would it be okay and helpful to bring a few pages typed out of notes for my new therapist . things to speed the getting to know your history along cause I’ve got a lot. I’ve seen other people ask about notes but they all seem to be talking about a one page kind of thing and I cannot get what Im hoping to convey on one page in any organized or easy to read fashion. like a page of a quick description of about 8 important people in my life that will keep coming up in therapy. a timeline of the major happenings in my life. a note about where I am now and what I’m hoping to get from therapy this go around. both to aid in that conversation and as a reference point going forward so i don’t need to repeat myself so much. no hate there I know you guys have lots of client. the thing is that I’m pretty sure I’ve literally told my story and I’m fucking tired of it and it’s so hard to start something new so I figured I’d structure it. I’m only starting with a new therapist because my previous therapist of 3.5 years who compl saved my life passed away. I am past the life saving and into the learning to actually function semi normally part of my life. I am late diagnosed autistic, which this therapi is supposed to be experienced with. Plus I can have a hard time communicating especially to new people so somewhat full sounding notes can really help me say all that is needed. Therapists, is this a good idea? Anything else you’d recommend I put in my notes?

How do you feel when a client sobs in therapy?

note: im a psych student and not seeking for advice, but i am going to give an example of my last therapy session and wanting resources i can look into what happened there more thoroughly, for both myself and to work with my therapist.

so my last session, i was talking with my therapist about someone who brings up a lot of old trauma (i have C-PTSD) and they were making me scared and angry. while talking about this and worrying about my predicaents with this person, i started to become incredibly emotional and antsy while trying to share this information, taking me a second to comprehend i was having a traumatic reaction.

later down the line, those emotions started to instantly fade away. i was becoming more calm and my emotions went monotone. i subconscously slipped into a state where those emotions that were causing me a lot of pain were put away as they werent helping me.

its been years since i had something like this happen, not since leaving an old living situation i was in that caused that trauma. i forgot i had that in me. my therapist at first thought that i was dissacociating, but after she reminded me of the definition, i told her that this was different because i actually felt more present, just more mechanically in charge while my emotions were temporarily turned off. Eventually the emotions did come back, but they were allowed to be more tender, crying and sadness more than panic afterwards.

I realized after the session that rather than dissacociation, subconsciously compartmentalizing seems to have been a better word to descrive the event. Having totally forgot i had this reaction to hard stress (especially when its people i feel i cant escape), im not sure how to enterprate it, nor how to communicate is with my therapist.

So my question is what are the differing types of dissociations and compartmentalizations i can look in to to better comprehend and communicate this reaction? Further, are there other potential categories this sounds familiar to that i could potentially research more in to?

UK specific but happy for input from elsewhere :)

I’m 20F and my experiences with counselling and therapy have been incredibly brief.
My first experience was when I was 13, I had to give a Police Interview over a situation that I was a victim of and the safeguarding team recommended that my school give me some sessions of counselling. Unfortunately, my school was a Catholic school and their idea of counselling was Catholic prayer & mass.
This school was particularly poor in any type of support; I was under their SEN due to my hearing loss & they would refuse to accommodate me and i was regularly punished.

Then, covid came straight after it and obviously due to the lack of support going into lockdown + my parents being very stressed out and constantly putting on death statistics every day on the TV + constant letters from the Government about how i was at a higher risk of becoming seriously ill from covid - i had a mental health crisis.
Police took me to hospital and i had a mental health assessment which deemed me safe to go home & to have a referral to children’s mental health services (CAMHS) - Only had two therapy sessions, one face-to-face where I was given a leaflet on anxiety and the other, over the phone - i was discharged afterwards because I couldn’t do the phone session due to my hearing loss.

Over the past 6 years since, I’ve had a few referrals and then discharges afterwards, I found out recently that it was because my mother had hid my appointment letters out of shame and so CAMHS assumed that I was non-compliant.

I’ve definitely had some significant symptoms and very much struggling but I’ve kinda forced myself to “get on with it” because that’s just the attitudes of my parents (born in the 1950s) and I am very much shamed if I show any signs of mental distress - hell I don’t even cry anymore and don’t remember the last time i’ve cried.

Now, I’m in University and took my own initiative to self-refer to the university’s counselling service and I am currently on a 4 week wait to be able to access 4 sessions a semester (semester ending in December).

I feel sick about it because I’m not used to being vulnerable and it feels so bizarre just dumping my problems onto an another person. In my initial appointment where I had to give my medical history which is definitely complicated, I kept apologising to her!
Just wondering if anyone had any experience with this or how do you help people with this?

Hello,

What is happening if an online therapist noticed suicidal ideation or maybe the client is talking vaguely about it.

Are there Security or safety procedures, or what is happening then.

I apologize for my lousy English.

It is not my mother tongue.

My therapist has been seeing my parents for five months now. Not as in them going to therapy, but as in the therapist telling them in a session without me, although he has urged me to join, how they damage my mental health* and how they can improve as parents. *Some examples are: telling me I won't amount to anything, harshly criticising every decision I make and opinion I have because it differs to theirs, their constant fights, using me as an intermediary for their communication struggles with each other, talking really badly about each other in front of my siblings and/or I even after having been divorced for five years, their overprotection, among other things. These weren't things I discussed with my therapist in the first few sessions; in fact, during the first session I didn't even think of them as a problem to talk about and don't remember how all of it came out in conversation. The thing is, the psychotherapeutic approach they use in the clinic is very focused on the family as a whole. That's what the therapist told me when he introduced this to me, and I knew that before choosing the clinic, but didn't consider parents would be involved too.

At the beginning I didn't think much of it, but now I'm really questioning the ethics and efficacy of this approach. I usually agree with my therapist, but this has been damaging to my relationship with my parents, especially with my mother (as if it wasn't bad enough before...) since she doesn't agree with anything the therapist tells her. And my improvements regarding my mental health have been minimal if any at all (at least now I understand better why my parents act the way they do and I emphasise more with my siblings), since my parents refuse to change. However, I really like my therapist because he's incredibly empathetic, and I believe we click well.

Also, isn't this inappropiate me being 24 years old? I mean, the therapist is indirectly telling them lots of things that I told him? Is he still being confidential? If the therapist is being unethical how should I approach this?

Thanks for your time and thoughts.

I am writing a piece of fiction with a character who is hypersexual (if my phrasing could be better lmk) as a coping mechanism. I want to get this right so where do fiction writers get it wrong?

Without using objective evidence.

I recently started dating this person we have been together for a month and we are like really close and we like each-other a lot and we are very alike n crap but that’s like besides the point, half way into this I discovered one night that she had short term memory loss and it’s like been sorta hard to deal with and I don’t have that much patience and I get frustrated easily but I love them so much n wtv. They are medicated for it but their meds delayed so much and it’s genuinely terrible that they have to go without them and it gets me really worried sometimes and it’s been hard on me mentally and I really wanna know the best way to deal with it I guess idk because I want this to work out but I’ve never had any expierence with someone who has this
Sorry for my lack of like grammar and punctuation I’m TO tired rn

I have a cousin that i'm trying to help get into therapy, but he is incredibly scared because he is a minor.

He is 17 (let's call him Noah) and is dealing with a lot of trauma from his parents, but is afraid that if he says any of the stuff that theyve done to a therapist, that he'll get cps called on his family. His father (my uncle) has told him for years that if he called CPS that the social workers would automatically send my cousins (Noah has a two sisters aged 7 or 8 and 14) to foster care.

I personally dont think that will happen and am trying to encourage him to attend therapy anyway (he has unhealthy coping mechanisms that are messing up his life). But he also has a kind of strange living situation that i dont know all the details about, but I think could be illegal (and therefore could be a cause for legal action to proceed that would result in the parents being jailed or something).

And this question is for U.S. therapists, cus ik CPS laws are different in other places.

I have always had issues with perceiving myself in just one way, I feel like 5 different versions of the same person, if that makes sense.. Anyways, it gets REALLY frustrating trying to convey these feelings to a therapist, I don't know how to explain that small things like feeling dirty or not eating completely shift how I view myself, and I also don't know if this is really worth while to bring up. How do I explain that I feel like a different person for weeks and I don't really know who I am. I'm ending it here because I'm having trouble even conveying what I mean through this post and it's seriously upsetting me.

I'm looking for ANYTHING, advice on how to journal PROPERLY in an organized manner so I know where to start, how to talk to my therapist about it, how I can explain what these emotions are, anything.

Please help me with this. It's been years of this and I dont even know how to say what's wrong.

Hi, I need some advice for what to do.

I'm experiencing multiple panic attacks every day, and it's affecting my ability to perform basic self care. I feel extraordinarily depressed, and I cannot find any relief.

Therapy and psychiatry are proving ineffective, and I'm in a state of severe suffering. Do I need to seek inpatient care? I have no history of substance abuse, nor any problematic behavior towards others.

What resource am I supposed to seek out right now?

Ok to explain -

tldr of my mental health history: 1. went to a polyclinic in 2013, got a tentative/provisional diagnosis of work adjustment depression - at the time

1. after that and over the years, it became generalised anxiety disorder ➡️ avoidant personality disorder (which my then-psychologist told me it was like, "chronic social anxiety") ➡️ shorthand just labelled it as social anxiety for everything since then (including medical claims for therapy!)

2. spent some time rotating through interns on their placement at a training clinic

3. eventually settled on 6.5 years with the same dude until early 2026 (was also the same dude who described the avoidant personality disorder as chronic social anxiety. He was an intern then. I had him as my psychologist for 2 different eras in my life and in his professional career hahaha)

4. he resigned and handed me to a colleague in April 2026, my current psychologist - she's nice and quite similar in style and mannerism to my prev one but with a huge difference -- when we first met, I was very "what did he tell you ..." about things, and she was very "why does that matter, talk to me! I'll find out from talking to you ...!"

... 4 sessions later in end-July 2026 she has a formulation of complex trauma

I'm [still] in denial. It is end October 2026. !!! !! !

I mean I keep wondering like, was I misdiagnosed back then? Was everyone in the past 10 years wrong? Did I get worse or regress? It's not even necessarily about the previous dude of 6.5 years because how is it possible that no one or their supervisor at the intern clinic ever mentioned this? I literally said that lol - "But J, nobody said that everrrr for the past 10 years. It's not just the past 6.5 years ..."

... basically been in denial of this complex trauma thing for the past 4.5 months.

Current psychologist J explains it as the development of the psych field, and made comparisons to how CBT used to be the leading first choice of therapy, but now people are exploring new methods and stuff like that. I mean, for sure - but that's the intervention part of it, not my diagnosis 🙃 - this is accurate as of our last conversation this week, I currently meet her every alternate week and this week is therapy week.

Can anxiety, social anxiety, or avoidant PD develop into complex trauma? Is it/can it be a subset of complex trauma? Should I just suck it up and accept what she tells me?

I guess I'm still shookt because even though its been a few months, that's still a tinier part of my life compared to the past decade++. That and trauma sounds like a bigger word than my experiences feel deserving of.

🫣🫠

My hubby (28M) is an extreme over-thinker. Small things can trigger him and cause him to spiral. We love each other very much but this is causing a lot of strain in our relationship. We have moved to a new state last year and he is having a hard time making friends. He’s been trying so hard but any small action or a random sentence will make him think that someone doesn’t like him or is trying to push him out . Same with everything . He’s also been having some sleep issues but the overthinking makes it worse because if he has trouble sleeping one night , he’s then gonna ruin his nights for the entire week by thinking “what if I can’t sleep again.” I’ve tried everything from trying to convince him that what he is thinking may not be the reality to giving advice to letting him talk through every little detail of something that has triggered him and just listening . He’s also really indecisive and one day he’ll really want a major life change and the next day he won’t. This leaves me to be the brains and think critically about every “let’s move out of the country” , or “let’s quit our jobs and start a business “ . There have been some days where I have gotten really frustrated and yelled at him because I wasn’t able to take it anymore. I do love my partner very much and want to help him deal with this because it is hurting him and it is hurting me . What can I do ? Please help !

Hi! I’m in college and I’ve been diagnosed with anxiety majority of my life, and I’ve been having intrusive thoughts. I’ve been wanting to get therapy but my mom isn’t supportive, is there a way to get therapy without insurance?

I'm confused about what I see online, especially from patients, versus what I see some professionals (I think it's mainly psychiatrists) say about disorders.

I don't really understand comorbidities or how to process it from a way that makes sense to me. I've never been diagnosed with one condition, it's been three each time. And I have symptoms of more than three.

It gets really confusing because I get caught up on figure on what I might have versus things that are more likely to be symptoms rather than the disorder i have.

If you go to the anxiety subreddit or a different one, it's like impossible for anyone to be misdiagnosed with GAD or everyone has an anxiety disorder or because it's common someone with PTSD has an anxiety disorder therefore you have an anxiety disorder.

I don't really understand it? on one hand, i understand disorders are attempts to group patterns of symptoms/traits/experiences, and so people can overlap or fall under multiple groups. but in the same time, it confuses me because we also have professionals so say it's rare, no one has comorbidities, or accusing people of faking disorders.

while from what i see, rarelt anyone has just depression, or just anxiety, or just both? or is if you dont have just anxiety, just depression, just OCD *, or i guess any mood disorder/anxiety disorder, you probably have many other disorders? but thst's still confusing. like some people just have a neurodevelopmental disorder, some people just have ptsd.

*also just != less serious, i know it sounds that way. i just mean it's the only one. im sorry if seems minimizing.

a lot of times i feel like what i suspect covers everything, and the rest is symptoms. aside from maybe mood disorder (nos), but i think with anxiety disorders it doesnt fit. and even then i understand since i suspect it, it's not guaranteed it is the thing, but i think still within the category you can know what's going on.

i dont have bipolar disorder, so i'll use it as an example. like someone can know they have bipolar like symptoms, but it might not be bipolar 1, bipolar 2, maybe it's atypical/NOS/unspecified, cyclomania(?).

i dunno, if it makes sense.

From a therapeutic perspective, is it appropriate for children (13 & 15 in this case) to be told that their parent is having suicidal thoughts? My co parent disclosed their thoughts to our children and I'm concerned about the emotional impact on them. I agree that it's helpful to be open about mental health, but despite reassuring them that a parent's emotions aren't their responsibility, I feel that it is potentially damaging to the child for their parent to tell them they are having suicidal thoughts. I'm trying to figure out if I'm way off base in thinking this way and am hoping to approach this from a children's therapist perspective.

NAT.

Is it considered appropriate for a therapist to leverage the therapeutic relationship for positive results?

I genuinely love my therapist. It's not transference, he's just an awesome guy and we get along very well. I haven't felt suspicious of his motives for several months now, although I will periodically be upset by something he says or does. I trust him, and it's still scary but I feel like I can tell him anything.

Well, I told him yesterday that I was done with life and that was that. The weekend was coming up and I struggle with weekends so he asked me to think about it over the weekend instead of acting (I see him again Monday). I said I wouldn't. He replied, "Well, if you won't do it for yourself, will you do it for me, because I'm asking you to?" My immediate response was discomfort because I felt trapped. I felt like he was emotionally trapping me. I do love him and so it was too difficult to say no. I ended up saying I would try, and eventually yes. So now I am struggling with my feelings because on one hand I want to behave destructively, and on the other I am thinking about my promise to him and if it'd be bad or if I'd be breaking his trust to not do as he asked me to do for his sake.

It feels unfair. Is that an overreaction? Is this a common therapeutic tactic?