Maybe people just post here more often about their negative experiences with therapy. I think my therapist is terrific. I have been seeing her for about 5 months. She is not a psychologist. She is an LCSW (Licensed Clinical Social Worker) and charges $80/hr.

She is very careful to guide my sessions so that I don't start getting deep into an issue and then have the session end abruptly when I am not at a good place.

The type of therapy that she does (IFS) is very gentle and intuitive and affirming, which works well for me. I am extremely stubborn and entrenched in my fears and dysfunctions, but I've discovered that if someone says "examine this aspect of yourself, ask how it is trying to help you, think about how it has gotten misguided/off-track, try to imagine what would be the healthy path here and then put it aside for now" that after I get out of the session, things will start percolating in my brain and subconscious and the next thing I know a realization or an urge to do something healthier will appear.

If that doesn't make any sense, well, it doesn't always make sense to me either. It's a mysterious process.

I feel so grateful for the time that I get to spend with this therapist. She is much younger than I am but wise in ways that I am not, and very intelligent and well-trained, too.

As far as whether she cares about me - she's helping me. I call that caring. Her manner is warm and her face doesn't "switch off" at the end of the session.

I think one thing that so many therapists don't do properly is what I'd call the "cool-down period" - the last 5 or 10 minutes of therapy where whatever you've been discussing needs to be brought to a natural ending point. It reminds me a bit of how a massage therapist does the same thing at the end of the session. I think each therapy session is like a story - it needs to have a beginning, a middle, and an ending.

So, I'm one person who is getting a lot of good from my therapy sessions and likes my therapist. That doesn't mean that I don't often feel emotionally drained after a session or that I don't sometimes feel like an area of my psyche has been "opened up" and that's not always comfortable.

I am not going to therapy this week because the session last week covered an issue that I need some time to "process" and digest before I go back.