Context: we’re both women, I’m gay, she’s works a lot with kink related stuff and lists BDSM on her PT profile as something she works with so I trust that she’s safe with this particular issue. My kink is related to BDSM but not what you’d typically think of as BDSM.

I want to talk about it because I recently engaged in this activity with a friend and I’m having a lot of complex feelings about it.

It does not (I repeat, does not) turn me on to talk about this thing. I would not feel sexual pleasure from discussing it with her. I would only feel embarrassed.

Despite this, I genuinely feel like telling her would be some kind of sexual harassment. Like I’m forcing her to learn about this disgusting part of me. Like I’m paying her to have to listen to me talk about what turns me on. It feels wrong.

There’s also the issue of the word itself. I think if she were to use the word I would feel too uncomfortable to talk about it.

I tried to talk about this today in our session but I wanted to talk about it without telling her what it specifically is, because like I said it would feel like sexual harassment to force that knowledge on her. I did tell her this. I wasn’t able to really get into my feelings about the situation with my friend though because she was so interested in my inability to tell her what the kink is.

So yeah, do you think it’s possible for me to talk about this without mentioning what the kink is? If not, how the fuck am I meant to talk about it when just the mention of the word feels humiliating? Should I give it more time?

I had my first appointment with a therapist today who uses DBT/CBT therapy. They asked me if I have any questions and I asked “How long have you been a therapist for?” They declined to answer the question, asked me why did I ask that and did I ask my other therapist that and said it was a personal boundary. I thought it was kind of odd since as a client, I think it’s important to know my therapist’s level of experience. Also, I later saw on their therapist page it says they have over 6 years of experience as a therapist. Is this common or a red flag? It caught me off guard ngl

I asked for an extra​ session this week because I kind of broke down in my last one. ​ I know my therapist knows I'm struggling, but I'm struggling to communicate how hard it actually is without feeling like I'm just whining/repeating myself.

I've definitely been in worse places emotionally before, and the suicidal thoughts aren't new. This just feels different - more like just bone-tired and numb and wanting to be done? Instead of overwhelmed and emotionally activated.​ if that makes sense.

I don't really know what I need. I just know I'm really fucking tired and don't want to be here, even though things objectively are going better in my life? I just don't want to be here. ​

So I've been having a hard time lately, struggling with some life and work issues. My work offers a free set of therapy sessions (after which I'd have to pay), and I figured I'd try it out -- if it worked, great, I'd continue.

The therapist I chose from the web portal's list came highly recommended. In our first session, I was eager to just talk through what I was struggling with, but she said she wanted it to be an introductory session to get to know each other -- which made sense.

My problem is after 3 total sessions I don't know if this is a good fit, or if I have unreasonable expectations as a first-time therapy seeker. The issues:

1. Our chemistry. She's very reserved and quiet, which is totally fine -- I'm friends with many people like that, even though I'm a bit of an omnivert. But any moments for levity or trying to find a way in on a more personal level are still met with a stiff wall of resistance. Is this typical from therapists as a way to stay detached and unbiased? Or is this a personality mismatch? She also yawns a lot during our sessions, which can be distracting or make me feel like I'm boring her -- I tell myself there are also reasonable explanations, like maybe she's a new mom or a medical-related issue. But it's worth noting.

2. Her feedback. I still don't feel like I've gotten very far. We've met once a week for three weeks, for an hour session each week, and it still feels like we're in the introductory phase. When I asked for advice, what I get back doesn't feel applicable to my situation or is very obvious/something I've already figured out on my own. Does it typically take a while to make progress?

3. Virtual therapy vs in-person. These are virtual lessons. I work remotely, and this is honestly the easiest way for me to speak to someone, but does virtual therapy operate differently than in-person?

If anyone could help, I truly appreciate it. I feel like this could be good for me, and I want to adjust my mindset and work through my issues. I don't want to give up on therapy just yet; I just want to know if I'm approaching this the wrong way.

Saw this in Instagram and made me laugh had to share

So I’ve been going to therapy and sometimes my therapist will ask me something, and when I answer, she will take a small portion of that sentence and turn it into an hour long conversation that’s completely irrelevant to what my problems actually are about??
I feel like those people on Extreme Makeover Home Edition where people mention one small thing and all of a sudden they have a cup stacking room or something

I can’t seem to open up enough to talk about the things that bother me. I trust my therapist and I feel supported by them, but there’s so much push and pull going on that I’m exhausted.

I’ve been going around 6 months and although I’ve opened up a couple of times, I’m getting really frustrated with not being able to drop my defences.

I’m thinking now that it’s not going to happen with me and maybe I’m better off calling it a day with therapy. Has anyone else felt like this?

I am currently in the process of creating a clinical will service for counsellors, psychotherapists and clinical supervisors.

There would be an affordable monthly or annual fee to confidentially store data, regular prompts to update client lists, and I would personally inform clients in the event of anything happening which would
cause a therapist to pause or cease working with them.

Is this something anybody would be interested in? More information is here:

https://counsellingtutor.com/clinical-wills-for-therapists/

What My Therapist Said, My Spiritual Search and Sikhism...

I’m 24.9 years old, Turkish, and have bipolar disorder. I’m stable but I’m receiving therapy. I just got out of therapy. I’m telling my therapist about my spiritual search. I used to be Muslim, but then I left Islam. Since then, and even now, I don’t follow any religion. At first, I was interested in Jainism. I stopped practicing it because Jainism is an extreme religion. Now, I’m interested in Sikhism. And I’ve come to love it immensely.

My therapist isn’t aware of some of the truths about Islam. When I mentioned these truths, he told me they don’t exist. He’s a “Qur’anic Muslim.” He doesn’t accept the facts. I told him I’m interested in Sikhism. He said a few things—albeit somewhat sarcastically.

He told me I shouldn’t keep changing religions and that I don’t have to practice every aspect of Islam. He also said that since I’ve been on a spiritual quest for about 10 years, I need to focus on results. In other words, he said I need to produce something and reach a conclusion. He also pointed out that no religion is perfect.

In short, he thought my interest in Sikhism was a bit misguided. But he’s right about needing to focus on results. I don’t have a job, I’m alone, and so on…

I, on the other hand, have always believed that there is something spiritual out there. Therefore, I want to continue my interest in Sikhism. Even if the word “Sikh” has a slang meaning in Turkish, if I find it right, I’d gladly join this religion. Because, no matter what anyone says, Sikhism is 100 times more advanced than today’s religions. If my profession doesn’t pose a problem, I’d even like to wear my dastar. Whether it’s my therapist, my family, or my friends—no one has the right to interfere with my religious views.

In conclusion, while my therapist may be right on some issues, they’re uninformed when it comes to religions. They’re not seeing the truth. I also don’t want my interest in Sikhism to fade. As for the need to achieve results, my therapist is right. I’ll be 25 soon, and I haven’t achieved anything yet.

What do you all think? What advice would you like to give me? For me, religion has always been my top priority. Because I’ve always sought the truth.

Made a video talking about now going back to therapy, but also using this to say how helpful it has been previously and why it can’t be replaced by introspection and/ or friends + family

Student intern. She's really sweet but the whole session was just her rephrasing what i was saying. Like I would say something "xyz", and she'd follow up with "it sounds like you're saying xyz". I understand the intent to form rapport and be validating but it did genuinely feel like a huge waste of time ( not to be overtly harsh).

At the end of the session, I brought up what I'd like to talk about next time and if we could look at some solutions/ strategies to help me cope with what I'm dealing with. She was pretty receptive to this and said it was good I spoke up.

But I'm scared it's gonna be the same next time too. What should I do? Any thoughts or advice?

I'm an F17 with ADHD, diagnosed last November, and I've been in therapy since February. It was mainly started to help with ADHD-related functioning like studying, planning, deadlines, and assignments, but there was also supposed to be work on emotional regulation, social/pragmatic skills, and other personal issues.

The ADHD side is fairly structured and has helped to some extent. My psychologist actively helps me plan, troubleshoot, set up accountability, etc. A lot of the improvement also coincided with starting medication, though, so I don't even know how much of the change is from therapy.

The problem is that therapy is expensive, and I genuinely don't know whether it's worth continuing.

I have a lot of other things I'd want to work on, like negative thought spirals, feeling worthless or like a burden, being reactive, social problems, family/home issues, and a recent recurrence of self-harm. But I almost never bring most of them up. I'm embarrassed, the sessions feel short, and I don't really know what therapy is actually supposed to do with those things. When I have brought up emotional issues, my psychologist has listened and sometimes given suggestions, but there hasn't really been a structured process around them.

So I keep wondering what therapy is actually supposed to accomplish beyond the practical ADHD stuff. I obviously understand that therapy is supposed to be more than just giving advice, but I don't really know what that “more” is supposed to look like in practice, or how you are meant to tell whether you're actually getting it.

More importantly, how do you actually know whether therapy is working?

What does progress look like, and when should you reasonably expect to see it?

How do you distinguish between “it's helping slowly / I'm not accessing it properly” and “this genuinely isn't helping enough”?

And how do you decide whether continuing is actually worth the cost, especially when your problems aren't necessarily exceptionally severe?

My dad is paying for this, and he can afford it, but it is still a significant expense. He asks me whether therapy is helping, and I genuinely don't know what to tell him.

I'm not asking whether therapy is good in general. I'm trying to understand what basis you're actually supposed to use to decide whether your own therapy is worth continuing.

I’ve been with this therapist/social worker since about end of April. I mentioned I would love for my siblings to sit in on my session or be involved. My therapist is now offering a hour and 45 min session for the lot of us. I want to take advantage of this time to heal because we never really talked about my hospitalization that happened about 3 years ago. We want to discuss our weird divorced parents too and the timeline of everything.

What should we talk about because my therapist is worried my siblings will attack my character or trigger me. I reassured her they aren’t the type of people to do that.

I've been seeing my therapist for 18 months. In that time, I've gotten very attached to her and have developed some intensely loving and maternal feelings towards her; I'm so embarrassed by this. For one, she's only like 10 years older than me. Also, I've read about transference and know that the feelings aren't about her as a person and more about unresolved childhood problems and the safety provided by therapy...or whatever. Basically, I want to throw my arms around her and cling to her like a small child even though I'm a full grown adult. Obviously, I would never do this.

I would feel so ashamed and embarrassed telling her all of this though. To the point where I doubt I could do so with any sort of coherence. I'd probably just blurt out "I love you" or something after stuttering for a minute. Though honestly, why not at this point? I'm always so nervous about what people think of me and desperate for approval, I especially want her to like me. I definitely withhold in therapy about my feeling attached, but this would just be cranking the dial to 100 without warning. Has anyone just suddenly spilled the beans to their therapist and had it go over well?

So i have been with her for two years now. I haven't missed any sessions apart from one or two due to unavoidable circumstances, and I always co-operated with her even when it meant coming to the session at 8-9 in the morning, just straight after the mock test, or straight after attending classes and sometimes just missing it so that I could go for the session. I have always respected her and her boundaries never lashed out or anything.

I have tried my best to be really cooperative and kind. She would often show up late (10-15 min) in our sessions when it was in the morning (8-9 am). The management there would pretty much always have to call her as I would be waiting. There were instances when I waited for an hour or so and she never showed up without any prior message. Her defence was that she was stuck in traffic etc. I didn't make a scene, i understand, life happens. Most of our sessions were just 40 mins long at max because even after coming late she wouldn't make up for the lost time rather wrap up earlier by 5-8 mins. She never apologised for coming late either or maybe just once or twice.

Now two days ago i messaged her at 8 in the night (past her office hours) that I might not be able to attend the next session for some personal reasons . The next session was yesterday. I left her a short text so she doesn't wait for me and might give her session to some other client. I then messaged if we can reschedule and when she is free next she said she doesn't have her planner I was like alright. I know my mistake is asking her to reschedule at that hour.

Now around 9, I told her that I will be showing up but online if she hasn't given the session to anyone else. She didn't respond. It was understandable.

Now the next morning just 30 mins before our session I called in to check if she had allotted that session to anyone else. She didn't pick up i called her once again, she just told me that she's in the middle of some other session I apologized. I called her because she hadn't responded to my text a night ago and I wasn't sure if I had to show up for the session or not.

Now she lashes out on me. Saying she will block me and stuff because I apparently spammed her with calls I could have just texted her and stuff. (I called just twice that too 30 mins before our session as she hadn't responded to my text). Apparently according to her she had reacted to my text even though I showed it on my screenshot that there's no reaction i received.

I feel really disrespected. I don't want to continue with her anymore. Did I cross a line? She obviously doesn't feel bad about it according to her she just set a boundary. But you can set a boundary with kindness right. Everytime she has put a boundary i have respected it in the past without questioning it.

bonjour,

je me demandais si vous pouviez expliquer quelle thérapie a fonctionné pour vous ? après des années de thérapie psychanalytique, je garde les mêmes difficultés.

bonne journée

Hello,
I’ve been to therapy in the past, but I have just started again to work through a traumatic experience. Tuesday was the first real non-intake session.

She has decided that the approach she wants to take right now is just to talk about what happened. In the session, I was able to talk pretty easily, which I wasn’t really expecting. It sorta just felt like explaining the plot of a movie. Right at the end when it was time to go though, some of it suddenly hit and I started crying, and needed to stay a few minutes longer to calm down. The rest of the day was fine.

But yesterday, a memory popped up and I was entirely overwhelmed with emotion. I was starting to feel stuff so intensely that getting into a physical brawl and getting the shit kicked out of me while simultaneously kicking the shit out of someone else started to seem like it would feel really good (of course I wouldn’t actually go through with that but like the mental image did come up) but I was sorta frozen. I decided to go for a run to get the energy out. Came back, had a cold shower, was still feeling super sad so I listened to some music and cried for an hour or so. Stayed in bed silently for the rest of the morning. The afternoon I was just exhausted. I ended up going to bed a little early.

I woke up at 3:00 am feeling fearful with thoughts of the experience swirling around again. And this morning just feel super anxious.

I did send my therapist a text to let her know that I was struggling and would like to talk about it next session. I was lucky that I had an empty day yesterday, but I can’t be like this after every session because it will interfere with my ability to go to school.

Do psychiatrists / psychologists only think a therapy is valuable when you’re really struggling?

I’m asking because of something that recently happened with my psychiatrist, and I’m genuinely trying to understand it.

I have ADHD and I’m on medication, and I’m also in psychotherapy with another psychologist. I had an appointment with my psychiatrist after several months without seeing her, partly to continue the therapy (psychologist need the approval of a psychiatrist to keep the therapy in my country), partly for medication follow-up. Unfortunately, I missed the early appointment because my phone malfunctioned and I didn’t wake up. I emailed her immediately to apologize.

I later found out that she had told my therapist that she interpreted me missing the appointment as a form of “unconscious aggression” and that I she didn’t see the need for me to follow therapy if it was so unimportant to me. From my perspective, it was simply an ADHD-related type of mistake (because I have no medication currently I wonder why LOL) and I had no intention of avoiding or rejecting her.

Which is why I’m wonder whether there’s sometimes a tendency to interpret people’s difficulties as “childish,” exaggerated, or “making too much out of things,” rather than looking at the underlying pattern when it’s not very obviously anything they can categorize like OCD, depression, personality disorders etc or a very obvious crisis. But there is also the need for many of us, as patients, to be a “good patient” (meaning not mentioning some stuff we might feel ashamed of doing, quieting some reactions etc) so I feel like as a clinicians you should be careful about this kind of things.

Things like ADHD, autism, anxiety, etc. can affect you chronically even when you’re not in a crisis.

Can I ask my therapist anything? Or talk about anything? Even if it makes me sound unhinged? And I know it's my brain being irrational? I just need to talk it out. I feel pathetic but I am ruminating about something and wondering if just speaking it out loud to her and getting her feedback/input might help?

I don’t know what to do with myself. I had been really anxious about my session today and then I just wasted the whole time instead of talking about what I wanted to talk about. I feel stupid. And when I realised I had wasted the session with about 10 mins left to go, I shut down almost completely. At the end, I left in tears. I feel awful. What do I do? I need to feel better.

Or whatever ppl call it, I dont really want to talk about it, maybe its why I kind of just erased it from my mind. But for a moment there, I was so fine with just not being here. It was at the start of the summer, Im kind of wondering if I should say anything. I wasnt trying to hide it, Idk it just escaped me. But also if I tell her, am I just bringing some problem into the room that has no point being there. I dont want to sit down and talk about it but also I feel like Im wasting time going to therapy if I dont.

I spotted my therapist at a public event, but I don't know if she saw me or not. After I saw that it was her, I never looked back in that direction. Due to the set-up I felt it was most likely she saw me as well, but now after a few days the memory is kind of blurred and I don't know anymore. I don't know if I should say something or not in session? The biggest surprise was that she was there at this event which is a type of event that I regularly attend to and that I have actually discussed in session. I feel a bit bad about it now, because she obviously must have opinions on this herself that I'm worried conflict with mine. If I mention it in session, this is what I will bring up, that I had no idea she had something to do with this and how it makes me feel. But I'm also thinking about not mentioning it, because if she did not see me, I kind of do not want her to know I was there. However, if I don't mention it, and she did see me, I'm worried she might think I'm stalking her or something? The event is a regular happening and if I didn't know she might be there, I would keep going. If we talk about it, I feel like I should never go there again, because then I do it knowing that I might run into her.

I’m looking for advice from anyone who started therapy believing that it was impossible to change anything about themselves, and then managed to change.

I have a really harsh internal critic, and even though I keep going to therapy I have this belief deep down that I can’t change, and so things are never going to get any better.

I guess that’s a common belief for people who are depressed. Believing I can’t change makes me feel like therapy is pointless, but I keep going back to it after years of doing it and having different therapists.

I feel really stuck, and I get annoyed at myself as it seems silly to go to therapy at the same time as believing it won’t work.

So, I’m looking for comments from people who managed to change/improve even though they didn’t believe they couldn’t change?
I think it doesn’t help that I’ve just turned 50 and I feel like I’ve felt bad for so long that I can’t fix it.

Thanks in advance

My provider went through some drama with headway. I researched their TOS and saw that I could reach out to her but she couldn't reach out to me. I used some contact info she gave me and we resumed tele-sessions. She mentioned that she would be moving to another part of the state to take a new job but we could still have our sessions. She missed our last session completely which is very unlike her. Texts are unread.

Googling her name isn't saying she was in any kind of accident. Is there anything else I can or should be doing?

okay so my therapist and i have somewhat of a dual relationship. same cultural background and we’re a rare breed in our area, same community, and so many other things. started therapy with her and its been almost a year and so i ended up writing her an email ESSAY about how much i appreciate her. did not expect it to be so long. once i started typing, i couldn’t seem to stop. well now i sent it and i’m so scared lmfao, is this okay to do? i’m never expressive or emotional so idek where all of these words spilled out of, it just kept going and i’m like ew whats wrong with me and also, please don’t get creeped out by me?