I'm pretty much damaged goods, too. Nobody said it in exactly those words but there have been lots of things close to it.

So, why can't they say something that explains the damage, and why their current methods don't work in a way that clients, coming from wherever we are coming from, can understand? I'm not intellectually stupid. How is it that I come across as damaged? Why is it that your methods fail to help with the damage? Have you considered trying to help come up with ways that I can get along in the world despite the damage? If I haven't been able to come up with them myself, maybe it's because the damage has limited my ability to do that? Helpers help blind people, for instance, by developing Braille and getting books published in Braille. And floor numbers in the elevator. All kinds of things to help the physically damaged. Why not us?

For years and years I heard that if I "worked hard" I could "change". I did work hard. What's changed is that I no longer trust therapists. And I believe that trusting them indiscriminately was part of the damage I went into therapy with.

So from that standpoint I am "better". But to take more than 50 years for that? And I still have no skills or confidence in how to get along in the world, to see and find my place in it, other than as a "mental patient". And I'm old. But not dead yet. Though often I wish I was, or feel like I'm going to disintegrate (again).

Therapy sucks and is often ineffective or harmful. That's the the result of my experience, of my personal "research". It's also my truth. Therapists may have their own truth, their own research, but it hasn't helped me much, despite me paying their fees and "working hard". So I think I'll stick with mine, unless something comes up that convinces me otherwise.