I feel like my therapists discloses too much, am I crazy?

I started seeing a new therapist a couple months ago, and right from the start they began sharing personal information about themselves, to a level that I am starting to feel uncomfortable with. In the first session they shared that they have the same diagnoses as me, what medications they take, questioned my medications and recommended me to try something similar to them. I have never asked them for any of this information or any of what I will share below.

Basically every time I share something I’m experiencing or going through they relate it back to themselves dealing with the same thing. I would say about half of the session involves them sharing about themselves. They use a lot of “people with our diagnoses like you and I tend to do ____” in a way that feels like they assume their experience is similar to mine and I find myself having to correct them if my experience is different. They share the struggles they are currently going through or have gone through in the past. I often find myself feeling like I don’t have enough time to express or talk about what I want to or feeling like I need to interrupt them to finish what I was trying to say, and like I am not able to go deeper in my processing because they relate it back to themselves instead of exploring my experience. The dynamic feels like one where we are more like friends rather than a client and therapist. I think they are probably coming from a place of trying to show me they understand me and relate to me to help me feel more comfortable, but I’m finding myself feeling rather disoriented and confused about how it’s causing me to feel. Im unsure if I am just being dramatic. I don’t want to bring it up because I don’t want to hurt their feelings, and I feel like if this is their style of therapy maybe I should quit and find someone else.

Here are some examples of things I know about them:
- Their diagnoses
- Their medications
- Their relationship status, and some issues they have gone through with their partner.
- Many instances of their own mental health struggles, including current ones.
- Physical health struggles they’ve gone through
- Types of other clients they have that they’ve found difficult/ hard to work with.

I know these may seem normal but it’s more so the way they share the information and how much they talk about it that is difficult for me. It feels as though they think they understand everything I’m going through and they think what worked for them will work for me. I find myself holding back on how I feel sometimes because knowing their experiences I don’t want to trigger them or I feel like they might disagree with me based off of things I know about them. I don’t feel like I’ve made any steps towards progress so far. I feel crazy, like maybe my expectations for therapy are abnormal?

(NAT)