Published on 12, July, 2020
I want to be loved. I want my feelings to be validated. I want to understand the world. I want to read people's minds.
I have left my therapy recently. Well, I felt misunderstood at times. In one occasion, after a stressful session where I was really distressed, my therapist was whistling happily in the kitchen before I leave the place. I thought it was very insensitive of her. I have been anxious and frozen in few sessions and we couldn't change or improve the situation very much. She seemed confused about what was going on with me. I left those sessions blaming myself for not improving a bit in breaking the anxiety cycle or learning how to deal with it. I couldn't talk about how I felt about my self-diagnousis because I was afraid of being unbelieved. There were some questions she asked that I didn't understand. Her questions made me doubt myself. I can't tell if she did that intentionally.
I can't get the situation out of my mind. It feels like a breakup with all the feelings of anger, sadness and relief. I can't stop rethinking her intentions and my decision. There are some other things about her that I found "cool" and the fact that she's older=wiser and more knowledgeable made me ignore how I felt. I still think to myself "is it me or was really happening?". For some silly reason, I think that a cool person (progressive ideology) can't be wrong, it must be me who was wrong!.. also, the isolation that I live in makes therapists almost the only person to know the real feelings that I have. This makes them more special to me while I'm just one more client to them.. I have an experience of falling in love with one therapist before. I tend to fall in love with people who can't love me back. Thank you guys for reading.. I don't think that I could have shared this anywhere else..
I've never been able to get along with therapy. I spend a few weeks telling the therapist absolutely everything that's on my mind and after a few weeks they start saying things like "I think we've gone as far as we can" or "maybe you'll never be ready to open up," usually right around the one where I think "great, I've told them absolutely everything going on with me, maybe we can start the actual therapy part now?"
They often seem confused and often try to ascribe thoughts to me that I don't have. E.g. assuming that I feel anxious in crowded places because of low self-esteem, rather than because I'm scared of being trapped in sensory hell or not being able to meet my basic needs of food/rest/shelter/toilet/water etc.
I've found typed therapy (through Qwell.io) marginally more helpful, as obviously typing and reading is a lot faster than speaking and listening, so at least I can get all the information across within a time limited session, and it's easier to understand what they're saying back without having to focus on doing the "noise to words" translation necessary with spoken English. You only get a few sessions though, and I haven't found any private providers willing to do typed therapy.
I don't know what the therapy secret is. It feels like there's some way you're supposed to interact with it that isn't just being open and honest, but no one has told me what that is.
I haven't managed to find an autistic therapist, but I wonder if that would be better? I did try an autistic coach but he just talked about himself and I couldn't get a word in edgewise.
Having an autistic therapist is the best mental health support experience I've had (in several years therapy with different people). Worth checking out the Neurodivergent Therapists Directory if you think that's something you'd like to explore. And I'm sorry about your coach - that level of self-absorption and not letting you speak is definitely not ok