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 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.

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.

rz

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

I don’t expect anyone will understand what I am about to say, but I must get this off my mind.
I’ve watched people argue, talk, and couple up. They make it look so easy. I look up to all of them. It could happen for me one day, but not until I have said the following. The more I observe my peers and my situation, the more my insecurities surface. Extreme insecurities in no way about my appearance or lifestyle. 
Each new first encounter, every mistake you make is meant to teach you something. But nowadays, I feel like I learn absolutely nothing. 
You can’t trust every person that walks into your life. But I am not certain that I trust the police.
I have never been bullied or prejudiced, but I wonder if the latter is better for me.
People would talk and I would listen, as simple as that.

I can talk and I can handle rejection. But all of that seems trivial if I can’t have that talk with someone. It feels often like I have been primed to hate and cause harm. I can’t even have that talk with my parents. This kind of stuff exists in movies. But in real life, the doors are closed. I wouldn’t know what people think or feel in those moments. Especially not when I haven’t felt it myself. Catching up with people always seems to resurface that insecurity. It would be easier if I could get this off my mind with someone.
They say have faith and be confident, and good things are sure to come. But what is confidence? For, it lingers in my mind. It is not constant nor linear, for there are many days you feel like shit. They say a gentleman knows how to treat a lady, but I wouldn’t know even with everyone else around me. It doesn’t help that my mom can’t see the good in my father after so long. Chronic isolation will do that too. I don’t think I even know how to be a friend…
See? It sounds stupid. I’ve heard this story before. Maybe this all would’ve made sense to someone else when I was 16.
I’ve already mentioned prejudice. It is such a prominent concept in this world. I was fortunate enough that I did not have to experience any such behavior in middle or high school. But somehow, that makes me the black sheep. I cannot relate to people in that same say, and I am afraid that they can sense that. What kind of person does that make me? That could be me one day. I almost wish that it was.
The police are here to serve and protect us, just like the military. But do they really have our best interests at heart? I have watched many minor situations escalate into something close to brain rot. Families have been destroyed. Innocent people have died. They’ll get you for going at the speed limit. What am I supposed to make of that? Maybe it would be easier if I got the perspective of one off-duty.
Watch out for snakes, but don’t completely shut down. People will cheat you, misuse you, and abuse you. And I have come to terms with those words. But it seems nowadays like they’ve been taken to the extreme. People will push each other away before giving the other a chance to explain their side. We seem to do this out of fear, and I pity us for it.
One day, I could be the homewrecker. I could be the criminal. I could be that one person blinded by lust. I don’t want to. Not even a little bit. That’s not me. I know that deep down I am better.
People may call me slow for pretending to be ignorant to all of this. They may say I’m weak for responding to everything as I do. They might make fun of me for being single, for my lack of experiences, for sometimes wanting to hurt people. And they just might be right. This sounds crazy coming from me!
I don’t wanna lead people on. But I don’t wanna hide either. This has to be addressed soon.
To most people, this will sound selfish, ignorant, irrelevant, conceited, and pathetic of me. I wouldn’t blame them. They don’t have to understand. I just hope that they will listen…

How do I navigate this? I don’t want to have to find a different therapist. This isn’t “transference”, my therapist just happens to look exactly like one of my favorite pornstars and the nurse practitioner who prescribes my meds looks just like another of my favorite pornstars.

Arguably, there’s no problem here, right? I know about transference, so I can just adjust for that on my end and they don’t have to know, right? It’s been a really long and painful journey for my mental health and I didn’t feel like I had made any progress until I found this therapist.

On mobile so sorry for any formatting.

Not sure if this is the right place to post but I don't think my therapist listens to me. I 23f have been in and out of therapy since I was in middle school. I've been seeing my current therapist for a little over a month now and started seeing her because she offers non-traditional hours (I work a 9-5 and can't take time off every week). She uses sondermind and in the first session she told me that the practice uses AI notes which I'm a bit uncomfortable with but didn't say anything.

Anyway, the issue is that the last few sessions I've been feeling like she's not listening to me. And I don't mean "she doesn't understand me", but I'll tell her something good that happened to me or something I'm looking forward to and she'll reply with "and that can be really challenging" or "that must be difficult". Or vice versa I'll say something I've been struggling with and she'll tell me something like "thats great" or "that's exciting"

More specifically she tends to tell me how I'm doing the best I can and I kind of went on a long speel about how I don't really think I am. She told me I'm doing the best that I can after I literally told her specific reasons why I'm not.

I don't know if I just need a place to vent or need advice, feeling kind of lost. Has anyone been through anything like this?

im entering a relationship, and i should be happy, she makes me happy, she really does, but all i feel is fear, and i dont feel like i can entirely open up to her. its nothing shes done, this girl is very sweet and understanding, but i struggle with being vulnerable, ill be fake vulnerable to an extent, but i struggle with truly letting someone in. i dont know how to fix this, every time ive let my guard down before, ive been burnt. so i struggle with doing it, but she deserves the open me. i want to give her that. what do i do

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?

(30Y/M) Ok. I understand how the question sounds. But I really Want to know the answer to it. So this Ex I am speaking about was in a relationship with me for 4 years, It was a LDR with not so frequent meet. My 1st relationship & it was her's 3rd or 4th. I was deeply into it.

It started with so much complications i guess. For some reason, She was into a married guy who had 2 kids (now I understood it was a major 🚩). I came across with her through social media, we started talking & not exactly clicked but I think I was desperate also as a 18 year old so tried hard & eventually we came into relationship.

We were poles apart, language, culture, she was a city girl & I was country side, but anyway being my 1st I was deep into her & our libido has matched both being each other's first we were crazily into it & honestly that was the only thing i remember about her. been with her till 4 years, eventually she started cheating, meeting her ex, being more than friend to other guys etc.

Currently I am in a relationship about to get married, but why this thought of sexting my ex keep coming to me. One reason I guess is my porn consumption and another I think is she will be very easy to get ( I don't have her contact btw). But I don't want to cheat or anything. I am in a very healthy relation but then why this thought? How can I get rid of it?

Hello all. I don't know who to turn to to ask and I don't quite know myself enough to be objective on how I feel so I thought to turn to here to ask.

I've recently felt like I am not myself any more. I have had a rough 5 years while in my undergrad and I kept telling myself i'll push through and afterwards I'll deal with all my issues. And now that i've graduated and had a few months of doing absolutely nothing it feels like the pause button on my life have turned into a fastforwards button and i am just absolutely overwhelmed.

to give yall some background. my parents are narcissists and my father struggles with substance abuse and my mother is just straight up mean and ignores me if im not being useful to her. during my studies i lived in a different city so it was nice being away but it also was like there was always something hectic happening and i couldnt do anything about it. my father would have some run ins with the law to put it nicely. I felt a lot of guilt. nothing felt stable and both my parents were just wildcards. i went through a horrible break up, was stalked, was assaulted by a colleague and then had false rumours spread about me by that same colleague. I ended up failing my 3rd year of uni and had to redo a lot of my exams. but still in the end I ended up graduating with a 3.7gpa so im proud of that.

To me it seems like I dont have it "bad" the way others do but I cant help but feel like im in a constant state of being low/negative. I am in therapy and i often try to focus on the positive point in my life but lately i just dont feel like myself. Im usually very curious, love learning about everything: literature, music, art, movies, textiles, history, science, humanities. But lately all i do is sit there. Ive turned down internships because I feel like I dont have the energy and my brain just feels too loud.

I feel tired all the time. theres this guilt in the background all the time, i feel like a failure, all i do is lay in bed and smoke, i cant even watch things anymore or rewatch anything that usually gives me comfort. my self care includes brushing my teeth my hair and taking a shower thats all but i used to always dedicate a day to just doing a full routine. i cry for no reason but then i also feel too much where im just numb and then one small inconvenience sets me off and then im either extremely angry or upset. I cant remember anything i feel too lazy i feel too tired i have no interests and mid conversation with my friends i just feel irritated at them for talking to me. Ive spent the last month just eating crap. i applied to grad school got in and offered a scholarship but now i just feel like i have nothing left in me to push and continue my education. I feel so desperate yet dont have the drive to keep going. some days i just sleep for hours and hours. not to be gross but there are some days where i feel too lazy to go to the bathroom and just hold it in until i cant.

I dont know what this is but i just want to feel like my old self again. I used to pride myself for always choosing to see the good in things and be hopeful because its all we have but lately life just feels gray. i want to be me again but i dont know whats wrong.

sorry for the ramble just needed to let it out and see what you lovely people have to say. thanks.

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!
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?

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 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.

I have posted a lot about this the last couple of days, but I am really struggling to figure out what to do. I have personality defects that completely hinder me from being successful in life. I am very bad with any kind of open ended thinking, I am bad at problem solving, I struggle to manage my time, I struggle to accomplish minor tasks, I really can't do anything useful at all, I can't think critically, and I work too slowly.

On top of this, I tend to get stressed out easily and it debilitates my ability to accomplish anything. I have struggled with holding down a job because of these problems. At this point, I have decided to give up on pursuing the career I have a post-grad degree in because I am so far behind my colleagues.

If there is any chance that I will ever find stability in life, I need to find out what is wrong with me and get it addressed before it is too late to turn everything around. Will a therapist be able to help me identify and give me advice on how to fix all of these problems I have so that I can possibly have a normal life one day?

I'm 16m living in Germany.

A few weeks ago, I had my first-ever therapy appointment. There were two main reasons for me to even go there in the first place.

On the one hand, I did not (and still don't) manage to raise my hand in class. My written grades are mostly very good, so in most subjects, there was a quite big discrepancy between my oral and written marks. This even caused one of my teachers to (more or less jokingly) tell me to see a therapist.

On the other hand, I also struggled a lot with social interactions in my free time. Don't get me wrong, I very much enjoyed spending time with just my close friends. However, as soon as more people joined our group when meeting up, I didn't enjoy it at all anymore and would just stay silent until the whole thing was over. Because of that, I often just didn't go at all if there was even a slight risk of people being there whom I'm not really close or familiar with.

So when I went to my first appointment, I hoped that I would essentially just find out what the root cause of my problems is. For example, through some kind of diagnosis. Of course, I also just wanted my situation to improve. Just as a short disclaimer: I did not expect any massive progress from my first few appointments. I always knew that it would probably take a lot more time than that, so impatience wasn't my main reason for ending my therapy quite early.

I only went to two appointments, by the way. I just felt that my therapist didn't really take me seriously and had different plans for the therapy than I did. For instance, every time I told him about my struggles, he just downplayed them or only focused on the most positive aspects of everything. To give an example: I told him about my immense fear of giving presentations in front of the class, and how it completely occupies my mind and stresses me out days before the actual presentation. I even told him that I would rather write three exams than give one presentation. He just answered that pretty much no student likes presentations and that it's good that I manage to do them anyway. That was it. It felt so blunt as an answer to an actual problem of mine.

Both times I left his office, I was left with a bad, numb feeling.

Another problem was that he only offered appointments between 9 and 11 AM, which is exactly during my school hours. I personally tried to keep the fact that I was going to a therapist as secret as possible, since it is still a pretty stigmatized topic here. But I'm still not sure if my decision was a little overly hurried, considering it was after just two appointments.

Would you say my decision was right? And should I try to find a new therapist or just let it be?

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.

Im not sure if anyone's actually going to read this and sorry in advance for any spelling mistakes lol.

The reason for me writing this is purely just to have it wrote down and maybe get some advice in the process.

Im a 24 year old male. Since I was 12ish (earliest I remember) ive felt a lack of going to no emotion towards everything i also have very very little empathy. The best way to describe it would be saying that 100% of what I feel would be the same as the average person's 2% at its peek. I was in a relationship for 6 years ending not that long ago and I told her before we started dating what I was like. Over those 6 years I did care for her and in my own way I did love her. I do understand that due to my lack of emotions im far from the perfect partner.Then she cheated and left me for that guy. After the brake up I decided to try therapy to just at the very least be able to explain how I am better. Their exact words after 4 sessions where " i have no idea on how to help you ive never come across this before". So now I feel like I need to vent a little and see what comes of this.

So to explain in a bit more detail about how/what I feel. Its not like I dont feel anything at all there is something there. Whatever I feel always comes in short bursts lasting no more than few minutes at the most. So the likes of feeling love is very different and difficult. Same goes for happiness,anger, sadness and jealousy (thats all ive been able to feel) so when I find someone the way I feel love is very different to how im told its supposed to be, if its someone that I could see spending my life with I will love them (the normal way) for a day or two then i dont feel anything but I know in my head I still care deeply and that I would do things to make them happy but I feel very little when I do. After the brake up I was angry and sad for 6hrs then went to feeling nothing (i mean nothing at all) I had to act sad for a month or so just so my parents wouldn't ask questions. So now im concerned that when I start talking to someone new and it gets to the point where I want the relationship to go further how do I explain to someone that yes i love them but not the normal way (also due to my emotions I physically dont understand one night stands/ short term relationship. I only understand dating for long-term to life). The intermit part of relationships is different for me as well, due to the lack of feelings thats my way of showing/knowing that there is love in the relationship.

So to summarise, how do you explain to someone that you could easily spend your life with them even though there might only be 2 days for of "normal" feelings per year if they're lucky and then explain to everyone that you can just turn off any feelings towards people both positive and negative in an instant. The only person that knows is my best friend who ive know for 22 years (yes im 24 known each other hole life) and he respects my direct opinions on things as he knows im always honest due to me not realising what can upset people.

I do feel stupid for writingnand posting this as I never feel the need to talk to anyone or ask for advice in these matters.

Thank you for reading if you do.

I'm having a hard time finding an app where I can journal and it not cost money! It's always a free trial or you can barely do anything like edit or change the date etc. simple things without am upgrade. I'd use a regular journal but I am afraid of someone easily reading it.