finally spoke to a psychiatrist about my social anxiety and he said 'you don't talk much' and laughed at me

Honestly in my own situation, it went like this. I said I was struggling with depression due to some things I'd experienced which had altered how I see the world and made it difficult for me to enjoy things in the current moment or to be light hearted. That, I figured, caused me to have social anxiety because when you are social you have to share people's joy in the moment.

She says what is it that I'm feeling- like she suggested that it might be personal that I'm judging the other person or that the other person was being selfish. Which is another thing I've noticed with therapists- at least in my experience. They tend to want to validate what you are feeling and blame it on the other person. Like if I say that I feel guilty when I hang out with my mom, they'll say my mom is toxic even though it might be me that's being selfish.

So I was explaining that my depression generally didn't have anything to do with my friends. They are interesting and fun people doing cool things. It's that I can't shake off the experiences I had from work. She started to say that I needed to work on separating work anxiety from real life. But that doesn't work when you are working with people's real life. Like, this isn't a project in a corporation or something, like an arbitrary deadline. I'm dealing with war refugees, children who have been abused, kids who live in homeless shelters. You start thinking long and hard about these things, how housing ends up this way, how imperialism works, how society is breaking down, etc. Big stuff- it's not something you can just turn off.

That's when she said, oh well if you are thinking that way about everything you must not be fun at dinner parties. It probably makes your friends uncomfortable that I can't share their joys with them since I'm talking about all these bigger more serious things.

But I'm not talking about those things. I leave people alone. I'm talking about how exhausting it is TO ME to not be able to share their joys for real and have to pretend that I do.

My feeling was similar to what you said. I got the feeling that she has spent her whole life in some nice suburb, then went to college, then got this job, then- I don't know. That's not fair. Maybe she has struggled too. Let me try again.

I felt like she was trying to tell me that's what is wrong is my worldview. Whereas I'm saying my worldview is accurate. I'm not asking her to convince me that my wordlview is wrong. I'm asking for help in trying to COPE with that.

But because, in her mind, the world is a fair place that makes sense, she thinks what I'm saying is a perception bias. Whether or not she thinks the world is a fair place that makes sense because she's never had hardship is beyond me. Maybe it's just how she's internalized it or some philosophical view she has or whatever. But regardless, it felt like what she was doing was arguing with me about my worldview in the first place.

Every therapist I've been to has been bad. But this one was the worst, infuriated me. As you can clearly see, I'm still pissed off about it.

When I read things like what the OP wrote, it infuriates me anew.

Which itself is not healthy. There must be some reason this works me up so much. I think the issue is that I feel like I'm struggling but I don't want to be one of those stubborn people who will not accept help or who tear other people down. So I try my hardest to keep it to myself around friends, then I seek help from the people who are being paid to help me. But they don't help. Most of the time they are like "hey you have 40 minutes" then they listen poorly for maybe half that time, then the rest of the time they tell me to practice breathing exercises that I could find on YouTube.

It's a sham IMO. I think I'd do better to get some religion honestly.

Uggh. I should probably have saved this for r/rants!

/r/Anxiety Thread Parent