Hi Etcetera1, I can relate to your question as I myself feel that I’m a bit incompatible with therapy. (For me, I think that therapists failed to comprehend that just coming and simply talking was hard, and that if they could listen with kindness, compassion and understanding, that this would be wonderful therapy for me as it would help me to accept my emotions and thoughts, just the fact of sharing them and being seen by another, and being received with respect and caring). I think my therapists felt they had to give me amazing insights and challenge my thoughts, which I found shaming in a traumatic way. I’ve stopped therapy for now, and I feel much better without it. Therapy brought to the surface all kinds of distressing emotions, and it feels fantastic that they’ve gone below the surface again.

You said therapists have said that:

I need to learn how to have safety about difficult strong emotions, feelings
- I need to learn how to be vulnerable and when and with whom to be vulnerable with

I personally think that its therapists who need to learn things - like how to truly accept and respect a person, and to have humility. I think that therapists can be very imperfect, but they often don’t realise this, and can work in a way that blames the clients.

I also found that the concept of self-soothing didn’t make sense. I think someone wrote it in a text book once and they all adopted the concept, but who knows what they really mean by the phrase and maybe different therapists give different meaning to it. I think we all self soothe, but unfortunately, some of us have much more painful emotions than others. I used to think that if my T could personally feel the emotions that were triggered by my sessions with her she would then shut up about self soothing.