Your Experiences W/ Therapy?

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Hi all, after reading a thread here I got curious as to what others have experienced with therapy and therapists. Mostly positive; mostly negative?

I had a long slew of negative experiences that bordered on traumatizing with the mental health field starting in my early teens. I stopped being willing to see therapists for awhile and eventually was talked into going back to one. I do art therapy now and have for almost a year. The therapist usually will try to talk to me about things therapists talk about and what my artwork signifies, but is very respectful when I do not wish to be bothered. I'd say we've spent at least half of all of our time together in silence and the other half not talking about anything deep. There have been a few times when I was dealing with specific things and wanted to talk about it. I like the fact that I don't feel any pressure, because that had gotten me in trouble in the past because I'd feel like I *had* to respond to questions I genuinely didn't know the answer to and it would come out as a bunch of BS. Overall, it has been a positive experience and has made me rethink my views on the mental health field as a whole (lots of bad, but still some good).

Didn't mean to ramble... back the original question then haha.

Oh, boy! Well, back when I was 15 years of age and seemingly getting diagnosed with depression every couple years (no kidding, it was the late 1970s and early 1980s; "if you don't want to socialize, you must have depression"), I had a psychiatrist ask me when "we are going to start changing your homosexuality" to which I asked him "why are you an M.D. and not a Ph.D.?" Of course, I knew the difference, but if he thought I was stupid, I was going to play it up to my advantage and torque him back. Well, he got angry with me and explained in great detail the differences between the two degrees. Shortly thereafter, I got invited to join a teen-aged group therapy moderated by a LCSW. He was great! The two men couldn't be further apart in temperament and style, and they set the types of therapists I would have for several years more; bad and great, black and white, hot and cold. I despised about half and enjoyed about half.

My hundreds of hours spent in therapy gave me a few ideas that I use even today, and enough experience to realize that their scripts are limited. In adulthood, my opinion about many therapists is that they are the camp followers of the research and diagnostic industry. When I realized that they started repeating themselves, I knew that I had reached their limits, and abandoned ship.

Last edited by AspieUtah on 23 May 2015, 12:01 pm, edited 3 times in total.

I too had a chain of experiences with therapists that ranged from useless to horrible, and I too refused to see one for years. But when a crisis pushed me into having no other choice, I reluctantly saw a therapist again and was pleasantly surprised! He has a crazy busy schedule for a reason, thus we don't meet often, but I finally had a good experience of therapy that challenged my bias toward the whole field. But I like having my biases challenged.
Unlike you though, I try to push getting into "deep" territory. That's what I'm there for. I stick to recounting facts when I'm uncomfortable, something I could do to a blank document, which doesn't help. I'm there to push whatever it is that's wrong with me, not have an amicable chat. Everyone has their individual approaches though, its what works best for you.

Yeah, if I were going to a traditional therapist, which I wouldn't because I've found it's not my style, then there's no way I'd sit there and just chitchat. Like my therapist said, people typically use Art Therapy in one of two ways:
- To express their feelings/problems through art
- To relieve stress, anxiety, and other negative feelings by doing art

I'm in the latter category, obviously. I guess I technically could do the same thing at home, but I honestly think it would would end up going into the "Nope, too busy to get around to doing" and I'd be left with a lot of unfinished artwork haha. I will say that I've been trying to open up to her more now that I've been seeing her for so long. I know I would not have been afforded that patience had I tried talk therapy again.

I've been to my fair share of therapists and none of them seem to be of any use, not that I haven't had ones that are decent people, it's just that autism and autistic thought is so far removed from their "scripts" (nice term btw AspieUtah) that in a lot of cases it's useless. My experience is about the same as talking to NT's, they have their view and it works for them and so it should work for you-- it's like trying to communicate with a different species sometimes.

The first therapist I saw was when I was 18 and my parents freaked out when they caught me with some marijuana so they sent me to a drug councilor. I explained to said councilor that I smoked pot because it helped alleviate the sensation of bright light, i.e. the sun which I was working in every single day that summer. Her conclusion: I was making that up as an excuse for my addiction because people don't have sensory issues like that (granted this was a little before the autism fad of the last decade).

I was sent to a mental institution a few years later and was damn near catatonic, the immediate and abrupt change to the new environment with new people, new routine, and obnoxiously bright lighting left me mute for about a week. I couldn't communicate with the therapists except through writing and gestures and the lead therapist stormed to his office on like the fifth day exclaiming, "Well I can't help him if he won't talk to me, just move him to another facility since he's gonna be difficult." Obviously those therapy sessions went nowhere.

I've had two other outpatient therapists that, well, we didn't really do anything except talk about s**t that doesn't matter: current politics, things I'm interested in, etc. Never once did an important issue ever come up, and on my intake I wrote about issues that I would think should be talked about: physical abuse, social anxiety, sensory problems, etc. Both therapists were decent people, but they seemed more interested in me teaching them something new about an interest than actually offering anything. Hell, one of them should have paid me for therapy-- I convinced her to pull her assets out of stock around late 2007 and place them in a mix of gold and low interest bonds for 2 years because there was a crash imminent. That's what therapy got me, the satisfaction of increasing my therapists' wealth.

I find action-oriented therapists better than talk therapists.
They can get people to do things that would help improve their lives or work their way out of a bad situation.

I've been in therapy on and off ever since I was about 11 or 12. I've had a bunch of different therapists, most of whom I didn't really like at all, and didn't find any use in seeing. Their inability to resolve any of my problems was definitely irritating.

There was one therapist I had while I was in the hospital, I met with her about three times for the whole time I was there but I kind of liked her. She was kind and funny and actually willing to listen to me ramble on about computers ^.^ But then I left that place, and that was that.

I just got done seeing yet another therapist a couple of weeks ago. We got in this argument about some stupid thing, and then I got really mad and just walked out of her office. Haven't gone back since. I am now out of therapy for the time being.

Maybe I've just had bad luck with therapists, or something. Idk

Be careful and trust your instincts, don't give unearned blind respect and trust to someone just because they are a therapist or psychiatrist.

Sadly, it's a profession that is very attractive to narcissists (as well as well-meaning people). It offers so many things that narcissists crave:

-power and control
-professional respect
-automatic status as 'the sane one'
-opportunity to manipulate others
-social/professional status
-abuse of clients flies under the radar
-clients are relatively disempowered
-power imbalance
-easy to stigmatise their victims
-lucrative
-ability to 'hide in plain sight'
-social admiration, respect


Some are predators, as all narcissists are; but not all therapists are narcissists. Lowly "counsellors" can be a safer option for sharing and repairing the woes of life..

http://lightshouse.org/lights-blog/narcissists-in-power

http://lightshouse.org/lights-blog/how- ... -therapist

I've had two therapists so far. The first one would spend the whole hour talking about her life experiences. The second one was sometimes helpful and other times telling me that I shouldn't obsess on things as if I had the choice. I have an obsessive disorder and just not obsessing is not the answer. That was part of the reason I went to see her.

The sad irony is that invalidation is itself a devastating form of emotional and psychological harm, often perpetrated by the people consulted by people who are seeking therapy for past impacts of psychological or emotional harm.

From my observations, people on the spectrum, because of a tendency to sometimes naive trust, are a favourite prey to professional narcissists, rather like wolves like to feed on defenceless sheep; the codependent patient is a sitting duck.. (animal metaphors abounding!) But: knowledge is power, so arm yourself with knowledge about professional narcissists in the 'helping' professions. And always remember that "I'm only trying to help you" is often just the smiley face worn by powertrippers to disguise their overwhelming desire to control others.

I didn't feel like my therapist understood my Aspie issues & had the cause & effects of things confused. They were expecting me to change things I couldn't. I didn't see em much thou. I also had similar problems with psychiatrist.

I've only made it twice past one session with a psychologist, three time I got a referral instead. I ended up in a group therapy thing, which was focused on bullied teens (it did not cater to my problems however). The last psychologist was found by my parents and I. Here the focus was on autism in children and teens, and that was all we spoke about, both my depression and tendency to self-destruct were mostly ignored. Looking back, I feel she was wrong to do so.