I'm sorry to hear that. I have had many bad experiences with therapists, one was extremely manipulative and another insulted me saying I needed plastic surgery. I try not to remember these experiences in too much detail because trauma can be incredibly intrusive for me.
One thing I would say is that therapists will never 'get it' because they aren't in your shoes to begin with. It's easy to stand on the sidelines and tell people that if they did X or Y then their lives would be better but they're not in your shoes.
They're not worth the extortionate fees they charge in my book and talking to a friend who listens to you for free can be much more valuable.
I also don't believe there's anything wrong with anybody to feel sad about their lives. We live in a society where everyone's being pressured to conform to certain standard and if they're not then they have a 'condition.'
It's a bit like with Aspergers or dyslexia, there isn't anything fundamentally wrong about not wanting to socialise, make small talk or processing information differently, it's just the generalisers trying to enforce their will over everyone else's in name of conformity.
If anyone can help you it's you because you know what your needs are. I know that might seem hopeless but perhaps there is someone out there who can help you to see those needs as easier to achieve.
And if you truly believe your needs are impossible to achieve perhaps there are also people out there who have experience with living without certain needs.
yeah... my previous therapist is the reason i stopped seeing a therapist for over a year... he liked to argue with me and then tell me the reason i was arguing with him was because i grew up with an emotionally abusive father, and then the days when i was too frustrated to even talk to him he would literally refuse to say anything for an entire session
after things ended with my ex, he showed me a ted-talk (instead of like... being a therapist) where the main message basically boiled down to 'hate them instead of missing them'
and that really didnt help... cant blame it all on him, but all im saying is it lead me down a path filled with mistakes and listening to a word he said is one of my biggest regrets because of how i ended up treating arguably the most important person in my life
not to mention haha i literally requested a new therapist after that point and he decided to bring me in for another appointment
just to tell me to my face that i wasnt going to be getting a new therapist
and that was my last session with him, i just stopped showing up
lucky for me my insurance covers it so i dont actually end up paying anything for therapy, but still
i would have been a lot more pissed if i had been
but
despite my awful experiences there
i disagree entirely that therapy is an inherently evil thing- those 'conditions' you mentioned are just that, conditions
not something fundamentally wrong with you but then again anyone saying otherwise is a fucking idiot to put it nicely
but what about when every social interaction brings you to tears and yet refraining from *any* social interaction leaves you horribly lonely and depressed to the point of considering CTB? what about when you feel so unable to control your emotions or impulsivity that you have to literally avoid being around people or youll wind up ruining their lives involuntarily? what about when, no matter what you do, you are unable to even feel a positive emotion? at that point its not just feeling sadness, its an absence of the ability to feel happy... and thats definitely a problem
its not exactly about conformity, its about managing the ways your mind makes your life a living hell, thats the goal of therapy
or at least thats how ive always viewed it
it didnt improve my life but it sure as hell has helped me understand it better... with my current therapist anyway, but its taken a long time to even put a name to half the shit i experience
still
now that i can, i can at least research ways to manage the symptoms i experience on my own time, and thats not something i would have ever figured out without therapy personally
maybe some people can deal with those things alone, but a lot of people might not even know they arent the only person in the world experiencing those things to begin with
yeah, its great if you can find someone who shares your experiences... but i think i can attest to that not always being a great thing
two unhealthy minds dont usually create something healthy in the process so again i have to disagree
i have absolutely no clue what my needs are or how to achieve them, couldnt even tell you my personality if you asked because that shits so ingrained in others for me- and thats part of why its been so long since ive actively hung around people lol
thats why i see value in therapy... or to be more precise i guess, psychology in general
it legitimately felt like i was going crazy and untreatable until recently
yeah i still feel hopeless that its going to change, still feel untreatable, but at the same time
understanding where my symptoms are coming from means theres the potential for learning to manage them
that definitely holds value for me even if i dont necessarily believe its going to happen
i still ultimately want a happy life above all else
and thats never going to happen if i start treating my mental illness as just a quirk of my mind or something
its an active detriment for me, i wouldnt still be in therapy if it wasnt causing me so much suffering i guess
and sorry for the lengthy af response
