Have you asked your current T what she thinks? What is that you are hoping to get out of therapy, is there anything specific that you can describe? Does your T understand and agree that it is possible? Has she helped others in this process? Can she describe some milestones that you might go through along the way?

All these are questions I never asked. I just kept plodding along, believing in the process, being a good client, as best I knew to. People pleasing the one "in charge" even if I had selected her and was, therefore, in charge. But it was a pattern that I selected and was conditioned to. I tried different things from time to time but it all eventually went back to me people-pleasing, "working hard" (well, I did get to know myself some through all of that), and eventually reaching some impassable impasse.

18 months after the last therapy ended, I am suspecting that the rejection I got from my last therapist, and the feelings I had about that, connected with intense, horrible feelings of rejection that I had as a child, and which I had numbed out and could not "recover" on my own. Therapy off and on my whole adult life couldn't get past that, despite my best conscious efforts.

If someone had told me that the root of my problem was intense fear of rejection, and avoiding it at almost any cost, I would not have believed them. None of that was conscious. So, I had to experience it.

However, it was an unbelievably intolerable experience, over many months, still ongoing. Without PC and some support groups IRL I doubt that I could have "made" it. I may well have caved and gone back to try to find another therapist who could "be there" for me -- as bad and expensive and as useless/hurtful as therapy has been for me at times, the desperation from the loneliness and feelings of worthlessness might well have won out. Ahh. . .So I guess I've got some things to be thankful for, although it's still a struggle.

My therapy ended badly because my last T reacted out of her own stuff. I wonder if somebody else might have been able to elicit or even trigger the rejection feelings without actually rejecting me. I would hope that there are some T's out there who can do that kind of thing, but my last T could not.