My experience of therapy is that it is an additional source of stress. It is stressful to reveal yourself and be vulnerable. It's horrible to acknowledge your needs and it's unbearable when those needs go unmet. It's painful and confusing when your therapist has responses which you don't like. When you are working within the relationship, I can't see how it's not stressful at least some of the time.

I think I have said this before LT, but he doesn't sound like he works relationally. My therapist can be pretty brutal about her responses to me, but it is within the context of how we are relating. So she might say she is irritated by me (she has said more hurtful things than that), but she would contextualise it by talking about what was happening for her. Ultimately, we would look at what was happening between us that caused her response and, more importantly, mine. Does he do anything like this or just tell you his response (good or bad) and leave it there? Does he attend to your part of the interaction?

It is very surprising to me that he doesn't appear to have a distinct modality. Maybe this is different in the US and maybe it's different with psychologists, but how are you supposed to know if his approach suits you if you don't what his approach is? Theoretically, at least.

(Also, I don't want to paint my therapist as a golden therapist because she most definitely isn't.)