I made significant effort with all therapists I've seen, but did not benefit in any meaningful way. With the last one I made enormous effort, and yet the experience was traumatic and ruinous. In many ways I have been a model client. Diligent, respectful, reliable, sufficiently honest and open. The problem was not my mindset. It was collective systemic failure.

For me that analogy does not work at all, and here's why. Therapists are not teachers nor possessors of technical skills that can be imparted to people as in the case of driving a car or playing the piano. They are peddling a vague brew of pseudoscientific techniques and life lessons that has little basis in evidence or empiricism, and when pressed many of them will acknowledge that mostly what they are selling is the relationship. It works for some, which is great. But how many? Nobody knows. I don't trust any of the statistical numbers people cite. As has been said on this forum many times, there are likely a good number of people who find therapy unhelpful or even damaging who are never asked about it, never talk about it, never do therapy again, and just disappear. If you look at this forum or others like it, you can see evidence of the many many ways this odd engineered relationship can devastate or confuse or destabilize people, especially the vulnerable and the desperate. Just my take based on my experience and research.