The therapy experience

 For those of us who have had therapy to describe our experience.

The two trained psychologists/therapists I saw pushed the "If you want to be a good person..." line as though I was a moral degenerate rather than someone who needed help to cope better. I stopped seeing them rather quickly.

Finally I had 'therapy' from an untrained member of staff at the day centre I was attending. She didn't push the "If you want to be a good person..." line but was hypercritical of me and didn't give much encouragement.
Eventually she revealed she was part of a small religious sect and dumped me soon after for inadvertently upsetting her religious sensibilities.

After that trio of fiascos I was soon told I was unsuitable for therapy.

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  • I'd suggest that the therapy was not suited to you rather than you being unsuited to therapy.

    I've been fortunate to have had a therapist who had some training to deal better with autistic people, and the difference between her and the previous three therapists that I saw was very noticeable.  On the previous occasions, I had found therapy extremely frustrating and even counter-productive.  My impression is that, basically, it is because therapists who don't understand autism are trying to restore us to a model of mental health that is based on neurotypical psychology.  The idea that some of our behaviour has neurological causes rather than psychological causes does not occur to them, which influences which traits they focus on and what techniques they use to try to counter them.

    I wrote a much longer article contrasting my experiences recently on the WrongPlanet forum - it's quite a long essay, so rather than duplicate it all here, here's a link for anyone who is interested in reading it; That's the kind of CBT for me!

  • Excellent article, Thank You for sharing!

    It made sense of all of my 'I don't know' answers which I'd started to think were just another example of me somehow 'doing it wrong'. I quite often haven't a clue what some of the questions are about, "How did it make you feel?" (It didn't, it was just something that happened, a fact, then I moved on.)  

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  • Excellent article, Thank You for sharing!

    It made sense of all of my 'I don't know' answers which I'd started to think were just another example of me somehow 'doing it wrong'. I quite often haven't a clue what some of the questions are about, "How did it make you feel?" (It didn't, it was just something that happened, a fact, then I moved on.)  

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