I insulted my therapist. Actually, a few of them.

[Anonymous]

Why did you move in the first place? You can have your spouse move there and you can meet up on the weekends. I did this for 5 years when my spouse worked in one country and I was in another country.

[Anonymous]

I am thinking troll. Lots of therapists available in this small town with no coffee shops and pit bulls running wild!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I am thinking troll. Lots of therapists available in this small town with no coffee shops and pit bulls running wild!

You know, I can totally see why you would think that, but there's a strangely large population of them here. I suspect it's a function of the educated locals moving back, like I mentioned before.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:That particular therapist should not have phrased it like that. It was unprofessional. However, if this has happened with multiple therapists, then you must be contributing to the problem, OP. You might be overly aggressive in your choice of words or tone, and have displaced anger about your trailing spouse life that you put squarely on your current location.

Have you tried medication for your depression? Sometimes it takes medication to make your brain more amenable to therapy and improvement. I've seen this in my son's ADHD. He couldn't learn unless he was medicated. I have a lot of anxiety, and so far medication has not worked for me, but I suspect my therapy sessions would work far better if I could find the right meds!

I also suggest finding an online therapist, not based where you are. You won't know where they're from unless they tell you. My psychiatrist lives in California, and is licensed there and in the state I live in. I see her on Zoom. I see my therapist on Zoom as well. No idea where he lives.

It's actually entirely possible for multiple therapists to be terrible. I've had multiple therapists respond in unprofessional ways to the same issue. It turned me off of therapy for a long time. I'm now with one that seems to know how to do her job, which is wonderful. The previous therapists' failings are not my fault, FFS.

A patient should not have to filter themselves beyond treating the therapist with courtesy and respect (obviously no therapist deserves to be abused). If the therapist is responding dismissively to a patient that is distressed, they are not doing their job. Which sucks for the patient, who has to keep looking for a therapist.

[Anonymous]

Wait, your new town doesn’t have a coffee shop?? Ok, I’ll bite, where is this fabulous town/city?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think you should try online therapy with someone who is t so personally tied to the area.
My suspicion is that you followed a professor-husband and are in a “college town” that feels remote and isolated and provincial compared to where you lived before. (Ask me why I think this)
And obviously the answer is to embrace where you are for now and find things that bring you joy. Join a gym, a church, a mom’s group, anything! And start joining in their traditions and community rituals to see if you can find a community of your own. Also maybe shift your mindset to see if you can step into their world and learn what it is that makes them appreciate a slower pace, a different way of approaching life. Maybe this season you are experiencing is meant to show you how to live in gratitude and humility rather than bitterness and irritation. Pretend you are the heroine in one of those Hallmark Christmas movies who moves from the big city to a smaller town and instead of listing all the things you hate about but (which is essentially Act One), step into Act Two of the story and embrace the town and its people and traditions. Just as an experiment. Wake up every day ready to find the good and embrace where you are. (After all—what choice do you have at the moment? Apart from making your husband miserable and feeding your own depression??)
And in 6 months, if you are still in this dark place, start plotting a move and help him figure out his next career move that can get you back to DMV or wherever you think you’d rather be. But OP, don’t blow up your marriage in the meantime. Try to see from your DH’s point of view that you are making this adjustment 10x harder for him as well with your misery.
You are choosing to wallow in it and you could deliberately and consciously flip that switch tomorrow. Clinical depression is a diagnosis where your sadness and misery and despair has no obvious cause, but your depression is circumstance-related with an obvious cause. But you can’t fix that cause at the moment so resolve to fix the outlook—at least temporarily. Why not try? It might make a huge difference.

The nearest church of our denomination is 45 minutes away. No time for gyms. I can't even work out on my lunch break (WFH) because the locals let their pit bulls run free. There was a drive-by shooting six months ago that killed a child. I am not interested in finding the good here.

No one is really going to be able to help you. You’ve chosen this life for yourself and despite being miserable you stay.

And what is it in your life that is so all consuming that you can’t find a few hours in your week for a gym?

[Anonymous]

Spoiler: your issues don’t actually stem from where you are living.

try another therapist but before you tell them about your feelings about your city, preface it with your prior experience with therapists and feeling dismissed by them.

Be open to thinking about why this experience repeated 4 times for you with different people …

[Anonymous]

You have a problem that you cannot accept others may like something you do not. That’s a good topic for your next session.

[Anonymous]

OP it kind of sounds like you would be miserable anywhere. I think that’s what the therapists are trying to tell you - being a trailing spouse is legitimately hard, but your unhappiness is way outsized. So maybe you’re pointing at the location because it’s big and convenient to blame for everything, but maybe it’s not to blame for EVERYTHING.

[Anonymous]

Okay two thoughts here, OP, and this from someone whose done a lot of therapy with a bunch of different therapists, who have ranged from amazing/life changing, to solid, to meh, to horrible.

1) I have some simple, logical math for you: You literally have only three choices: a) you can move b) you can be miserable or c) you can figure out ways to be happy (or at least less miserable) where you are.

That’s it. No therapist has some secret fourth option. There’s no magic. You are currently choosing B. As long as you choose B, which includes deciding that both A and C are impossible (which of course is objectively false), you are stuck and no one, nothing can unstuck you. Therapy will be a waste of time and money until you’re willing to say “I am open to the possibility of either A or C, though they both seem super hard,” there’s not really a point to therapy and all therapists are going to disappoint you.

2) Your story as written is unlikely enough for me to feel confident you are not being factually inaccurate. Four bad therapists in a row is certainly possible (though unlikely). But four bad therapists in a row who are bad in the exact same way and are basically providing the same, nearly verbatim, bad response, of “I like living here and I don’t understand why you don’t?” No. Sorry, but I do not believe you. I do not, to be clear, think you are lying. I think you are deeply trapped in your triumphant unhappiness and are not actually listening to or internalizing what these therapists are actually saying. There are many different approaches, very reasonable ones, that I could see a therapist taking that you are interpreting this way. Things like “do you think anyone likes it here?” “No, no one could possibly like it here, it’s terrible” “well, I like it here - can you think of any reasons why someone might like it?”

Or

“Is there anything at all you like here?”

Or

“Why do you think people live here?”

Or

“Can you give me more specifics on what’s making you unhappy here?”

Or any one of a million CBT techniques designed to move you away from the black and white, distorted (yup - sorry to tell you nowhere is all good or all bad) thinking that you are trapped in. In other words, you’re coming in incredibly defensive, and you’re not listening or opening your mind at all (because, see above, you’ve decided B is your only option).

The point of therapy is to change your thought patterns, process and understand your emotions, and be open to new ways of looking at things. As long as you’re going in with “IM PERFECT, MY THOUGHTS AND EMOTIONS ARE PERFECTLY RATIONAL ITS JUST THIS HORRIBLE PLACE” you’re wasting your time and money.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Your therapist can’t fix where you live.

Well she's not supposed to devalue that OP hates where she lives.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Okay two thoughts here, OP, and this from someone whose done a lot of therapy with a bunch of different therapists, who have ranged from amazing/life changing, to solid, to meh, to horrible.

1) I have some simple, logical math for you: You literally have only three choices: a) you can move b) you can be miserable or c) you can figure out ways to be happy (or at least less miserable) where you are.

That’s it. No therapist has some secret fourth option. There’s no magic. You are currently choosing B. As long as you choose B, which includes deciding that both A and C are impossible (which of course is objectively false), you are stuck and no one, nothing can unstuck you. Therapy will be a waste of time and money until you’re willing to say “I am open to the possibility of either A or C, though they both seem super hard,” there’s not really a point to therapy and all therapists are going to disappoint you.

2) Your story as written is unlikely enough for me to feel confident you are not being factually inaccurate. Four bad therapists in a row is certainly possible (though unlikely). But four bad therapists in a row who are bad in the exact same way and are basically providing the same, nearly verbatim, bad response, of “I like living here and I don’t understand why you don’t?” No. Sorry, but I do not believe you. I do not, to be clear, think you are lying. I think you are deeply trapped in your triumphant unhappiness and are not actually listening to or internalizing what these therapists are actually saying. There are many different approaches, very reasonable ones, that I could see a therapist taking that you are interpreting this way. Things like “do you think anyone likes it here?” “No, no one could possibly like it here, it’s terrible” “well, I like it here - can you think of any reasons why someone might like it?”

Or

“Is there anything at all you like here?”

Or

“Why do you think people live here?”

Or

“Can you give me more specifics on what’s making you unhappy here?”

Or any one of a million CBT techniques designed to move you away from the black and white, distorted (yup - sorry to tell you nowhere is all good or all bad) thinking that you are trapped in. In other words, you’re coming in incredibly defensive, and you’re not listening or opening your mind at all (because, see above, you’ve decided B is your only option).

The point of therapy is to change your thought patterns, process and understand your emotions, and be open to new ways of looking at things. As long as you’re going in with “IM PERFECT, MY THOUGHTS AND EMOTIONS ARE PERFECTLY RATIONAL ITS JUST THIS HORRIBLE PLACE” you’re wasting your time and money.

This is what I’m thinking too. They respond by saying something about the town and OP’s strong hatred of the town interprets it as “I love it here and can’t understand why you don’t.”

[Anonymous]

That was the therapists’ mistakes, not yours. To the extent that your story is not believable.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Okay two thoughts here, OP, and this from someone whose done a lot of therapy with a bunch of different therapists, who have ranged from amazing/life changing, to solid, to meh, to horrible.

1) I have some simple, logical math for you: You literally have only three choices: a) you can move b) you can be miserable or c) you can figure out ways to be happy (or at least less miserable) where you are.

That’s it. No therapist has some secret fourth option. There’s no magic. You are currently choosing B. As long as you choose B, which includes deciding that both A and C are impossible (which of course is objectively false), you are stuck and no one, nothing can unstuck you. Therapy will be a waste of time and money until you’re willing to say “I am open to the possibility of either A or C, though they both seem super hard,” there’s not really a point to therapy and all therapists are going to disappoint you.

2) Your story as written is unlikely enough for me to feel confident you are not being factually inaccurate. Four bad therapists in a row is certainly possible (though unlikely). But four bad therapists in a row who are bad in the exact same way and are basically providing the same, nearly verbatim, bad response, of “I like living here and I don’t understand why you don’t?” No. Sorry, but I do not believe you. I do not, to be clear, think you are lying. I think you are deeply trapped in your triumphant unhappiness and are not actually listening to or internalizing what these therapists are actually saying. There are many different approaches, very reasonable ones, that I could see a therapist taking that you are interpreting this way. Things like “do you think anyone likes it here?” “No, no one could possibly like it here, it’s terrible” “well, I like it here - can you think of any reasons why someone might like it?”

Or

“Is there anything at all you like here?”

Or

“Why do you think people live here?”

Or

“Can you give me more specifics on what’s making you unhappy here?”

Or any one of a million CBT techniques designed to move you away from the black and white, distorted (yup - sorry to tell you nowhere is all good or all bad) thinking that you are trapped in. In other words, you’re coming in incredibly defensive, and you’re not listening or opening your mind at all (because, see above, you’ve decided B is your only option).

The point of therapy is to change your thought patterns, process and understand your emotions, and be open to new ways of looking at things. As long as you’re going in with “IM PERFECT, MY THOUGHTS AND EMOTIONS ARE PERFECTLY RATIONAL ITS JUST THIS HORRIBLE PLACE” you’re wasting your time and money.

OP, I think this is the best answer you're going to get. Triumphant unhappiness is an inspired way to describe the vibe I'm getting from you, so hats off to PP for that one. I'm guessing you fought hard against moving to this place, maybe you are choosing to be miserable as a way to continue to show your spouse that you were right.

[Anonymous]

You say you aren’t interested in finding the good in where you live. But that is terribly self defeating.

Either move or decide to make the best of it.

You can move, even without your spouse.

If you make the choice not to move you have to embrace that choice and make the best of it.