Therapists

I’ve seen a bunch of therapists in the 14 years since I was first diagnosed with depression. None of them have been particularly effective. I guess that’s not surprising, given that I tend to use negative thoughts as a mechanism to avoid situations that are scary or tend to result in emotional pain. A therapist can give me a technique to challenge my thoughts or a behavior to lessen the power of those thoughts, but I’ve rarely tried any of them because I don’t actually want to challenge my thoughts. If I do, I know I will be likely to drag myself right back out there to face that pain again and it’s generally worse the second time.

I’ve been seeing my current therapist for almost two years. He is trying to get me to challenge my social phobia, always talking about how much I’m missing out on by avoiding social groups and romantic relationships. He doesn’t seem to realize that I truly don’t care if I’m missing out on that stuff; whenever I’ve told him so he insists that I’m lying to myself. I don’t really want to be pushed to fit in with society anymore; my dad did that for most of my later childhood and it resulted in me learning a lot of social skills but also increasingly hating myself and my life. At this point I mainly want to know how I can live without experiencing acute emotional pain on a regular basis, if that’s even possible.

My therapist occasionally comes up with some very good insights, which is why I’ve kept seeing him for this long, but I really don’t trust him at this point and there’s a lot of stuff I feel like I can’t tell him. I figure I should probably end things with him, but I have no idea who/what I should try next.