(Dani and velcro003, pardon me for coming so late to this thread. I got here by thread-hopping, seeing who'd replied to some thread I'd been following, and what else they'd posted, and who else had posted there, and where else they'd posted... and here I was.)

I haven't been in therapy myself in quite a while. When I was, it was through a public program, potluck, two residents (new MDs) for a year each. I never found out what my diagnosis was but my presenting complaint was anxiety. I remember being pretty reactive at the time, rarely trusting my therapists not to trigger me and send me home still triggered, so mostly thinking twice before bringing anything up in session, or bringing up the least "loaded" stuff first to see how they responded.

Both there and on later occasions when I had issues on my mind that I was having trouble getting a handle on, I found myself anticipating: "If I say that this (or this, or this) is where I'm coming from -- what will they make of it? What diagnostic box will they put me in, that I won't be able to climb back out of if it's not a good fit? What might they tell me I now have to do, "or else"?

I think the one situation I was trying to avoid at any cost was the one where I might present a T with something he didn't understand well or wasn't that good at dealing with; I'd suspect that he wasn't being a good T; he'd tell me that instead, I wasn't being a good client; and since he was the expert/boss, it would be his opinion that would stick. In fairness, I don't remember either of my Ts actually pulling this on me but (a.) I was working pretty hard to avoid it and (b.) other advisors who weren't Ts, later did.

What I missed most (though I didn't discover this until much later) was having some informed choices available: if I choose to go this way, here's more or less what I can expect; if I choose to go that way instead, here's what that's likely to look like; and if I start off in one direction and find I don't like the scenery, I can back up and try another without being faulted for indecision or something. And of course no BS such as, "You can either straighten up, fly right, and do it my way, or end up a burnt-out schizophrenic ten years from now."

Anyway, I was wondering (Dani and velcro003 especially): is there anything in particular you expect/imagine happening if you do bring up an issue that you're currently stuck on, but you start out in the wrong place, or on the wrong foot, or your T doesn't seem to get it -- so your T doesn't respond in a way that seems to work for you?