Recieving counselling

Yeah, this feels very true. My knee jerk reaction is to want to hide my traits in case they are displeasing, though she said she knows autistic people, so I suppose she probably knows about different traits anyway. 

I think it might be part that I'm embarrassed by how autistic I am and didn't realise -having got the report back last week on my ADOS and the things I was worrying about were fine, it was all the other areas I was deficit that I hadn't realised, and I've been worried about how visable I am. Kind of like having something on your face and no one tells you.

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 everyone, I'm going to reply to each as I appreciate the time taken to help me with understanding this and to hear the different views. As I mentioned the whole experience of actually talking about issues instead of just having these conversations in my own head, is fairly new to me, so getting everyone's different perspectives is helping give me context to understand therapy and how to use it to help and not hinder. So thanks everyone!

(And it's helping me out of my post-deleting spiral I sometimes get in).

I’ve been seeing a new therapist now for a couple of months once a week. I was seeing a different therapist before for about a year who it felt like I’d told everything to. It was much better no to go back to square one just treat it afresh and keep it light.  I only see her for an hour, also I find emailing before with a list of one or two things I want to address as sometimes I have forgotten by the time I get there Dont go prepared, if it’s important you’ll probably end up talking about. As a side note my therapist has ADHD but my previous therapist was fairly NT , this one seems a lot more focused and I think the feedback is more insightful. Like I never knew ADHD people mask too.

I'm going to be contravercial here, (surprise surprise), I dont' think it's always the best thing to have someone who specialises in a certain area, like ND, not every problem, situation or life experience is to do with ND and I think what a lot of people want is to know they're not alone in what or how they feel, normal under the circumstances can feel such a relief. One fo the questions I used to ask my clients who were beating themselves up for being weak or something was, 'what would you say to someone else, a friend or family member, who told you all the things you've just told me?' 9 times out of 10 they'd be much kinder to another than to themselves, but that question validates their feelings to themselves. Whilst someone who's ND might process things differently, oe of the things counselling teaches you as that we all hurt and are often hurt by the same things, people will feel the same shame, anger, fear, etc if they've been abused as a child regardless of they're neurotype. 

I think your counsellor could be being very wise to warn you about looking at everything through an ND lens, especially if you're feeling wobbly anyway, you've probably had enough people telling you all the things you can't do, shouldn't do, ought to do, so dont' let your diagnosis disempower you. Maybe suggest to your therapist that you think she has things to teach you so as you can go on fixing yourself and not getting into the same holes again?

My unprofessional opinion? You should look for a counselor that specializes in Autism. By what you’re saying, I think TheCatWoman nailed it by responding:

TheCatWoman said:

it might be that she's not confident in her skills in dealing with ND?

That’s what it sounds like to me. Yeah, skills regression is a thing and is definitely something you should be careful about, but just assuming that you will get that by looking more into your own confirmed diagnosis is kind of ridiculous (imo).

The best therapy I ever got was with an art therapist who specialized in childhood Autism. Yeah, she wasn’t as used to working with ND adults, but she was willing to learn along with me what my diagnosis meant. I personally believe you should look for a counselor that specializes in neurodiversity, rather than try to ignore your ASD problems in sessions.

Maybe after xmas when she see's you've not imploded, you'll be able to go back to working on what you need to work on, it might be that she's not confident in her skills in dealing with ND?

Maybe she needs reminding that being ND dosen't mean that other stuff dosen't happen and dosent need dealing with.

Maybe next time have a xhat with her about where you want to go with your counselling and if she's the right person to walk alongside you and if not, can she recomend someone else.

I don’t think you should feel you have to ‘hide’ or suppress things when talking to a therapist - if she’s making you feel that you need to do that I’d say that she’s not making you feel comfortable and secure enough to talk openly to her. 
both myself and my youngest son have had therapy - I had therapy for ptsd and my therapist was wonderful and really helped me. My son had therapy for depression and ocd - his first therapist was incredibly nice but didn’t really help him, and his second therapist was quite harsh and abrupt and really alienated him - and she didn’t help him at all. After a whole year of this the therapy ended and my son didn’t feel he’d been helped at all and felt alienated from the whole process. So we had very different experiences. I think that you should ideally feel comfortable enough to be able to be completely open with your therapist - and if you feel you can’t maybe discuss with her that this is something your struggling with or confused about. She’s there to help you -  it’s her job not yours to solve the problems that arise during therapy. 

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 youMonkeyclogs , that does make sense. I don't have a frame of reference so it's tricky to judge what I should be doing, so that is helpful!

I've had a lot of therapy over the last 30 years. Mostly it hasn't helped, some of it has been very damaging. However, since diagnosis I started again with a therapist who is more neurodiversity informed and it actually feels helpful.

My advice, for what its worth, is to take your questions to the therapy session you have booked and see what the therapist says in response. But, if after that you still feel like you are questioning if you have to hide part of yourself then you possibly need to find a different therapist who you feel completely comfortable with.