My therapist pretended not know what I'm talking about. Why?

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18 Nov 2018, 9:56 am

Even Sherlock Holmes declared himself unable to deduce the motivations of women. He had seen "the most outrageous behaviour" caused by a missing hat-pin.

Prometheus18
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18 Nov 2018, 10:43 am

All I can tell you is that the type of person you describe gets a kick out of having control over others. I know this from previous encounters with psychologists; indeed, it seems to be a large part of the reason many become psychologists. I bet she'd be thrilled to learn of the emotional and psychological control she has over you implied by the fact that you're still posting long messages about her online after all this time.

These sorts of people have such low self-esteem that they don't care whether the attention is positive or negative - anything as long as someone else fills the psychological and emotional void they feel. The best thing you can do with respect to these sorts of parasites is to simply ignore them.

johntober
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21 Nov 2018, 11:55 am

They probably are not pretending. Therapists and their ilk are NT and truly don’t understand but are too arrogant to accept it.

Aspie1 wrote:

Looking back on my stints with therapy, I noticed that my therapist would often pretend not to know what I'm talking about. It would happen whenever I talked about something that went against the mainstream, idealistic worldview. Now, I'm stating it as a "presumed yes", rather than a yes/no question, because anyone with a Master's degree in psychology should just know that not everything in the world is hunky-dory. That unhappy families do exist. That parents do love some kids more than others. That kids can be cruel, unless they can relate to you somehow. That society has certain preconceived notions.

So why would my therapist pretend not to know what I'm talking about, whenever I brought up situations that contained those simple facts? I do have one explanation. Her specialty was "family therapist", which means that her loyalty was with my parents, not me. After all, "family" is code word for "parents"; I was like a car getting taken to a mechanic. Also to "society", which is true for all therapists, and any client who tries to one-up society must be put back in their place. And now, without further ado...

Situation 1
Aspie1: "Whenever I read articles and such about "having fun with your family", it always confuses me. Family is supposed to be about order and discipline, not fun."
Therapist: (like I'm talking gibberish) "Really? No fun with family? At all?"
Possible motive: "This kid won't honor his parents. I'm going to gaslight him into doing so."
What created this situation: My own family was very strict, so even "fun" times had a strong undertone of order and discipline, and any violations resulted in ruthless yelling and/or punishments, effectively canceling out the "fun".
What should have been said: "That's fine. If you can't have fun with family, have fun elsewhere. Or wait it out until you can have have your own fun." Or: "Did you know that cooking wine contains alcohol and you don't have to be 21 to buy it?" (I figured this out in high school, and also took up tobacco smoking in college.)

Situation 2
Aspie1: "My parents love my older sister [by 10 years] more than they love me. Every time, they treat her better, and let her get away with more. Now, I recently read in a psychology book, that parents don't always love their children equally. How true is it?"
Therapist: (mildly confrontational) "'Don't always love equally' or 'always don't love equally'?"
Possible motive: "This kid knows more than me. And he's undermining my customers [his parents]. I gotta be on their side."
What created this situation: "My older sister knew how to sweet-talk my parents into loving her; I did not."
What should have been said: "What book did you read it in? I want to make sure it's a reputable source. But you might be right. Other than the book, what prompted you to think that way?"

Situation 3
Aspie1: "This kid in class used to be such a jerk to me. But when I read up on Michael Jordan, and talked about basketball with him, he started treating me a little better. I'm not friends with him, but it's good to see him being nicer to me."
Therapist: (laughing tone) "No, you just stopped trying to impress him, and he always liked you the way you are. The fact that he's being nicer to you proves that. Basketball doesn't mean anything."
Possible motive: "This kid is leaning the truth about how society works. I gotta keep him naive."
What created this situation: I showed that classmate that I had popular interests he could relate to, and he saw me in a slightly different light.
What should have been said: "Good job; whatever helped you get him off your back. Remember: you don't have to sincerely like Michael Jordan. But he's popular now (it was 1996), so it's a good conversation topic to have at hand. You're learning the art of putting on a social mask. That's never a bad thing."

Situation 4
Aspie1: When I was in the waiting room, all I saw are "Good Housekeeping" magazines. They're effeminate; I was kind of embarrassed to be seen reading it. (I was 13.) I had to dig through the whole pile before I found "Architectural Digest", and ended up reading that.
Therapist: (like I'm talking gibberish) So, "Good Housekeeping" is effeminate, but "Architectural Digest" is not effeminate?
Possible motive: "This kid is leaning the truth about how society works. I gotta keep him naive."
What created this situation: It's a fact that "Good Housekeeping" is geared toward women, while "Architectural Digest" is largely gender-neutral. I also hoped she could persuade the office to stock more male-friendly magazines.
What should have been said: "I'm glad you found something your were comfortable being seen reading. But also understand that most people won't care what you read. For all they know, it's for your social studies class. It's fine for a boy to read a women's magazine if his teacher told him to, right?" ("Yes.")
Side note: This topic probably wouldn't come up in 2018, since "gender" is now up in the air and all over the place.

Aspie1
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29 Nov 2018, 10:46 pm

johntober wrote:

They probably are not pretending. Therapists and their ilk are NT and truly don’t understand but are too arrogant to accept it.

Understanding the things I described isn't even "scientific" knowledge; it's basic social skills. It's something NTs learn before they can walk and talk. So a therapist has to be pretending: to gaslight me into being "normal", to subtly yet transparently side with my parents, or to tell me to quit whining. It's just sad that therapists do it by pretending to be more naive than an aspie kindergartner, rather than being honest about it.

Of course, I think I know the reason my therapist pretended not to know what I'm talking about. After all, a "family" therapist's first loyalty is the parents, not the child; all but the lowest-functioning autistics can pick up on that.

Dear_one
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29 Nov 2018, 11:19 pm

Aspie1 wrote:

johntober wrote:

They probably are not pretending. Therapists and their ilk are NT and truly don’t understand but are too arrogant to accept it.

Yes, you have said that before. Why were we all consulted?

ABSally
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01 Dec 2018, 10:03 am

I kept being sent to Cognitive Behavioural Therapy and it was as if all they knew was on their chart which shows if you think about bad things then you will get anxious. They don't know much apart from that. It took me years to be diagnosed as they don't know about it

HighLlama
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01 Dec 2018, 10:07 am

ABSally wrote:

Did you like it? I was advised to try CBT, too, but it wasn't helpful for most of my issues. My therapist seemed to equate issues with social interaction, eye contact, etc. as social anxiety. I was also advised to listen to recordings of office noise to "desensitize" myself to horrible noises at work, but as Johntober said, this showed a lack of understanding. I've worked in offices since I was 23, which should have desensitized me, except it doesn't work that way.

Dear_one
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01 Dec 2018, 11:24 am

I tried CBT before I'd heard of AS. It was hard to follow the instructions, and it didn't work for me.

Aspie1
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05 Dec 2018, 11:38 pm

I'd like to add another situation, that I think tops the rest. We just had a really intense session, where she pushed my emotional buttons over and over, to "help bring my feelings out". :roll: Which basically amounted to her trying to make me cry. It took all mental effort I could muster to make sure she failed. Which she did. But not without picking up on how sad I felt afterwards.

Situation 6

Therapist: "You look a little sad and upset. Would you like a hug?"
Aspie1: "A hug, really? This is professional environment, with me getting professional help. Wouldn't a hug be inappropriate?"
Therapist: (confused) "Is it inappropriate for a therapist to hug a client?"
Aspie1: "Right. Hugs are for family, friends, and relationships." [I can't believe I actually had to explain that!]
Therapist: "What would be appropriate?"
Aspie1: "I don't know. How about words? Like we've been doing."
Therapist: (less confused) "Would a handshake be appropriate?"
Aspie1: "I guess. It's what people do at work."
(Honestly, I only agreed to the handshake to humor her. And it was overly drawn out and limp, not quick and firm like I expected, gender nonewithstanding. The very kind that's an automatic fail at job interviews and such.)
Possible motive: "This dumb kid thinks he knows more about professionalism than me! Let me throw him a curveball."
What created this situation: A feeble effort on my part to enforce a patient/therapist boundary.
What should have been said: "I'll take it as a no. We'll stick to words."

What the hell? In all other situations, 1 thru 5, there could be an honest, dumb mistake on the therapist's part. After all, therapists aren't very bright, and know little about how real people think and operate in the real world, be they aspies or NTs. But in this situation, we're talking about official therapy protocol! Surely, she was trained on it very thoroughly, including restrictions on hugs and such So WHY would she pretend not to know that a hug between a therapist and a patient isn't the best exchange? Especially 40-something therapist and a 15-year-old patient.

Not to mention, I felt disgusted about hugging someone who just spent 45 minutes trying to make me cry (and failing). I just didn't bother to tell her, because I knew it'd be useless.

starkid
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12 Dec 2018, 2:53 am

Aspie1 wrote:

Your thinking about this seems distorted and strangely biased. None of your examples suggest that the therapist was acting like you were stupid. I don't know where you get the idea that family therapists are more loyal to parents than children. It kind of seems like you are taking stuff you learned from your dysfunctional family and projecting it onto other people and situations.

It's normal for therapists to ask clients to explain themselves, especially when clients make seemingly bizarre statements like you made in your first example. Like someone else said, you should have made it clear that you were talking about your family instead of families in general because that would have been a strange perspective to have on families in general.

You should really think twice about guessing at the therapist's motivations.

Aspie1
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13 Dec 2018, 7:25 am

starkid wrote:

I didn't say my therapist thought I was stupid. I said she pretended not to understand what I'm talking about. Because any therapist who's even remotely qualified would know that unhappy, unfun families do exist. Still, it was out of her loyalty to my parents (who were paying her, after all) and society's status quo. Speaking of which, why wouldn't therapists be more loyal to the parents than to the child? Who pays them and who's closer in age? Exactly!

If my therapist wanted me to explain myself, that's fine. If wanted an honest explanation---like in Situation 1---she'd have said: "No fun with family? How so? Clarify for me." With the appropriate body language and tone to match. But instead, she was looking at me like I was talking gibberish, and her question sounded rhetorical. In retrospect, it makes perfect sense: loyalty (see above). But back then, it felt pretty insulting.

cubedemon6073
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06 Jan 2019, 1:52 am

I would like to make some points.

1. Thing is, therapy does not work on Autistic/Aspie people. It is made by NTs for NTs who are dealing with things like depression, etc. What you needed just like I needed is not just social skills but social stories that helped you with various social situations.

2. A number of therapists are not trained to deal with those on the spectrum. What you needed was someone who specialised in someone with spectrum disorders.

3. More then likely your parents if they were here to defend themselves would see things differently and have a different story to tell. In other words, there's their side, your side and the truth. The truth lies somewhere between what both of you say to be true.

4. All of the disorders in the DSM have no scientific test one could perform for any of the disorders like one is testing for the HIV virus. They base their analysis on their observations in their office and what you tell them. Psychology, psychiatry is not a hard science.

Sheila Nye
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06 Jan 2019, 2:03 am

Aspie1 wrote:

I'd like to add another situation, that I think tops the rest. We just had a really intense session, where she pushed my emotional buttons over and over, to "help bring my feelings out". :roll:

Which basically amounted to her trying to make me cry. It took all mental effort I could muster to make sure she failed. Which she did. But not without picking up on how sad I felt afterwards.

Situation 6

Therapist: "You look a little sad and upset. Would you like a hug?"
Aspie1: "A hug, really? This is professional environment, with me getting professional help. Wouldn't a hug be inappropriate?"
Therapist: (confused) "Is it inappropriate for a therapist to hug a client?"
Aspie1: "Right. Hugs are for family, friends, and relationships." [I can't believe I actually had to explain that!]
Therapist: "What would be appropriate?"
Aspie1: "I don't know. How about words? Like we've been doing."

Not to mention, I felt disgusted about hugging someone who just spent 45 minutes trying to make me cry (and failing). I just didn't bother to tell her, because I knew it'd be useless.

These days, therapists are discouraged from physical contact with clients because boundaries. A handshake is generally acceptable I think but I refuse those too.

Can you ask for a different therapist?

If not, can you generate a list of what YOU want to work on and pick one or two things from that list a session?
I have found myself that without such a list, therapy tends to be something that is done TO US and thus not effective.
With my own set goals, I can say stuff like, "I am having difficulty managing office politics. Here is an example..." or whatever. Then the therapy becomes more concrete.

You have a right not to be touched by your therapist and you have a right not to be manipulated into crying by your therapist.

Cripes.

Best wishes.

p.s. I agree with @cubedemon6073 that therapy does not work on us.

_________________
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~La Cage aux Folles

Aspie1
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06 Jan 2019, 2:21 am

Sheila Nye wrote:

If not, can you generate a list of what YOU want to work on and pick one or two things from that list a session? I have found myself that without such a list, therapy tends to be something that is done TO US and thus not effective. With my own set goals, I can say stuff like, "I am having difficulty managing office politics. Here is an example..." or whatever. Then the therapy becomes more concrete.

I was in my teens, with the emotional development of about 10. So I didn't have the guile or the foresight to do this. Not to mention, if I said something like "I have trouble talking to unreasonable teachers", this therapist would find a way to use it against me. Or grill me on how I feel about it without giving me even a hint of advice. Or worse, just look at me and say "aww".

I solved my problem differently. I fabricated fake "throw-away" problems, like test anxiety, and asked her to help me with those. She gave me some trite suggestions that I didn't even listen to. But it kept her busy enough to prevent her from poking at my emotional buttons about serious stuff. It's like giving a cat a scratching post, so it doesn't claw the furniture.

Sheila Nye
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06 Jan 2019, 3:49 am

So this is a past therapist then???

In that case, at least she is not part of your present.
I will not claim that "Not all therapists are like that."

I will say that finding professionals who are competent in treating autistic adults is difficult.

I am sorry that you went through all of that.

Most adults don't have the foresight to develop their own goals either. I did in response to a therapist who was fairly incompetent. At least I got something out of my time that way.

_________________
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Aspie1
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06 Jan 2019, 12:53 pm

Sheila Nye wrote:

I saw a therapist twice as an adult. Once at 29, another time at 32.

The first therapist was pleasant but off the mark. I found my conversations with him interesting, though. He told me some insightful, philosophical things about the psychology of travel: that it's like putting on an alter ego without actually changing yourself. It was comparable to debating about which non-Earth planet should be colonized, while having a drunken conversation with a friend. In other words, fun but not worth the $100 an hour I was paying. Plus, he was younger than me, so I can't help feeling like I had the upper hand and/or manipulated the sessions (like that bad therapist once did to me). It was more perceived lack of danger, rather than trust on my part. I wonder if that's the reason I picked a younger therapist in the first place. So I reluctantly admit that I might have contributed to the unhelpfulness from him.

The second therapist was strictly business: I needed a psych professional to sign a document for work, and her office was 5 minutes from my apartment. So it was a one-and-done session with a little bit of background discussion. I wish all therapy was like this. But I doubt I'd see her long-term. After all, a therapist is still a therapist.

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