I recently had a discussion with a troll about never questioning therapists, and it left me with a lot of thoughts on the matter. So here I am, writing a blog post about my experience with therapists and to say that… it’s okay to question them!
Which is not to say that you should not trust your therapist, or that you should approach them in an antagonistic manner. Just that therapists are humans too, and as such, they can make mistakes – and if you find yourself with a therapist that you feel is not the right match for you, it’s okay to change them.
My first therapist failed to diagnose me with depression, and thought my symtomps were caused by my relationship with my father (which confused me a lot, since if anything, I had problems with my mother at the time). Then I went to a therapist that tried to sell me a ‘get better in five weeks’ formula. I met therapists who denied the genetic component of depression, who thought it was okay to ask a person telling them about abuse if they ‘remembered it correctly’.
A friend of mine had a therapist who failed to diagnose them with depression too, and denied their bisexuality (for the therapist, they were a lesbian in denial).
There are a lot of good therapists too, my current two therapists are a gem and my friend found one who they love and who helped them greatly. But we couldn’t have found them if we stuck with our previous therapists just because ‘they know better than us’. Sometimes it’s true, sometimes it’s not, if your therapist causes you additional stress and it’s objectively wrong (as in the case of the denial of bisexuality)… flee as fast as you can! Therapy is extremely important, I can’t stress this enough, but a bad therapist can do more harm than good. Finding the right therapist is a lot of work, but it’s worth it, and it’s very important to not get demoralized by a bad experience and keep searching. Just like I did! And it worked.