Published on 12, July, 2020
Hi,
Prior to my autism diagnosis I had around 8 sessions with a CBT therapist which I think did more harm than good. It was as a result of this that I saw a psychiatrist which set me on my journey to a diagnosis.
Since then I have been seeing a therapist who uses a “people centred approach”, which seems to largely involve her asking me how I feel about things.
I’ve had around a dozen sessions now and while the first few were cathartic, I now feel I’m at an impasse. This approach isn’t helping me find any solutions or move my life forward and I’m starting to panic a little, feeling that there is no hope.
Have any of you had a more positive experience of therapy, and if so was it a specific kind of therapy?
I got refused all avenues for anything other than counselling, which I was also refused from after my initial appointment, because I was too acute for the talking therapies team and not in enough immediate danger/too autistic (I had two different explanations for that refusal) for the more serious mental health team.
However the crisis text line 'shout' gave me a lot of self help resources which eventually after it became clear that CBT wasn't working terribly well for me started giving me DBT resources. When I looked it up it said it's usually hard to do by yourself, but it worked much better for me, because it was about working around and through distressing emotions rather than trying to stop the distressing emotions themselves, as I have had absolutely no success at that at all.
It's usually only offered for people with personality disorders, but there are resources out there that you can start with if you want to give it a go. But it took a super long time to get to work so persistence is required.