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?
I've seen 2 trained therapists, and an untrained day centre worker who was supposed to help with my anxiety and lack of confidence/self esteem. The first therapist was foreign(European) with less than adequate verbal skills. He came out with comments like 'All boys rebel against their mothers by the time they are 7'. I had a very disconcerting session where he said nothing to me and I couldn't initiate a conversation. That went on for 20 minutes! Those sessions ended when I caught a bug/had flu and couldn't attend. My wife phoned on my behalf and was treated like crap. There was no way I was going back after that.
The 2nd therapist hit me quickly with two major whammies (1) He was seeing me because the rest of the psych team were fed up with me (2) 'If you want to be a good person..' as though I was a criminal type of person. What I needed and wanted was help to cope better with stressful situations.
The third person,a woman, told me I lacked confidence and then oafishly went out of her way to criticise me. After 4 sessions or so she announced that she was a member of a 'small religious sect' . I wrote several pages that were aimed at getting her to know me better, and stop the crap she'd been coming out with . That offended her religious sensibilities, and she reported me to my care coordinator. That was an awful,psychologically triggering, situation, as thanks to an incident at prep school, when I was 9, being reprimanded or punished when I've done nothing wrong is a major trigger that has a bad effect on my mental well being.
After all that I very much doubt I could ever trust another therapist/untrained 'therapist'.
FM, That's awful and abusive of the practitioners to do that to you, someone who's already vulnerable and seeking help.
With my more recent therapists, whilst I've been happy to tell them of my traumatic early life experiences, I've also told them that unless they're intruding into whats happening for me now, I dont' want to go back and revisit them as it just retrumatises me and is unhelpful. Some accept this and others don't and see it as denial or a scab to be picked at, instead of a well healed scar that's just there. I won't see the ones who insist on picking at the long healed scars.
The first therapist I ever saw just sat there not looking at me and looking totally bored, I think I only went to about 3 sessions as I felt better talking to my cat who at least mrrped and purred in the appropriate places.
I never found CBT worked for me either, what it did do for me was symptom subsistution, I'd gone because I'd had to give up driving because of panic attacks and nightmares, I'm able to drive again, but under limited circumstances and never on motorways, but I developed social phobia. It's almost the exact same set of fears etc, just transfered onto a different situation. I certainy wouldn't have it again and I'd be sceptical about recommending it to someone else.
Thank you.I've never been a big believer in it , due to the ridiculousness of it being touted as a solution to a 1001 different things . 'Late middle aged/just become a pensioner? Suffer from botty pops that repeat and repeat? CBT will solve that problem'.