Sunset, I am going to say a few things and they are just my opinion, nothing more. Feel free to discard anything that doesn't fit you or your situation but I hope you'll at least consider what I have to say because I have been where you were, and I have gained some wisdom that has greatly helped me in my recovery.
I've seen, what, 6 by now prior to her, and interacted with 4 more? 2 dumb ones that were too busy treating imaginary problems to screen for abuse.
Because of the chronic abuse I went through, I had to get good at guessing what my abusers were thinking so I could try to keep myself safe. I did get good at that guessing game, and I believed I could read their minds because it seemed so.
Once I escaped, I went into the world believing I could tell what other people were thinking. I would often act on what my perception was. I believed my interpretation of their outsides was a factual reflection of their emotions & thoughts.
As it turns out, I couldn't read any of their minds nor accurately guess what they were feeling, most of the time. Neither can you, or anybody else. This false belief is coming out very strongly in your writing, and it will greatly impede any progress you might be otherwise able to make. Because once we've made a judgement, we can switch off and refuse to allow any new information to get in where it might help us. I know, because I did this too. It caused me to miss out on many friendships, enjoyable activities, and develop a healthy network of healthy people.
For example, your statement "2 dumb ones that were too busy treating imaginary problems to screen for abuse." Ok, you have called them dumb. Generally people who meet that criteria are not successful at making it through college and then through the training necessary for clinical practice.
Labeling them 'dumb' in our minds allows us to put up a psychological defense to be able to, in our minds, dismiss everything they say instead of truly examining it to see if there's anything that might be helpful. Even if we would dismiss it after examining "it" (whatever "it" is), fear of our traumas being unlocked causes us to keep that mental defense in place.
Given the nature of trauma, is perfectly understandable and was an amazing defense we found necessary to allow us to survive unsafe people. But once we're safe, this defense keeps safe people away (and us isolated from others) and perpetuates our symptoms. Healthy people experience our black/white view of the world as strange or aggravating.
Another thing that keeps us from healing is the belief that we're smarter, better informed, and more qualified to know our disease and how best to treat it than the professionals.
We are absolutely an expert on us. But they are presumably the experts on everything else we explore in the treatment room. That's not to say they don't make mistakes, nor that they know everything. Also, methods that work for most patients may not work for us, but we won't know that until our therapist tries it out. But they do have a wealth of knowledge and experience we do not.
We may think we know what they are thinking, and what they are feeling, and why they are doing what they do. But unless we ask them these questions and allow them to respond, we actually have NO idea. We can make a guess, but guessing isn't a good way to build a therapeutic alliance together in the therapy room.
If we don't ask them, we deprive ourselves of understanding the link between our perceptions of the nuances of other people's behavior & appearance, and the overlay of our traumas which colors that perception, usually in a very negative fashion.
Also, you mentioned you think they were treating imaginary problems instead of screening for abuse, but you may be incorrect.
In fact, they have many, many diagnostic questions they need to be finding a way to ask gently. They need time and some basic trust extended so they can help identify our functioning, our symptoms, our diagnoses, and the best treatment options. With a trauma patient, this process can take weeks, months, or in severe cases, years.
It does us no good to use the psychological defense of 'they don't know what they are doing.'
Though this mental defense allows our frightened, traumatized selves to find a good justification to exit therapy, for most therapists, it would be difficult to accurately assess their skills based upon just a few appointments, or even more than a few.
If we enter into the therapy room with these mental defenses up, we will tend to find the 'evidence' we believe validates our feelings. This is a good recipe for going through many therapists but achieving no progress in therapy nor functioning in life.
I fired my therapist a gazillion times in my head, a few times in real life, and finally had a hard fought breakthrough in my trust where I allowed him 'in.' It took over a year and 1/2. I made a pact with myself, my hubby, and a safe, trusted friend that I would not quit, no matter how terrible I felt or scared I got, without discussing it with them and my therapist first.
It worked. It was freaking HARD. There was a lot of triggering involved. But I learned so much about myself. The conflicts with my therapist I faced, talked about, and worked to resolve in the therapy room had marvelous benefits. Some of those include greatly improving my confidence in myself, my ability to be assertive and demand respect, and my trust in the process of therapy.
I hope you'll consider at least going into the therapy room with an assumption that they just might know some things you don't, and that they aren't your abusers. If your current therapist keeps talking about forgiveness and it pisses you off, tell her.
The forgiveness thing really ticked me off too, years ago. I'd go into a 'freeze' mode since it mirrored my abusers and their enablers words, and I couldn't respond. It took time and trust with my CBT therapist to help me learn how to 'unfreeze' at such times so I could speak up for myself.
Now, I tell people 'when you speak of forgiveness, I feel misunderstood and my pain minimized. I feel like you're just like many of the abusive people in my life. I don't trust you...and it makes me want to never come back.' That puts the ball in their court. I've gotten some wonderful empathetic responses that way.
I've also lost a few friends but as it turned out, I was better off without them.
