I'm close to giving up on therapy

[NeuroBeautiful]

In the summer of 2012, when I first started being active here, I decide to go to therapy. I was 18 years old and had vague recollections of playing with play dough at a therapy outpatient clinic and coloring pictures of cats at school under the "school counselor" (quotes because I highly doubt she was at all certified)

It is already 2021. I have been through a dozen or more therapists. I finally started trauma specialized therapy in 2019 but I honestly don't feel like I'm benefiting. I am starting to get skeptical about intern therapists just saying "yeah, that makes sense. Your feeling are valid". That doesn't feel like therapy.

I switched to a non intern who specializes in EMDR and trauma and eating disorders. I won't try EMDR any time soon but I thought specialising in trauma would be good for me.

For the record, she is sweet and understanding and I feel like I can actually have a conversation with her and not feel like I'm talking to a wall who just nods and says they feel x emotions also because it is normal. And I don't have to be like listen, don't tell me you feel rage on a daily basis that's ridiculous and a flat out lie. Your headphone cord getting stuck in the door knob while you're "jammimg" is not an example of RAGE.

The therapist I have no isn't bad. We have been meeting weekly for about 3 months. She seems to want me to tell her the direction and "what works for me". She said she personalizes for each client. There are some clients who just want to vent and other clients who want more structure. She wants to know what I want.

I told her i have a fear with every therapist that thry wouldn't be able to help me and that I'm feeling it with her too. When I get too much of it in my hands, it makes me feel like the therapist is stepping away too much.

She told me to come up with some things I would like to work on. I came up so far with this

1. understanding and communicating healthy boundaries. I tend to have a hard time understanding where I end and the other person begins. I end up getting taken advantage of or in into emotional relationships with unhealthy people. This is something that continuously occurs. I keep getting involved in toxic situations and get retraumatized
2. This one is a little more abstract. When I think about healing trauma, I think of integrating the traumatic wounds in a way that it is more meaningful to my life rather than pulling me down. I want my pain to have a purpose. I want to understand my life from a zoomed out big picture lens and rework how I see and tell my life story.
3. Perhaps working on a book together would be helpful. I benefit from writing and processing. So maybe I need a kind of therapy that involves reflecting on my own and then sharing with the therapist once a week. Maybe we can alternate between meeting on zoom and just communicating by email. I don't know.


I suffer from depression, anxiety and cptsd. I however realize that it isn't just the disorders I need to overcome but rather, due to developmental trauma I'm pretty much an orphan and there are everyday things I need support and coaching like related to career or life goals that kind of just have to do with the fact that I don't have any parental support with figuring those things out. Ideally a parent would nurture a child's interests and support the individual they are growing up to be. But I never had that. So I have to do a lot of the nurturing myself or constantly reach out and feel like a bother. So things like making friends and making career choices are big overwhelming things and I know it can be for lots of folks but I have that extra layer of not knowing basic things or learning things slower that I should've learned as a child because the environment I grew up in was so deprived.

Like I don't drive and getting a permit that 16 years old get all the time is like a huge anxiety provoking thing. Driving is a nightmare and I am 27 so I'm not a teenager. It affects me a lot.

A therapist can validate my fears but that isn't going to help me learn to drive. It is a result of a traumatic upbringing but now there's this practical issue of: I need to learn to drive. Even moving to a city that isn't car centered will require me to drive at least a little.


Anyway, writing helps I guess I'm just worried that I'm getting older and not improving.


I didn't send my therapist the list I came up with. I am just wondering what healing trauma actually means. I think the somatic experiencing work confuses me and frustrates me. I like Parts Work....internal family system stuff. But it seems like I need two main things: to emotionally and conceptually understand things and to practically make changes in my life.

I think that venting has a place if it is meant for processing and conceptualizing and making sense of something.

I find that when I talk in therapy, I feel more confused and hopeless. I wonder if there's some kind of adult biblio therapy type of thing. I think that would be very helpful.

i think i need examples of people who came through the other side and are thriving.
I need to learn from someone sharing something vulnerable and authentic. Something that the therapist can't do but can bring me examples of.

[Rivière]

I'm really sorry you haven't yet received a response yet! I can only hope that my reply with be of at least some sort of use to you.

I have a client who's had therapists before and doesn't find them to be of any help. She said that talking with a stranger doesn't feel like it benefits her in any way. Not only that, whenever she's spoken with a therapist, they all seem too clinical. All of which are fair points. It's hard to find a mental health professional whom we click with really well, and instantly.

I think once we've been through a few counsellors/therapists, we tend to feel quite demotivated. We've shared the same stories over and over and it gets to a point where we just get tired of repeating ourselves. I've been in that sort of situation as well. I've been through a few counsellors and a couple were ok, some were not.

In terms of getting a driving permit, I'm 30 years old and I still don't drive. I absolutely refuse to. My mum constantly tells me about how it took her 3 times to get her license and all the horror stories she told me. She tries to tell me them to help make me feel better, but she honestly just makes me more fearful. She forgets I have a genuine learning disability that makes it so much harder for me to drive. I physically can't tell the distance between things. It's even worse driving around in a 4-wheeled box. She doesn't get this concept. She doesn't realise how the thought of having to learn how to drive at 30+ causes me so much anxiety. I fully understand your concern. People don't realise that it can be even harder for someone older to start driving.

In terms of wanting an example of having therapy and coming out better for it, I don't know if my stories will help, but there are 3 main ones I have. 2 good, 1 bad.

I was 18 years old when I had my first counsellor. The place I went to focused on person-centred counselling. This is where the focus is primarily on the client and allowing them to talk however much they want, only prompting when things get quiet or the client gets stuck for words. Fortunately for me, I was someone who had a lot to say and I offloaded a lot of my problems instantly. I'd just come from an attempted suicide so there was already a lot to discuss. She never wrote anything down. She literally just sat and listened because this is really all I'd ever wanted. For somebody to just sit and listen to me talk about everything that has happened to me and feel like I have somebody who wants to listen to me. I was with her up until I was around 20 and then I finished because she felt I'd become a lot stronger and grown past all the issues I'd had. She felt I was no longer a danger to myself and that discussing my problems really helped me improve. It really did. So I never needed to go back.

When I reached 21 I split with my boyfriend and I really spiralled a lot. I started having bad negative thoughts and those of suicide. I feared a relapse and so went to the doctor as well as the counselling place I received counselling for last time. I requested my same counsellor, but was unable to have her so was placed with another. During this time, I was on a 6-month waiting list with another counselling service aimed at adults. When I went back with my first counselling service, I had a new counsellor. Honestly she was the best counsellor I'd ever had. She was funny... personable. She listened. She let me say whatever I wanted, judgement-free. I felt so much happier for seeing her and always looked forward to seeing her every week. I saw her for 2.5 years and in that time, I came from being this sad and upset person, to this empowered individual, all because she sat listening to me. She treated me like I was a human being, and a friend. It wasn't just me sat there talking about my life. She would sometimes chip in with her experiences, not to behave in the manner of, 'this is what happened to me and it's worse...' but to behave in a way that demonstrated relatability. I felt like I could relate to her and understand her, and in turn, knowing her personal experiences made me feel like I was understood.

The third counsellor I saw at the adult counselling service was completely different. The service was ok, but they seemed to be focused more on numbers and how fast they can get people in. It felt very 'time is money' sort of thing. She'd sit there with a notebook writing everything down that I'd said. I wasn't used to that, given the other service never having done that. I felt like I wasn't properly being listened to. And any smile or nervous laughter I'd made was taken improperly. When I discussed my childhood, she would just comment how bad my mother was and how she wasn't very good... despite what happened to be as a child being no fault of my mother's at all. I think because I'd had such a good counsellor in the other service, my expectations were extremely high. So coming into another service and having this completely different approach... it really affected how I thought and felt about counselling.

Overall, my experiences of counselling were good, but I think having a counsellor/therapist who goes beyond just qualifications is important. It matters what their own personal life has been like. It provides a level of relatability and understanding. The first counselling service, they were all volunteers. They counselled me because they wanted to be there. The second did so because they were paid to do so. There was this huge difference. It was felt immediately.

[NeuroBeautiful]

Hi Sarah,

Thank you so much for this reply and sharing your experiences. I read through all of it and can see the varied experiences. You should also know that though I didn't reply immediately, I thought about what you said and it helped me with the process of this update I'm about to share.

I wanted to say that after much struggle I've decided to stop seeing my current therapist. In addition, I've decided to start with a cbt therapist to address my depression and anxiety. I am putting directly working on my complex/developmental trauma with a trauma specialist aside for now because I cannot get access to any that are a good fit. I am on a 6 month waitlist for a trauma therapist and am hoping that doing cbt before going back into trauma work eould be helpful.

On that note, this thread may be closed!

[NeuroBeautiful]

Well this thread hasn't been closed for nearly a month and I was hoping it would be by now and that I won't look back with the opportunity I has but nope. I'm back to not having a therapist. I am on a 6 month waitlist for a trauma specialist but I font know how much longer I can hold on for.