When people talk about "therapy" here, they most likely are thinking of bog-standard talk therapy, where you just go in and kinda, well, talk to someone about your life, problems, etc.
For some people, it's enough to just get things off their chest, talk about things out loud with someone and helps them deal with their issues. I personally see such a therapist monthly and find it beneficial to my mental health.
For others, especially those with more intense troubles and traumas, it may not be, and would probably be served better by someone more specialized with said traumas.
Like any medical profession, the quality of individual therapists and mental health experts can vary widely, from chuds to libs to comrades and everything in-between. there's a solid chance you may not get the perfect fit on try 1, I didn't.
I just feel like some people are dipping their toes into Scientology-ish "all therapy is bad, never seek professional help for your problems" stuff, which I think is disastrous advice.
I just feel like some people are dipping their toes into Scientology-ish "all therapy is bad, never seek professional help for your problems" stuff
Maybe, but I’m also tired of “get therapy” or “go see a therapist” as this pithy response people online have.
It’s this weird mix of like…contempt and condescension where they basically just cast you aside while feigning concern for your emotional well-being.Therapy is just confession for secular pmc liberals who can afford it.
It makes them feel self-righteous for going to some shrink and talking about how sometimes they feel sad and they look down on other people who can’t afford it or who have actual mental problems it doesn’t help.I think your frustration is understandable and quite justified, especially because "get help" "you need therapy" and especially "who hurt you?" are used as pithy concern-trolling putdowns and ways to belittle people on the internet.
I admit I have a similar personal frustration (in addition to the above, sick of hearing that) with "just do (drug) bro, don't be a (slur) bro" proposals flung at me. I'm not sure if you've had a similar experience there, but to me, the presumption that whatever ailed me would be cured if I just took a big enough hit of something (and I did try a few things in college; who didn't?) felt similarly dismissive, especially if I didn't respond with the results they expected.
it's this same underlying ideology of "your suffering isn't real, your sadness isn't real, your anger isn't real. i don't feel any of those things so you shouldn't either. your brain is just bad and needs fixing" (definition of fixing left up to specific person stating this)
I’m a therapist. If any therapist ever tells you your suffering isn’t real, fire them. I’ve mostly been working with kids (under 21) for years. Typically, while all the kids I see have real problems, the kid sent to the therapist is the healthiest one in the family. So yeah, people who aren’t in therapy who try to send people to therapists usually need it more.
"your suffering isn't real, your sadness isn't real, your anger isn't real. i don't feel any of those things so you shouldn't either. your brain is just bad and needs fixing"
I can't help but be reminded of this old meme:
Show
At least its free and you get some degree of community out of church that can help you (in usually ineffectual ways but hey its better than a therapist which won't help you if you go homeless due to your issues)
If I go too deep into this sesh I'm going to get angry fast but I'm strongly of the opinion that therapy is pretty much useless and should be entirely replaced with support groups. Its far more useful to have connections and comradery than to pay some asshole with a jesus complex a fuckton of money. Even if it were free its a rip off, people you make friends with at support can look out for you and pick you up when you're down, a therapist will never do that.
Almost everything trauma related requires significant community and medical intervention, just one person vibing with you for fat stacks isn't going to do it
Sorry but I disagree. When I had group therapy all I did was compare myself to others and thought my problems "weren't as serious" (they definitely were) as others; I didn't get the kind of attention I needed. Also, other random people aren't usually equipped with the tools necessary to be able to help people process their trauma. Under capitalism there are some things that therapists simply won't be able to solve, but that doesn't mean it's useless.
I suffered a lot of trauma as a child, physical mental and emotional abuse from both of my families and at school.
I saw dozens of psychiatrists, counselors, therapists and psychologists. Got absolutely nothing out of it.
Eventually i found my way to a Trauma Treatment Center where they specialize in fucked up little nuggets like me.
And then my life changed because I got the help I needed and was able to unwind a lot of my problems and develop coping tools for what I couldn't repair.
I'm very happy that i kept at it, my life feels very good now and I have friends and community and love.
It's never too late, never give up on yourself.
I saw dozens of psychiatrists, counselors, therapists and psychologists. Got absolutely nothing out of it.
Eventually i found my way to a Trauma Treatment Center where they specialize in fucked up little nuggets like me.
And then my life changed because I got the help I needed and was able to unwind a lot of my problems and develop coping tools for what I couldn't repair.
I wish I could do that
The problem is that if you don't have the money/insurance/referrals/whatever to get into one of those Trauma Treatment Centers, or otherwise stumble into the actually useful people who know what to do with trauma somehow, then you're doomed to dealing with all of those other useless sorts who just tell you to meditate it off.
how did you find or get into the Trauma Treatment Center, by the way?
I never really paid for any of it; most of it was on my parents dime when I was a child and they were trying to 'fix' me. There's a 25 year gap where I had great insurance and thought i didn't need help (just alcohol, drugs, women) so didn't see anyone. Then i got incredibly depressed, couldn't get out of bed, lost my job and got on medicaid. Medicaid has been covering my therapy across 3 states for the last 7 years. After getting fired as a patient by a first year counselor his boss suggested i try to get into the trauma center and after an 8 month wait i got the first actual help in my life.
Almost all the other therapists would get utterly hung up on suicidal ideation and intrusive thoughts even when i explained to them that they were managed. they just couldn't hear me and because that was all they would focus on nothing ever progressed. I tried lying but it's hard to build a connection and trust that way.
My trauma therapist, like, treats it like no deal. Which to me it isn't, the thoughts have been there for decades and i'm not going to act on them. When I mention them she doesn't focus on them at all and subsequently I was able to get better.
When we first started doing sessions years ago it would literally be me pretty much ugly crying for most of the hour. Couple years before I made it through a session without crying.
At our last session I was laughing, joking, happy, thriving, and crying but they were joyful tears.
It took me over 40 years to get the help I needed and many black nights and many empty fifths but i'm still here baby and I'm living my best life now! Don't give up!
Ideally people would know the difference between various services and gain a little insight into what they need either on their own or through some introductory talk therapy. Do you need DBT? Do you need EMDR? Do you need somatic therapy? Is basic CBT enough? Do you need someone who specializes in a certain disorder? Wading through all that can be hard and is rarely done properly.
The more advanced treatments such as EMDR are out of reach for a lot of people, especially in the publicly-funded but privately-profitable insurance octopus system that dominates the US and many other westen countries. That sucks because some of that stuff can really help people for specific issues, such as traumatic stress processing in the case of EMDR.
If you’re in a city and your therapist isn’t a grad student—but maybe even if they are—they’re going to be able to refer you to someone who does EMDR if you ask. Another great trauma modality is somatic experiencing, though that’s harder to find than EMDR. A lot of practitioners on insurance panels can still provide this type of specialty service.
EMDR is fucking ridiculous just play a video game or preoccupy yourself in some other way its the same fucking thing, I fucking HATE how people act like this is a serious treatment and isn't deeply condescending to survivors
I found EMDR very helpful for me after some particularly bad experiences. Yes, I tried distractions before that, for years after the incident, but having a guided process made a difference for me with lasting results. Please do not invalidate my own experience as a trauma survivor.
EMDR is basically just being told to go play video games. Its fucking stupid.
Wut.
My EMDR stuff has been to focus on the trauma while following a movement from left to right with my eyes. What have you been getting? O.o
Its just a procedural thing that you do while having issues. Anything can work to do that.
Also, if this 'brain hack' works, then why are therapists necessary? We can just have one video explaining it and get rid of therapists. In terms of clinical results, EMDR has very poor results. I'm glad you got something out of it but most people don't. https://nap.nationalacademies.org/read/11955/chapter/6#99
I've seen multiple clinics advertising in this area that EMDR can 'alleviate 90% or more of the symptoms of PTSD' within just four sessions. I can verify that this isn't true in my case. It just felt like some therapist purposefully triggering me for a thought experiment, each time I went to therapy it ruined a whole month for me which was worse than the normal 3-4 days.
everyone loves to assert there are bad therapists, but no one likes to admit that there are bad patients
Could you please describe a "bad patient"? Like, how can there be such a thing by definition? A psychologist, as any other medical practitioner, should be able to form a diagnosis based on the observation and listening to the patient, and then decide which treatment, if any, is adequate. How is any of this the responsibility, or even worse, fault, of the patient???
Lying about yourself, missing appointments, not sticking to treatments, general contempt for the process while trying to go through it.
Lots of ways someone can poison their own well.
Lying about yourself
My moms a narcissist and actually got worse after going to therapy. She does her appointments remote and one time she was staying at my place during one. I wasn't trying to eavesdrop but the walls are thin and I overheard a bit where she was recounting an interaction she had with my sister that I had witnessed and she told the tale in a way that made her come off WAY more reasonable than my sister way less reasonable than I recall. I never called this out, felt it would be unethical of me to do so, but it always made me suspicious he was basically just using her therapist to validate her interpretations of things.
I imagine this happens to some extend with almost all therapy, your therapist is naturally only gonna get your side of every story, but I see how with certain toxic people (like a narcissist) it could actually end up so bad it's counter productive.
Yeah. Definitely a part of it. Therapists aren't infallible. If people are actively trying to deceive them in order to achieve an outcome, it's not always on the therapist. Sometimes they're really, really good at it.
Did you ever see that scene in The Sopranos about this?
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
Lying about yourself, missing appointments, not sticking to treatments, general contempt for the process while trying to go through it
That's, in my humble opinion, a fault of the system that makes people disregard the opinion of the professionals, or of the field failing to compel patients to actually conform to the therapy mode chosen or to adapt to the needs of the patient. Your "bad patient" thing sounds to me very much like "everyone complains about bad teachers but nobody wants to admit that there are bad students". Like, maybe adapt the system and the field to diverse people in diverse situations, instead of applying a cookie-mold approach and blaming the recipient for it.
How are you going to compel people to conform to the therapy?
You can drag a horse to water. You can't make it drink.
How are you going to compel people to conform to the therapy?
Again, that should absolutely be studied as part of the effectiveness of given therapies and methodologies. If the field fails to account for the high percentage of people who don't confirm to therapies for one reason or another, or to study those reasons and to find solutions, then what the fuck are the scientists doing?
I’m not going to say that the methodology doesn’t matter, but the #1 factor in whether therapy is going to work for someone is the level of trust with the therapist. That tops methodology, education, everything else. Certain therapies absolutely help certain things, but a good therapist isn’t trying to get anyone to “conform.”
Read the rest of my interactions with the other user in this comment chain
Oh no, all good, just wanted to say that I've mostly addressed it in my other interactions
It is studied as a part of the effectiveness. Nobody claimed that there is a high percentage of bad patients. Just that they exist.
The focus on "bad patients" is faulty from a pragmatic point of view. It leads to thinking "certain people just don't wanna be helped". If you reframe it as people who for example by social conditioning or by public opinion or trust on psychology, don't fully accept treatment, or people who for actual reasons aren't receptive to treatment, the framing leads you to finding solutions to those problems instead of just dismissing them as "bad patients", as happens with students. I bet my ass that "bad patients" correlate with demographic and economic factors, i.e., "bad patients" are a product of the environment that can be fixed by altering the environment in a very similar fashion to how "criminals" are a overwhelmingly byproduct of the system and surrounding conditions.
Automatically assuming that bad patients don't exist is faulty in and of itself. Of course some people don't want to be helped - Not everyone is ready to be helped, and not everyone thinks that they need to be "helped". You cannot help someone that doesn't want to be helped.
Again, focusing on "bad patients" instead of the environment that creates them, is like focusing on "criminals" instead of their surrounding socioeconomic environment
Nobody is focusing on them. Just admitting that they exist.
Yeah the behaviours you mentioned are a sign of a "difficult" patient (not the individual therapist's fault nor the patient's fault), not a "bad" patient. A "bad" patient cannot exist because the goal is a constant never-ending striving to get as close to 100% of the population healthy no matter what. Saying "what can we do, x% are morally bad so fuck em they deserve to suffer unless they become good" is neoliberal thinking and unacceptable.
Furthermore, such behaviours are indicative moreso of a sick society which tries to compartmentalize the healing of a person's mental illness to a paid hourly visit per week and does fuck all to collectively address any compounding factors that may exacerbate their condition, nor try and help them further, outside of this relationship.
yea ok but the majority of instances where people complain about bad therapists, it's usually desperate and otherwise seemingly honest and normal people who have no reason to lie about or not engage with the process
there are definitely well meaning people with bad therapists
this does not mean that bad patients don't also exist
the point i'm making is that the majority of complaints (or at least the kind of complaints you see on here) are being made by people who are neurodivergent or disabled in some other way and are experiencing shitty therapists. i am specifying this because blaming bad patients can extremely easily slide into simply denying genuine complaints that these people have
Admitting that bad patients exist doesn't automatically erase the shitty experiences that other people have.
of course it doesn't, but it's used that way so you can understand my jumpiness around it
Absolutely! Automatically writing people off isn't a great strategy, especially for therapy.
thats because 90% of "bad patients" are just pathologized normal behavior you fucking goober
I've been seeing a therapist the past 6 months. Got a lot of stuff in my past I'm trying to work through.
I think that as long as you recognize therapy is there to help you cope with the hellworld we live in I think it's valuable. It's also good for just understanding yourself and your own relationships better (I've been working through some shit with my family).
It isn't a cure all though. I think recognizing what it's for and why you're in it is important.
However, I am probably going to cut back to once a month pretty soon. Was starting with two a month because a lot of crazy shit happened right after I started therapy so like, shit was busy.
i've posted about this before but here goes. i largely agree and sympathise with people who say talk therapy is bs. imo it's at best akin to writing in a journal with some accountability. at worst it's capitalist realist conditioning. however, there is a HUGE difference between talk therapy with some dude with a bachelor's degree and going to see an actual brain doctor, a psychologist, or cutting-edge structured therapy like DBT. i'm autistic and suffer from chronic MDD and i used to meet the BPD criteria too. i was basically completely disillusioned with "therapy" writ large, until i checked into the psych ward where luckily i was able to have sessions with a real psych and then get enrolled in a DBT program through which those sessions would continue along with group therapy. i consider the DBT program the most successful mental health intervention i have ever undergone. i still suffer greatly, but i am largely a lot more stable and able to exert much more control over the harmful coping mechanisms and self-destructive urges that overwhelmed me in the past. i would recommend it to anyone suffering from any kind of long term mental health issues or disorders, especially those related to emotional regulation.
the tragedy is that "therapy" for most people, insofar as it's what they can afford or have access to, is the former talk-therapy example which can range from useless to harmful for folks like me. i wish stuff like DBT was available to more people. still i think it's important to draw the distinction.
I've been in therapy for a few months now and I can say it's actually been extremely helpful. I thought I'd figured a lot of things out myself but it wasn't until I started therapy that I realized there were more deeper issues that I hadn't quite realized.
I'm not going to write a wall of text explaining everything, but at the very least if we understand that capitalism is the root of many of our problems, including our ability to get proper help, there doesn't need to be an outright rejection of the science of how the brain works.
There's a lot to say about therapy, but imo it's more systemic in regards to the whole health system (well all systems really), than any criticism I have about the ideas of therapy in general.
There's a lot of different therapeutic treatments for a lot of mental health conditions. Anyone who makes sweeping statements is being overly jaded imo.
I personally have benefited from talk therapy. I think due to my isolation/neglect growing up, it's been helpful for learning to open up in a safe environment. It also was a big stepping stone as someone raised a man who had created distance from themselves emotionally their entire life up to that point.
That being said, I've also had to come to terms with the fact that no amount of talk therapy was going to rewire the parts of my psyche that are fucked due to abuse I had growing up. I've seen that there's different forms of therapy that try to help past traumas, but money is of course tight, and there's no guarantees.
I still thank my therapists for what they tried to help with, and appreciated when they told me straight up "this is out of my wheel house. I think it would serve you better if you found a specialist".
I also did a lot of research to find a therapist who was a known comrade/ally in the local community. Very based and started the biggest community groups for trans people in the area.
I think it's important to be able to talk about the world and it's effects in a real way, which you cannot do with a liberal or conservative person at all in my opinion.
I just feel like some people are dipping their toes into Scientology-ish "all therapy is bad, never seek professional help for your problems" stuff, which I think is disastrous advice.
Those people tend to lean into "just do (specific favored drug) it will fix everything" Joe Roganisms instead. Sure, drugs might help, but they are definitely not universal cures for feeling bad. As one example, the holy cure-all known as ketamine has famously done pretty much nothing good for one of its favorite consumers
Those people tend to lean into "just do (specific favored drug) it will fix everything" Joe Roganisms instead. Sure, drugs might help, but they are definitely not universal cures for feeling bad.
Or, you know, they’ve actually spent a lifetime and endless amounts of money cycling through different mental health professionals only to find that the entire field is mostly just kumbaya bullshit with little rigour unless you’re lucky enough to find someone who truly knows what they’re doing.
mostly just kumbaya bullshit with little rigour
I already said drugs can be helpful. If you want to take a specific case of someone trying all sorts of therapy and none of it working to broad-brush therapy as "kumbaya bullshit", I can just as easily tell you about my cousin who rejected trying therapy for undiagnosed problems, self-medicated through at least a half-dozen substances that his college buddies had access to, but eventually simplified his self-treatment by drinking himself to death.
unless you’re lucky enough to find someone who truly knows what they’re doing.
Unless of course the amateur (and presumably "rigorous") self-prescribing pharmacist is lucky enough to find a drug that works and fixes everything without any further assistance required.
I don’t think drugs are necessarily the answer but therapy is in most cases so prohibitively expensive it’s almost certainly never the answer for the majority of people. $50-100 per week on therapy, if we’re being extremely generous, could fund multiple drug addictions.
The way things are set up, yes, it's prohibitively expensive and standards (and methods of treatment) are sloppy and all over the place.
I don't think multiple drug addictions would really help that person either, at least not as much as the kind of educated and experienced person (be they a psychiatrist, psychologist, a very kind and understanding dealer, a shaman, or whatever) that would narrow down courses of treatment. In the case of the cousin I mentioned, just bouncing from one "just do (drug) bro don't be a (slur) bro" after another was almost like fad dieting, except more expensive.
I don't have easy answers when it comes to something being affordable and in easy reach with a keen diagnosis for someone in need that can't afford to try a lot of things.
If you want to take a specific case of someone trying all sorts of therapy and none of it working to broad-brush therapy as "kumbaya bullshit"
However, OP already stated that:
"all therapy is bad, never seek professional help for your problems" stuff, which I think is disastrous advice."
So what I think they mean is that from the perspective of the long suffering person trying out different therapists without success (not from OP's perspective), therapy seems like "kumbaya bullshit" because it hasn't solved their problems. Therefore, it might be unfair to say that such individuals generally tend towards pseudo scientific attitudes out of a place of arrogance (like killionaire god emperor m*sk).
The OP didn't call therapy "kumbaya bullshit" so I didn't let that broad-brushing stand unanswered, especially because the most common implication of that is "(specific trendy drug) will solve your problems because it solved mine" like there's some silver bullet waiting to be found.
from the perspective of the long suffering person trying out different therapists without success
I was speaking from the perspective of someone that had to live with (for a time) someone who didn't even start therapy at all (except bragging about lying during initial counseling before dropping out of college), going the all-American route of "nothing is wrong if no diagnosis is made," and instead self-medicated while gradually wasting away, starting to steal from me to keep the self-medication going to the point of me having to move out for my own sake.
If you want to be generous in one interpretation, I'll take the other.
I didn't let that broad-brushing stand unanswered, especially because the most common implication of that is "(specific trendy drug) will solve your problems because it solved mine"
Based on what I've seen irl and online, I'd say that such sentiments in this case moreso may come from a place of despair and suffering, not so much arrogance nor shilling of snake oil, especially if the person has tried therapy before in good faith. Not saying that shitheads and "Just X bro"-scientist roganites don't exist though, because you absolutely do describe a widespread and life-threatening tendency especially among men, but it may not apply to this specific case that OP mentioned earlier.
I was speaking from the perspective of someone that had to live with (for a time) someone who didn't even start therapy at all (except bragging about lying during initial counseling before dropping out of college), going the all-American route of "nothing is wrong if no diagnosis is made," and instead self-medicated while gradually wasting away, starting to steal from me to keep the self-medication going to the point of me having to move out for my own sake.
That is beyond horrifying. My condolences.
Thank you, I do appreciate that.
The experience, and the eventual loss (he died alone and wasn't found for while afterward), definitely weighs on me and subjectively gives me strong feelings against self-prescribing and self-medicating tendencies among some people that refuse to accept support even when it's available.
he died alone and wasn't found for while afterward
:doomjak: no words beyond "NO"
definitely weighs on me and subjectively gives me strong feelings against self-prescribing and self-medicating tendencies among some people
thats very understandable and such tendencies are undoubtedly harmful, may you find peace on the farm with the family
thats very understandable and such tendencies are undoubtedly harmful, may you find peace on the farm with the family
Thank you. I am well and happy here. It was just a bit haunting to get that notification call from the people that found him and saw me on his contact list. He made no calls, never reached out.
I’m really sorry you went through that, and my intention wasn’t to minimize your experiences. I’m merely saying what I did out of personal experience and a sense of desperation.
serious false dichotomies here. therapy can be a good concept and often a good practice while still ultimately often a form of psychological enforcement.
My view is that if you have the ability to self-reflect, talk therapy is 100% useless. They aren't going to tell you anything you couldn't think of on your own.
This gets especially frustrating with ADHD where doctors try to force you to take therapy as a prerequisite for receiving medication. Sorry, but I can think of ways to deal with my problems myself without needing some dipshit listening to me. What I can't do on my own however is fix the chemical imbalance in my brain, without having access to the prescription meds that allow this.
I disagree, there are therapists who understand professional ways of reframing experiences to help you understand a new way of interpreting them, which can be very insightful
I often think about what a therapist would tell my abuser and how they would help them seek peace and comfort without actually addressing any of the harm they caused,
Its a defferal mechanism at its worst, heres how you can be ok.
As a marxist the only thing im actually interested in, that therapy cannot provide is restorative justice; undo the harm that has been caused, financially compensate me ect.
I feel in a fairer society therapy would come with actual real life actions and changes to laws, politics and society. As it stands it feels more like a railroad of defferal where they can box people in and keep them as active workers paying tax.
It has utlity, I just hate the neo-liberal conception and structure/outcomes of it.
Not really.
I started therapy a bit before I broke up with my abusive ex. I had always thought that I had a very good way of introspecting; when there were problems in the relationship I was able to reflect on my actions and improve myself. Turns out I was just being gaslit into thinking everything was my fault, and I needed a therapist who knew what tells of abuse and abuse victims were so it could be clear to me that I was acting like an abuse victim and my relationship was obviously and clearly abusive.
Your perspective on yourself and your actions is not infallible, everyone is prone to biases and blindspots.
I don't think that's very fair. I like to think I'm a thoughtful, self-reflective person, but even I need help with things. Talking with someone else openly about things I may otherwise keep to myself is very helpful to me.
I agree but I think its important to understand the experiences people have with therapists instead of dismissing them.
Sure help is good and works... In the right conditions and format with the right specialist.... IF you even know what is the root of your trauma in the first place. I imagine a lot of people here have quite serious traumas that aren't alleviated by talk therapy and realistically need a healthcare system with empathy that can triage and direct to the right treatment.
Maybe instead of just telling people "go to therapy" try to understand their problems and maybe give better directed advice. To speak from my own experience i had multiple talk therapist who all made the problems worse and really all i needed was for someone to tell me I'm autistic cos for 25 solid years i had no idea and only really found out what neurodivergence is via this website. Once i found out i did the rest of the work myself as the pieces kind of fell into place and i could seek the correct approach to handle my issues.
I had been to mental health teams multiple times for various problems and not once was this mentioned. Infact the entire UK mental health system seems to actively think these disorders don't even exist. Only recently did it start offering treatment to adults with ADHD and thought people just "grew out of it".
Medical bigotry is pervasive and i can say with some degree of certainty a lot of users have experienced something like this. On the other hand i don't think its useful to tell people not to at least try because for some it may be exactly what they need. But also don't forget this shit isn't free to people which plays a big part in perception. What's needed is a free robust and empathetic mental healthcare system with a good supply of specialists not whatever the fuck mess we have atm.
My insurance classifies all psychiatrists and clinical psychologists as "talk therapy" and covers none of it
