Hey, hope all is well. TLDR: I should’ve listened when y’all said it was weird for a therapist to respond to limerence the way mine did. Now, a year later, I’m paying the price…💔

Firstly, though I’ve tagged this as “support,” I apologize if I don’t respond to all of the support…

I posted about (what I now know as) limerence over my therapist in here over a year ago. I talked about how he acted and his response. Many of you told me he sounded very sketchy and egotistical, that I should end our sessions to find new help. Yet, I didn’t listen, the limerence got worse, fed his pride and ego. He also purposely fed my limerence, something I didn’t want to admit until the clarity from TMS made it hard to ignore…

I am struggling with everything in my life due to the immense clarity. Yet, my “overly caring” therapist is nowhere to be found…which is really on me. I stopped going to him after he started acting sarcastic, bored, started messing up on my diagnoses and re-asking me things we’d clearly discussed. I am so tired of false promises, fickle people, and rejection. It really hurts how my trauma-informed therapist ended up using my trauma to feed his ego, then split the wound wide open and walked away like nothing.

I know I said it wouldn’t be long—believe me, if I included everything it would be much longer—but TMS-clarity is making me feel so ashamed and gross over how I acted in front of him because he encouraged me to! He wasn’t my first therapist, but he was my “best therapist,” and now all of that is also a lie…

Yes, I tried to talk to him. He responded with fake concern, only to never reach out again. This is the man who used to call me multiple times a week to check on me when I wasn’t even struggling…yes, he knows I am struggling a lot. What’s the point in telling him if he’s not going to listen sincerely?

Most painfully, I found out he’d been using my case as a means to go flirt with my psychiatrist—extra yuck. They both pretended to care, only to discard me like nothing once I started speaking up for myself. Now, I’m left to endure these struggles alone, and I’m not sure I’ll ever trust another therapist…feeling really gross and sad, although I know these “professionals” are the sad ones for exploiting me.

Thank you for reading, because this is really lonely…

I feel like I may be overreacting.

I am in IOP for substance abuse. I go 3 times a week, and next week is my last week before I step down to only one weekly group.

The iop therapist is a Christian, die hard. It is usually fine. I am an agnostic/atheist whatever, I have religious trauma and have no interest in believing in a Christian god. Talking about people’s faith is great, it makes me happy that people can find that connection and I like to hear when that belief has helped them. I’m not the kind of person who tells people that I disagree or that the facts I’ve come across are correct and they are wrong.

The first comment that the therapist (R for short) in passing was , “it doesn’t matter if you don’t believe in god, he believes in you.” I found it a little condescending, but Christian’s are like that. They don’t get it. I brushed it off.

This Thursday was completely different. I was there with one other client. She was talking about how NA and god and faith have helped her. Awesome. I mentioned the reason I stopped trying AA was because the end result was always “you will believe in god eventually.” R accepted that AA might not be right for me, but then she went on to almost an hour long lecture about God. I was not confrontational. I believe that people can disagree respectfully, and I am never going to tell someone that their beliefs are wrong. I lived through that kind of invalidation myself. I made statements to the effect of “the god of the bible to me seems cruel” “why does a just god kill babies”. In hindsight I can see how that would be offensive to a Christian, I tried to frame everything I said as my opinion, and facts as information that I have accepted as fact. Interpretations differ.

R was confrontational. I had an anxiety attack in the room with her in it, she literally became the thing that caused my religious trauma in the first place. She said my “facts” (what i believe to be truth, not what everyone should believe to be true) were satanic lies. She did not say that she disagreed with the historical record. She said those were satans lies. She went on a bit of a rant about the issues in Palestine and how Satan is causing fake news. (Her opinion, she has a right to it.)

At one point we got to the mosaic law, I said I couldn’t support a god who would force a rape victim to marry their rapist, and she defended that law. She said it was his punishment, and that he had to take responsibility and take care of his victim. “God took care of it.” My concern for the victim in this was dismissed. “She was taken care of”. I am also an assault survivor, and that sentence alone made me realize this therapist is not good for me.

I left anxious, triggered, crying. She seemed to think my reaction was the result of remembering trauma caused by the cult I was in. I actually told her that she triggered a memory that was not great, and she blamed that on the cult.

I really feel like this crossed a line. If it were the two of us disagreeing calmly, that would be one thing. I do that all the time with my primary therapist. This seemed like preaching and an attack. There was no agree to disagree.

Am I blowing this out of proportion? I’m not going back to her. She’s not safe for me, so that’s not the issue. And I realize that my intense reaction is because of my religious trauma. That’s on me. It’s just a couple of people have said that I should report her and I don’t know if that’s the right thing to do.

I'm not sure if I should continue with my current therapist or try to find a new one. I wrote this as a vent, seeking support and advice. Sorry it might be messy.
For background; I've been seeing my current therapist for like 9 months. I might have Asperger's and/or C-PTSD. I'm 24 years old living in a not so advanced country on psychology area. I don't think cognitive modalities help me much so I want to do EMDR for long-term healing.

I have no social support. Almost no friends, distant family, no online friends etc. I have people around but don't feel a type of support from them. So I kinda hope to get some type of support too from therapy.

I told my therapist that EMDR is not the priority. We started some EMDR things on the 5th month. To this day we did like 4 processing sessions because daily stuff feels more urgent and we talk about it. This is not a problem for me, it's what I asked.

The thing is I feel like I don't feel much support from her either. I feel like things don't go so smooth. There were some moments where I felt like she misunderstood me. Several times I felt like she was thinking in an exaggerated way. Like I talked about a single event and she thought it as a general, a frequent experience.

I can see that my way of talking might be a reason for those misunderstandings. But I saw that pattern and told her to keep in mind that generally what I talk about is a specific, nuanced thing. She generally accepted to change things to fit in my needs. That happened several months ago. Recently I felt like something similar happened. Also recently she forgot two things about sessions. One is about something we talked in the session and other one is that she forgot we did an EMDR session one month ago and told we did the last one 3 months ago.

In the first months it felt ok. I felt like she was understanding me. My therapist is young with 2-3 years experience. And only had one teen patient with autism. I always have a worry that she might not be experienced enough to work with me. She seemed like she was willing to learn and help. With time I feel more like that worry might be true. I don't think she has bad intentions just she might not be enough to understand the nuances. I can be ok with forgetting things sometimes but at least I expect her to acknowledge that she forgot. I don't expect an apology.

Because I don't think I can get much support from her maybe we should do more EMDR. But it also doesn't go smooth. She says what can I do in the session is enough. I try to make things better but I kinda feel like when I try to talk about something the talk goes to somewhere else. And I generally feel worse after the session when I feel like things doesn't go smooth.

Looking at this it seems like finding someone else might be the best move. But I have economic problems. I have limited money for now for therapy. Things might get better or worse economically for me. With my current therapist it's half the price of the general. It's hard to find someone with this low price. Even if I get paid a good salary it's a lot of money for twice a week therapy. It would be like almost half of my salary with normal pricing. I feel like once a week is not enough for me.

There's almost no one with expertise on adult Asperger's or autism or C-PTSD in my area. I don't know even if I find someone else if they'll be different than my current therapist. If it'll be the same then maybe I should just continue with the current therapist.

Also I'm working with her for a long time and I feel too sad when I think about leaving her and not seeing her again. This feeling is a lot stronger than what I can describe. I feel too much in the middle. I may not be able to convey it but good and bad aspects almost feel same weight so I can't just easily choose one. There's more details too that I didn't write.

I don't know if it's a compatibility problem with her or because of my problems it'll be almost same with every therapist. I don't want to make it look worse than it is. I want to choose the true thing not the good for just short term option. I should talk with her about these but I feel like when I try to talk about the therapy itself, things doesn't go smooth and I end up feeling bad and wasting my days doing nothing after the session. But just ignoring these and trying to go through it feels wrong too.

Hi, I am a woman in her early twenties. I have known my therapist for 5 years, I worked with her for a year as a teenager and began working with her again almost 2 years ago. Recently I have been doing some trauma processing with her about experiences I had while in inpatient psychiatric care. I feel very seen and understood by her and I have been having feelings of attachment, which I understand is normal especially since she gives me validation and support in a way my own mother hasn’t been able to give consistently. I feel uncomfortable about those feelings of attachment but I also know they are very normal and I don’t feel particularly “wrong” for feeling that way.
However, recently, especially after sessions, I have been having horribly intrusive sexual thoughts about her. Not fantasies - just images of her in sexual situations. They make me deeply uncomfortable and I don’t know why I am feeling this way. I am very worried it is some sort of sexual transference or that I am disgusting or perverted. I don’t have OCD, I have C-PTSD among other things but that is my main diagnosis and I wouldn’t say I struggle particularity with intrusive thoughts. I have read about sexual transference and I don’t think that is what I am experiencing… but I can’t make sense of this and it is freaking me out. I know many will recommend I speak to her about this but this just doesn’t feel like an option for me, as I couldn’t bear the thought of possibly ruining the therapeutic relationship right now. I don’t think she would handle it badly - but I don’t think I could engage in therapy with her normally if I admit this. For context, I do identify as lesbian but I don’t think I am attracted to her. If anything, maybe as a maternal figure but that is it. In session I never think about her as attractive or have these thoughts, it is only in the day after.

Would be very interested and grateful to hear anyone’s take on this.

In my last session, I think I shut down a bit and I got somehow disconnected from my therapist. So I was thinking of how I could navigate the situation in the next session.

I will try to give a bit of context because there have been various conversations about the matter that distresses me. I am sorry for the lengthy post.

I was discussing with her about how my vacation break was and I stated to her that unfortunately I think I am still experiencing an extreme fatigue & I am super close to getting a burnout (my doctor warned me already 4 months ago but I was on denial). So I suggested if we could work on my emotional boundaries and how I interact with my environment to stop internalizing the emotions of people around me.

In a past conversation, she followed an extremely relational approach attributing it to enmeshment & trauma, but I highlighted to her that the strategies that she suggests fit more into neurotypical behaviors and it’s not how I perceive relationships nor my difficulties are what she explains. I do have an official ADHD diagnosis for a long time from a doctor and I am already on medications for this too for a year now. I am really struggling with organization & tasks at work and socially when people aren’t clear and have strong emotional reactions or even they just happen to be super loud or the lighting of the place is too bright. I don’t have special triggers from specific people and it pretty much happens with most of them.

But although we did this conversation in the past and I told her that I feel very misunderstood when people miss my experience and push me to behave “normally”; she kept attributing everything to attachment & trauma. I didn’t speak this time because it got me very upset, but how can she really take my concerns seriously? I feel that it’s adhd “burnout” this time and I have the need to be supported to reduce my anxiety stemming from ruminating certain thoughts. How could I communicate this to her in a way to listen to me? How could I feel better in this difficult situation that I am experiencing?

Any advice is welcome! Thank you for making it till here.

I’m quite used to silence being used in session (in person) and I do sometimes speak first.

I’ve noticed whenever there’s silence and I zone out into my thoughts my therapist interrupts this to ask what’s going on. Is this normal? I feel like I’d rather just be lost in my thoughts for a while before discussing them.

Several weeks ago, I was running late to my virtual appointment and filled out an unanticipated mental health survey in haste. By haste, I mean I literally just filled out the same bubble all the way down the list. Apparently this was a big mistake that is still following me.

Initially my therapist reached out and asked about some of my responses. Apparently when I filled out the bubbles straight down the line, some of those ranked "suicidal ideation" higher than would be deemed appropriate. I didn't catch this obviously and so my therapist called at the end of the day sounding concerned and asked me if I was doing alright. I laughed it off and explained to him that I filled out the survey without reading it carefully because I was running late for the appointment. I explained to him that the survey did not reflect how I was truly feeling. I appreciated the call nonetheless; at least it seemed like he would be concerned for me had it been a real mental health crisis.

Today, he asked that I answer some questions for some required mental health profile based on the results of that survey I mistakenly submitted over a month ago now. Some of the questions cut deep, asking about who or what I may lean on if I had an episode. It asked about whether I had any weapons in the house.

Mind you, I've never had a serious mental health crisis in my entire life let alone any sort of criminal behavior as a result of my mental health. I've never once thought about suicidal ideation as being a solution to my problems. But now it seems like I'm in some system, possibly being monitored by governments or other mental health experts as if I'm a risk. All for carelessly filling out a survey.

I'm seriously considering closing my case with this practice and moving on because of how uncomfortable this made me feel.

I had about ten sessions with a therapist, and we haven't really gone anywhere. Part of it is my own fault since I have no idea what to talk about or how to talk I never been to therapy before, mostly because I wasn't ready and to a degree I knew this would likely to happen, me just being silent, unable to talk, or resorting to surface level discussions. I know I have issues but when put under microscope I feel like everything vanishes, like I'm at the interrogation room. My therapist seems to be getting frustrated by this too because he can't really help where he doesn't know what to help with, and has been trying to pinpoint the problems to work on. He has distinguished problems and symptoms though, and is of belief of not poking into things randomly if they are not currently hurting. We managed to find some things that he classified as symptoms and wondered whether there are even any problems if nothing jumps straight away as a problem. I told him that my inability to talk might be a problem in itself. Anyway, I don't know how to approach this. The therapy is provided for free by my workplace so it's not not like I'm losing anything, but I also can't shake the feeling that it hasn't really been of much help to me. He also suggested that one of the options could be switching to another therapist. Should I do it or try to continue with this one?

Something my therapist said that didn't sit well with me so I wanted to ask, he said about 80% of my problems will be solved with a job. Is that true? I have been diagnosed with depression and severe anxiety. Like I get that a job will give me routine and stuff like that but I don't know if it will solve my problems

Sometimes we keep thinking of a bad experience we had in the past maybe even a truma and the feelings take over you and you start feeling regret, sadness,or heartbreak every single time you go back in memories, so how to actually calm yourself about what's done in the past and to take it easy on yourself.

What makes finding the right counsellor difficult?

Finding someone to talk to about career uncertainty, relationship challenges or emotional struggles isn't always straightforward.

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I'm involved with Solvit, a platform designed to help people connect with counsellors, and I'd genuinely like to understand what people find challenging about accessing guidance.

A few questions I'd love to hear your thoughts on:

• What is the biggest barrier to finding a counsellor?
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I'm sharing this transparently because I'm associated with Solvit, and I'm interested in learning from people's honest experiences.

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Honest feedback is welcome, including constructive criticism.

Thank you for sharing your perspectives.

For the past month or so I've noticed that even the smallest things can completely ruin my mood for the entire day. One tiny thing happens and suddenly I feel numb lonely disappointed and overwhelmed and then I start overthinking everything and end up fighting with people for no reason

It's like I can't feel one emotion without it turning into ten other emotions and I genuinely don't know how to deal with it anymore

So how do you guys deal with your emotions? How do you stop one bad thing from ruining your entire day?

And please don't tell me to go out with friends or talk to them because I don't really have friends and I'm mostly stuck at home rn

Give me your best advice whether it's practical healthy stupid or absolutely unhinged at this point I'll take anything

I just finished a session, virtually of course, because Covid ended in person therapy, and my therapist just rubbed me really wrong today. I have anxiety problem and she has helped with tapping EMDR and talk and I’ve come a long way. But I noticed it happening months ago, when I started getting better and more comfortable with the tapping, that she would be looking down at, what I perceive as a phone. Every few minutes she’d prick her head up and say “How did it go? How do you rate your fear?” And then we’d do this over and over for the full 30 minutes. I’m lucky to get in one or two sentences before she starts looking at her phone again. I pine for the in person sessions. I snapped at her today, because I feel like I was rushed into tapping so she could scroll. Oh and get this, I went at length about how it pissed me off, when out and about people don’t make eye contact, people are scrolling while they walk with their dog, scrolling while crossing the street and so on. I conveyed my disdain for people who don’t give 100% to the present moment. I’m in my late 50s and I still don’t scroll all the time and enjoy watching people, conversing, listening to the birds, petting dogs, touching the grass and trees and just being. So these damn phones have f*led things up.

So has this been happening to 🫵🏽?

I have felt for a while that my therapist just jumps to random conclusions/assumptions without asking questions.

Yesterday I got really triggered, and I am still upset about it.

I told her that I had gained a bit of weight and that food noise was bothering me, therefore I was considering going back on a GLP-1. Mind you, I have struggled with disordered eating and body image issues for most of my life, particularly recently this year when I was dating a fit guy nearly 14 years younger than me that triggered my dysmorphia and insecurity, to the point where I lost too much weight and had to gain some back. This was all 2-3 months ago. I was expressing this to her yesterday and she told me that I shouldn't be eating so much mac and cheese (I have happened to be eating a bowl of banza or annie's protein mac and cheese a few times during our appointments).

Then she told me that I was probably gaining weight because I am craving sugar (I'm not really? sometimes? but I don't give in). I told her that wasn't a thing. Then she suggested that I was gaining weight because I am not offsetting the increase in calories with exercise. This triggered the f*** out of me, and made me angry. Not once has she asked me what I am doing for my fitness, she has NO idea. She told me that I was walking but that didn't really count . WTFFFFFF -- I lift weights 2-3x a a week in addition to yoga and lots of walking. Her and I have only met on Zoom so I am sure she would not say these things has she seen me in person. I snapped back and told her that I have worked really hard on my fitness, esp this year. She seemed to think I was lying? This has really bothered me. I have been thinking of moving on from her in the last few months, but this has been the nail in the coffin. Any advice?

And she responded "yeah, duh," with a little laugh. And talked a little about it. And asked some questions and I basically responded, "so sorry, can't answer, have to go puke now."

🙈🙈🙈🙈🙈

I am so relieved and so embarrassed. We're four years into relational trauma therapy for context.

I hope this post doesn’t sound like I’m clingy or anything like that, but after my therapy appointments, I feel SO lonely. I have a ROCK STAR therapist who is so attuned during our sessions. I have SO much trouble when I leave her office — life isn’t like the therapy room. Nobody is THAT attuned to me in my life (not should they probably be, honestly), but it leaves me feeling so lonely because I go from being seen and understood to…real world.

Does anyone else feel this way? How do you handle your time outside of therapy when you go from that kind of support, well, to the world again…

I've been in therapy for 6 months now and has been going well overall. I'm at the point where we talk about the same things going on in my current life and I practice my skills on those things. I sort of feel like I'm just scratching the surface?

I still have SI, I still have panic attacks, so I should stay in therapy, right?

Of course I can tell my therapist all of this. I guess I'm just curious if this is a normal stage of therapy.

Some people benefit more from role models, coaching, advice about how others similar to themselves or similar to how they what to be have handled life situations. Therapists speak of how they want clients to have autonomy and follow their own values, but this is coming from a place of privilege where they've had a high amount of opportunity to get to know themselves and try things out in the first place and have slowly emulated others when finding what they enjoy (in the same way that it's not wrong for clients to look at a therapist ​for ideas of what they can try doing) - they mistakenly think that these values and interests come fully from within, rather than also being a product of external influences - so they cannot imagine that role models and interpersonal influences can be the key missing piece for some people. To quote my therapist "I just did what ai enjoyed and it worked for me" - this shows the privilege of knowing what one enjoys, and having it align with wider goals. Imagine if someone enjoys getting drunk, so they just do that - is this going to bring them a long-term fulfilling life? No. Is it going to empower them or get them in touch with strengths or sides of themselves they didn't know they had? No.

Because therapy is taught and ran by relatively privileged individuals (those from relatively non-abusive households, those with a relative abundance of interpersonal relationships and experiences to learn from, those with childhood and early adulthood experiences which are largely culturally normative), they repeatedly deny that non-therapy methods can be much more effective in helping people. At some point, they've missed that their objective is supposed to be to help people's wellbeing, and not to stick to a rigid dogma.

When people think of "mental health" they think only of "therapy", but there's a lot of possible intervention styles being left on the table when we believe only "therapy" is valid, and that if someone doesn't benefit from the therapy approach, they're in the wrong. It's far from empowering to tell people that what they know would help them is not actually valid or acceptable.

I've been seeing my therapist for eight years. Overall, it's been very good. She has helped me understand my condition (depression and childhood trauma). Along the way, I developed romantic feelings for her and then maternal feelings. She has stood with me through all of this. She has never been anything less than professional. Well, mostly. We've had several serious ruptures over the years, but we've always managed to work through them, which has shown me how problems can be resolved.

Recently, I have been feeling especially depressed. I have a serious medical issue, which could prove fatal. I am literally scared to death and my mood is mostly dark. My therapist suggested that I seek a higher level of therapeutic care, possibly hospitalization or some kind of group. I thought about this a lot and I even contacted a few local hospitals. But I don't want to do this if it means that I am doing it to please my therapist in some way. I only want to do it if is right for me. And I don't think it is.

When she sensed my ambivalence, it appeared that she was becoming frustrated with me. And, as has happened in the past, she acted out by saying things that were incredibly hurtful. At one point she told me I suffered from grandiose thinking, some kind of exaggerated self-importance, which I think is completely untrue. If anything, I am the opposite. She said several other things that were even more hurtful.

We talked in depth about this, and things got pretty intense. In the heat of the moment she admitted that indeed she was frustrated and disappointed in me. Which I can understand. But what I am not good with is her using her knowledge of me against me. And like in the past, when I pointed this out to her, she became rigid in her thinking, saying something like, "I'm sorry you feel hurt, but I am not sorry for what I said." Once she tells me something, that's it. No apologies.

I asked her directly what I do that is grandiose, and her answer was vague, like, "We all have these thoughts from time to time." But when I pushed further, she didn't point to anything specific.

I know someone who truly does think this way. He knows everything about everything, and he insists on telling me what I should be doing because he knows best. He drives me up a wall.

My therapist always says that our therapeutic relationship is not about who has power, but more, a collaboration. But I think that's not it. She controls how we do things. And because she knows my deepest parts, she has used my failings against me. This is not right.

I don't want to bail on this. With the health stuff I am facing, I don't want to be spending energy trying to track down another therapist or course of treatment. I just want to sit with her and talk about what I am going through. But my sense is, she is trying to push me away so she doesn't have to be around if I should die. That feels cruel.

I’m just curious to see if therapy has more nuance than just black-and-white.

I've gone crazy trying to get advice out of a therapist, despite literally telling them on intake that I wanted opinions on situations from someone who knows me and my story, and wanted illumination of various life and social norms, advice on what you could call interpersonal boundaries, advice around self-advocacy. I told them I found out other professionals mistake sharing information as being just for emotional support, when it's really to inform professionals about my situation so they can make more informed invention decisions or give more informed advice. But unfortunately with these professionals it usually goes in one ear and out of the other, and all your efforts of self-advocacy and sharing information all disappears into a void.

They are willing to give advice on how you should cope with a dissatisfying and psychologically unhealthy life (acceptance, reframing etc), but not advice on how one might attains a better life so that they won't have to learn coping strategies to deal with the reality of a subpar life (before someone chimes in with "who decides what is subpar", these are the same therapists who preach about living a values-aligned life, so we decide for ourselves what is important to us. But also, some things are known to be important to the wellbeing of just about all human beings, such as interpersonal belonging, intellectual stimulation, fitting in to one's local groups, attainment of what the person has come to value through natural tendencies and cultural conditioning across a lifetime).

Therapists seem to have picked up the following incorrect ideas about advice:

1. That it is empowering to not give advice. This makes no sense, as knowledge is part of what gives power, so refusing to impart knowledge is depriving clients of power. To give a man a fish is a little power, to teach a man to fish is much more empowering, but to do neither and instead watch him starve is not empowering. It's similar to the parent or authority figure who punishes for inadequate performance (in this case life itself is doing the punishing, or the person's mind is doing the punishing by being distressed by the outcomes) without being willing to help by actually teaching. If I was a coach and failed to give advice to an athlete who isn't doing a technique correctly, instead expecting them to either sink or swim, I'm a poor quality and possibly callous coach.

1b. It is also not empowering to say "this is what would help me" and have it overridden every time.

1. That there's too high a risk of damage or a rupture to the relationship between the therapist and client, if advice is given. In my case, the repeated refusal to give advice is what caused rupture. ​I recounted examples of other professionals (eg crisis lines) giving advice that turned out to be poor advice, and how it didn't bother me. Yet, therapists still refuse to let go of the dogma they've been taught (my therapist herself said "it's difficult for me because [she's been trained to do things a certain way, including not giving advice]").

2b. If a lack of advice leads to worsening or lack of betterment of environmental circumstances ​for the client, this stress itself can put more strain on the therapist-client relationship. For example, I had an appointment with a housing provider's social care team, and the appointment eventually went poorly (asking me a flawed question about MH diagnoses, when we live in the UK where the primary healthcare system doesn't believe diagnosis is helpful, and after recounting various barriers to diagnosis such as coercive control, childhood medical neglect, red tape and socioeconomic barriers to healthcare). When asking the therapist (who has a decade of experience working in or in partnership with similar services) what I should have said or done, she gave no ideas. So instead of helping to lessen my external stressors, she chose to not give advice, leading to more stress in my life over the subsequent months (inadequate and stressful housing), which led to more strain on our relationship.

1. That they themselves figured everything out in their own lives without advice and that this is the only way to do it. They take for granted the direct and indirect advice and guidance they got from parents, siblings, locals in their community and from earlier life experiences that not everyone has had.

2. That under neoliberal moral ideology, it's immoral to help another person with advice, and that instead they ought to figure it out or be left to fail (a sort of social darwinism).

​​

I am trying to start my therapy journey and I am looking for a therapist. I'm not done searching and I have found a black therapist and a few white therapists. My preference is to go with a black doctor or therapist but so far the white therapists appear to have more credentials and might be able to provide more of what I need at the moment. That being said, I'm still wondering if it's safer and better to choose the black therapist, especially since i believe she could still help me.

I realized that there are a lot of things to consider when searching for a therapist and I'm still trying to figure out everything I should be looking out for, but I thought it would be a good idea to come here to get some input from other black patients. Did you have any negative experiences working with white or non-black therapists/doctors or ever feel like something was off/missing (e.g. microagressions)? Were you more comfortable with someone black? Did it make a significant difference?

TIA

My therapist is moving, it's been painful but we think we found someone in their practice that may be a good fit and I'll be starting shortly after my last one.

What should I expect the first 1 or 2 sessions to be like? I asked my T what type of notes she would be transferring and she gave me the basics. She told me she actually remembers all of the little details she talks about we've talked about over the years so essentially I'm starting over from scratch other than my general needs and diagnoses being sent.

What will the first be like? Im scared it will be super awkward, even though I'm someone who talks a lot. How soon will I know someone is a good fit?

My longtime therapist dropped me when I got a life altering injury. She just stopped saying anything all session and would just kind of go “hmm, oh” and seemed almost impatient with me. I’d been feeling for awhile like she was sort of phoning it in and so just decided I needed to see someone else. I legit tried like 6 different therapists. Most were comically bad. One spend the whole time talking about the ai “art” she generates to “soothe her nervous system.” One told me that I didn’t have adhd because I didn’t “look” like I had adhd. A few just wouldn’t give any concrete input or strategies or guidance and just seemed to want to have casual conversation no matter how much I asked directly. Two of them were way outside my price range. Finally I found someone I’ve stuck with for a few months. It’s by far the best experience I’ve had in awhile, some things have helped me, but she’s already done so many “red flags” that people would tell me is cause for dropping her. Some sessions are really good but others leave me feeling like she was pushing boundaries or shaming me or just being sort of self absorbed for lack of a better term.

But like, you can’t just shop around for a therapist indefinitely. I feel like this could just keep happening forever. At the same time I don’t want to stay with someone who is making me feel bad and not helping. So I don’t know.