I’m aware the premise makes no sense.
Over the years I’ve been in and out of therapy. In my teens I had a serious enough depression to necessitate medication to somehow level me, a few years after that I went back because I felt I wanted to unpack a few things from my early years, after that I went back to pick up on the work I left behind, after that I went back to try to find a way to cope with the eminent loss of someone very dear to me and very recently I went back because I felt the need to give it another try to unpack a lot of wrongs in my head.
Unfortunately, every single time, as I try to go back and pick on the process - and I feel the need to stress that I’ve been received by multiple professionals over the years - I’m always directed, more or less openly, not towards what I want to resolve but towards something completely unrelated. And no, I am not a professional in mental health but I think I am minimally qualified to know what I think/understand is bothering me and want to explore and try to find a solution/rationalisation for so I can drop that issue or at least drop it in value in my mind so I can move forward.
Instead, my concerns have constantly been ignored or overlooked and all type of approaches been tried to deviate me, as such:
- hypnosis (went horribly wrong)
- cognitive and behavioural shift (as in “You are acting/feeling/thinking wrong.”)
- completely ignoring my concerns
- openly antagonising me
- a very veiled attempt to create in me a notion of “faith in a higher power” (I’m laic)
The last approach is to try to teach me how to meditate.
I have always been received by licensed professionals, two of them through my NHS; no spiritual counsellors nor anything in the like.
I’ve been able to make more breakthroughs by reading philosophy books than by sitting in a chair and talking back and forth with a therapist. But I always get the feeling that I really need some degree of counselling I am not getting.
Am I being paranoid, unlucky or just expecting something that isn’t at all aligned with reality?
So I’m going through this right now with my therapist who I’ve been with for 3 years now. And, the last session I had with her, was an attempt to re-align what we’re to work on because the session before that, I was in no mood to discuss whatever it was she wanted to work on with me. And I felt incredibly invalidated and unseen because, I was showing a lot of visual cues that was like “I’m not interested, I’m emotional, I’m angry at everything and everyone right now” and while she did pick up on that, she obliviously carried on.
There had been an awful lot of questionable things she’s told me that didn’t simply sit well. I’m not sure if she’s not articulating her points well or what, I’d like to think she isn’t being deliberate but she delivers her words so conclusively that it really makes me convinced that she’s not helping as much as she thinks.
You’re going into therapy, to unpack, to learn about and to work with mental issues or challenges that you yourself need a little assistance on. You’re trusting a professional (someone with PsyD, PhD .etc) to do that for you and their job is to help navigate, resolve and help you understand. They aren’t there to sugarcoat anything, if they’re going to tell you something that is something you didn’t realize before, it’s going to hurt.
I know for certain that therapists are not meant to leave you feeling worse off, like mine kinda is now. They aren’t supposed to argue with you, raise your emotional levels or escalate anything. They also aren’t yes-men either. It’s about finding the right neutral balance and if a therapist can’t do that for you, then it’s not really a good form of therapy.
I never went into therapy expecting for everything to be all roses and rainbows. I’m a big boy and can handle pain, to a point most people find disturbing, including a therapist. I was acquainted with suffering very early on and needed to develop ways to handle it, as I had nobody available and even less capable of helping. I grew up being the weird kid, kept to himself. Not that I did not want to be with others; I just had stuff in my head that completely went over theirs.
Nowadays, going into therapy I expect at least respect for my concerns. Not compassion, nor sorrow, or any demonstration of socially adequate behaviour towards my internal conflicts. I expect an approach that somehow can give me a guidance or a tool to navigate my mind out of the knots it created.
I sincerely hope you can keep going strong in your journey.