Kiwi ,
Please forgive my snark ,"putting training wheels on therapist is a damn hard job ".

A good therapist (or a competent one ) is going to meet you on your level ,wherever that maybe and establish a rapport ,before they go messing around in the brain bucket ,well now that you have experienced discount outlet therapy ,your older and wiser ,and will stay away from the "walmart model of mental health".

The fact that your still standing ,healing and moving on ,is a real testament to your own inner resources .

Therapy should never be dis empowering, and somehow i am left with the feeling that #8 is out there clubing somebody with there own arms ,#8 is clueless .

You cant work a "cookie cutter one size fits all manual" ,without creating a trail of victims,and not everyone is going to have the ability to "heal thy self" ,if they did maybe they would have done that to start with? .

I am happy you have found away to succeed despite a therapy failure ,maybe you found the best outcome from the worst therapy .I will let you decide that for yourself when the time is right ?

I only made it to Cali once in my life ,i had to take my wife out to UC San Diego,for a surgery that never happened ,and I didn't see much outside of trying to get the hospital in order,and the coffee truck outside.i would realy love to do the "culinary tour" eat my way across LA . I don't have an eating disorder ,i do have a metabolic one about every five years my metabolism goes ballistic ,and I have to eat around 6000 calories a day or I lose weight that day ,I can crush some leftovers ,i have no idea why LA is so appealing ,considering I am on the other coast and was raised in an around the 5 borbouroghs but its Ok to dream? I guess what you haven't been exposed to will always have that gravitational pull.i have a friend who lived out there who always reminds me "dude that isn't a hotspot of food ,it's 527 square miles of congested everything , you wouldn't last a week , going across town can take 10 hours". Maybe in my next life .