You have spent real time in a therapist's office. It helped. You understand yourself far better than you did. And the thing you went in about still happens. Therapy has helped, it really has. I'm still going back and forth.
This page is not an argument against therapy, and nothing on it is a reason to stop.
01
What therapy may have been doing
Therapy has its own aims. Many of them are things this method does not attempt: assessing and caring for conditions, staying with someone through a hard stretch, working with what has happened to a person. If yours did some of that, it did its job.
Looking for one condition of worth or safety under a recurring problem is a narrow question. It may not have been the question you brought, and it may not have been the one your therapist was asked to answer.
02
Four possibilities
They found it and called it something else. Different approaches have their own words, and this library's terms are its own.
The sessions followed the week. If each hour went to what had just happened, at home or at work, there may have been little room for what repeated across those hours.
It was found, and knowing did not move it. That can happen with any insight, this kind included.
Or there is no rule to find. Some things are a hard life, a loss, or a situation that has not changed.
03
One example
Someone spends a long time in therapy on conflict with a partner. They learn to speak more calmly and to listen better. The fights are shorter. Afterward they still go over each one for days, working out who was right.
The going-over was never the subject, since it happened after the fight was finished.
Under it there might be Right, where the fear is that if you are wrong about this, what else are you wrong about. There might be Peace, where the fear is that someone's disappointment means you did something wrong. There might be neither.
Say you were right and they were upset anyway. Is that alright? No, the upset is what counts, is the Peace answer. Yes, being right settles it, is the Right answer.
04
What this means for the therapy
Possibly nothing. Whatever a rule turns out to be is something you can take back to your therapist.
If things are getting worse and not merely staying the same, that is a reason to go toward a clinician and not away from one. Licensed mental-health care is the right door.If tonight is an emergency, call or text 988 (US). This library is not that door.
Subtraction asks a narrower question than therapy does, and it may come back with not enough to tell.
What to consider when therapy has not been enough is on Therapy Didn't Work. What Now?