Did a therapist ever ask you what you were taking away from that appointment?

having to pay out of pocket for my therapy, i definilty took away more debt after each session

ex-T did ask on occasion if a session had been helpful, and similar to weaverbeaver, i always felt put on the spot to come up with something positive to say. it didn't feel safe for me to give him the honest feedback for fear of hurting him, him becoming defensive, or him deciding to terminate with me because i was not finding his therapy helpful. so, for a long time, i chose to stroke his ego instead.

I think there may be a correlation between #3 and #6. That is, I think where the therapist is content to rest on her laurels (for whatever reason; laziness, sleepiness, incompetence, the mistaken assumption that this approach is appealing, etc.) and just sit there waiting for something to happen, there will be no structure or purpose. The agenda will not be so much hidden as nonexistent. That's my theory, anyway. I have seen many therapists on reddit insist on the importance of not working harder than the client. I think this sort of nonsense is what they're talking about. It's rather ridiculous. No other profession you contract for a service has such a stupid notion that I've ever heard of.

I'd like to view therapy primarily as a place of learning and experimenting, so to me this question would kind of make sense, as long as the therapist is willing to also answer the same question for her/himself. Heck, I kind of wish we'd asked that question regularly from the start with ex-T. Mind you, usually I could only have answered with 'I think I need a few days to digest'.

What are you learning or experimenting with? I honestly don't know what that means in terms of therapy

Mine never asked this but sometimes I said things in that context by myself before leaving or (more often) emailed them my conclusions a few hours later. They were just my thoughts in relation to what came up in session and stuff I associated with what we discussed, sometimes things I felt were interesting or useful. I liked to do this but preferred with a bit of delay (hence the email). For me, it was very similar to when I think about the content of any meeting or event and make analyses/conclusions about it, what I learned, how it was productive, or how it was frustrating, unproductive, useless... These mental summaries about outcome were not different at all regarding therapy than anything else, for me. As I said, I do it often when I process experiences and kinda construct a mental (or real) report. The closest I could compare it to things we read here on PC is the reports people post in the In Session Today threads or their own similar threads.

I would not like to be pushed by a T to do this though, especially not immediately at the end of a session... that is way too rushed.

It's hard to give a concise answer - trying to understand what's behind the "Why did I just do that??" moments ... getting a better sense of when and how far to trust my instincts, and how to convince myself to act on them or not ... what is / isn't reasonable to expect from people (including myself) ... basically, I think it boils down to figuring out how to get to a point where I can (and want to) live with myself ... and also have the necessary skills and discipline to do so