A therapist once said that the only thing we could actually work on was our own relationship which we formed through the course of therapy. I didn’t really understand what that meant but it worried me since we only talked one hour a week and I was struggling through serious life relationships like family and romantic partners and I never saw how the in-therapy relationship could possibly catch up to those, especially since we didn’t actually do anything together except talk about other people.
A few months into seeing this therapist, she had barely said a word to me the entire time. I asked “so, I’ve been spending these past weeks and months sort of downloading everything that’s going on. At what point will you start giving me feedback or reacting to what I’m saying?”
She clicked out her pen and said “oh interesting… do you enter every relationship saying ‘when do I get something?’”
I’ll never patronize a full blown psychologist again - unless I’m experiencing a legit pathology, not just for processing life. I found them totally useless and way too expensive for just processing life.