Recieving counselling

There is a reason Steph Jones wrote "The autistic survival guide to therapy".

I have not read it but I can imagine e some if the things it covers 

The purpose is to get help with what is bothering you, or what you are stuck with. It is not to make them feel good, or make their life easy, etc. This is actually masking, if you are managing how they feel. It really is for you to steer. If you want to talk about something, or not talk about something, then say. Tell them what you've said here. They only know what you say.

If you want to talk about bullying, then go ahead. But note they don't need to know every detail, although you may want to tell them. They may want to probe how you feel now, how you felt then, why you think certain things, and whether they are true. Then maybe some exercises to see if you can change your perception.

They can't erase the memories, but can help you feel better about yourself and how to deal with the emotions. If you get too distressed they may stop. That does not mean you did anything wrong. It is to take things in small chunks so you don't make yourself worse (and re-traumatise yourself).

But there is no magic wand that fixes things. Progress can be slow and also come in jumps as you unblock things or understand them.

I think it takes at least 6 sessions to to make some progress and get to know each other, and for you to really trust them.

You won't solve everything, even in 20 sessions. But they can help steer you if you are stuck and don't know where to start. I have used them for this then spend lots of time (20 hours +)  thinking and researching between sessions. I also used them to check what I thought, to make sure I wasn't convincing myself of having something I didn't, i.e. for validation (but since I always try to disprove things and look for alternative explanations I haven't fallen into this trap).

If you don't agree with what they say speak up. They should be happy to hear and discuss why you think that.

If you are private, if you are struggling to understand each other, then you could consider someone else. If they are not experienced with autism, what they suggest may not be helpful.

They may not get why you want to understand stuff in tiny detail. But autistic brains are often stuck because they don't understand, not because they need empathy and soothing words (although that is not a bad thing). It is a different approach.

Her comment of not looking for problems and thinking you might have issues just because you read about them, is well intentioned. But you know what is bothering you, so don't be put off.

Thank you Stuart333 . You know I did read that book just before in a bit of a panicked rush that I was doing the wrong thing.  Perhaps it's making me hyper-aware of having negative effects from therapy.

I guess I'm finding it hard as I can't see a pattern yet in how we discuss things, such as going from an overview one week, to talking about what's happened on the weekend, (for instance, if I'd had a bad weekend, for me it would be friday, saturday, sunday events, but the discussion didn't go past the friday stuff so it only addressed part of it) . The more I talk about it, I can kind of see the lack of knowing the structure is causing me confusion. It's hard to admit, but when conversations jump around a bit it throws me off balance and I'm not always sure what to say. 

Your overview of therapy is really helpful, it may seem obvious, but I can see my desire to mask again when things get uncomfortable, but I suppose the reason I'm trying to do it in the first place was to try get help on the uncomfortable stuff. Maybe I need to have it on a post it note on the side of the screen during the session.

Thank you, actually trying to talk about what it is that's making me want to hide stuff is helping clear up some of my confusion towards therapy in general.

Thank you Stuart333 . You know I did read that book just before in a bit of a panicked rush that I was doing the wrong thing.  Perhaps it's making me hyper-aware of having negative effects from therapy.

I guess I'm finding it hard as I can't see a pattern yet in how we discuss things, such as going from an overview one week, to talking about what's happened on the weekend, (for instance, if I'd had a bad weekend, for me it would be friday, saturday, sunday events, but the discussion didn't go past the friday stuff so it only addressed part of it) . The more I talk about it, I can kind of see the lack of knowing the structure is causing me confusion. It's hard to admit, but when conversations jump around a bit it throws me off balance and I'm not always sure what to say. 

Your overview of therapy is really helpful, it may seem obvious, but I can see my desire to mask again when things get uncomfortable, but I suppose the reason I'm trying to do it in the first place was to try get help on the uncomfortable stuff. Maybe I need to have it on a post it note on the side of the screen during the session.

Thank you, actually trying to talk about what it is that's making me want to hide stuff is helping clear up some of my confusion towards therapy in general.

If you just talk about stuff that ls comfortable it won't help.

The whole point is to address things that make you uncomfortable. It is to get you to recognise and accept the hard stuff, ask why you are doing it or avoiding, then think how to help improve it.

Sometimes just naming the problem out loud is enough. This is the case for shame and guilt issues. It can be very hard to expose yourself.

They can give you exercises to do between sessions. These may also not be easy.

In general growth comes from pushing and confronting things.

Beware of trying to steer the sessions to avoid things. I was doing this subconsciously a lot. I was intellectualising things to avoid emotions.