One more thought on therapy, more musing than anything:

I've been told a lot things like "therapists aren't mindreaders" and "they can only work on what you bring to the session." Which, I understand, but it also seems like it's putting a lot of work on the patient to basically be the expert? Like I've definitely had cases where I was dealing with abuse, but to me what was happening was so normal that it wasn't worth bringing up in therapy. I feel like what I actually needed from therapy was someone to say "hey this thing that you're used to seeing as normal is actually pretty out there and it's causing you a lot of problems." But it was somehow my responsibility to bring it up, despite my having no reason at all to think I should. And it was my fault if therapy didn't work because I didn't bring it up.

That's part of how I feel like "you need therapy to benefit from therapy" comes up as well. Like I had to do all the work on my own of overcoming all the gaslighting and manipulation and being able to see and name what was going on. And then once I do 90% of the work while therapy frankly actively impedes it by focusing on other things, then I'm considered "ready for therapy" and actually able to receive help without being blamed for not doing it right.