I was diagnosed with SAD and Depression. What I mainly went to therapy for was social anxiety, not even the depression. Ever since I was a kid, ever since I could remember, I was way too shy. I knew in my heart I wasn't living my life to the fullest. But more than that, my social anxiety was just causing so many problems in my life.

I couldn't socially function at school. When I got old enough to legally work, I was unhireable. I would have loved to be uninhibited, to have satisfying friendships, to actually be appealing enough to someone to date and have a romantic relationship...but my most pressing concern was just reigning in my social anxiety enough to avoid the intensely shameful moments in life that come from not being able to socially function. The moments as a kid when you are punished, for example. And also, the not being able to work, not having any control over your life or any autonomy.

So I tried therapy for that...Let me tell you, the times when I made gains in my social functioning were NOT during therapy. I'm not the same person I was at let's say 18. I started employment later in life, but I'm still able to find and keep jobs. I say a bit more, make a bit more eye contact.

When I was in therapy...it was as if I needed my social anxiety MORE. I was socially anxious about failing at therapy. I was socially anxious about the consequences of seeming like I wasn't trying. First of all, just emotionally...this person has so much power for you. They are trying to help you enter a more "realistic" reality, one that doesn't have all these cognitive distortions. They have the power to make you distrust yourself and question your beliefs. But more than just the emotional aspect, complying with therapy or not can seriously impact your life. It can affect what your psychiatrist can prescribe you, the chemicals you put in your brain. It can even force you to do mandatory inpatient if you can't control your emotions and are completely helpless. And that in turn, not just being painful and horrible and traumatic, can legally affect your future employment. 5150's barring you from certain jobs and things.

It's not bad reasoning, that people need to be "reprogrammed" and that one of the most effective ways out of bad habits are to have different experiences. If you repeatedly learn there is no danger, it becomes a belief.

I also believe that a lot of anxiety comes from the experience of your mental faculties that you develop when you're not even young enough to talk yet, or barely young enough. You're anxious for a reason. It might be because there is a REAL danger in not being able to relate to people, or socially conform, to guess what people think and anticipate how they will react. You can't just magically be smarter, but you can have more awareness about your shortcomings. And even if it is just delusions, it's wishful thinking to try to use your adult "logic" to reason out of it. That logic is comparatively flimsy.

And I also believe that behind a lot of anxiety is anger, not just fear. Most people can't afford to be angry, especially little kids. And you have to control your emotions some way. So you become afraid of not being able to manage your anger. You could have a really good reason to be angry too. Some children are abused for example. Or it's just an understandably infuriating experience trying to get by in society when you are less close to normal than other people.

This is all probably sounding like the whole topic of ASD...I think it's broader than that. But yeah I do identify as someone who probably had undiagnosed ASD and ADHD and those problems got ignored because they're more complex, and the idea that "the only thing that really helps anyway is CBT so throw some CBT at it."