Hello all I’m new here, though I’ve read through a lot of the threads and have found so much in them that has been helpful to me.

Now I feel I want to post some of my issues with therapy, well specifically the aftermath of today’s session.

I’ve been in and out of therapy over the past 40 odd years, and have never been helped (in fact some of the courses of therapy I’ve done have ended up being destructive to me.) This time around I really shopped hard for the ‘right’ person, actually saw four different therapists on the trot, one of whom I stayed with for 2 sessions, one for 7 - but having gotten a bit wiser about what I think I need from a therapist realized that none of those four were going to be able to help me. In the end I found the therapist I’m currently seeing (have been with him for 5 months now, twice weekly.)

Ok given that I’ve had so much experience of useless therapists (sorry but I have to say that, I put up with lousy therapy for years because I always accepted it was something in me that was stopping me getting helped, now I believe it was the therapists who were at best inadequate) I’m constantly struggling with current T to be understood and though I don’t believe he does yet actually understand the nature of my problems I at least see that he really makes an effort to understand, that alone is worth gold to me!

So today I go to therapy feeling in a really bad place, full of impotent rage and frustration all directed at myself, really tearing myself apart because the ‘I am to blame for all my problems, it’s all my fault’ belief was in full strength and I struggle really hard to oppose that internal set up. Telling T as best as I can about the ‘it’s all my fault’ set up, spitting nails and being really irritable and snarly and defensive - and he was ok with that, he’s very good so far in that I’ve been able to get annoyed at him and say critical angry things to him (like ‘you STILL don’t f***ing understand!!!!’) but then at the end of the session he asked whether it had been helpful, whether I had taken anything from it and I said, no - because it hadn’t, I hadn’t felt helped or even understood, and I wasn’t feeling any better or hopeful or positive at all. At which he looked quite - disappointed I think - and said this happens every 3 or 4 sessions where he thinks there’s progress and I come along and say no nothing has changed I don’t feel that there’s any progress at all. It wasn’t an accusation by him, more of a statement but the way he looked and all his body language made me feel like, oh it’s my fault (naturally!) I’m supposed to be getting better, I’m supposed to be changing and feeling progress and I’m not and thinking about it afterwards I realize I’m suddenly terrified that he thinks he can’t help me, that he’s going to tell me that it’s no good that he can’t actually help me after all (translated in my head as ‘I can’t be helped’) and that is spinning me out right now.

I know the advice would be to talk to him about it, and I will in next session (much as I’d rather not mention it, keep quiet and hope I’m wrong type of thing, talk about it and it might just make it true!) But right now it’s making me think of all the ‘failed’ therapy I’ve done over the years and that I am ‘incurable’ after all, that it’s something so very wrong with me that so many different therapists haven’t been able to help me. And here I am with the first therapist in my life whom I think CAN help me, and he’s thinking that after all he can’t.

Sorry for the long post, sorry also for anticipating the obvious advice anyone could give me - I guess I just wanted to spill the fear to people who might have experienced something similar.