It’s a slow, dawning, and deeply uncomfortable horror. You mention a term like “Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria,” and your therapist cocks their head with a blank look. You find yourself carefully editing your own experience in real-time, simplifying your non-linear thoughts and leaving out the “weird” parts so you don’t confuse them. You realize, with a sinking feeling in your stomach, that you are working harder in this room than they are.

“I feel this wave of guilt every time I bring up something I read. I feel like I’m embarrassing them or challenging their expertise, so I just… stop. I end up pretending I know less than I do, just to keep the session comfortable for them.”

The mental health industrial complex has churned out a generation of well-meaning generalists who are utterly unprepared for the specifics of neurodivergent brains. The system has failed them in their training, and in turn, they are failing you. They have left you, the paying client, with the absurd and exhausting job of being a patient, a teacher, and an emotional support animal for your own therapist, all at the same time.

Your unconscious drive to manage the therapist’s feelings is a brilliant trauma adaptation, often called a fawn response. It’s a strategy your nervous system learned to stay safe in unpredictable environments. But when it’s activated in a therapy room, it leads to epistemic injustice: the automatic, often unconscious, silencing of your own knowledge in deference to a perceived authority figure who, in this case, knows less than you do.

You believe your job is to be a “good, easy patient.” You are terrified of embarrassing the professional you are paying. This is a lie your trauma taught you.

You are not their patient; you have become their unpaid supervisor.

You are not in a space of healing; you are in a dysfunctional workplace where you are paying for the privilege of training your own boss. Your “kindness” in protecting their ego is a profound act of self-abandonment that makes your own healing impossible.

“You are not paying for the privilege of educating a well-meaning amateur. You are paying for expertise. If you are the most knowledgeable person in the room about your own condition, you are in the wrong room.”

It is time to tender your resignation from your unpaid supervisory position. Your energy is a precious, finite resource. Stop spending it managing the feelings of an unqualified professional. You deserve a therapist who is a colleague, not a student. It is time to find a true neuro-affirming specialist who has already done the reading. When you’re ready to fire your student and hire a colleague, the search starts here. Learn more about our collaborative philosophy.