Willingness to be you is a key place to get to, for my 2 cents, Ralph.

The witness self is another key place to get to! It is possible to take a step back and observe yourself having the feelings you are feeling, thoughts you are having, etc.

"... to give me the same advice I could get from my mom ..."

"... I can't seem to get anyone to care even if I pay them ..."

What about the possibility that you're transferring a bit of your mom onto your therapist? Maybe there's a different way to hear what she said.

Ralph,

Both of the previous messages make sense to me.

I’d vote for:

"...growing up is figuring out who you are and willing to be that person..."

Malign’s comment makes a lot of sense to me, too. But I’ve had such bad luck with therapists. When I have gotten into that place where I feel invalidated, I try to talk about it with them, but by that point I don’t trust them, so maybe I come off cold, hostile, or critical. And they have responded emotionally to that rather than to my concerns. So I end up leaving after all.

This time around, therapy is helping me to discover and be the person who I am. But, it took an awful lot of looking, trying, and failing.

I don't think I'm transferring anything onto the therapist. The past few weeks she has been pretty disengaged, throwing out random suggestions that sound like simplistic solutions any well meaning friend would come up with rather than a reasoned professional opinion based in the application of theory to a specific situation. Hence my impression that she just doesn't care.

DD, sorry you had therapists that responded to their own perceptions of your emotion rather than your valid concerns. Then again this could be proof that they shouldn't be trusted. It baffles me that a psychologist wouldn't be able to work through an emotional situation, since that is arguably what they signed up for in the first place when setting out to be psychologists.