Confidence In Therapists

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I've seen one that I was referred to from my job. I only have two words that I can use to describe the guy so far:

F*CKING USELESS

Unless there's someone out there who has an absolute wealth of knowledge about AS, I doubt that any others will be any different.

Most are trained to deal with the average "Joe" and mistake lack of social skills with the lack of confidence. For me the only one that ever help was actually a gramer teacher that without extensive training, realized that I could not understand most peoples facial expressions. She took the time to work with me on her own time. I just wish I could thank her now. My life would have been a lot harder had it not be for her.

Social skills will come naturally if you relax?! So they have no clue what Asperger's is. That not so encouraging. Write out everything you want from the session before hand - that way, if words fail you face to face you still have your agenda to speak for you. If you want social skills training put that on there and your reasons why. Be detailed. Say everything in writing that you can't say in person. Ask your therapist for their email address. If you communicate better in writing, you may be able to accomplish more if you email a list of concerns each week before your session.

I'm honestly, not sure the majority of therapists are qualified to work with autistic patients. In general I do not see understanding or comprehension of what the differences truly are or how to work with them and overcome them. I can see a truly ignorant but self righteous therapist actually doing more harm than good. the ones that really get it seem to be few and far between.

I have had pretty good results with my therapist, but there are definite limits to what he can do for me. He is pretty good at dealing with depression and anxiety and has helped me to work on my social skills. At the same time, he can be a bit of a cheerleader, and sometimes underestimates some of the difficulties that I experience. I am thinking about looking for a new therapist who has experience with older adults with autistic symptoms, but I have some doubts about whether I can find one around here. It's hard to find leading-edge psychotherapy around here. Still, on the whole, I think that I am better off with my current therapist than I would have been without him.

I'm very skeptical of counselors because I had a bad experience with one (but it wasn't %100 all bad) and it to the point I have been afraid of them. But it got to a point where my doctor wanted me to go to this guy, Usually I don't go to doctors either but I've had to go more the last couple years.
This guy isn't so bad and one time he offered to go down to the coffee shop and sort of pretend we were having a conversation because I don't really know how and I don't particularly like them. He's tryingto convince me that conversational skills will benefit me. I'm not sure if he was joking or not though. I mostly don't think he was but sometimes I take people seriously when they're joking.
He doesn't try to change my thoughts and has told my thoughts aren't exactly really my main problem. He isn't up in my face "challenging" me and he doesn't demand eye contact which I can do but if he wants me to really talk then that's the way it's going to be.
I even critiqued CBT therapy and how it sure seemed the previous counselor was saying good feelings are the truth so gear your thoughts about things so that they make you feel good. The first social worker never said that literally but it seemed pretty close to that. I'm not saying your thoughts don't affect your mood though.
This guy swears and has even taught me how to verbally push back toward people in an socially acceptable way. I was kind of liking that when I did it with this guy which he helped me with. I'm not sure I know how to do that in general though but I did it.
I'm actually surprised with this guy.

Well, I'd feel awful if I discriminated against only one type of health care professional. So I have no confidence in any type of doctors, psychiatrists, psychologists or any of that lot. Generally speaking it's cheaper to find a beggar and give them 10 bucks to dismiss everything you say and tell you your feelings are wrong and you have no right to feel that way, then tell you in the next sentence they understand you completely. Followed by telling you everything will turn out alright if you just keep trying the same method over again and all your problems can be fixed by either just turning that frown upside down or drugs - oh and then send you on your way with some comment insinuating you're a hypochondriac who is wasting their time or just an attention seeking neurotic who's only problem is laziness. It seems to produce about as much actual help, while not resulting in any waiting time, being significantly cheaper and causing less emotional hurt over having all your feelings and problems be dismissed as they were too inconvenient to acknowledge.

Oh yeah, I should mention that yeah, while there's been the occasional person who hasn't been like that and has honestly listened (which with doctors you'd think they'd want to know you were throwing up or felt dizzy but surprisingly often they don't) - there's just too many of those types in all those professions. It's not like I'm not basing my general distrust, avoidance and stony silence on something other than personal experience. That and I haven't forgiven the MD's in particular how much they failed when it came to my dad.

Oh, yes!

I really want to rant hugely on this topic, but I'd better wait until I've settled in here more. I don't want to ride into WP on a wave of furious anti-psychiatric and anti-psychotherapeutic ranting! I'm not basically an angry person, but a lot of things have happened that should have made me angry, and it's all stored up (mostly as depression).

If I ever have the energy to do it, I want to write a book, or a play, or something, about certain things that happened to me (and others) in two so-called "therapeutic communities" in London (England) in 1984-6 and 1986-8.

Thanks to the wonderful NHS, and thanks to reading Laing, Szasz, et al. (Szasz is maddening, but that's another topic), I lost belief in the "medical model" of "mental illness" some time in the 1970s.

But I still believed in something called "psychotherapy".

I was quite the religious believer. Losing my faith has been agonising, like being excommunicated (not for the first time - but again, that's another story, sorry!).

I believed in it even though it never felt right.

I believed that if it didn't feel right, then it was because I was doing it wrong.

After all, I was wrong by definition.

My brain may not have been faulty (that would be the "medical model" in its most literal form), but my mind (whatever exactly that is) was presumed to be faulty. It might as well still have been the same old "medical model", for all the difference it made.

I no longer believe in "psychotherapy".

I am inclined still to believe that there is much valid knowledge locked up and encoded in the bewilderingly obscure pseudo-scientific theories of Freud, Jung, Ferenczi, Klein, Winnicott, Bowlby, and so on (and indeed good old Laing, whom I still admire enormously, in spite of his faults, and who can certainly not be accused of being pseudo-scientific, because he is very explicitly anti-scientistic - and I'm probably being completely unfair to Winnicott and Bowlby, too - I do mean to read up properly on the history of post-Freudian analytic thought, when I can get over my intense aversion to the whole field).

And I still believe that counselling makes sense. Just not "psychotherapy".

I'll rant properly and at length another time, I'll try to explain my reasoning, and I'll listen to other people's arguments. For the moment, I'm just getting this off my chest!

I'm 59 now. I believed in "psychotherapy" for more than 30 years. I spent all my savings on it. I even tended to proselytise for it (rather boringly, I imagine) to people who didn't believe in it. (I still tend to disagree strongly with people who dismiss it out of hand, without knowing much about it.)

For about 6 years, now, I've been trying very hard to think what it is that I do believe in. There is something ...

On a philosophy forum last year, someone used as their signature Wittgenstein's saying, "Whereof one cannot speak, thereon must one remain silent." I retorted, "Whereon one cannot remain silent, thereof must one learn to speak." (I've corrected the grammar a bit.) I haven't learned to speak yet, so I must still remain, if not silent, then still somewhat muffled and unintelligible.

(I've oversimplified horribly, but the alternative would be a very long rant indeed! Apologies to the one therapist to whom these strictures don't really apply. If I ever do write at length about this here, I'll try to be more careful, and get my criticisms right.)

Jeffrey Masson's books Against Therapy and Final Analysis are pretty good, I seem to remember.

I still at least in a general manner have confidence in therapy as far as myself go. I am not diagnosed with AS though I am thinking about it for the moment if I shall ask for a referal from my GP in order to be so but I will see,

For me it has helped just to have someone to went too, a place where I can say whatever I want without being judged by someone (well seamingly at least as far as I know). My problems and the nature that they are have been pretty persistent for a long time and they are basically the same today as they were at least when I started therapy, but I have improved more in the sense that I accept myself for the person that I am.

I have seen psychiatrists, psychologists and social workers so far and the one that I clicked the most with and who helped me the most was a social worker that I saw for a period of about 8 months. We had a good contact I feel and when I graduated from university long overdue I went back to my therapist almost two years after the sessions stopped and I gave her 10 red roses and told her that I will always think well of her and that she had thought me something about how I can care for another person. I cried when I told her and she almost did as well she was very moved by it, it is something I will never forget.

Along with the above poster I think I can share some of the similar thoughts in regards to at least what I have found useful for me in theraphy, I do not really want a label or someone telling me from a piece of paper what I am or what I should do I need a relation when I am in theraphy more then anything else. I am sliding into existentialism, at least partially and philosophical councelling more these days at least in my own perception as far as myself goes for my own future (as I have said in other posts I am a clinical psychologist myself now since I graduated in the fall) and I hope I can do something about it if I am strong enough.