Ha - I ghosted a therapist once. We had a few sessions and I was talking about all the terrible crap I was dealing with. She then asked me to list some good things going. I rattled off all the basics - good health, good family, steady job. And she said "See? There are good things going on too!" It really REALLY rubbed me the wrong way. My marriage was crumbling, my husband had become a drug addict. One of my closest friends lost her child I'd been in ICU with her, it was awful. I wandered around fully functioning, going to work, hiding all the pain and misery and focusing on the positive, the solutions, etc. protecting my family, friends, and coworkers from all the terrible planning I'd started to do in my head. And her comment just made me feel like I was whining in therapy and she didn't want to hear it. I simply ghosted her. She was perfectly kind, but the chemistry was bad. My next (and current) therapist validates my pain without pitying me, and teaches me how I can move through it instead of just "focusing on the positive." I know she's had similar experiences to me, she gets it. And she just seems to know what I need to hear... whether it's teaching me to be more compassionate to myself or facing a hard truth I've been blind to. Her comments are always done with real respect and I trust her very much.

after a year with one therapist (that only said the same thing EVERY week "make friends online" which didn't work for the 20 years before her - i knew it wouldnt help at all) and I said "I need something different please stop telling me to meet people online i'm not comfortable with that ive tried it for years i want/need real life connections." her response was to get mad at me and said, in a snotty tone btw, "then maybe you should find a different therapist if my approach doesnt work for you". I said, "If you have no other options to try, then yes that's what I'm going to have to do." she said "then is this our last session?" I said "probably." and that was that. I truly felt like i wasted a year of my life. A year I didnt get the help i needed. and honestly I lost the love of my life during that year. not a good year for me. I have not found a new therapist yet, and this was a year and a half ago. There just aren't any therapists in my area that take my insurance and specialize in CPTSD. everytime i call my insurance or local agencies I ask for Family/CPTSD specialists and they say "do you mean a counselor, a therapist, psychologist, or psychiatrist?" seriously does no one even know what that is in my area? sigh.

I hate going through this. It's like needing to hire a handyman but you can't interview them beforehand and just have to hire random people, *hoping* (not an easy thing to do for someone with depression) that ONE of them won't just make a bigger mess. It's been countless handymen, but my home is still messed up.

Once I've gone through the two referrals, the wait list, then six separate intakes for the same thing, then an online course, then a first meeting, a delay, a staff changeup, another intake and a final first meeting, I've been lucky enough to have gotten along well with every one of my therapists, before moving house and needing to find the next one.

Something I found very helpful in dealing with healing from familial emotional abuse was finding a therapist with experience in treating children as well as adults. Even though I’m in my thirties, we were able to really get into my experiences as a child from both the point of view I had at the time and the one I have now.

I never thought I'd hear my dream therapist described as a "dry, analytical mirror" but its actually spot on 😅

I don't really know what problem to start with when it comes to therapy... I tried to get diagnosed with depression because it runs in my family and I'm fairly certain I've been depressed since I was 16. But the day i went to the doctor I was having a good day, so they said if I have depression then it was mild (glazing over the fact I mentioned I've had suicidal thoughts). I also tried talking to my counsellor about anxiety, but rather than determining why I have anxiety, which is what I was hoping for, it turned into 3 sessions where the counsellor said I could cure my anxiety with mindfulness and that I didn't need to see him anymore. For context, during early covid I was scared to leave the house my anxiety got so bad... Mindfulness hasn't helped much, if anything I feel worse now for not being 'fixed'. My family says things that make me feel guilty for not continuing therapy, but I feel like I've hit a wall not knowing how to untangle my thoughts/trusting people enough to even talk to them... I feel like I tell my therapist what I think they want me to say...

My first experience with mental health professionals was not good and it's effected me ever since. Little trust now. When I was 17 my mom set me up an appointment with a medical doctor, he gave me a handful of sample packets of antidepressants, failed to tell me "take one a day", told me it was our little secret and my parents didn't have to know. So when I ended up taking 4 through out the rest of the day he convinced my parents I was trying to kill myself and that I needed to be sent away immediately. Then the 5 psychologists at the next place I had to deal with wouldn't listen to me and also tried to convince me that I was trying to kill myself and since I didn't cave to them they told my parents I need to do an year of inpatient as far away as possible. So in the few months I was at that next place I got to experience sexism, sexual assault, racism, bullying and more from a so called Christian establishment and the pastors that ran the place. Any any time I've tried to talk to someone after that I felt unheard.

I've been through a large/double digit number of terrible therapists and the biggest problems I've run into are: 1. therapists who project their stuff onto you (one person decided I really needed to be more open to finding a relationship and having kids after I told her I was asexual and didn't want them. She was struggling to get pregnant and couldn't imagine why anyone wouldn't want kids and then tried to convince me what a great parent I would be) 2. therapists that only want to talk about themselves (I once spent almost an entire session that I paid for listening to someone talk about their collection of Wonder Woman memorabilia; another guy burned up 30 minutes on a reference to the movie Amadeus that could have taken 2 minutes) 3. therapists who are trying to get you out the door as quickly as possible (goal setting good, thinking you've diagnosed and solved all my problems twenty minutes into the first session, not so much) 4. therapists who push their religious beliefs on you even after you've specifically asked them not to 5.therapists who minimise your issues without even trying to understand them or who compare your issues with their other patients 6. therapists who can't remember anything you've told them previously so every session is starting from scratch and covering the same things.

I've had a long line of therapists that just did not know what to do with me. My needs were so specific and where I lived they just couldn't provide. Part of it isn't their fault, they just weren't the right ones for me. But a big part of it was that I set up boundaries what I wanted and needed and they didn't listen or they completely took a turn I wasn't expecting so I cut them off.

I think it's just a personality thing - I went through like 5 therapists before I found one I connected with - my first one was so bad that I thought it was about me. Found my current therapist on Therapy Panda, It was so easy in comparison because they have these videos to show what the therapist is like, you can add filters and it's cheap too - only issue is they don't have an app yet

It seems incredibly hard to find a therapist who doesn't want to prescribe drugs on the first visit. It gives me the impression that the therapist doesn't trust me to put in the work and improve, they assume I'm just there to plaster over my problems. I'm sure there are people who have severe issues that could benefit from medications, but is it really necessary to drug somebody who is getting by fairly well in life and isn't self-harming? Shouldn't there be some sort of discussion about the pros and cons of taking pills, and what the long term effects of particular drugs might be? I'd love to see a video about when it's appropriate to head to the pharmacy after visit one... and when it's not.

My therapist has saved my life. There are good ones out there.

Trying to find support for CPTSD has now added an extra trauma to my experiences. I live near Glastonbury (UK) where every other resident seems to be a therapist of some sort. The NHS has diagnosed me as needing therapy and can offer short term (8) zoom talking therapy but after 6 years of being passed from one support service to another, I know it takes about 4 sessions to get through my "story" which is traumatic in itself to tell. One of my triggers is technology and passwords so zoom just adds an extra barrier to connecting (let alone trusting) a therapist. I'm wondering whether non-talking therapy would be more effective (art/dance/music) or maybe videoing my story so I can share it with as many therapists as it takes to find the right one. The other issue is cost. It's £50 a session in the UK and I get £95 a week to live on. Plus I'm not sure where I'm going to be living long-term to look for a local therapist. I'd like to get the story out of me so I can let it go (although there are parts that I have difficulty remembering), and maybe I could work on editing it so I can interpret it in a different way. I tried EDMR therapy but the therapist said I was still going through trauma and didn't have a safe place so it wasn't going to work. One of my issues is eco-grief, (so finding a therapist who understands that is extra hard), so I believe there is never going to be a safe place.

Currently it is not possible for me to get any therapist.. they are all so fully overbooked that there is nothing available, been trying for 6 years straight now. And I don't know how it works elsewhere but here I need one to get diagnosed with ADHD otherwise I don't get help from my doctor, next to all the other issues I've been battling with since I was a kid. Therapists are amazing, and important. It's a shame that there aren't enough (even in a major city like mine) for everyone who needs them.

I didn't find out until a couple years ago at 40 that I have aspergers. In MS there's plenty of people who can help children but it's been impossible to find someone that can treat an adult. My marriage is basically over and I have no one who can help me because they just don't get it. They aren't trained for my needs.

I’ve had bad experiences with therapists. Some were good but just couldn’t stay with them due to outside forces. Like recently, the clinic I went to closed it’s doors and also I needed to change insurance and my therapist doesn’t take it. Though, the bad ones just never believed me when I told them what was going wrong. Like if medicine wasn’t working, they wouldn’t believe me. It’s also hard to find someone who is trained with Autism.

Ooh also I'm stoked to have the first comment. You and Alan have seriously helped normalize and de-mystify therapy for me, and introduce explanations for things about myself and human nature that I couldn't previously understand. Thank you for that❤️

Yes! I've been waiting for this one. I've needed a therapist for a long time but I have no idea how to find a good one who specializes in ADHD and trauma. At this point it's putting strain on my marriage and I've been getting more and more unsure about what to do.

I don't know if it's just me being negative? My therapist cut me off and defended herself for five minutes, by bringing up her years of experience, how she knows she not a bad therapist if someone says otherwise. Right after when I just started saying to her that after the last session, I felt frustrated, sad, abandoned, alone, angry, self criticism sky rocketed. I haven't even told her how the number of my suicidal ideation thoughts doubled. In other sessions, she also told me I didn't want to fix things (this was my 3rd/4th session), when I clearly told her I'm working on it. She got visibly upset and raised her voice and swung her arm up and down a little. Now I feel even more worthless, undeserving of patience and compassion. I started holding my breath for no reasons all the time and constantly have to make a conscious choice to breathe. Should I find a new therapist or go back and talk about it?

I just found your channel…I like it a lot. I appreciate how I feel like I’m being talked to even though I’m watching a video. Thank you. I actually wrote a whole analogy as to how watching your videos makes me feel, but it was really long and when i reread it…it sounded a bit crazy. Actually it wasn’t even about how these videos make me feel, it’s about how they’ve called me out, and why even though I’ve been called out I still keep telling myself there is nothing.

I can’t afford therapy even though I know I need it. I have Medicare and Medicaid and in my state it’s not paid fully.

My doctor suggested I talk to a councilor because I've been under stress for so long. I did it to humor her but I don't just have stress in my current situation but I have CPTSD from childhood and a lot of what I experience just falls right under trauma. All she did was validate me, and that was great, but after that I needed tools and programs. By watching your videos you have given me intake questions for THEM.

This is great and thank you 🙌🏽 for the insight and information, but how the heck do I even know which specialty I need to look for? Over the past several years I’ve known I need to get into therapy. For lots of reasons. But I can’t make myself take that leap. I’ve spoken to people (not therapists, usually people who have been to therapy) and have gotten lots of support from friends and family and I’ll feel ready to jump in but then I back out. There’s so much that has happened within the past 4 years I wouldn’t know how to begin to figure out which branch or speciality I would need the most. The obvious answer would be to just pick someone and go from there…but I know myself and if I go to a therapist that isn’t a good match and it bombs, I’ll quit and it’ll be ten times as hard to force myself to try again. Anyone have any thoughts or insights? Am I just being dumb and building it up too much in my head? One small bit of context: my mother was…not a great mom, when I was a child she made me go see a therapist. Except this person wasn’t an actual therapist, just someone she thought would “fix me” and it ended really REALLY bad. So I’m already gun-shy when it comes to therapists and opening up to strangers and being vulnerable, etc.

Thank you very much foe this input and guidance. What do we learn: Because it's a bit of a matchmaking act and that's known to be straining, we really need to get to it early. Lest we run out of breath before arriving at a place that's actually helpful. Or worse: come in wrecked and because it's no match, collapse completely. This is one of the high prices I think we pay for civilisation on grand scale. In more tribe-like communities that are embedded into the modern world (or even more secluded than that) there are sometimes really awesome structures like rituals and gatherings helping with that. Those that are regular but not too frequent and too binding and feature elders sharing wisdoms and cycles of everyone getting to speak on their problem even just to normalise addressing issues and being welcomed and supported to find support. Though I know some churches have elements that are comparable, I often find them not working overly well. Since they often play with dynamics of shaming, blaming, punishing and excluding. Ofcourse there are some lead by lovely ppl and hence are actually helpful. But still such rituals tend to be different in quality. 🤔 If I ponder it a bit.... maybe it's the part where either you're powerless and are to rely on god or you're to carry it all? I'm not sure. While in non-religious (non-toxic, there are such!) more nature based rituals of communities are more about..... "How are you today, beloved member of tribe and how can humans help humans, even if advice of spirit will be taken into consideration, too". Like.... I guess in either type, there are loving and abusive ways to handle things. But all in all, it is something that many people in Western world lost on the way.

I hope this helps with my ability to finally call for a referral

I think I could specialize in dealing with immigrant (namely, Asian) parenting expectations, narcissism, sexual survival, and women with autism. My training was with wildlife rehabilitation though, and I am thinking about a career change because I am having little luck getting a job with my experience. What are my options? I have considered doing animal assisted therapy and community health, and I love to write

Whenever I need a therapist, I just watch Goodwill Hunting and that should last me for about a month.

If you cancel an appointment and don't reschedule a new one, is that ghosting a therapist? If so, I'm guilty. 😅 Sorry, on behalf of ghosty patients! 👻

Can you help people who live in other states? Does video therapy work as well as therapy in person?

I do wanna know, how do you make time for therapy if you work full time and their times for appointments are only times you work?

I googled therapistfinder, but it only provided me the registered sex offender public registry.

That's lie... I've been trying to find a therapist for years... But apparently I need insurance to get a therapist... So now I'm trying to find an insurance... But when I try and get insurance it's nothing but transfer, call them call me etc My problem is finding insurance first

Because I'm a broke trucker.

I had a great therapist & then they stopped accepting my insurance. I’ve tried 3 from “Psychology Today” and 1 on Teledoc. They have all been horrible. I haven’t had a real therapy session in 4 months.

Psychologytoday isnt a world wide thing is it🥲