u/H3sbara

I’m a 42-year-old woman. I am going through perimenopause and also have adhd, anxiety and dysthymia or long term mild depression. I believe a lot of my difficulties are related to attachment issues and long-standing relational patterns.
The main things I struggle with are:
Strong emotional reactions when I feel rejected, criticised, abandoned, or misunderstood
Overthinking and replaying conversations in my head
Difficulty regulating emotions, especially in close relationships
Holding onto resentment and unresolved feelings from the past
Having a limited number of close friendships and difficulty building or maintaining deeper connections
Feeling scattered and emotionally overwhelmed, very little resilience under stress
Feeling like the odd one out
Extreme tiredness and low energy

I’ve tried CBT and ACT, but I find them too mechanical and goal-driven. My experience has been that the focus can shift quickly to goals, strategies, behavioural change, or tracking improvement, as though the underlying causes and relational patterns are not especially important and almost as if the therapist has something to prove to someone (the insurance company maybe?) .
I know I benefit from being able to talk things through and feel genuinely understood. At the same time, I don’t want therapy to be only open-ended exploration without movement or change.
I’m wondering if there is a therapy approach that offers a better balance: enough depth to understand and process the emotions, but enough structure to help me shift long-standing patterns.
I struggle when therapy sits too far at either extreme. I recently stopped seeing a therapist who seemed very focused on behavioural activation and didn’t seem interested in exploring what was actually bothering me. In one session, they asked me to write down everything that was bothering me. Then they told me to turn the paper over and not look at it. When I asked, “Are we really not going to talk about what I’m struggling with?” they said, “How is talking about that going to help you move forward?”
I understand that talk therapy can sometimes become insight without change. But highly structured approaches can also feel like behaviour management without enough attention to the deeper attachment, emotional, and relational patterns underneath.
Now I feel like I’m back to square one trying to find a new therapist.
What I’m looking for is help understanding myself better, processing emotions, identifying long-standing beliefs, changing relational patterns, and becoming less controlled by them.
For people with similar issues, what type of therapy helped you develop deeper insight while also creating actual emotional and relational change?

I’m a 42-year-old woman. I am going through perimenopause and also have adhd, anxiety and dysthymia or long term mild depression. I believe a lot of my difficulties are related to attachment issues and long-standing relational patterns.
The main things I struggle with are:
Strong emotional reactions when I feel rejected, criticised, abandoned, or misunderstood
Overthinking and replaying conversations in my head
Difficulty regulating emotions, especially in close relationships
Holding onto resentment and unresolved feelings from the past
Having a limited number of close friendships and difficulty building or maintaining deeper connections
Feeling scattered and emotionally overwhelmed, very little resilience under stress
Feeling like the odd one out
Extreme tiredness and low energy

I’ve tried CBT and ACT, but I find them too mechanical and goal-driven. My experience has been that the focus can shift quickly to goals, strategies, behavioural change, or tracking improvement, as though the underlying causes and relational patterns are not especially important and almost as if the therapist has something to prove to someone (the insurance company maybe?) .
I know I benefit from being able to talk things through and feel genuinely understood. At the same time, I don’t want therapy to be only open-ended exploration without movement or change.
I’m wondering if there is a therapy approach that offers a better balance: enough depth to understand and process the emotions, but enough structure to help me shift long-standing patterns.
I struggle when therapy sits too far at either extreme. I recently stopped seeing a therapist who seemed very focused on behavioural activation and didn’t seem interested in exploring what was actually bothering me. In one session, they asked me to write down everything that was bothering me. Then they told me to turn the paper over and not look at it. When I asked, “Are we really not going to talk about what I’m struggling with?” they said, “How is talking about that going to help you move forward?”
I understand that talk therapy can sometimes become insight without change. But highly structured approaches can also feel like behaviour management without enough attention to the deeper attachment, emotional, and relational patterns underneath.
Now I feel like I’m back to square one trying to find a new therapist.
What I’m looking for is help understanding myself better, processing emotions, identifying long-standing beliefs, changing relational patterns, and becoming less controlled by them.
For people with similar issues, what type of therapy helped you develop deeper insight while also creating actual emotional and relational change?