Good questions, IMI!

Do you believe everything your therapist says about you?

I have had 2 Ts and no, I didn't believe everything they said. I never believe everything anyone says! I always thought that even though my Ts were better educated and more trained to observe things in me and my patterns that I might miss, I still was the one living in my heart and mind and I also was every bit as intelligent as either one of them - which they agreed with. I challenged them on things. Sometimes they were wrong and admitted it. Sometimes they were right and they saw what I had not and I had to think about it a while before I saw it and accepted it, too.

Do you agree with the type of treatment and medications your therapist wants for you?

No, I didn't always agree, especially about meds. I was willing to be as compliant as possible but I also asked lots of questions and took some initiative. I feel like I was working too hard to be compliant at first when I was misdiagnosed as bipolar and put on Abilify (which started a round of absolute hell for me), but I still stood up for myself enough that I got T and the PA doofus to accept what it was doing to me!

Do you believe you have a mental illness or a chemical imbalance in your brain?

Hmmm. I tend not to think of myself as mentally ill, just mentally/emotionally different. I don't think I am mentally ill. But I do think I have some things in my brain that do function different than the average so-called normal person, whether that's a chemical thing or the way my brain is structured/designed or whether it's all interrelated with the cause/effect of the emotional environment in which I grew up, which could have brought out inherent tendencies or created patterns in my thinking ....

Do you think your therapist knows more than you about your diagnosis?

I think my Ts had more education/training than I on them. But I have learned a great plenty.

Do you just let your therapist do their job by helping you and ignore thinking for yourselves?

My Ts encouraged me to do the work and the thinking for myself!
Though there was a time, well, it was in the middle of hell and I had withdrawn from T really, and she said, Let people help you!
Anyway, it was teamwork ... although sometimes I was too independent about it all and needed them to remind me it was OK to stop doing ALL the work by myself, alone!