and that we are pretty much on our own to learn how to communicate so we can be understood.

i have a reasonable command of language, but in a lot of ways, i have not learned to speak. i can't fault therapists or anyone else, as i have relied too much on others to eventually figure out what i needed to be asked. this probably sounds like woe-is-me existentialist nonsense. but on a basic level if you cannot communicate who you are, it's very difficult to get help. all i hope to get out of therapy (or friendships, or anything else) is to build a stronger bridge to the outside world.

i have asked my therapist some very direct questions about her intentions and her answers just don't make sense to me. and i can't pick out what it is that's confusing in order to clarify. maybe we are just too different. i was hoping she could be a sort of translator, but i need her to be translated.



i wonder what a therapist who is trained to work with ASDs does differently? they must be very direct and build communication in some systematic fashion. i'm curious but i don't have the means to change therapists at the moment.

I think I'm pretty articulate, and I can understand a lot of things, at least in hindsight. In hindsight I can tell how someone went about manipulating me and what his/her motives were. But I still don't understand what I did that was so wrong and that made me a target. It's these subtleties that are like blind spots. Those are the things I'd like my therapist to be able to explain to me, but she doesn't seem to know.

And I think it's like you said, I don't know how to communicate these things that are outside of the therapist's own experience, either in her own life or with her patients, none of whom have AS.
I have had that exact experience with every therapist. Therapy is this weird dance in which the therapist tries to get you to see things in a different light and change your thinking patterns, but they think it doesn't work unless they just lead the path to the water and then you take a drink yourself, so they won't just tell you where the well is. (If my metaphor makes sense.)

I went into it this time saying from the outset that I don't want therapy, I just want insight and a better understanding, but I have gotten none of that. She just tells me anecdotes about people not being "very evolved." Duh, I know that. What I don't know is how not to fall into their snares and how to deal with the pain of past blunders.

i don't understand deliberate manipulations; in hindsight i'm likely to see failed communication but assume someone's intentions are good.

it would be difficult to unravel those subtleties you mention. missing the nuances of conversation and interaction are just going to leave someone vulnerable. so your being a target is probably not anything you did. it's just something you didn't read.



how do you communicate blindness to someone who can see?



that makes sense. it just doesn't work for me. there is a big difference, which maybe therapists can't understand, between trying to change someone's habits and trying to change their wiring.

my therapist points out all my black and white thinking. ok. what am i supposed to do about it?


i guess being aware of the way you are is helpful.

It doesn't work for me either. I need the therapist to be direct. But I haven't been able to get that across to any of them.

i wish there was a section here on WP for services with a big list of diagnosticians and appropriate therapists, arranged geographically, with feedback from people who had gone to them. this would be especially helpful for women and those diagnosed (or seeking diagnosis) as adults.

Agreed. This is something I ran into in my area--someone who was coming with high recommendations, on an initial phone consult, did not seem to want to even listen to me or to know what the heck he was talking about.

Mom sent me to a counsellor while I was in middle school. We had no idea I had AS. Waste of freaking time. All we ended up doing was talking in circles because the therapist could NOT see the root of the problem. It was the usual "be nicer" and "be yourself" (WTF I'm not being mean, being myself means nothing) and other pointless nonsense.

I also saw a psychiatrist, but he wasn't that helpful. By then I was already out of high school and didn't see the people I was not getting along with anymore. But he did suggest a 'day program' in a city quite some distance away, and I stayed with relatives while attending this thing (took 6 weeks). It sort of helped, since it was interacting with people who were as broken as myself if not more so (but unlike me, THEY had problems that resulted from the criminal actions of others) and there was frank and honest feedback about how actions were seen by others). Still had NO idea I had AS.

I saw another psychiatrist, also not very helpful. This guy ALSO had no idea I had AS.

Eventually mom thought my problem was a brain injury, because she'd talked to someone. So we had me sent to a neuropsychiatrist. I was tested for 5 hours and the result was they found out I have AS.

However:

I cannot find ANY therapists AT ALL around here, even 200 km away, that know *&^% about *&^^ about how to deal with AS patients. I contacted the local mental health association two years ago, asking for one. They still haven't gotten back to me. So for me, therapy is a waste of freaking time now.

I went to a therapist who specialized in Aspergers. He diagnosed me and then completely ignored my AS diagnosis and wanted to blame all my problems on my relationship with my mother (it wasn't a good one when I was growing up).

It was a complete waste of time and he provided no helpful tips for dealing with the challenges of AS. I almost felt that because I am able to hold down a job, can live independently and have a long-term relationship my AS was deemed not to be an issue by my therapist.

Apparently there are good therapists out there and I don't doubt that there is, but it seems like they are hard to find whilst the crap ones are everywhere.

The guy I went to wanted to avoid giving me a label of Aspergers and to help me deal with my social anxiety and depression. I really think the guy really wanted me as a repeat patient because of my insurance when we argured about me leaving he kept saying it only costs you $20.00. a visit Is that too much to spend on good mental health? He knew I am on unemployment but wanted me to come two times a week. I guess having money for my high blood pressure medicine is just me being selfish.

Last edited by Todesking on 07 Jul 2010, 12:02 am, edited 1 time in total.

those in the psychotherapy field in general are not trained to recognize AS. they are trained to look for buried emotional underpinnings to someone's problems. so even if it's obvious, they are probably going to be looking for something else.

this topic provides a good example, although it isn't specifically about therapists: http://www.wrongplanet.net/postt129950.html
it does illustrate how someone could misinterpret very obvious signs that someone might have AS.

this is just an abstract (you have to pay to read the whole article, so i have not) but it basically says 4 out of 5 marriage and family therapists do not recognize AS when presented with a case study:
http://www.springerlink.com/content/f485053472033k26/

(hope this is helpful. i am a chronic cross-referencer.)