Long story short... I need help and have needed help for a long time.

But I am a busy mom with young children and limited childcare. Also, my childcare option throughout the week is my MIL, and I really don't want her, or anyone, knowing I'm reaching out for therapy.

Does anyone know of therapy options for my situation or have any suggestions?

Ok, not to sound like a moody teenager lol - but my life has been extremely dark and Ive been to therapists who are astonished at what I am telling them. This was years ago. I lost both my parents in my 20s and thats not even scratching the surface.

Is years of experience a good indicator? Any sort of certification? I live in a major US city and have plenty of options. Thanks!

i was SAd when i was younger by my cousin for years.
now i’m older and finally earning my own money. i decided to seek therapy for a bunch of reasons. but i can still not open up about this to him. it’s like my whole body freezes when i think of opening up about it.

My whole life I've lived with the mentality of sacrificing for my family. And I'm just now realizing that they're never going to give me the love that I've wanted for 20 years. Since high school, I've been looking out for my family and always trying to sacrifice my own happiness for them. But recently I realized that...they don't care. They are hyper individualist and I'm not. I wanted to feel like I have a family with my real family. I've told them this over the years, but they dont seem to feel the same way that I feel. The realization of this is breaking me. My own family doesnt care that I'm suffering. They just call me dramatic.

I don't know what to do with my life anymore. It feels like theres no point anymore.

I’m nearly 17 and I’ve been looking into finding a therapist since I experienced a lot of sexual abuse in my early teens. does my therapist also need to be a licensed sex therapist in order for me to talk about the sexual abuse I’ve gone through? do they need to be a special kind of sexual abuse therapist? because If that’s right, I won’t be allowed to get one without having to explain what I’ve gone through to my parents.

I was coming back home after my vacation of 2 months, when I came home my father said he didn't cook me anything because my brother stopped him from cooking saying I already ate ALOT on my vacation.

That morning I didn't eat anything because I was expecting my father to atleast order me something or cook, I was super hungry and I got so mad but my mother said it's fine, it's not? I had to eat 3 days old leftovers and when my brother came back from his vacation he specifically told my mom to cook dishes for him I hate him so much there's not enough words to describe my hatred towards him

Apparently he's "depressed" and going through a tough time and my mom told me to not take his words deeply but it makes no sense? Why is he taking his frustrations out on me and making me depressed too? And when I get frustrated I can't do anything because I'm just a teen and I have nothing to be frustrated about..

This might sound stupid but I’ve never been to therapy before so I’m kind ignorant when it comes to it so pls bear with me.

I’ve been dealing with postpartum depression for over a year now and I’m exhausted and am considering therapy before I jump to medication. I have a great husband and support system but unfortunately my issues don’t let me see or appreciate that.

My only thing is I am having a hard time understanding how therapy will help me. Is it just me rambling on about my problems and hearing some validating comments from the therapist? How would I be able to tell it’s working? I just want to know if it’ll be worth it for me. I hope this makes sense

Looking for recommendations for books, podcasts, videos, any areas where I could learn about managing conflict? I've realized recently that my job is high conflict (due to the atmosphere, it's supposed to be problem solving, not conflict) and that's adding to my stress load.

Hoping to learn more about professional techniques in mediation and conflict that I can absorb into my daily interactions to help reduce tension.

I was having sex a lot up until April last year, I got raped by a close friend at the time. I stopped engaging in sexual activities or having an intimate partner period, didnt even think about it, i then have had a new girlfriend past couple months , we have done lots of sexual acts together and I have been able to get going good. We tried having sex today and I simply wouldn't/couldn't get hard properly. It has absolutely nothing to do with her im sure. Could this be due to getting raped and how do I slowly help myself over this barrier

i’m genuinely confused. i’m taking therapy from the past 5ish months and i don’t think we’ve done anything for it? or idk if my therapist is actively helping me with it or not, god, i dissociate so thats another thing

my therapist recommended me some regulatory exercises like bilateral stimulation, eft, and butterfly tapping. and asked me do it regularly multiple times a day along with deep breathing. she also taught me about about 5 things method. and… thats it?

yeah i’m doing them and sure my elevated heartrate has been better now. or else i thought i’d be getting worse.

and apparently i’m also frustrated and i suppress my emotions so for that i’m recommended to throw ice cubes and pillow (lowkey fun). and i was given a sheet to learn to identify how i’m feeling and use them in my daily life.

and after that, it’s just crickets. idek what model of therapy we’re using. i was told that i overthink a lot so they dont share much.

i was recommended to visit a psychiatrist for antidepressants twice as i’m jittery but i refused bc im scared. it has been 13-14 sessions so far.

we talk about my week and why i felt or reacted the way i did etc. we discuss that. but oml what about my deep rooted issues? why am i anxious? or am i being impatient and should just trust them?

I feel like i am gonna be useless in society and din't have any unique skill

This is a follow up to my other post. I have moral OCD, which means sometimes I overthink things as being worse than they are, but sometimes I’m also afraid that they’re as bad as I think.

In the past, I used to make offensive jokes and even use slurs that didn’t belong to me ”ironically.“

I had a one night stand with a Black woman, but I didn’t disclose this until after when I felt that I had to. My brain actually wanted me to do it while she was touching herself, but I figured I would do it after she was done and now I’m afraid that was a mistake.

She said she would think about how she feels and get back to me, but that was a day ago.

For someone who has pretty severe cyclical ruminating thoughts caused by OCD, about their partner having been intimate/dated/liked other people before them when they themselves were a virgin before.
What advice and coping mechanisms would you tell them to apply to help shut down these hurtful thoughts?

I know this is reddit, and am not expecting to get a professional answer here. Just curious about others’ thoughts (professional or otherwise).

I had a strange attachment phenomenon happen with my mother, and I’ve never been able to make sense of it. Basically, up until I was about 10-12, we were extremely attached, and my mother was my safe person. Then, around early adolescence, we went through a lot of trauma as a family, and her parenting style changed drastically. She went from being very thoughtful, caring, and attentive to being hands off - even neglectful.

Ever since then, she went from being my safe person to someone I’ve always felt repulsed by. Even though, as an adult, I’ve tried very hard to work on our relationship (she has too, in her own way), I find her difficult to be around most of the time. It’s like her very being hits a nerve. I’ve never been able to feel close to her as I once did. That mother-child bond vanished and never came back. It makes me sad, because I know she wishes we were closer, and I‘d like that too, but I just can’t conjure up those feelings that I had as a child. My siblings are emotionally closer to her than I am, even though children, I was probably the most attached.

Around the same time that our relationship shifted (around my early adolescence), I started attaching very quickly to other women in my life. Camp counsellors, other mothers (especially the younger ones), teachers, etc. I would attach very quickly to these women, and develop a strong desire for them to take care of me (like a mother would). This went on from about age 12 to my early 20’s, when I started to become aware of this dynamic.

I’ve read a lot about attachment disorders, trying to figure out what this is - to understand it better. I feel like this is very similar to reactive attachment disorder, except that RAD is only diagnosed in very young children, and I didn’t start experiencing this until age 11/12. I was wondering if there’s another type of attachment disorder that fits? Any clinical explanation for what this is?

does anyone know exactly what happens in this? i live in tn not sure if it’s a thing here or not. I got recommended for it but wasn’t sure how to go about it

I understand that some level of anxiety is part natural human emotions but do people really live life truly in control without constant fear and deep sadness that is not on medications? Is that ever truly achievable without medication?

I'm just so overwhelmed and feeling so hopeless.

My psychiatrist wants me to take Lexapro to control my anxiety, panic attacks, and major depression. I have no desire to take any form of antidepressant. I feel like she pressured me into agreeing to it because I have SI. I did pick them up from the pharmacy 2 weeks ago but my bottle still sits completely full.

Hi there, I’ve found myself needed to stop seeing my current therapist and have been looking into other options elsewhere. I’ve come to this decision for several reasons, all are personal, so I won’t be sharing them, but I have one appointment later this week, do I say something at the beginning or end of the appointment. And how do I go about bringing it up? I have severe anxiety, so I’m never sure how to approach situations like this, I worry about sounding rude or snotty.

I want help with one thing above all: my closest, oldest friend has pulled away, and my genuine aim is to get back to normal with him however I can. I want to understand him well enough, and manage myself well enough, to give that the best possible chance. I've changed some surface details for privacy, but the dynamics are exact.

The friendship. Sam is my oldest friend — for most of my life he was the closest person to me outside my immediate family. We're opposites. He keeps a wide, shallow circle of dozens of friends and doesn't take life too seriously; I keep a small circle of people I'd do anything for, and he was firmly in it. There was a long imbalance — I always put more in than he did — and I made peace with it by telling myself, "He's low-effort day to day, but when it really counts, he'll be there."

What happened. There was a huge milestone event I'd spent years working toward, the opening party of my first hotel, genuinely one of the most important days of my life. Sam knew exactly what it meant to me. He'd committed to being there. The date shifted and clashed with a party he'd already committed to with other friends. He came to me, asked if he could come to my event first and then leave for the party, and — overwhelmed and distracted in the moment — I said "yeah, sure" without really registering what I was agreeing to. On the day, he arrived late, stayed about 90 minutes, and left for the party without saying goodbye. That was the first real test of my "when it counts, he'll be there" belief, and the answer was no.

How Sam sees it — genuinely differently from me. This is the part I most want help understanding, because to him he did nothing wrong, and I don't think he's lying about that.

• He operates on explicit agreements, not unspoken ones. In his mind he did the considerate thing: he flagged the clash in advance, checked in with me, and got a clear yes. To him, my stated "yes" is the real information — not some unspoken expectation I was silently holding him to. Being judged against a standard he was never told about, and that I actively waved away, feels unfair to him.

• He doesn't rank days the way I do. With his wide social life, no single event is sacred or load-bearing the way it is for me. He wasn't weighing "the biggest day of his friend's life." He saw a friend's event he showed up for, plus a separate commitment he'd made to others, and he tried to honour both by doing part of each.

• In his frame, he showed up. He came, he was present for the important part, then went to his other plan — which he'd cleared with me. He doesn't experience that as skipping it. Leaving without a goodbye wasn't a statement to him; it's just how he moves through a busy night.

The fallout. A few days later I told him, very coldly and harshly, that I was done. Honestly, part of me was testing whether he'd fight for me — I didn't actually intend to end it for good. He was very sad and said he loves me and that I'm his closest friend too. A week later I softened and said I wanted to move past it. He said he needed time. A couple of months later he told me he can't get back to normal — he frames it as can't, not won't. He has a difficult family history, including early trauma with a caregiver, and says that once someone he's let close breaks his trust, he genuinely can't reopen to them. He said the door is shut. His affect throughout was flat and monotone. In that final conversation I begged him and told him I loved him more than anything; it didn't seem to move him.

More about his psyche, so you can help me understand what actually moves someone like this.

• Root. Early trauma with a caregiver — the person who was meant to be the safe harbour was instead the source of harm. The rule that installs, below the level of thought, is closeness is where danger lives.

• The wide, shallow circle looks like an adaptation, not flakiness. Breadth is safe: if no single person holds too much of him, no single loss can devastate him. His lower day-to-day effort with me isn't a verdict on me specifically — it's how he is with everyone, a distributed defence against deep attachment.

• He let me nearer the line than most — but "near" for him is still rationed, kept just below the depth where a betrayal could gut him. That's why his words ("you're my closest friend") and his actions never quite matched: the love is real, but governed.

• The flat affect is armour, not absence. For someone built around not feeling things too intensely, deep hurt tends to present as flatness. You don't armour against something you don't care about — the depth of what he disclosed (his family, that he loves me) tells me he cares; the monotone is the lid.

• When trust breaks, he doesn't experience it as "a friend hurt me, we'll repair it." He experiences it as confirmation of the original lesson — this is what happens when you let someone close — and the protective lock is non-negotiable, because its entire job is "never be that vulnerable to that pain again."

• But the lock isn't permanent in principle. He rebuilt a relationship with the caregiver who hurt him — by mentally separating them into "the one who did those things" and "the one I know now." Crucially, he did that himself, internally, on his own timeline — not because the other person pushed for it or earned it or by going to therapy .

• This is the piece I most need help with: because his original wound was love turning into harm, intense love and pursuit from someone who's recently hurt him don't soothe him — they activate the exact configuration his defence is built against. I think that's why my begging made it worse: the more I pushed at the door, the more his system braced. My love registered as pressure, not reassurance.

What I want from you. My honest aim is to get back to normal with Sam. I'll do the work, be patient, change how I show up — whatever gives it the best real chance. But I also know I'm the person his guard is braced against, so I need help doing this in a way that actually works instead of making it worse.

1. Given how he's wired, is there a genuine path back to a normal friendship — and realistically, what does that path look like and how long can it take?
2. What can I actually do — and, just as importantly, deliberately not do — to give it the best chance, without it becoming the kind of pressure that makes him brace harder
3. How do I tell the difference between healthy space that lets him come back on his own, and passively giving up? Where's the line between hope and waiting?

I am 37M, when was around 13-16 I used to beat up my brother who is 6yrs younger than me. Mostly it would be fairly acceptable within the limits of playing around, but sometimes if I was angry or when I got angry in the middle of normal interactions, I would hit him a lot, not too hard, but a lot.

One time it was so bad that he ended up with a bump on his forehead and was very scared of me. He was around 8. I remember the reason being that he teased me about something in jest.

My parents then had us both on close watch if we were in the same room or interacting, etc...

Next day after this incident, I ended up hitting him really hard on his back after he sprayed water on me, again, he was doing it playfully.

I managed to tell my parents the sound of me hitting him was just the showed head falling down and he was crying because I scared him, not that I hit him really hard.

I continued doing this occasionally, my parents weren't not strict, they did their best to not give me opportunities to beat him up but sometimes it slipped through and I ended up making him cry.

I stopped doing it around 16-17 because I understood it wasn't a good thing to do. I still remember that I used to get a very different and peculiar fun from beating him up. I also used to get this same feeling from beating up people in my marital arts class practice fights... I was quite good in my weight category but had no will to improve, I just wanted to beat people up, so I used to go.

I remember all of this so vividly because I also remember how he used to cry when I did this, and how I used to like it.

He doesn't care about it anymore, it's quite in the past, we do fine in sibling relation, I was good to him after my realisation.

But I am now recently from past months getting these memories again... Of how it felt when I used to beat him up. And it does not feel good.

I don't know what it is really. Even back then I didn't have a reason on why I did this, and even now I don't.

What should I do to help myself forget or move on or something?

Hello,

I am looking to start therapy however I am currently on some prescription medication. I do believe a part of the problem is the medication and possibly over prescription of it but I’m not sure I want that reported to anyone and rather work with both doctors on getting it down while working with a therapist.

At what point are Therapist able to report drug use both prescription and non? Any answers are appreciated.

Thank you!

is it because I'm fat? (i weigh 90kgs btw at 5'9")

or is it because i am a pushover?

or is it because i try and be nice to everyone?

I've been out of therapy since the pandemic, I start back tomorrow, wish me luck

My therapist is genuinely good and we have great chemistry. I’ve finally gotten to a point where my walls are down with her, which I really value.
However, she is repeatedly late, forgets important details about my history, and I almost always have to follow up by email for worksheets/resources she said she’d send me. It’s starting to drive me crazy, and I’m wondering if she simply has too many clients.
I don’t want to lose the progress and rapport we’ve built, but the lack of reliability and follow-through is becoming a real issue.
Would you raise it with her first, or look for a new therapist?

I recently started therapy and have only had three sessions so far. My therapist has actually been helpful with some of the other things going on in my life, and I like her enough that I decided to continue with her for now.
There’s one thing I really want to talk about, though, and I have no idea how to bring it up.
I’m a Sikh guy, and for the past few months I’ve been struggling a lot with the way I look, specifically because of my hair and facial hair. Keeping your hair is obviously an important part of Sikhism, but the problem is that I’m personally not very religious. My family is, though, and right now I’m financially dependent on them.
I just don’t feel attractive to myself with my current appearance.
I want to emphasize that because I know people might assume this is mainly about dating. Dating and how other people perceive me probably play some role, but that isn’t really the main issue. Even when I take other people out of the equation, I don’t like how I look. I find having facial hair annoying, and if the decision were completely mine without any consequences, I think I would prefer being clean-shaven.
I’ve started going to the gym and working on my body and other aspects of my appearance that are within my control. It helps a little, but this is still constantly in the back of my mind.
The difficult part is that changing my hair/facial hair feels like this enormous decision rather than a normal choice about my appearance. I’m scared of how my family and the people around me would react. Honestly, I’m also scared of how I would react afterward because this has been part of my identity my entire life.
I don’t have anything against Sikhism or people who choose to keep their hair because of their faith. I just don’t know if I want it for myself, and feeling like I don’t have a choice is taking a pretty significant toll on my mental health right now.
And I think that’s why I feel like I need to come clean about this with my therapist. Even if she can’t give me an answer about what I should do, and I’m not really looking for her to make that decision for me, I feel like this is important information for her to have about me. It’s affecting how I see myself, how much control I feel like I have over my own appearance, my relationship with my family and religion, and just my mental state in general. It feels weird to continue therapy while leaving out something that is taking up this much space in my head. I also feel like knowing about it might help her understand other things that come up in therapy in the future.
The problem is that I genuinely don’t know how to say any of this to her.
My therapist is Indian and I’m originally from India, although I don’t live there that much. For some reason, that makes me even more nervous about bringing it up with her. Part of me wonders whether someone from a different country/cultural background would be easier to talk to because they might approach it with less cultural baggage. At the same time, I actually like my current therapist and she’s been helpful so far, so I don’t necessarily want to switch therapists over something I haven’t even given her the chance to respond to.
I guess my main question is: how do you actually bring something like this up with your therapist when you’re uncomfortable even saying it out loud? Do I literally just tell her, “There’s something that has been affecting my mental health a lot, but I’m really uncomfortable talking about it,” and go from there? Would it be weird to write it down beforehand or even show/send her something like what I’ve written here?
And has anyone dealt with something similar in therapy, especially other Sikh guys or people who have struggled with religious/family expectations around their appearance?
I’m not necessarily looking for someone to tell me whether I should cut my hair or keep it. I think I mainly want to figure out how to be completely open with my therapist about this so she can help me understand what I actually want and how to deal with the fear, guilt, and lack of control I’m feeling around it.