Disclaimer: I am not a proponent of psychiatric medication, and I only offer this thought from past experience.

What could have been happening is that your therapist sought to address your symptoms without medication first, which can often help identify what's psychological and what might be physiological. I think that's a good approach. A lot of mh professionals will diagnose and drug first, which leaves a lot of room for error. If you had gone to the psychiatrist first, he may have given you unnecessary drugs if, say, you could have gotten relief from therapy instead. Often, pdocs like to know that someone has been to counseling as a way to rule out psychological causes. In that case, it was good that you'd been in therapy for a while.

So it could be more that the process wasn't made clear to you by your therapist early on, or that he truly felt you could resolve your symptoms with therapy.