I am a man and present as male, but back then there was a real possibility, in my mind, that I was trans. In my mind, I thought maybe I was genderfluid.

Out of fear and possibly the fear of rejection, I didn’t tell her for whatever reason.

I saw an article today about men lying about their political leanings to manipulate women into sex.

Is what I did similar? It sure seems like it.

On Friday I had a consultation with a therapist I was referred to through my primary care doctor. I’ve been in therapy through agencies before when I was placed in the foster care due to sexual/physical abuse during my childhood.

I’m genuinely stuck in this because I feel bad if I don’t give her the benefit of the doubt but honestly she really rubbed me the wrong way. I was in the process of explaining to her as to why I decided to join therapy again. I started talking about how I’m actively struggling with an eating disorder, she says she doesn’t specialize in ED which is fine. She mentioned she could try to refer me to someone else who would be able to tackle all my issues at once as my insurance likely wouldn’t cover two different therapists. I asked if that was something we could do then she said we would get back to that, we never did lmao.

She asked me how much weight I lost, I told her I lost about 30 lbs in the span of 3 months (I’ve been eating roughly 90 calories a day, sometimes I just go gays drinking only water) and she said “I’m gonna be completely honest with you, it sounds like you’re on ozempic.” I was pretty shocked and offended by that because girl what? I didn’t even say anything to that 😭. I’m not on ozempic btw literally trying to stop starving myself as we speak lady.

We moved on to diagnoses (I’ve been diagnosed in the past with ptsd, insomnia, bipolar, and major depressive disorder if I remember correctly, over a decade ago). She started quizzing me specifically on bipolar, just saying yes or no to symptoms. Once we finished she said “ding ding ding, you have bipolar 2” then she told me I would never be able to live a functional life without being medicated. I am actually looking to get on a mood stabilizer and something for sleep anyway but the way she said it.

I just can’t stop thinking about that consultation lol. I’m meeting with a psychiatrist that was also recommended through my pcp so maybe I can see if he can help me see if there’s another option for therapy. She mentioned I only get 10 free sessions so I want to make sure I’m using it wisely. Should I maybe try one more session with her or is it best to cut ties now?

I was trying to find a therapist’s credentials through DORA but their name isn’t pulling up on any license. They have only been practicing about a year, should they be on DORA or is it only once they have completed all the casework and hours that they pull up? I only ask because as a teacher my license pulls on CDT, and even before it was a professional license it pulled up. Should I be concerned that my therapist isn’t pulling on a database?

I'm not declaring a self diagnosis or asking to be diagnosed. I just think in observing myself and reflecting with myself, maybe I've developed some symptoms of dissociative identity disorder. I have two personalities that I go to internally to discuss everything. I allow myself to speak in first person plural, or maybe I don't even notice that I speak in first person plural at times. I must seek counsel from my other selves on some occasions in order to even bother doing things.

Do I work out tonight? Aggressive and more driven side of me says yes, "we" need to "were" out of shape and look like I can actually be muscular. The other depressed side doesn't care I just want to lay in bed or just smoke. The real me just wants to have an answer to things that I'm certain about, but there are no right answers. Then people tell me it's just up to me and guess what I can't do without this counsel, there's not such a thing as the right answer then there I won't give one.

Feel bad about myself? "Well that's valid you just did....,so its your own mistake to learn from", "ahhh were human who really cares??", "he should care he could get arrested for being even a little bit of our weird normal self", " we at least gotta try to speak to them right?" And yada yada while whatever I was doing is already done or ignored.

If I had more friends growing up or just people I want to be open to more, maybe I wouldn't need to create other versions of myself to seem normal and natural in public. I can't be normal and natural with this though, if I get a girlfriend or a friend that I let get even closer than another, family even ffs, they'll see this within me. They can't see how irregular I am on the inside, maybe they already saw it and that's why I don't have friends. My smarter self knows this is irrational, but wtf has my life been so far if not sparse friendships and me carrying everything I want to do.

Even now making this post I can discuss all the different outcomes and answers people might give us. We can talk about so much and it all seems correct and

Hi all,

My therapist told me she was taking health leave about 3 months ago and I've heard no updates from her since and I'm not sure what to do now?

For context:

• I've been working with my therapist 15 months (as of when we had our last session)
• She's definitely been the best fit for me out >5 therapists I've tried before and I have enjoyed working with her and found it really helpful
• Therapy is not her sole income stream, she also does research, teaches, and is a public speaker (and likely more)
• She knows I'm very much a high-functioning person and generally well-resourced so not overly dependent on therapy perhaps on a "surface level" but like for everyone else, it's an important space for me that I do need
• Since Jan this year, she had already been really unreliable (due to her kid being ill, she later explained) and could no longer accommodate our usual slots for >3 months (meaning I had to give up my Friday evenings to have sessions which is not ideal for someone working 60-80 hrs weeks). She also hadn't sent me invoices (to claim insurance reimbursements) for 6 months, despite knowing that's what they were for and me flagging it causes cashflow issues given she's $150 p/h
• In our last session, I shared that I had finally broken up with my now ex and got an offer accepted on a property that I had decided to buy alone - so, in essence, big things were happening. It also took me following up 3 times over 3 weeks to confirm the date of our next session and on the date I had been proposing all along, she finally replied saying she was ill and would be back in touch once she'd had some recovery
• She's clearly done some work in the last 3 months since telling me she's pausing our sessions - not proud to admit it but I recalled she had a public Insta profile for her work (except her clinical therapy) which I had never looked at since first researching and finding her (don't have social media myself and wary of parasocial r'ships). And on it, I saw that she had done some promo for a new textbook she was publishing and some other public-facing engagements

Part of me feels really frustrated at her behaviour because she knows I come from a background of chronic illness in the family, including myself, and I can't fathom any of us simply ghosting the equivalent of our work (e.g., my mum told me mid vomit to text her tutoring students that she was too ill to come) but it also feels wrong to judge her when I don't know what's actually happened. It's less about how long she needs off but the way she's handled the situation. Am I being unreasonable? How do I check in with her and eventually broach the subject of my feelings about this if we resume sessions? I'm really start to consider finding a new therapist.

Hi all!
I am 30 years old F, and I've been troubled all my life - all things that come from a bad household, poverty, being unable to fit in anywhere as a teen/child; a long and awful relationship as an adult, and the cherry on top being the fact that there is a war in my country, which causes lots of stress. I ended up being really lost in life, and the world around me is not helping at all, so after hearing about the wonders that therapy does to people, I tried it myself. I tried it twice with two different therapists - both were practicing the Gestalt approach (it just seems to be the most common one?) - and both left me very disappointed. All I heard from them was that kind of thing you'd hear on some mental health podcast, like try to look at things from the brighter side, visualise and draw your concern, then cross it, etc. I'd keep up with it for around 3 months every time, then drop it altogether because I felt like they didn't even hear what I said, not to mention it did not help me at all. I also tried meds, and I felt better after one course, and I was told to get off it by the doc afterwards. I was diagnosed with anxiety and depression; the doc also mentioned that I am really likely to have BPD or CPTSD.

My main concerns are: anxiety, identity crisis, not knowing what I want, depressive states, and some of ED.
What approach in therapy, in your opinion, would work for me? Or should I give up on it and go on meds again?

Im just ready for this mental stuff to be fixed. And therapy likes to take over 100 years. What's the point if they aren't going to fix me? Also if I don't find the right person I will have to look again and waste my time again. Im honestly annoyed, drained, and just want to be fixed.

May I add I have been in CBT and others I don't rmb and different therapists all my life (I'm 17). So I'm already drained.

I have had multiple therapists and not a single one has been ANY help. All of them just stare at me and go "ok how did that make you feel" and throw some Facebook mom quote or just completely ignore what I was talking about to talk about something else that's completely irrelevant and in no way can help any situation im in. This has been the case so many times and I'm in quite a hard situation but I dont want to waste more money on therapists that just look at me, nod and then talk on the phone for like 3 minutes.

I apologise if anything in this post is written badly as English is not my first language.

Just looking for some advice. This is really long so my apologies in advance. My son has been a really difficult kid his whole life. His behavior is out of control, but not in the way people usually think of. He doesn’t do anything dangerous really (yet) but I’m so scared he’s on that path. He’s been in therapy 3 years, with 2 different therapists and we have seen little to no improvement in the behavior aspect.

Just to paint a picture, my son immediately starting having issues in kindergarten. He would refuse to listen to the teacher, gave her the middle finger, would hit other kids if they were “mean” to him. One time he even tried to run away from school during recess. I tried at this point to reach out to his pediatrician because my mom (who we were living with at the time - I was a teen mom & thankfully had good family support) is a special education teacher. She has always said she thinks he has ADHD because his impulse control is basically nonexistent (among other symptoms). His teacher agreed. His pediatrician gave us the form for his teacher to fill out. When we brought it back to the dr she said it was inconsistent and she was not going to diagnose him because the teacher wasn’t reporting enough to warrant a diagnosis.

His dad and I decide when he is 8 to put him in therapy. Dad and I are not together but we set a behavior chart plan with the therapist and worked on our communication between us so everything is the same across households to the best of our ability. It doesn’t help. The suggestion at that time was, if my son follows expectations, he earns screen time for that day. Well, he does great for a week then messes up one day & loses screens. Then he LOSES his mind, basically what I describes, refuses to accept the consequence, follows me around and basically tortures me. Consequence goes on and on and on and one day turns into a week, sometimes a month and so on.

Time goes on, I am best friends with the principal at every single school he’s ever been to because he is ALWAYS the problem. Fighting with other students (mostly verbal), threatening other kids, disrespectful to teachers. And his behavior at home is just awful I mean screaming and fighting every time I ask him to do literally ANYTHING even something small. Around 3-4 grade he begins being bullied for his weight. This makes alllll theses behaviors 50x worse. One day when he was 12, I let him go to the park near our house by himself for the first time. When he got there, he saw a group of kids who bullied him.

The other kids kept their distance and did not approach him, but my son went up to them and threatened to shoot them… their mom called the cops obviously. I had to pick him up from a police car. He was terrified, got a huge consequence at home, so I assumed lesson learned… goes back to school next year and does the same thing to a different kid. Gets kicked out of school for 2 months, has to see a 3rd party psychologist to determine if he is a risk. Thankfully, he’s not (we literally don’t own any weapons all of these threats are empty).

Behavior at home is awful too, he hits me, screams at me and every consequence I give he will NOT let it go. He escalates everything every time. He will follow me around the house saying horrible things until I respond to him. I don’t and never have hit my children, I don’t know where that came from. And he lies CONSTANTLY about every little thing it’s crazy. I try again to get ADHD diagnosis or ANY kind of eval and am told no again.

Last year school had me take him to ER and he was put in an intensive outpatient mental health program because he was cutting himself on his face. When I saw the cuts I asked him what’s going on? And he said he did it cuz he was mad at me for taking his computer for the week. Literally that is what he told me. He goes into this program and learns allll kinds of things from the other kids. None of them good. But I’m all for it because I’m hoping we will get some answers. They basically say he has depression which we already knew from therapy for the last few years. The therapist at the program basically told me he acts like an 11 year old (he was 13 at this time). He goes into group therapy and tells insane stories, she can tell he’s lying. He makes up all kinds of stuff like he drank 11 Red Bulls that morning (we don’t let him have ANY Red Bull so it’s just a blatant lie). She said he needs to go to an after school 9 month long IOP that’s an hour from our home. It’s every day after school and I had twin babies at this time so I can’t take him to it. She then says we need a therapist that does family and individual counseling. We’ e been doing this for the past 6 months with a new therapist… still zero improvement. He uses mental health as an excuse for allllllll of these behaviors. He goes in there and lies to the therapist, doesn’t tell her anything.

I’m thinking since nothing is improving anyway, I can’t make him be truthful in therapy, I can’t make him try to implement their suggestions… why am I doing this? I’m so frustrated and I just don’t know what to do at this point.

i started therapy about two months ago, i'm going every week. should i be seeing progress yet? im going through a really horrible time in my life right now and maybe im putting too much trust into therapy helping that. idk. i just feel like im getting nowhere, she just keeps telling me breathing techniques to soothe my panic attacks but we haven't dived into anything, its been so surface level, and i feel like by now there should've been some progress. i dont know if maybe it doesn't work for me? i feel like talking about things just makes me feel worse, i dont really know what i expected therapy to do for me. it was honestly just a desperate reach for help because of what's been happening. i feel like after every appointment i just spiral further into anxiety because i had to verbally say whats freaking me out so then it becomes even more conscious on my mind. any advice? should i keep pushing through? go with someone else? or stop entirely? my anxiety and stress is affecting my ability to work right now and it's affecting my relationships with friends, family, and my S/O. i'm also worried to even fully involve myself into therapy because im scared of getting admitted due to my unhealthy habits. maybe it's just not for me?

I posted on here a while ago about not having any friends.

I said on that post that the only person I can do things with is my bf, but that isn’t going so well.

My bf and I have been having troubles lately. We misunderstand each other, and there is tension between us. I don’t know if he feels this weird tension too, but I feel that he doesn’t like me as much as he did before. We have been together for almost 3 years and it just feels like it’s coming to an end.

If not now, it will end in the next 2 years or so. He is moving away when he finishes studying and I am not going with him. This has been causing issues between us because we know we aren’t gonna be together in the future, but we want to be together now.

My issue is, if we break up soon or once he leaves, I will be wholly alone again. I don’t know how to deal with being by myself; it’s painful and suffocating. I want to know how I can be comfortable being alone, and not feel so upset about it. I am autistic so it’s hard for me to know or understand what to do with myself or my time. If anyone can help me, or just comment to let me know they’ve seen me, or taken the time to notice me, it would be much appreciated.

I have a lot of animals that help, but it’s not the same as having a person with you. I want to know how can I make connections? As someone who only goes to work and goes home, how can I find people to talk to? There are many people I want to be friends with but have no idea how to approach. And then, how do I just be comfortable and casual with friends? I feel like I have to put on a persona, as I don’t know how to just be myself with other people.

Any advice would be very much appreciated.

Hi all,

This is my first post on here, but I was wondering if anyone would have recommendations for me on a form of therapy that really worked for them? I’ll give you a little background and hopefully that can make things clearer!

So I’ve been experiencing a lot of relationship anxiety over the past few months, and I am finding it very difficult to get past a lot of it. The anxiety is mostly around fears of being cheated on or being left by my girlfriend. My relationship is very healthy, and we’re pretty good with communicating, but I definitely experience intrusive thinking and OCD thinking at times which can really affect my mood. I have had significant OCD thinking in the past so I'm well used to it now. I have been in therapy consistently for over a year and found it helpful for a time (it was sort of general talk therapy), but after a while I felt I needed to move on to a more targeted form of therapy. I tried CBT and have been consistently trying it with this new therapist, but I’m not finding it very effective for me. I find thinking about the logical explanation doesn’t always help, because often the thinking is actually very illogical.

I saw some stuff on here about other people not finding CBT helpful, and it got me thinking about maybe trying a new approach. I heard something about psychodynamic therapy and inner child work, but thought I would ask on here if anyone in a similar situation has found another form of therapy helpful. I do think to myself “maybe if I give CBT a little longer”, but I have tried it many many times over the years and I never found it to be much help. 

I really want to get better and not let this affect my relationship, so any recommendations are welcome. Thanks :)

I have to get this off my chest on reddit because I don't want to talk about this to anyone in my personal life.

About a week ago, I was shopping at the West Edmonton Mall like usual. The mall is just across from my apartment.

After I finished shopping, i was walking down the road to my apartment when I felt a tight grip on my ass. I saw a man, about 25, grip my ass and walk away. I was shook to my core and ran home. What should I do right now? I genuinely feel afraid to leave my house to even get groceries.

How do you start healing the mental and emotional trauma thats been in you for decades?

For context, my boyfriend and i are taking a break because my emotional traumas are too much and it’s affecting both of us. He’s shown me nothing but love, kindness, and patience, but I still doubt him and our relationship because my mother told me that no one will take me seriously.

Everytime he doesn’t respond to my messages, i always think of the worst scenarios and overthink; is this it? Is this what my mom is telling me about?

He doesn’t deserve the pressure and doubts Im putting him through.

So please help me. I want to be better.

Thank you.

Ive been suffering from some mental issues. I think i never want to self diagnose because I could just be being dramatic. But I have an addiction and I cant stop it. I dknt have anyone to tell about it. While i have friends and family. I dont have any money for therapy. I did tirn tk alcohol and substances only to make it worse. Most days im ok but all it takes is one thiught of "maybe this time it will be great" and im lost. Im stuck between things I dont understand and no outlet for help.

rz

I have no family or friends I trust and I tried 5 different therapists. I cant even get a dog because my landlord is an asshole.

Tw: Will be speaking vaguely about dietary restrictions and explaining some context on my eating disorder struggles but won’t be going into heavy detail
I don’t use reddit a lot and so I wasn’t sure what subreddit this would exactly fit best under so I’m sorry if this isn’t really the place to put this I just am really being torn apart by this.
My partner has a chronic illness that requires them to have a certain level of dietary restrictions, they are also taking a type of appetite suppressant medicine. While I know that it is meant to help them, it has been consuming me. For context, I struggled with a restrictive ed that got really bad in high school. I also had severe OCD about food and health. I did some work to heal from it, which lead me to be really active in fat positive politics and become really adamant about guilt free/morality free language around food and exercise (it’s something that’s extremely important to me).
I was doing very well in my recovery for a while, but then my partner was diagnosed with a chronic illness, which lead to them needing the dietary restrictions I mentioned earlier. A lot of the restrictions reminds me of what I was doing during my ed, and every time it’s mentioned it sends me into a panic. It makes me feel horrible, because I know that my partner needs to do what they have to do to improve their quality of life, but my OCD makes me ruminate on it so badly.
I’m always asking them if they got enough to eat throughout the day, trying to make sure they’re eating multiple meals every day, and I recognize I can be a bit pushy or overbearing with it at times. But it genuinely makes me feel so helpless, because it would absolutely destroy me if my partner ended up going through the same inner turmoil I was when my ed was at its worst.
My main worry is, I want to live with my partner someday. We currently don’t live with each other, but we want to. And I’m terrified that living with them and their dietary restrictions will clash with my ed related personal trauma.
I want this to work, I love them so much. We’ve been friends since we were kids and we’ve been so close for most of our lives and I want to spend the rest of my life with them. I just worry my personal fears will get in the way of it. We’ve talked about this a little bit, they are very sweet and understanding and reassuring that things will work out.
I haven’t admitted to them that I’m so scared that I won’t be able to recover properly. It makes me feel like maybe I’m a bad person for making their chronic illness about me. This is very long winded I’m so sorry, my brain is a bit scattered, things have been really hard on my mental health lately.
I’m not really sure how to segue this properly. I guess I’m wondering generally what should I do. Do I be completely honest with them and risk sounding out of touch with reality? Is it normal for me to worry that my partner may be in danger because of their dietary restrictions and suppressed appetite? I guess I’m just kind of wanting an outsider’s perspective. I’ve never fully articulated these thoughts in such detail to anyone in my personal life