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Joined 8 months ago
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Cake day: November 1st, 2025

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  • Other comments have touched on the more personally important aspects, but I’d like to highlight:

    No final paychecks or anything.

    as some fuckin’ bullshit, yo. Are you quite sure that’s kosher? If you worked and aren’t paid for the time, your employer still owes you wages for that time worked regardless of if they’re satisfied with your performance or not.




  • There’s no magic moment when you Become You. It’s gradual and takes years and most of the time it’s effective it’s also apparently unrewarding, and there’s no way to tell the difference between “this is useless and i should move on” and “this isn’t immediately rewarding and i should be patient” except to experience the results. With experience it does get easier to tell the difference. At this point, I know within 3-4 sessions with a new shrink whether it’s a good fit or not, but I’ve been at this for decades by now.

    I can say that the session ending 35 minutes early for any reason other than one you agreed upon ahead of time is extraordinary and almost certainly unprofessional.

    It’s okay to say “You’re not helping me, I need X, Y, and Z from now on” and if they can’t provide that then just move on, or if you’re sure just say “You’re not giving me what I need, I’m moving on.”

    I also dunno about all this workbook shit. At that point you might as well join a support group or get on an app or shudder talk to AI for a helluva lot cheaper. In fact, I’ve had several support groups that were leaps and bounds more helpful than the shrink I was seeing; more honest, more direct, more empathetic and experienced. If someone handed me a workbook and told me to do “therapy” out of it I’d drop it on the floor, never return, and refuse to pay for that session. Therapy is done with a therapist. They’re welcome to recommend reading or whatever, but therapy isn’t a fucking worksheet, it doesn’t follow a formula or a flowchart. I’m willing to bet $20 most of those zillion skills are just so many myriad reframings and permutations of the same two or three principles.

    A good therapist doesn’t just ask you how you can deal with X (though that is in fact an important part of it), a good therapist works with you to help you figure out how you can deal with X, including making suggestions of their own. A good therapist doesn’t just watch you sputter and flounder on the high sea asking, “jeez looks like a tight spot you’re in there, how ya gonna get outta that?”, they throw the therapist’s metaphorical equivalent of a float and bring you aboard and place you (to the extent possible in the circumstances) in calmer, shallower water. Conversely, a good therapist also knows your strengths and will challenge you when they know you’re not living up to them, whether through laziness or mental block or you just hadn’t thought of it that way or whatever.

    Fuck anyone who implies you’re not trying hard enough or that a mediocre therapist is good enough. You can tell good and well for your own damn self that it ain’t workin; TRUST YOURSELF. Yes, it’s important that you do most of the work and yes, some people or some issues can tolerate mediocrity, blah blah blah. Is that working for you? Seriously ask yourself. Keep trying 'til you find the right one. But don’t drop the one until you’ve picked up another, if possible. less-than-ideal therapy is usually better than no therapy at all.

    Oh, and medicine. It’s very important that you get the right medicine. In my experience, I know within 2-3 weeks whether and how a medicine is working and when a psychiatrist tells me “lets check back in 2-3 months” It’s almost always more to do with their scheduling than anything of theraputic import.