Hello! I'm 17 and I currently go see a school counselor for my anxiety. Honestly I've questioned how good she is a few times but bc she's free and this is my first time getting help, I kind of just brush it off and hope for the best.

Now I have two different kinds of anxiety. I haven't been diagnosed with anything (it's unnecessary in my country unless you need meds, have some more complex issue or need a very specific type of therapy), but one part of it is more agoraphobia-like symptoms and I really struggle with my independence. Now she's good with that cuz I do exposure therapy with her (I think that's what it's called) and it's working so far. However, I also have more general anxiety where I worry and get stressed and anxious over minor events and just minor stuff. This is not related to the agoraphobic-like stuff at all.

With the more general anxiety, she has been helping me by telling me to think positively, taught me a breathing technique and currently she's really focused on my confidence and self esteem bc for some reason she's convinced that'll fix my anxiety or make it significantly better, which I'm not sure about. The positive thoughts sometimes help. They're kind of 50/50 I think, depending on how anxious and worried I am. The breathing technique is kind of useless and doesn't really help me at all honestly. I haven't told her those two things haven't worked (I don't think) but I've told her about 4 times that this certain method she's really focused on isn't working for me (it's this post-it note thing to help with my confidence and self esteem), and she either tells me I'm not doing it correctly bc I need to believe in the things I write on them (I do believe in what I write, but it's not easy to magically eradicate your negative thoughts sometimes) or that I need to be persistent with them, which I definitely have been bc we've literally been doing this method for like at least a month or two I'd say, but I think more like 3-4 months. She just won't listen to the fact that that specific method genuinely isn't working for me.

Today I was thinking maybe I just need a good therapist but my parents would have to pay for it which I think they can do, but with inflation I feel kind of bad asking for it and I think maybe this counselor thing will work out eventually and get better.

What are your thoughts? Sorry for such a long post.