I felt validated and affirmed, somewhat important and like I could get OK if I just followed their program and came and talked when I had problems. Maybe it did help me sort some things out sometimes but the greater issue of how I could do that for myself I never learned while in therapy. It didn't happen. Instead, I now think going to therapy hampered that, although I didn't know that and apparently didn't have the ability to know that as long as I was "hooked in" to the therapy mindset. (Cult and addiction are words that others have used to describe their experience with therapy and they feel right to me, too, in describing my experience.)

From that perspective, the last therapist terminating me because "she didn't have the emotional resources to continue", "helped" (???) me break the addiction -- I did have the support group I have mentioned and this forum to vent on. Had I not had those resources, the rejection, reenacting and triggering rejected feelings from my childhood that I didn't know I had, despite 50 years of therapy on and off, might well have done me in worse, sending me back to therapy for more addiction or a hospital.