I don't personally believe my therapist is trained in trauma.I think she is familiar with trauma, but that is not the same thing. I feel like it has been money down the drain with this therapist. there is no structure. My sister gave me money for the therapy and therefore I think that because I can afford x2 sessions a week whilst being unemployed, that my 'trauma' can't be that bad, and that I've lived a sheltered life.

So far, she has taught me no skills and given me no printed worksheets or anything. She sets homework only occasionally and then doesn't ask me if I did it. It's meant to be mixture of cbt/dbt, but she never comes to the sessions with any pre-prepared materials. It's not person centred therapy and yet I guide the whole sessions, and then she says we talk about the past too much!! But that's what I am stuck in- everything that's happened.
She has actually told me to practise skills without telling me what they are. She told me to think about making a self soothe box without talling me what it was. She has mentioned grounding techniques once, but then she never mentions them again.

One of the worst bits is that we're supposed to be doing dbt and yet she has never given me any resources on it except x1 set of mindfulness sheets. she hasn't even given me the skills checker sheet to write down when you've practise dbt skills during the week.
She tells me that I will 'probably have to do some trauma work,' and I'm sat there thinking 'isn't that what we're supposed to be doing now??' She says we have to work make sure I'm stable first, and that's fine but we're not even doing that. I have been honest with her to the best of my ability about how bad it gets for me in terms of self care, and yet she has never even given me a depression 'activity sheet' or self care checker sheet.

I dont' think she realises how deep all this stuff is, and how unbelievably confused and disorientated I am all the time- therapy needs to be the one place i can count on having some structure, so that I can at least feel safe in therapy, because i don't feel safe outside of it. It's not person centred therapy so i shouldn't be guiding it.
I am reading Judith Hermann's 'Trauma and Recovery' and apparently the first stage of trauma recovery is safety and stability.Yet my therapist talks about me going to visit the buddhist centre when I've only managed to start leaving the house whatsoever in the last 3/4 weeks. I was housebound for 14 months prior, and going to the buddhist centre seems to me to be the 'reconnection' phase of recovery which is stage 3

What do you guys make of all this? I have given this woman a LOT of money which makes me want to continue and not have to admit that this isn't good enough for a therapist, but i so far have made no gains.