Trip

Thank you and thank you everyone for your support! It is very very much appreciated! And yes, I meant appeal to authority in that sense indeed. I understand that they have studied psychology or psychiatry and they know more about it than me (but sadly not always...), but there is no amount of studies that can tell them how I feel better than I do and somehow they still try to explain it to me. And it's a good idea to write things down. Sometimes they ask me what my symptoms are and I start with the dumbest thing I remember, I lose credibility and then whatever I say after it feels like I can't regain it. And if I insist, they think I am manipulating them, or I am obsessed with something or something like that. But if I start with the strongest example, they will accept or ignore the weaker ones that come after. So I have to work on my rethoric. And it's frustrating because it feels like I am indeed manipulating them into understanding me. They think they are the teachers giving me a lecture about who I am objectively, and yet I am the one who has to step around their biases....

Yes, it's still a tiny bit more complicated than that but one will pay around 30€ in average for a psychiatrist or psychologist (other professions not protected by a diploma are usually not covered), or less if one has an additional coverage from a complementary health insurance. I am lucky that this is really inexpensive for me so the price is definitely not a limitation. Also I don't think insurance companies can limit refunding to some therapists only, which I am greatful for. So choosing isn't really a problem for me, but finding is. I have tried many therapists now, including those I have seen only once I have seen about 23 of them. Usually I left them because they did not seem to listen, because they were authoritarian or condescending, or just seemed incompetent to me, or all of the above. On all this list, I have found about 4 relatively good ones so far and had to leave them because I moved or because they retired. I plan to write extensively about that because there is really a lot I need to vent about.

Hello, I'm very happy to discover this forum. As happy as I am fed up with most of the therapists I have seen these past 10 years. I live in France and on the forums I have found I only managed to get "therapy-splained" about the fact that I did not understand what therapy really is about. I have seen so much appeal to authority and crossing boundaries in therapy, I am really fed up with it. I just started googling in english and I find that the english speaking world is much more advanced on these questions than my country, which is still plagued by psychoanalysis... It's terrible because even the best therapists that I can find still tend to take it personally when I talk about other bad therapists, they don't seem to get it even if they are much better than the others. I always hear some "you know, it depends on the client too, we can't predict if what we say will hurt the person or not, it's difficult for us". When I clearly explain them that this isn't the problem. I am a person who looks a bit out of touch with reality, I know I can look nervous even when I am not because I am very static, very intellectual and not displaying a lot of emotions even if I do feel them. This makes a lot of people think I am a very gullible person, lost in his mind, who is out of touch with reality, not just psychologists, but doctors too and scammers as well. So it seems that whatever I say, doctors tend to not listen to me but just trust their intuition based on what I look like and think that everything that comes out of my mouth is hypocondria infused fantasies about myself whereas they know the obvious truth that is visible just by reading my face. Really it's true to a point that makes it ridiculous. I hate it when they tell me the usual "so you think this about that person, but really they didn't tell you explicitly that this is what they thought, so its just an assumption on your part, right?". And at the same time they are the ones who play fortune tellers when they tell me that they "knew since I walked to the desk in their office that my problem was social anxiety and nothing else", whereas they deny me the most basic ability to read non-verbal language. And this is just one example of the way they try to assert their authority and manipulate me. And strangely enough, they only question my intuition when it goes against theirs. I was afraid this forum was dead because I did not manage to join, but apparently I just can't read and click a big button at a top of a page... I will be very happy to read your posts and share about those different therapists I have so many things to vent about. It's nice to find a place that makes me feel I am not crazy and alone after all.