I wonder if the therapist was using a technique that backfired. The technique is that the client says they’re ambivalent, let’s say about quitting smoking, the therapist says “why don’t you just keep smoking?”

This is meant to prompt the client to list the reasons why they prefer to quit smoking. So then the client is convincing themself rather than listening to the therapist say why smoking bad and arguing with therapist that quitting is too hard.

It’s too crude a tool IMHO for something like “I feel ambivalent about mental health recovery.” In my opinion, a more skillful response is not to question whether the client wants to continue therapy (especially not the first time they bring it up in month 3 of therapy!) but to just listen and try to understand what they they mean and where this is coming from.

It sounds like this therapist missed an opportunity to explore what role (mental) illness has played in your life, what role you played in your family because of it, what skills you did or did not develop because of it etc.

Change is hard and feeling ambivalent about it seems pretty understandable.