My thoughts on therapy and counseling.

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I do know a therapist here in NYC, she's the one who diagnosed me, but my insurance doesn't cover her and her fee is $300 per session. That would be $1200 a month, which is more than my total monthly income. She also has interns who charge less, but it's still a lot. She recommended a social skills group that costs $900 for the whole course. I'm sort of considering it, even though it just seems so extravagant, and I still don't have that much confidence that it would help. I guess I would figure out a way to pay these fees (like asking my family to pay for it) if I was actually convinced it would help, but I'm not convinced. They're still therapists, and I've only had bad experiences with therapists. I'm afraid I would feel like a total chump for having paid them so much money.

What's frustrating is that every time you try a new therapist you have to go in blind, having no idea if they'll be better or worse than the last one. The experiences don't somehow build new information or generate referrals.

I get where you're coming from, but not all therapists are like this.

I'm a therapist and I care about the wellbeing of my clients. If I just wanted to collect a paycheck there are literally hundreds of jobs I could have picked instead.
Most therapists I know are the same.

Maybe the situation is different where you live but around these parts people in healthcare actually CARE.

I have been to so many different therapists and none of them helped me at all. They were too quick to throw the label (bipolar, bpd) on that the previous one had given me instead of trying to see if it was something more than that.

I know myself that its more than just a personality disorder and is nerological and had to do with being born so early. The only way I would ever go to another therapist is to find one that would be willing to help me see if my self diagnosis of aspergers is right and not just say its what you had in the past. If that makes sense. I want to find one also who is willing to work with me at my own pace of change. But for now I dont really want to try again. I just left therapy for being too "high functioning".

The issue (at least for me and as far as I can tell for others in this thread) is not that therapists don't care, it's that they don't listen.

Therapists assume that everyone is essentially the same, and that people's problems have predictable sources and predictable solutions, so when they come across someone who is non-standard, either because they have AS or are very smart, or come from another culture, etc, their one size fits all approach fails miserably. But if they were willing to listen to their clients and admit they could be wrong, perhaps these painful failures wouldn't have to happen.

I do not believe that certain neurological challenges such as ADHD, dyslexia, epilepsy, autism, or Asperger's can be talked out of a person at all.

no, you are absolutely right. this is why therapy can be dangerous for the neuro-atypical if the therapist is not appropriate.

the distinction must be made between what is hard wired and what is movable.

with a therapist i was seeing recently a lot of what i talked about was ways to accommodate my sensory needs and potentially stay employed. and some dismal attempts at anxiety management techniques.


edit: worlds since what i posted previously in this thread.

i did manage to get something out of therapy. i sound (and was) quite exasperated in previous posts.

but the communication barrier remained. i wasted a lot of time in her office trying to hammer in points she could not understand or trying to pick apart what she was asking me.

i don't know if this is common but i feel i am not pliant enough for therapy to do a lot for me really.

I'm still trying to figure out what it is that doesn't work at all for me when it comes to therapy, after 20 years of trying (with long gaps when I wasn't trying because I had given up).

I'm not sure if it's about being pliant enough, though I am certainly not pliant. There seems to be an almost complete lack of communication because the therapist has certain expectations of how the patient will be, and he/she interprets everything the patient says through that lens. and it feels impossible to disabuse him/her of his/her preconceived notions.

I've always felt that it was up to the therapists to figure it out, not me, because it's their gig and they are supposed to know how to go about making it work. (Sort of like if I go into a class, I expect the teacher to have prepared a syllabus rather than expecting me to say what I want to learn, and how to go about learning it.) But they don't even ask me questions that would help me explain what my concerns are.

I'm thinking of trying a new therapist and I really wish I knew how I'm supposed to go about being a patient!

I'd try to do without them.

The Gubbermint ones are paid to maintain the line that:

Aspies are rejects that must conform to NT standards to become well like NT's

Figuratively I hit her with this statement:

'Being well-adjusted to a profoundly sick society a not a sign of good mental health.'

She seems very emotional now and is probably in need of therapy more than me.

Perhaps I should have mentioned this.
I have had very mixed results.
I tried CBT. I think at first I appreciated someone to talk to, but then she just played mind games, like telling me I was a wonderful inteligent person when I felt like s**t, and that lots of famous people like Osama Bin Laden and hitler had Aspergers. WTF?!?! She then turned around ( when my self esteem was better)and basicly told me that I should be grateful for a husband who would put up with me - despite me telling her about his earlier lack of support.

It got to the point that it seemed regardless of my thoughts or feelings, she would tell me they were wrong. She gave me conflicting advice, and it got to the point I dreaded going, so I stopped.

Hmm. My first therapist seemed to know nothing about AS and couldn't seem to help. At all. He wasn't that approachable to me, either, since he just seemed "Too NT". The level he was on, and the level I was on, were too far apart, and he probably just didn't know how to help. Pity, but worthless.

I got lucky the second time around, my current therapist is great. He's not an AS *expert*, but has other AS patients, understands *mostly* what I'm talking about, real supportive, and he's on a communicable level with me. One of the few people I can say that about. Hell, our insurance was having issues and he was willing to work with us and reduce the price we would normally have to pay if we didn't have insurance.

I didn't think it could have been as bad as the OP mentioned, though. I thought that therapy was always better than medication.

I'd rather have someone to talk to than have my chemistry jiggered with.

That's what I thought.

I guess the problem is just that it's hard to find anybody to talk to who is willing to help and knows what AS is.


I don't think it's possible to talk them out of a person, but to help them adapt to such a foreign society.

I am having trouble in my therapy group. It's very much an NT world. But still, it does help sometimes.

I put up with all sorts of NT crap, just to be in a group setting with others....