I am going to start a little survey here.

Here are my four questions:

1. How long have you been in therapy?

2. What are your main symptoms, the reasons you went into therapy?

3. What do you think are the origins of your symptoms?

4. How successful has your therapy been?

I guess since I ask for information from others I should be willing to give it for myself:

1. Decades, on and off.

2. Severe anxiety and various means of dealing with it; depression.

3. A highly controlling mother, who really had no idea how to raise children other than how she had been raised, and who as a consequence often panicked and was out of control herself, resulting in an abusive childhood for us children. Plus a personality type that did not match what my mother thought it should be. Father who could have provided a counter-balance absent after my age of 8, and often before that.

4. Therapy ups and downs. At times the "therapy" was extremely destructive. In the last year or so I have been getting much more of a handle on what has been going on with myself, only partly as a result of therapy, with a lot of help from books on or by people with emotional difficulties, and some books on psychology -- plus Psych Central.