this post was submitted on 12 Jun 2023
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Autism
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Oh yeah... I got this.
Years ago (before most people even knew the word "autism"), my parents offered to send me to a therapist to work through some things. I was all in -- I even had my own ideas about how to go about it, and enthusiastically presented those to the therapist during our first session. He listened with what appeared to be rapt attention, until the end of the fifty minute session, at which point he abruptly stated that we would pick this up the following week. The next week was much the same. And the week after that, I started running out of things to say.
Thing is, he never really offered anything in the way of feedback. He had even stated that this would be the case, as his silently absorbing everything I offered was supposedly part of his therapeutic method, or some such thing. But over the course of time, I started to recognize a few things. First off, it didn't even matter if I said anything; he would very contentedly sit there the entire time and just wait me out until it was time to leave. And the vast majority of the time, regardless of whether or not I said anything, his gaze was fixed on a point over by the windowsill, just out of my line of vision.
Well, I mean... even as a kid, I was certainly no dummy. I made a point of looking at that windowsill as I passed it one day. Situated up there, where he could easily rest his gaze without his less observant patients ever even suspecting, was a clock. He was quite literally just relaxing as the minutes passed and counting the dollars as they tallied onto his bill. Two dollars a minute. That's what he charged.
I don't remember exactly how many months I went to him, but it was easily more than a year. Eventually, my parents informed me that he was moving his practice to a bigger office about an hour away in a much more expensive part of the area, and they asked me if I was interested in continuing to meet with him. I told them very bluntly... no. He very literally did absolutely nothing for me.
I recognize intellectually that this was probably a one-off situation... but nonetheless, I still haven't been able to fully get over my distrust of any form of therapy nor of any therapists, since.