Content warning for a death in the family

I think I need a new therapist and it couldn’t have come at a worse time. 

I don’t want to say my therapist is a bad therapist, but I’ve gotten to the point that there’s things I feel like I can’t bring up with him. For example, I joined a new religion shortly before I started working with him. Im Buddhist now and the school I follow is less well known in the states than other schools so I was actually pretty excited to find out he knew quite a bit about it. For a long time he would ask me how it’s going and how I’ve made it relevant to me personally but every time I’ve made a breakthrough with my religion he might as well tell me “that’s not how Buddhism works” based on the early schools of India. Well for one thing I’m making it personal, but also a Japanese school of Buddhism founded in the 13th century is different from Buddhism in India 2000 years ago. 

I also spend a lot of time on the internet but it hasn’t been a problem for me for around four years since I stopped using Facebook (I started working with my therapist about a year and a half ago). I frequent r/internetmysteries and consider that sort of thing an interest of mine. When I told him about a post over there where I was able to solve the mystery and tell what was happening to the guy who owned the website (basically an old website was taken over by a spam bot for a prescription medication scam) he very directly insinuated that I have an internet addiction. I was trying to make the point that I was proud of something, especially something like this because I was able to help curb a scam related to mental illness because many of the medications listed as part of the scam were psychotropics. At our next appointment after I told the story he opened the session with “So hows your internet addiction?” and for four weeks after that he kept asking my about my internet usage despite me telling him it never changed. 

He also doesn’t like labels and I’m tired of arguing with doctors and therapists about it. Label me for god sake because I asked for it. I don’t need to hear the lecture on “those labels are stigmatizing” because it’s the stigma that’s stigmatizing. It helps me to have my symptoms labeled in order to understand them. I could (and have) go on about it for an entire hour long session but they never listen to me. It’s as if I’m unable to make decisions about how to deal with the stigma leveled against myself. Plus, when he refers to general anxiety as “paranoia” all it does is create confusion and make me question if I’m having actual paranoia and of course that leads down an entire rabbit hole. 

I don’t know what to do though because I’m most likely switching jobs and then last night I found out my grandma is in the hospital and even though the entire family is making plans for her discharge it likely won’t happen. I’ll be surprised if she makes it through the day let alone until the morning. I’m not close with her and never have been but the whole situation is so complicated and I need someone to talk to about it who’s trained in these things. But my current therapist I’m certain will start putting all kinds of meaning where there just isn’t any and I can’t convince him when something like that is false. 

I don’t know man because there’s barely any therapists in town who will so much as take a patient with schizophrenia let alone try and treat those symptoms (but it’s the label that’s stigmatizing right?) but I really don’t even want to go to his office again. 

This is partly a rant but also if anyone has any advice or suggestions it would be appreciated