I was too difficult for my therapist.

“If you can’t tell me what you’re feeling, then I’m going to have to pull out the chart.” My therapist said as she reached for this gigantic laminate of cartoon faces expressing a series of emotions that is clearly meant for children who are still learning to express themselves. “Well, now I’m just feeling belittled and dumb” I wanted to say to her, but I bit my tongue and instead pointed to an anxious face on the chart.

I never liked to express my emotions at the expense of someone else, so, to me, it was easier to comply with her initial request than tell her how I was really feeling in that moment. I’ve always been like that. Keep the conversation going. Smile and nod. Answer every question I’m asked. Don’t waste anyone’s time. If I wasn’t giving my therapist the answer that I thought that I was supposed to be giving her in that moment, then I felt like I was wasting her time, so I kept talking and trying to draw my own conclusions from childhood traumas and family history to fill the space until our appointment was up.

I had always thought that therapy would be different. I always imagined that I’d tell my therapist what was wrong and they would offer me ways to remedy whatever I was going through. As I sat there opposite her blank, almost judging face, I knew that it wasn’t going to be the case. If I wanted to talk to a blank wall, I would have just stayed in my bedroom. I wanted answers. I wanted help. I wanted Meredith’s therapist on Grey’s Anatomy to yell at me and tell me what was wrong with me. But, of course, I was too shy to tell her that; too afraid of accusing her of doing a bad job, so I tried to pull topics out of the air to prattle on about while she stared at me for the remainder of the hour.

It was during my 4th or 5th therapy session when she flat-out told me that I was “too difficult” for her and that trying to get me to tell her how I was feeling was “like pulling teeth.” I left that appointment feeling even worse than before. If I was still too anxious to open up in front of her before, I definitely wasn’t feeling safe enough to open up around her now. Maybe it wasn’t her though, I thought. Maybe I really was the problem. Maybe I never really learned how to openly express myself to others without sugar coating it. Maybe I never even learned how to openly express my emotions to myself. I always thought that I was being as truthful as possible, but apparently she didn’t think so. I left my appointment that day feeling like I had flunked out of therapy. I never went back to her office.

A few months later, after feeling like the anti-depressants that my general practitioner had prescribed me weren’t working, I began to see a psychiatrist. At first, the interactions were almost the same. She would just sit there and listen and I would talk and talk, hoping that eventually she would interject and offer some advice or tell me what I was doing wrong. She never did. Afraid that she too would reach the point of telling me that I was too difficult to work with, I mustered up all of the courage that I had to tell her what I wanted from her.

I told her about my last therapist and how it made me feel, and how I felt like I was getting the same vibes from her. As I told this new therapist that I didn’t want someone to just listen while I talked, I began to shake and tears fell from my eyes. My most vulnerable moment during therapy so far wasn’t talking about my own problems, but rather telling my therapist what my problem with her was. Even though she told me that flat-out telling me what to do wasn’t her style because she didn’t feel like I would truly learn anything that way, our sessions went smoother from there on out.

After that conversation, I did learn that one of my biggest problems is that I’m a people-pleaser. I always like to be right, I like to do a good job, and I never like to call anybody out on their own issues, even if it drives me insane. I put everyone else’s emotions before my own — even my therapist’s. Since she never offered me any advice and rarely ever did anything other than listen, I still haven’t figured out how to get past that. I wouldn’t say that I still feel like I failed therapy, but I don’t think that I’ve succeeded yet.

I eventually stopped seeing her too, once we had found a course of medication that worked best for me, and once I realized that I wasn’t getting much, if anything, out of these therapy sessions either. I haven’t been back to therapy since, and, for the time being, I’m OK with that. I know that at some point, I probably should go back to therapy to try and work all of that out, but for now I’m OK without having to point to my feelings on a cartoon chart.