I'm curious what experience others have had with therapists being less than supportive.
I don't mean obvious disgust and condemnation, necessarily. I think most therapists (though I'm sure not all of them) are professional enough not to reveal their negative judgments of us.
I'm thinking more about a subtle lack of support or a tendency to want to change the subject (perhaps on the grounds that "oh, that's perfectly okay, so we don't need to talk about it").
Not to bore you with an extended tale of woe ... let's see if I can summarize briefly. My sexual feelings are all to do with CDing, but my romantic orientation is heterosexual, as a man toward a woman. I've had very little success in the area of romance and relationships -- and over the course of 30 years, off and on with several different therapists, therapy has done absolutely nothing to help me develop a healthy, committed intimate relationship, though I have repeatedly stressed (again, with several different therapists) that that was my goal.
So yesterday, after starting with a new therapist and getting a bit frustrated, I bought a copy of "Dating for Dummies." Chapter 2 is about having an inner sense of confidence, which one needs in order to be successful in dating. And it struck me that no therapist has ever, to the best of my recollection, focused on developing confidence. (Score one for "Dummies"!)
What _should_ have happened, but didn't -- a therapist should have said, "If you want to be successful in dating, you need to develop a sense of confidence about the whole process. Not just the sense that you're as good as anybody else, or that you have a right to expect a healthy relationship -- no, you need to have a sense that your prospects for a healthy, committed relationship are just as good as anybody else's, a confident sense that your CDing is not going to be a problem."
What I'm getting at is this: I don't think any therapist ever said that to me, and I suspect the reason is because of subconscious anti-TG bias. That is, I think they started by feeling (but not saying), "Oh, dear, getting this person into a healthy intimate relationship is going to be a real problem." They gave up before they even started, due to anti-TG bias ... and then they continued to take my money for an extended period of time.
I'm often too cynical, so maybe I'm wrong about this being evidence of bias. But I'm curious what experiences other gals have had with the professional community being less than fully supportive (while taking our money).