“Go see a therapist”

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This is right. As I said above, it's no panacea and it doesn't work for everyone and sure it can be very expensive. But what Hurt says about emotional and mental paralysis and cycles of negative thinking and feeling, f**k yeah do I know that since I've been that way most of my life. But I can't emphasize strongly enough how positive psychology at least can help you start to break out of those damn cycles. For some people on the spectrum, getting access to the right toolkit to work on your problems and yourself can empower you to improve your situation. Having homework from my current therapist is also helping me start to develop that skillset too, partly because it helps me identify and focus on both my issues but also the strengths I already have. And those strengths are the basis of the coping strategies you use to work on your issues. This is how CBT works anyway. There's a whole problem solving method it uses to guide you through this anyway which I haven't even gotten to yet.

Like Kraftie I also have alot of debt and ok maybe I'm lucky that it looks like I'll be able to get the bulk of it discharged. But it hasn't been easy at all the last several years for me. If you can find some kind of sliding scale low cost therapy as I have that too makes it easier, provided you still get a good therapist. But these absolute statements here about therapy just being a racket and never working, sorry to break it to you but you're flat out wrong.

My debt will never be discharged. I have to pay it back---eventually.

In order for me to trust a therapist, one of the two things (or both) have to happen: (1) they have to be a lot smarter than me, or (2) they have to have experienced the same troubles as me.

Take the first scenario. What do therapists do when you share your troubles? They ask: "How did that make you feel?" How stupid does someone have to be to not know how a bad situation makes someone feel? Not only that, they try to learn by asking the very patients they're supposed to be helping, and charge you for the privilege of teaching them. At least you can outwit them by talking like in a soap opera. If that's not blatant stupidity, I don't know what is. Unless the question is some sort of a manipulative mind game, which is 100 times worse.

Take the second scenario. Most therapists live their lives in the lap of emotional luxury. They don't know what it feels like to have anxiety or depression. So they go by their textbook training or their personal beliefs, and more often than not, they make everything worse. They can probably even get "samples" of antidepressants. So they never truly experience the sadness they're supposed to help with. It's like expecting a woman to personally understand what testicular hernia feels like. Or a man to personally understand what childbirth feels like.

Aspie1 they're not asking you how it makes you feel so that you can educate them, it's to get you to think about how you really feel.

I found this helpful as I wasn't thinking in terms of emotions, but in terms of physical pain. That's all I was focussed on because I was ill at the time.

You've had some bad therapy anyway. Your experience isn't universal.

You can find therapists who have been through depression and other things. Sometimes the help they got is what moves them to help others.

Yeah all I was saying was that alot of people benefit from therapy and we say that from experience so you can't legitimately say it never works.

Well, if that's the case, why won't they honestly explain why they're asking you such rhetorical questions? As opposed to ask you with no elaboration, and make themselves look like dumb, unqualified quacks. Even if that's what they are, wouldn't they at least try to disguise that?

That's another thing that makes me not trust therapy: the lack of transparency! You never know why they do what they do, and they won't explain it to you when you ask. They just dodge your questions. Which makes them looks even more untrustworthy than they actually are.

rogerian therapy kept me from the leaving this world ahead of time.

Most people don't over analyse everything the way that you do and don't need or care for it to be explained.

Very good video.
The therapist is supposed to guide you when you're working on yourself - but you are the boss. Imagine you're a jungle explorer hiring a native guide. You need to know where you want to get so the guide can choose the best path and look for traps. You are supposed to know the goal. They are supposed to know the land.
If you don't want to go anywhere, you will gain nothing from hiring even the best guide.

Although I don't think that "I want a girlfriend" is necessarily the best goal to have. When I've suggested therapy to members of this forum it's to help them get out of a rut of negative thinking.

I genuinely don't believe that all people can or will find love. There are too many variables. I believe in making the best of your situation and getting help to find happiness in that.

A honest guide would say - it's not my area, the closest thing I can do is helping you improve your interpersonal skills.
A charlatain could promise anything.

Imagine a native guide that never answered any of your questions, or was deliberately withholding information from you. Or a native guide who was working for your country's government, and was only pretending to help you.
Consider this: "Are these leaves safe to touch? They look like poison ivy, but that's a North American plant; we're in a rainforest." / "What do you think? Why touch the plant at at all?" (Is the guide too dumb to just answer the damn question?)
Or this: "I'm getting hungry. I know coconut palms grow at this latitude. Coconuts are a good food source." / "<stares patronizingly with an "aw, how cute" look> (Umm... WTF?)
Or this: "No way! That's a road! I know it looks abandoned, but roads mean civilization. It leads into a town." / "How does this make you feel?" (What do my feelings got to do with this? Do we follow it, or do we not?)

Oh, and the woman in the video lost her credibility with me because of her job title: "marriage and family therapist". They're the worst, when it comes to helpfulness. "Family" therapists are really parents' therapists. Kids/teens may be the patient, but they are NOT the real customer. Of course, kids/teens are never told that.

Yes we know Aspie1. You had a bad experience. I'm sorry that you did because a good therapist could have helped you. It really sucks.

Take this to heart people. If you're not getting along with your therapist find a new one. It does no good to stay with a bad one. Poor Aspie1 was stuck though because he was a minor at the time but you as an adult can move on to a better therapist. I was just lucky to find a good one on my first try.

I liked her advice about finding out about the therapist too and asking questions before you even make an appointment.

Aspie1, thinking of you, I rather imagined your parents expecting a guide to forcibly carry you where you didn't want to go - and the guide totally unable to move someone who doesn't want to go there but pretending to do something, so they can get $$.
That was a very bad attempt of a therapy, on many levels, it has to be admitted.

"Talking" therapy doesn't really do much for me, but, when I suggest such, it because it's like I see a wound gushing blood and I feel the need to at least TRY to stop the bleeding.

Going to a therapist is preferable to marinating in self-pity.