Published on 12, July, 2020
For about maybe seven months now, I've been using BetterHelp for private therapy. I can't say I've found there to be any progress, though I'm not sure I'm going in with the right expectations. My therapist tries to get me to reframe my thoughts. Use less negative language, try to imagine more positive outcomes to situations, that sort of thing. "What would it be like..." is her common language for this. To which my response is often along the lines of "Well that would be unrealistic because xyz". She also tends to point out my "yets" as hopeful, despite my assurance that it's just to avoid an absolute statement. I can't tell if I'm being too rigid and set in my ways, if her approach is ill effective for autism, or a bit of both.
For anyone that uses a therapist, how do you find your engagements with them?
Oran G. Utan said:For anyone that uses a therapist, how do you find your engagements with them?
I had 2 therapists with only a passing textbook knowledge of autism and they were no help but when I found one who had autistic children herself and understood the issues in depth it made the world of difference.
Your therapist sounds like they are using techniques that are known to be ineffective for most autists so I would ditch them and find one who understands our minds better - one who has taken that journey with autists before and who knows the issues deeply and personally.
That being said, they don't need to be autistic themselves - in fact that may make them less well suited due to the risk of them being triggered or having their own issues.
I find with the right therapist you can tell them at the start of the session what you want to focus on and be able to pause during the session to say "are we staying on track here"? to stop the conversation veering off course. The reason can be that we sometimes subconciously sabotage talking about sensitive stuff by steering the conversation to something else.
If the relationship feels right you can tell quickly. I found being treated as an equal (but different) adult and being open to having my assumptions challenged from time to time got me thinking in the wayt that allowed the difficult stuff to be dragged into the light and looked at analytically.
When appropriate talking through emotional responses to things and being willing to be vulnerable were approaches it took some time and patience with, but the results were quite remarkable for me personally.
For the negative stuff, when this is looked at in a cold, analytical way it becomes clear to me that this was a fear response and when reviewing situation after situation it was clear it was either unhelpful at the least and damaging at the worst so learning to let go of it was a relief.
I think you shoud be able to talk comfortably with a therapist about all this sort of stuff and haven open conversation where you get to ask anything and they can do the same with no opt-outs. If it is difficult to talk about then there is a reason and you need to open up that reason to understand it, so face the discomfort in order to progress.
That has been my experience and my thoughts on your situation.