It's almost impossible to find a therapist that I can work with.  I had two that were really great.  One of them dropped me because of insurance and ther other because I graduated from college, I couldn't see her anymore. She was the absolute best.

So I found someone else. The reason I'm going is because I have serious problems with my family. I'm worried that my brother is mistreating my mom who is medically fragile, and I need support in case I have to call the police or protective services. 

I thought this one seemed alright, and the last session went off the rails. I am generally opposed to talking about the past. I have a lot of DV in my past, and my attitude is that I want to talk about the present and future. I've done EMDR and I've revisited these horrible incidents. She insists that we talk about them-in detail.  I had to fill out this 'trauma worksheet'.  It was terrible. I had to list everything in detail, she said 'like a police report.'  Well, there actually was a police report-more than one.  I didn't like it at all and told her I thought it was a waste of my time. The part that really made me mad was that for the past several years I've been trying to get out of the 'I'm a victim" narrative. At the end of me telling all of this, she says "You're a victim".  I really, really hate that. I find it so depressing and disempowering, and it's like reliving all of it all over again.  I've done EMDR and somatic therapies and find this other s*** to be useless. 

Worse yet, she starts going off on this tangent, saying that I'm 'neurodiverse'. She decides after hardly knowing me that I have ADHD-because she has it. She decides that the reason for my anxiety is not because my mom was really sick and almost died and that my brother probably is mentally abusing her-or worse, but if I take ADD meds 'the background noise in my head will go off'.  Obviously has no grasp on the nature of the issues. I wonder if someone who counsels about narcissism dynamics might help. I know there are therapists who do that. When I brought up "HSP" as in "highly sensitive person" she didn't even know what that was.....there are a lot of books about it and it's all over the internet. 

I actually took someone else's ADHD meds years back, just to see if it would help. Total. Disaster. I felt worse than ever, more distracted and hyper than I have ever been in my life.  From what I understand, if you *don't* have ADHD those meds will make you worse.  I really believe they get money for pushing certain diagnoses.  I know that when I screened for ketamine treatment, all the sudden, with no prompting whatsoever, he started to say that he thought I had ADHD.  I was reading that there is a steep rise in this diagnosis as well as autism-and that it is being pushed a lot these days.  None of it tracks for me. When I was a kid I was distractible and disorganized, but...I was a kid.  She said that I've 'learned to compensate during adulthood." I suppose some of that is true.  My brother has ADHD and it shows, and we couldn't be more opposite. The point is I went there to get help with family issues. Instead I'm being railroaded into the pathologizing of me-with no help for my actual problems. No wonder people prefer life coaching these days. I see a lot of flaws with traditional therapy and frankly have had much better success with life coaching.  I suppose each caters to a different clientle. Life coaching is more practical and traditional therapy and psychotherapy really helps if you have a specific mental illness. That is my take on it. Depression is common and people with depression can benefit from both, or either, IMHO. 

I was really mad. My psychiatrist said to drop her and find someone else. I wasn't sure, but I think that is a good idea. I felt like s*** after that appointment and was up half the night.  Time to move on.