Hi with. A lot of what you say deeply resonates with me. I've had therapy go on for long periods, stopped, gone back, etc.

IMO, it may be the case that, at this particular moment in time, you have exhausted what good you can derive from psychotherapy - for now. That's not to say that, at some future point in time, it might not benefit you again.

I've had so many of the same experiences that you are relating and have asked myself so many of the same questions. There were intervals of time when I would come out of a therapy session all wound up and feeling like I needed a few drinks to settle down. I would highly encourage you to take a break and used the money saved to pay down some bills.

Maybe therapy can be a godsend to some people at certain points in their lives. But for people, like myself, with chronically recurring depression, I think very long-term therapy is overrated. I did it for a long time. I came to believe that I was going because it felt good, while I was in the therapist's office, not because it was leading to any improvement in my life. So I stopped seeing a therapist I had been seeing for 19 years. I did go back, down the line, in therapy with other therapists.

I believe there comes a point where you can feel like you're really just spinning your wheels. There are times when what you most need to learn is something that can't be learned in a therapist's office. I think having interpersonal issues is a sign that you may be at that kind of a point. Somethings you have to learn in the laboratory of life.

A childhood trauma like your identity issue related to adoption is, I think, the ideal sort of issue to explore in therapy. But there's a limit to how much you can profitably kick that around. Your therapist, and possibly you, might feel like you could continue exploring that issue for months to come. And you probably could. But to what end? It might be something that you could profitably return to in the future. But you may have done as much as you can do with that issue for the time being.

I think a lot of therapeutic relationships go on way past the time that anything really therapeutic is being achieved.