Therapist won’t bring up sexual orientation

You may be correct, and there are two issues at work there.

The first is that therapists and counselors are trained to tread lightly and carefully on delicate issues. This is because if a therapist brings up an issue the client is uncomfortable with or isn't ready to hear, the client may simply bail. They stop coming to therapy because it made them uncomfortable. A competent therapist knows well how to judge this, how to identify (most of the time anyway) if the client is being made uncomfortable by the topic being discussed, and can work with the client on it so therapy continues, but that issue (and it isn't only sexual stuff that triggers this) goes on the back burner.

The second issue is that many therapists are simply very uncomfortable getting into detailed discussion of sexuality because of their own discomfort, or their fear that it will make the client uncomfortable.

With either the first or second issue, a competent therapist doesn't have the issue because they have done their own work and understand how to navigate the client's issues. The problem is, the majority of therapists in practice seem to have one or both of those problems (that's my perception, based on working with probably hundreds of therapists and counselors by now in various professional settings), and so clients suffer.

Also, no competent therapist is one-size-fits-all. So if a therapist is pushing CBT (or Brainspotting or EMDR or any other single modality) as the main or primary focus of work, that is also likely not a particularly versatile therapist. They may be good for some clients but not for the majority. (And CBT absolutely has its value; I've seen miraculous impact from clients making use of those tools, but it is best used as a small part of an overall treatment plan, and many therapists do not use it that way.) You're correct that your issue isn't cognitive, and the temptation of many therapists is to reduce everything to distorted thinking (CBT's area of strength) or an unmanageable traumatic event (EMDR/brainspotting). The reality is far more complex.

A good therapist helps you to understand your own thinking and see the blind spots you are missing. They will carefully choose an eclectic mix of approaches customized to what you need. A competent therapist absolutely can help a client who is questioning their sexuality; the therapist I was seeing when I began to figure out I might not be straight was absolutely amazing in that regard, and she was not a specialist in LGBT issues and I was actually one of her first LGBT clients. Questioning sexuality is one of the most common reasons someone sees a therapist. And CBT won't do shit for it. Anyone who thinks it will is incompetent.

Your anxiety and depression are almost certainly tied up with your questioning of your sexuality. Resolve the sexuality issue and the others may not go away instantly, but much of the problem will go away. And no, "Go experiment" is not competent therapy. My therapist didn't suggest that. Instead, she helped me explore what I was feeling and thinking, and helped clarify what was going on for me. To an extent, this is what EC's advisors (like myself) do, but it is very different doing it online in a public messaging space than one-on-one over Zoom or in person.

Not at all. No one I have ever seen working through that issue was ready to just dive into it. It's a dance, and a delicate one. But a competent professional knows how to get to the core of the issues in a safe way, and to help even the reluctant client to discuss it. The very fact you are discussing it here tells us you are ready.

 

While it's possible the therapist is picking something up, the fact that, at least in one case, you texted and said you wanted to bring it up would negate any misreading by the therapist. I suspect it's more likely you've just had a run of bad therapists. .

It's all interconnected. While what you say is true, being confused about sexuality can affect your self-worth, because you don't know where you belong. Once you get a clear picture, then it will be something that's just a part of you, and at that point, it will be similar to what you earlier described.

You know, it's been so long, I don't remember the specific conversations, but in general, her approach was just to explore the comments and feelings I had, how I interacted with others, what I wanted, how I felt, how various things I experienced made me feel... that sort of thing. And by doing that as it relates to sexuality, and helping me explore distorted thinking and reframe perceptions I had about what might or might not constitute being gay, or what relationships looked like... it made it a lot easier for me to accept who I was.

Well, you know yourself better than anyone else. What you might consider is working with someone who does sessions via zoom or text. Back when I was doing a lot of one-on-one advisory counseling for EC, I had a lot of folks say that they could talk about things over text that they could never say in person to their therapist, and I'm convinced that's true, especially for the most vulnerable things. So that might be something to explore. Doing therapy over text definitely has a lot of issues, but if it's where you would feel comfortable starting, it's a good place to start.

 

As much as you don't like it, that's a good thing. And the fact you let it slip means your unconscious is ready for it to come up and be discussed. Do your best to lean into the discomfort and just roll with what comes.

 

It isn't, and an ethical, competent therapist will *never* tell you what to think, give you advice, tell you what to do. The therapist's job is to help you figure out what YOU want. The best therapists don't even suggest things, instead making the client do the work. And the reason for that is, quite often, the thought the therapist has in his or her mind is *completely* different than what the client comes up with, left to their own devices. So had the therapist spoken first, it's quite possible the client would just have gone along with that. And that isn't in the best interest of the client.

If that's not what you had, then yes, unfortunately, you had a bunch of terrible therapists. And sadly, that isn't uncommon.