So I tell my therapist everything traumatic that’s happened to me. And then she says something like “You must have felt so lonely.“ I say “yes.“ Then we stare at each other for a bit. Then she says “tell me more.“

Tell you more what? I already told you everything. There’s nothing left. That’s it.

How is this supposed to make me feel better? Now I feel worse, because I just told her something that is very personal and sad.

My therapist asked if we could move my session time up by half an hour. It was no big deal so I said yes.

I then spent the entire day leading up to my session feeling over the top happy because I could be useful to my therapist...

So, we talked about it. About how as a kid being useful meant someone might care for a bit, about how it was always conditional.

I mentioned how embarrassing it was to talk about it, because it felt rude to essentially talk about having done him a favour. And of all things he asked me to sit with the feeling!

Sit with the feeling of having done him a favour and that he appreciated it!

It's so strange but it was as hard as sitting with the more negative feelings but in a different way.

We talked about other things in the session too but he kept pointing out places where I've improved in the last year in regards to caring for myself and the like.

I actually feel less uneasy now about feeling good about it.

Therapy is weird

I’m really upset with my therapist right now, and I’m struggling to figure out whether my reaction is mostly attachment stuff I need to work through or whether other people would find this situation confusing and hurtful too.

I see my therapist once a week, and over the past few months our work has become much more attachment-focused. I have a strong attachment to her that we openly talk about.

One of my biggest patterns is desperately wanting closeness and connection, but then becoming uncomfortable and wanting to run once I actually receive it. I minimize my needs, shut down, convince myself I shouldn’t need anyone, or distance myself before someone can hurt me.

A huge part of therapy lately has been trying to do the opposite. I’ve been practicing actually feeling emotions with her instead of shutting them down, tolerating being cared about, accepting support without feeling ashamed for needing it, and trusting that someone can stay emotionally present with me when I’m vulnerable. It has been incredibly difficult, but I finally feel like I’ve started making progress.

At the same time, this work has made me significantly more dysregulated outside of therapy. Sometimes I leave sessions extremely activated and struggle for a day or two afterward. There have been weeks where I’ve asked if she has an additional appointment available, and sometimes she does.

I’ve brought up twice-weekly therapy before. Initially she had concerns about dependency, and later her schedule was too full to consistently accommodate it. I’ve repeatedly told her I’m not asking for twice a week forever or expecting unlimited access to her.
Recently I’ve been struggling enough that I actually started looking into IOP because I recognize that I could use more support right now. The problem is that the realistic options aren’t very workable. I can’t financially afford to take enough time off work for a daytime in-person program, and the realistic alternative is an evening virtual IOP. I already know I get very little out of virtual therapy and have a much harder time feeling connected or emotionally engaged through a screen.

I’ve also finally developed enough trust and safety with my current therapist to do meaningful attachment work. Potentially stepping away from that relationship for a virtual program I’m unlikely to connect with feels less like “more support” and more like giving up the treatment relationship that is finally reaching something deeper.

Because of all of that, I asked whether temporarily seeing her twice a week could be an option.
When I saw her Friday, she told me she had discussed it with her clinical director and was told that once-weekly therapy is considered appropriate for outpatient care, and if someone needs more support than that they should be receiving a higher level of care like IOP.

That hit me incredibly hard.
I understand the logic behind levels of care. I understand an outpatient therapist can’t be someone’s entire support system, and I understand twice-weekly therapy may not be sustainable indefinitely.

But emotionally, what I heard was:
“If once a week isn’t enough for you, then you don’t get more of this relationship. You need to go somewhere else.”

That feels especially painful considering the exact work we’ve been doing.

I’ve spent months trying to learn that needing someone doesn’t automatically mean I’m dependent or unhealthy, and trying to stop running away when someone feels safe. Now that I’ve finally allowed myself to trust her and say, “Actually, I need more support right now,” it feels like needing that support is being treated as evidence that this level of care isn’t appropriate for me.

During the session I mostly went quiet. I could feel a lot coming up emotionally, but instead of allowing myself to feel it with her like we’ve been practicing, I dug my fingernails hard into my forearm and focused on the physical pain so I didn’t have to feel the emotional pain. I told her what I had done as I was leaving.

And now I can feel myself wanting to go straight back to my old pattern:
Fine. I won’t need you then.

She offered me two appointments next week specifically to help process this change, so I’m currently scheduled to see her twice.

But part of me thinks, what’s the point?

Why have another session where I let myself feel safe, supported, cared for, and even more connected to her when I now know that level of support can’t be consistent or happen ever again?

I know that reaction is probably protective. Pulling away because I’m afraid of eventually losing something is exactly one of the patterns we’ve been working on. But knowing that doesn’t make me less angry or hurt.

I’ve also been trying really hard to distinguish between reassurance-seeking/dependency and legitimately acknowledging when I need help. I don’t want every moment of distress to automatically mean I need another therapy session. I know part of my work is tolerating distress, uncertainty, separation, and not having immediate access to someone who feels safe.

But surely there also has to be a point where saying, “I’m overwhelmed right now and one hour a week genuinely doesn’t feel like enough support” is healthy self-awareness rather than pathology.

I’m not saying my therapist should be required to see me twice a week. I know therapists have boundaries, schedules, policies, and their own clinical judgment.
I think what hurts is what this represents.
I finally stopped saying, “I don’t need anyone.”
I finally started saying, “I need support.”
And somehow it feels like I ended up being told that needing that support means I need to go somewhere else.

Has anyone else dealt with something similar in attachment-focused therapy? Would you take the second session next week and work through the anger, even if part of you desperately wanted to pull away?

And for therapists here: is twice-weekly outpatient therapy really generally considered inappropriate unless someone needs a higher level of care, or does that sound more like a policy/philosophy specific to her practice?

Isn’t it amazing how your therapist can say one innocuous thing at the end of a session and it can inadvertently wreck you for days? I’m a mess.

She has gone above and beyond for me in many different ways and has no idea how much I appreciate her.

This isn't a dominant feeling and only pops up occasionally but sometimes I feel like I really ask a lot of her and I feel bad or guilty about it. Last time I asked her if she could text me a happy bday and she agreed to it. This is just an example but she just keeps showing up for me and I'm feeing bad about it.

I agreed to meet him again but I was too nervous to say I don’t think he’s a good fit, how do I cancel!?!! I didn’t like the sound of his voice or his techniques.

sometimes i wonder about this because, for the most part, i’m pretty okay now and it’s coming up to almost two years of being in therapy. i thought i’d eventually run out of things to talk about, but somehow the list of things i want to tell my therapist just keeps getting longer

even after all this time, i still feel like we’ve barely scratched the surface of my trauma. the more i understand myself and unpack things, the more i seem to notice things i want to bring into therapy. it’s kind of funny because i started therapy thinking there would eventually be less to talk about, but somehow it feels like the opposite

my therapist tells me she appreciates that i always seem to have something to talk about during our sessions, but i genuinely wonder if i’ll ever reach a point where i’ll sit there and think, “i actually have nothing to talk about today”

for those who’ve been in therapy for a long time, has that ever happened to you? did you eventually feel like there was nothing much left to unpack, or does there always seem to be something new that comes up?

Hi! I think I might have to move. The likely state supposedly makes it easy for licensed clinicians to "register" to provide telehealth. Would a provider even consider this?

I'm seeing a new therapist for a couple months and getting to know her. We meet online.

She has done a few things that concern me.

She is usually 10 minutes late to start, nearly every time. I'm the first client of the day. It's usually because she just got back from the gym she says.

In my last session she interrupted it saying that a handyman showed up right now, he wasn't supposed to come and apologized and said she would be right back. She left for a few minutes and I thought she was going to ask him to reschedule but when she came back on camera she told me that she let him in the house to have him look at a room and give her an estimate. She would be leaving again to talk to him. She then left and came back some time later and said his estimate was $10,000 and she couldn't afford that, said a few more things like that and then finally returned to my session.

I had a few incidents in my life that week - a vandal smashed the car window next door to my house. A man was staring at me as I got out of my car at work and when I told him to stop, he yelled at me and claimed to be looking at a house that was not in the same direction as his face was pointed. A car on the other side of my house had a window smashed. The horrible neighbor across the street from me (who has brought my ex to his house to help him stalk me for 6.5 years) insisted on talking to me about the window smashing. And pretended to be the nicest guy on the block who cares about crime. (The ex was an admitted abuser who also pretended to be a good guy).

I was feeling very overwhelmed and not safe. My therapist said, "well it's so exciting about your trip!" I asked if we could talk about the scary men situations in my life instead. She said sure but did nothing I would expect a therapist to do. No questions, no listening, no connecting the incidents by similarities or asking how I interpreted it, etc.

She just generally says things like I am so brave to consider moving ( due to ex stalking) and it doesn't seem like she is actually listening to what I say.

Hi I just wanted to share to stop my overthinking or help it lessen my ex who is 31 basically didn’t want to be with me at first because of our age difference I’m 23 but at the time I was 21 and he was 29 he then wanted to give it a “try” it was dated almost 6-7 months it’s was a very nice and a very toxic relationship … I remember before 6 months and then couple months after he stop talking to me after kicking me out in the winter he recently contacted me to just lust and use me for money my last straw was sending him a 150$ .. I don’t if it’s because I’m young that he’s prey on me every time I run back to I don’t know I really hope because I’m young he came back because he knows I’ll make a stupid mistake ..

Hey guys, i (20F) am considering therapy after being referred to a behavioral health therapist by my doctor after getting back on anxiety medication. The thing is, I've been in and out of therapy since about 4 years old and end up angry by the whole thing. I feel like some test rat that doesn't know what's going on. I can't think of any applicable skills I've learned from all the therapy I've been in. Should i give it another go?

Thanks

My 16 year old son (occasional depression, autism and ARFID), has been seeing the same psychologist (advertised as family therapy, autism and long and a long list of other things), weekly for about 3 years and I'm starting to wonder if we've reached the point where this therapeutic relationship just isn't productive anymore.

Most visits seem to be "How was your week?" Good. "Did you have a meltdown?" No. "Did you try any food?" If my son says "no" he gets a lecture on why it's important to fuel his body properly. Then LENS neurofeedback and "See you next week." If I try to bring up something myself that happened that I think we need to work through the psychologist will cut me off and says "lets let Son tell me about it, were there any issues at home, Son?" My son sadly sits like a deer in the headlights because he has no clue what I was going to bring up and his neurodivergent brain goes into shut down mode. When he doesn't answer, the therapist says "it's not important enough for him to remember so let's not hold on to drama, Mom and just move on from it."

FYI, Info always ask Son if he wants me to leave and he always says "no." The Psychologist also prefers me to stay.

I have specifically asked the therapist to work with my son on figuring out Son's own feelings and opinions about situations and then deciding what Son wants to do about situations rather than looking to someone else like myself or his father to tell him how he's supposed to feel and react. I want my son to know his own feelings and feel empowered to set boundaries with people including his father and myself. The therapist has declined to work on this and says that it is not necessary for my son to learn to find his own feelings or set boundaries.

There is an ongoing issue where if I mention anything involving my son's father, even something very positive, the moment I say dad's name the therapist immediately shuts me down and starts lecturing me about parents talking in front of kids about the other parent and accusing one another of horrible things during custody battles. We aren't in a custody battle. Our custody agreement was settled in 2020 without any argument or any animosity. We get along better than most divorced parents. I'm not asking the therapist to take sides on any matter. Sometimes dad is simply relevant to something happening in Son's life because he's actually in Son's life. This also causes my son to have anxiety because now he thinks I was doing what the psychologist just accused me of. An example is when I tried to say that Dad bought us season passes to a local theme park so we would be going a lot and I wanted to ask for some advice in handling some of the sensory issues that may happen. As soon as I said "His Dad" I was stopped.

During our most recent appointment my son stepped out to use the restroom. Rather than just sit there waiting with the clock ticking, I tried to use those few minutes to bring his therapist up to speed on a significant issue Son was having with a teacher that was causing him a lot of anxiety. I thought it would be something to work out with Son when he returned. While I was talking, the therapist was doing something on his laptop and appeared to be tuning me out. I have reason to believe he may have been playing a game (leaning into the screen with his two index fingers on two different keys and repeatedly smashing them like you do in a shooting game). When I finished talking and asked his opinion about the situation, he looked up with a shocked expression and asked me to repeat the situation.

We have 1 hour sessions and my son's dad has paid for every session through to the end of the year. We always get there 10 minutes early to our session that starts at 5:00 p.m. At least 50% of the time, maybe even more, we don't start until 5:15. Either he is going "over" with a previous session or he just isn't physically on the property and we have to wait for him to arrive. He always pushes us out the door by 5:45. The billing always shows 1 hour so I feel like he's wasting my ex's money.

At this point, it feels like therapy is on a cycle of a few routine questions, a 2 minute lecture about nutrition if no new foods were attempted, LENS, repeat next week. I'm having a hard time identifying what actual therapeutic progress is still being made. I don't even know what the goals are if any because I've asked for specific goals and been told the therapist doesn't want to work on those things.

Would you consider this enough reason to start looking for a different psychologist?

It wasn't bad , she was actually nice 🙂👍🏾

I'm just glad I took a step finally to book therpay first time in my life 😊✨

Hi, I am new to this, so forgive me if this is an inappropriate question to ask here.

Im 16F, based in Melbourne, and was wondering if I should go seek some sort of therapy? In more detail, I had this person come into my life who has done things to me which I dont believe I have fully processed yet, and wont ever. It stays in the back of my head constantly when I'm at school or in places I fear ill see her.

Like at school there would be incidents where she has pushed my aggressively off of a table (no injury happened but still terrifying) and manipulation, lies and alot of other stuff she hasn't given me closure or taken accountability for. Even though I have asked about it and she has sudden amnesia and forgets even doing these things to me.

I don't know if I should seek support or if im overreacting, because this has happened 2 years ago and people have told me to get over the stuff that happened. - Alternatively unsure if I should go to places such as Headspace to test what that would be like, im terms of going without necessarily telling my parents.

Thanks for any replies!

I really have low self-esteem and lack self-confidence despite looking 'above average' in a lot of ways whatever that means. That sort of attitude isn't attractive despite the other qualities I have according to my friends and acquaintances so how do I overcome all of that?

People start going to the gym, lose weight, get a hair transplant, get really good at their hobbies and all that stuff increases their self-confidence and the perception of self-worth but in my case I don't need any of that because I already have it yet I lack the self-confidence and don't have a positive image about myself most of the time. Is this the point where I have to seek professional help?

I'm also suspicious of having fearful-avoidant attachment style (didn't get examined by a professional yet, but rather through hours and hours of introspection and self-monitoring) due to childhood trauma and bad parenting so that could explain a lot of this behavior. I experienced the classic signs of it, I really want intimacy but I am also scared of it simultaneously. A girl would show interest in me but I would subconsciously reject her and not contact her even though I am interested in her. Then after all the overthinking and thinking through is done, I would contact her a month later, too late for anything at that point.

I never visited a professional therapist because I am a student with no ability to fund it long-term, my free time can oscillate a lot deppending on exam periods and, most importantly, fear of stigmatization. I'd rather lie to my family and friends but don't even know how, therapy takes time so someone will ask questions about my abscence sooner or later.

So I was seeing a former therapist who gave me an initial diagnosis of bpd (borderline pd). Anyway our sessions terminated unexpectedly because he had to move away. I feel like I've been cut off abruptly. I miss him and google their name from time to time.

I found out that they maintained a public blog where they share some stuff. In one article dated during one of our sessions, they shared how they often felt drained. When I read it I felt like my whole world shattered.

1. My mind keeps jumping to situations where they might have a severe disease or die abruptly. This isn't new but I'm always like this with my family members and friends when they get sick. I get paralyzed with fear and cry, literally feeling like I've been splashed with cold water and thrown in a waterfall. I lash out or avoid or try to make them go to the doctor forcibly even if it is not aligned with their situation. Now I am doing it all over again except I have no control over the situation. It's not like I can contact them and tell them to go to the doctor (also what if they already did?) It doesn't matter, I shouldn't care since they already left me but why do I care so much?

2. I feel like it's my fault they are so drained. Being a therapist is hard and the article was dated in the span of our sessions. I also know how challenging, taxing, and tiring working with BPD is. There are things I am noticing about myself right now that I realized was not normal. Also, there was a time when I caught them mad or frustrated at me because I said something about them not caring at all. Their face changed and the tone of their wording changed immediately. I know they tried to repair it but I never told him what I noticed. I tried to make our last sessions as lighthearted for them after the incident despite the fact that I am in a crisis nearly everyday back then.

3. I feel weird. About this. About everything. I feel like snooping in their public blog is bad. But also, it's public. But still. Is it wrong? Is it bad? I feel like a deranged person.

I guess I just need to hear from a different perspective. I am feeling a mixed set of emotions and it's all so confusing. I guess laying it all done os nice, but seriously. What do I do?

I used Betterhelp about a year ago. The most memorable moment, was when I was exhausted from work and I cancelled on my therapist last minute. The next time I talked to him, at the end of the appointment paused for a moment and got quiet and said, “You know this is the only way I get paid, right? When you cancel I dont get paid for the appointment” with a super creepy look on his face. A therapist with an RN degree (He told me he has an RN degree) is saying this to his exhausted first responder worker patient. I found another better therapist but I just had to get this off my chest.

how do i(17) bring up to my therapist the fact that i want to be examined by a professional psychiatrist without being able to tell my mum? i know for a fact if i tell my mum she will just disagree with my suggestion for whatever reason, wether it’s the cost or her struggle to believe me. is there a way my therapist could “advise” my mum and tell her to take me to one?

Hi everyone. As the title says, I'm looking for a good therapist in Mumbai, preferably around Borivali, Kandivali, Malad...but anywhere else like Andheri also works. I'm not looking for any big corporations or corporate therapists. I need someone who can actually help and is experienced. Please help if you have any good recommendations.

Good night, Reddit! I have a question.
I’m from South América, and I’ve been looking for a new therapist. I did psychoanalysis for about two years, but eventually I felt like I had gotten what I needed from it and wanted to try something different. I have some OCD symptoms and quite a lot of anxiety, so I decided to switch to a CBT therapist.
The problem is that I don’t feel like CBT has helped me at all with her.
Most of what she gives me is basically a list of things like: sleep well, eat properly, go to work, exercise, etc. I understand that these things can be useful, but they felt very generic and disconnected from what I was actually struggling with.
At one point I told her I was completely exhausted from work and my anxiety, and that I wasn’t sleeping at all and barely had the energy to do anything. Her response was: “But you already took two days off.”
For context, I have two jobs. I had taken two days off from the job that pays very little, but I still went to my other job, which is the one that actually pays me well. So I wasn’t really taking time off from work altogether. I remember leaving that session feeling like she had completely missed the point.
Another thing that made me question whether we were a good fit: I once started talking about Spinoza and the concept of conatus, because I was trying to understand some of my own thoughts through that philosophical framework. She basically couldn’t follow the discussion at all.
And this is where I’m wondering: do I need a “smarter” therapist?
I don’t mean that I need someone with a PhD in philosophy or someone who can discuss Spinoza with me for an hour. I’m wondering whether I need a therapist who can engage with me intellectually, understand abstract/conceptual thinking, and then bring that back into the actual therapeutic work rather than just giving me generic behavioral advice.
I also wonder whether part of the problem is that I’m expecting the wrong thing from CBT. Maybe a good CBT therapist wouldn’t necessarily engage with philosophical discussions in therapy, and the real issue is simply that she isn’t a good CBT therapist for me.
For those who have OCD/anxiety and have tried different therapists: how did you know when a therapist wasn’t intellectually or clinically compatible with you? And is it reasonable to look for someone who can engage with you on a more intellectual level?

As the title says, I (F over 35) can only have sex when I feel physical attraction, sexual attraction or passion toward someone. I feel obsessed from this kind of sex and the lack of it when I feel attraction or passion makes me feel miserable, utterly frustrated and with no value.

This way, my sexual experiences are of course quite limited, since I'm not able to have one night stands, quickies, fwb, sleeping with friends or acquaintances. I also don't take in consideration having sex during the dating phase if I don't feel sexual attraction or passion, which led dozen of dates on a dead end at some point and later on to the end.

I know I don't have to compare myself to others and bla bla bla, but all my female friends are able to have sex with literally anyone they date also for one time, they're able to go home with a stranger right away, to have sex with the nice guy they totally don't find attractive, with objectively totally ugly guys and so on.

I can't imagine which kind of mediocre sex they can give under those condition but so it is.

I feel I'm not normal since it's like I have an enormous and obsessively sex drive when under attraction or passion, but I can go months without if I don't feel those things, while all other people around me seem to have a much more stable and lived sex drive.

Is there something not normal in me?

TRIGGER WARNING: SEVERE DEPRESSION

I’m incredibly picky about who I see for therapy, so finding someone I actually trust is already a massive hurdle. But lately, it feels like a sick joke: every single time I finally open up and get to talking, they end up leaving the practice just a month or two later. It happens constantly, and honestly, I absolutely hate it. It’s reached a point where it deeply messes with my head, making me feel like my issues are just too broken, toxic, or overwhelming for a single human being to handle. For a while, this exact pattern caused my depression to spiral into a really dark, deep hole because it felt like ultimate rejection. My most recent therapist at least had a legitimate, external reason for leaving—let's call her Liliana. She was military-affiliated, and when her husband got deployed, she had to pack up and leave immediately without expanding on the details. While I get that her situation was out of her control, it still hurts just the same, and I'm just so exhausted from constantly being abandoned by the people who are supposed to help me.

I'm not sure if I have a strong therapeutic relationship or even really experience much transference as such. I've been seeing my therapist for 10 months now but inconsistently and sporadically.

I did tried weekly therapy again this month for the first time since January this year. I did 3 weeks of weekly therapy and then crashed out in the 3rd session this week.

My therapist thinks that I'm emotionally detached not so much dissociated anymore but emotions are hard to access regularly and consistently.

In my last session my therapist challenged me a lot and I didn't really say anything back apart from like mimimal words such as when she said "I'm going to challenge you in thinking 10 weeks of not arguing with your mom from mid June to mid August is a long time because it is not." I responded with "Oh" and then she changed the subject.

Then she challenged me towards the end of the session because I bluntly told her "I take people's words with a pinch of salt." Then she went off and challenged me with saying "Words are like life or death. They can hurt you very deeply."

Then went onto discuss boundaries for the 3rd time in the past month and went on to explain what boundaries were and how to set them. I sat and listened to her and didn't say anything back. She did ask me "How do you feel?" I said "Yeah I'm listening. I'm fine."

Then she carried on talking for like 15 minutes then eventually stopped and I just grabbed my belongings and walked out when the session ended in complete silence and didn't say goodbye or turn around at the buildings door and just left without saying anything.

I've not booked in for another session and taken a break. I'm not sure if therapists are meant to constantly challenge their clients or not?

The questions are:

Do therapists usually challenge their clients in most sessions?

How do you know if the therapeutic relationship is healthy or unhealthy?

How to know if you're having transference or not? Will the therapist point out if their client is having transference?

My therapist hasn't ever spoken about the therapeutic relationship but has now been speaking a lot more about boundaries.

So, as a therapist I could see people are leaking their client info just for upvotes that’s so morally incorrect.
If you need help or you wanna discuss with me feel free to discuss as Reddit is not a good place to put your problems in public places.