I'm reading the longer version of the article, and holy crap, this is me. Therapists start out really intrigued and intellectually stimulated by me and my situation. They see me as a "special case," as the article describes. It's in no small part because, while I'm not a mental health worker, I am a very cerebral, academic-oriented person and tend naturally to have a lot in common with therapist types. We see the world through similar lenses and share similar interests. Then they realize just how tough my issues are to crack. If they were easy to crack with their usual methods, I would have already resolved them myself...I'm pretty familiar with psychological concepts after all and have successfully desensitized my own panic attacks using techniques I read about in an undergraduate psych course. And, thus, distance, tension, and frustration sets in. My defenses that I was able to, at least to some degree, let down in the beginning go back up because what's the point in letting this person incapable of helping me have access to me defenseless? I try to take them back down and give therapy a genuine chance, but every time I do, it becomes clearer that doing so in no way increases this person's ability to help me and just leads to me feeling ashamed by the vulnerability. Eventually, we both conclude we're getting nowhere. I leave with greater insights into my problems, as the article also discusses, but the problems themselves are still there...I just think about them a little more complexly, which I guess can be good or bad.