Need help choosing a therapist

I have the worst luck with therapist. it's not the therapist fault, it's mine. I haven't seen a therapist in a year now. Mostly because i have given up and partly because I can't afford too.

You see when I see a therapist I put on a mask, a friendly mask. A mask where I say everything is fine. Even though my head is a whirl wind of thoughts and emotions. I don't know why I put on this mask. I know a therapist office is suppose to be a save place, but I just can never let them in to see the real me.

I took my wife years to break down my walls and I still have some up with her.

So I just wish I could find a therapist who is willing to come at me with a sledge hammer and get down to the real issues.

Sounds like you need one kind of like mine then! When you email or call potential therapists, I'd actually try sharing some of what you said in this post. How you'd need someone to help you break down walls, for them to be perhaps somewhat aggressive with you. And does that seem like something they'd be willing and able to accommodate?

If you really want to change, just be honest and tell them what you said above. You wear a mask and need help to go deeper. This way you won't waste money on Ts who are not up to the job. You will weed them out early on.

IMO it is not your fault. If we came into therapy without any defenses we wouldn’t need or benefit from therapy. A good therapist should be able to figure out how to get past them. Problem is most therapists seem to be mediocre to poor at their job. My T doesn’t exactly run around swinging a sledge hammer, he believes the defenses are there for a reason and when you address the reason they will go down. Just because he doesn’t swing a hammer though doesn’t mean he will sit there and take your money knowing full well your defenses aren’t any closer to coming down. With my husband when he put defenses up T would instantly drop the subject and bring up something comfortable they both had in common. This let hubbies unconscious know that T did not want to be a threat. It works slowly but it did start to get my hubby more comfortable (he only came one session as it is my therapy not marriage therapy). Things were a bit harder with me. T has emotion cards and I have to pick at least one about how I am feeling as part of our check in. Picking up the sad, mad or scared card is a lot easier for me than saying them. T then respects my boundaries/defenses if I don’t want to talk about it. T has asked “do I need to be more firm with you” when my defenses got more snippy/disrespectful. T let me know he did not want me to feel pressured to tell him anything until I was ready. He let me know that he wanted this to be a safe place for me and invited me to let him know if there was anything he could do to help make it a safe place. T gave me more control over sessions and where we sat.
There is a reason you stick to your defense and it is doing it’s job, you are still alive. Now your rational mind may know that there is more to life than just still being alive and that talking to a therapist will help. That doesn’t mean our protective mind doesn’t still feel the need to do its job. I did tell my T the very first contact that I needed someone that was comfortable and skilled at working with very defensive clients.

This is exactly my problem. All my therapist were all to easily diverted from my core problems. I don't know, maybe i'm come off as intimidating. I have been told that by my wife and family a few times.