Be warned, I am standing on my soap box and I think I may even be channelling Oprah here!

Amateurs!

I have almost 15 years in therapies and therapists. Three major therapists, each lasting about 4 to 5 years, two were cognitive and the current one is psychoanalyst. Not to mention several short visits in between.

Mostly, its been like banging my head against a brick wall, but no experience is without some learning. I learned for example, that CBT as a primary therapy sucks for me, to me seeing a therapist once a week is like claytons therapy, I would forget anything we discussed or I experienced in between. I learned that I have control and trust issues which accounts for the sabotaging and dumping of therapists around 4 years. I learned the difference between staying in therapy because I thought that I wasn't good enough as a patient and blamed the failure on myself and staying in therapy because the therapist was a good one but I was sabotaging.

Don't worry too much. The knowledge that its the therapy or the therapist that isn't working and that you need to move on will eventually just explode in your brain one day. You won't even bother asking us the question because you will just know its time.

Also, don't worry about you self-sabotaging yourself. After a few therapists, you will figure it out and stop doing it.

This is a win-win situation. We are made to survive and figure out solutions to our problems even if it takes a life-time.

Okay, I know this doesn't sound like much of an answer. You want a time limit. The problem is that the time limit is your entire life, with or without your therapist. Do you really think that if your therapist disappeared tomorrow, you would stop learning, having problems, etc? No. Life would go on, you would get older, mature, solve problems, etc. Your 'therapists' would be friends, parents, siblings, teachers, tv, books, seminars, work, etc. Not to down grade the importance of therapists, just to say that we need to keep things in our lives in perspective.

You will never be fully perfect, you will never be normal, you will never be absolutely okay. However, what will change is that you will be okay with the less than perfect, normal and okay you. For example, therapy won't completely take away your anxieties, but it will make you more comfortable with your anxieties. The more you learn to live with your self, your mess, the worlds mess, paradoxically, the more normal, perfect, okay, you become. For me, this has been the greatest lesson, to be okay with the imperfect me.

You will figure it out, just be gentle with yourself, there is no gun to your head saying that you have to figure it all out and make a decision today.