men will literally not afford therapy before going to therapy
I stared it this year, I’m doing it online and it’s been decent considering we’ve all been doing Zoom calls etc. It’s all you can text/email and one 45 min call a week. It’s $220 a month. I can hardly afford this but it’s been so worth it. I have put feelings away from child hood trauma and it’s been a fucking relief to speak with someone who listens like they do
How I loathe the way social problems are infantilized and reduced to individual failures to cope or manage in a broken world rather than fixing the society itself.
Last time I went to therapy, someone making enough to thrive in the pandemic couldn't seem to understand that class proximity to its effects causes different kinds of stress. Instead they kept recommending pseudoscientific energy therapies and went down the Jordan Peterson list of platitudes. The time before that I told an even wealthier one that watching kids die isn't fun and he said, direct quote, "when I'm sad I like to ride my bike". I couldn't strangle him without it being considered an anger issue by some third bourgeois cunt.
Probably works for some, I cannot stand being under a microscope by someone who is ideologically hostile toward me and whose professional incentive is to personalise problems rather than attack their environmental and systemic roots.
yeah that's my problem with therapy, it feels like you're getting called ill for having a normal ass reaction to a shitty world
The time before that I told an even wealthier one that watching kids die isn’t fun and he said, direct quote, “when I’m sad I like to ride my bike”. I couldn’t strangle him without it being considered an anger issue by some third bourgeois cunt.
Mood.
Good point. Imma keep dreaming I bite off my fingers while everyone cries then
who the fuck is scraeming "go to therapy" at my house. show yourself, coward. i will never go to therapy
Lol buying meme stocks during a dip and selling the same day made me money. Therapy costs money and time. Not that therapy works anyways.
I’ve been in therapy since childhood. The only “therapist” that did any good was a formerly retired psychiatrist who decided to start a place where your therapist was your psychiatrist. Psychiatry works. Therapy maybe.
Tbh that would probably be the same quality as 2/3 therapists I’ve had and for free, so not a terrible idea.
I’ve had one therapist who actually put in thought and effort. The other two just had personal conversations with me for money.
sorry for replying to an old post, but could you tell me a little more about what you liked about the therapist who put in thought and effort? which is to say, what did they do differently from the other two that gave you that impression
Sure. I think the easiest way for me to format this in my mind is bullet points about my experiences, and I want to mention the caveat that I’ve always wanted a bit more from therapy than I’ve gotten (I want something more rigorous than I’ve had), but my first experience was still genuinely helpful overall.
Therapist 1: -Listened very intently and would often take notes. He made a point to pause me for a second if needed, and it really showed me he cared -Referenced the notes from previous appointments to make sure he’d get things right most of the time, and to refresh himself on points and descriptions of past events I made before -Took time to really think about and engage with what I had said after I said it. Wouldn’t just offer feel good platitudes, but would instead actually think sometimes out loud for a moment before reaching the actual suggestion. -Came up with concrete changes I could make. Even small things like exercise to help with anxiety/depression were more than just “do it”, and he’d follow up on if I had been doing it, why not if I hadn’t, and how to get myself to do it, etc. -Genuinely cared. More so than just being “nice” he actually seemed invested with my development -Conversations more often than not had purpose, and he would actually try and get me to be on track if I ended up being more conversational than giving him something to work with. Felt like he valued the time. -Recognized what was beyond his scope and helped me get additional help. Wasn’t perfect about this, and the other therapists I had did this too, but he was better at this than the others. -Unfortunately after his wife died he was less helpful (understandable), so I left
Therapist 2: -Never took notes -Constantly forgot things I had said in previous visits and would frequently need correction on things he partially remembered. My previous therapist would ask me things he wasn’t completely sure he remembered, but this guy would just say things that were wrong and it would be like “oh, right” after being corrected far too often -Just gave platitudes as advice most of the time. Nothing felt personalized. -Advice never really had structure. Like, I know hobbies are helpful for depression, but how about helping me make a concrete plan and making sure I’m trying? -Even though he was “nice” I felt like he wasn’t invested in me, and I was just paying to talk to a friendly wall that would dispense common wisdom for money -It took him probably around 10 visits to point out that my self talk is really really negative. I was dumbfounded it took him that long to say that
Therapist 3: -She took notes, and made some effort to reference them, but it rarely felt like past issues were dug into and connected to the present -Way too conversational without direction. Things were more of a personal conversation that I could have with a sibling than something constructive and unique to a professional -Sometime would just get totally off topic and we’d end up talking about life more than my issues. Partially my fault, but my first therapist would have stopped this -She seemed like she wanted to help, but she didn’t feel qualified to do more than have a normal conversation that just happened to be personal to me
For therapist 4, I think I’m going to be more demanding about the kind of therapist I’m looking for, the kind of issues I have, and what I want to get out of it. I think I should probably put in more effort on my end to journal (audio/writing) a bit here and there, and to keep them and me focused on my issues and a solution/approach during the session. I think a timer on my phone for every 15 minutes or so might be a good idea to keep track of time.
Hope that helps a bit
Thank you so much for the detailed and well thought out response. To know the things someone as lucid and objective as yourself are thinking about when they seek therapy is invaluable to anyone reading it that is interested in striving to be the best listener they can be. I'm just a med student but im hoping to be a psychiatrist one day and I really appreciated your notes here.
Theres some stuff here that just makes intuitive sense as professionalism like providing service with continuity (taking, referencing, and following up with notes and suggestions from previous encounters) but there was definitely stuff here I appreciated being reminded of like pausing the patient if they need it but might not realize it and thinking about suggestions out loud to show ones thought process in a clear way prior to application. I hope your current therapist is everything you need and your plans work out!
If only there was some way to make therapy free for anyone who needs it :agony-deep:
As someone who has been to a therapist like two times more than a decade ago and got tought a couple of useless new age energy visualisation exercises I assume some of those fancy behavioural-cognitive-whatever therapies could probably have some scientific validity. You could probably even do them without a therapist and save a bunch of money. Strange that I've never seen that discussed.
i went to a therapist as part of mandatory shit for trans stuff at the time and idk they just handed me some printouts for ptsd that i could easily have googled myself
Given recent events: CW for being able to sink a lot of time and money into treatment. And for brief descriptions of what bad depression symptoms were like.
I got diagnosed with clinical depression several years back -- now identified as bipolar II which is probably not what you think it is (?) I got put into an intensive outpatient therapy program, which included group sessions 3 hours every weekday. It also included access to a therapist (cognitive behavioral/talk therapy with a PhD) and a psychiatrist (medication treatment). I was extremely lucky to have the insurance, time, and funds to do this.
The 3 hours were for teaching effective habits for basically making it easier to take care of yourself. I was very depressed at the time and I didn't eat, clean, sleep, or shower with any regularity. That shit makes you even more depressed which makes you take care of yourself even less and all that jazz. I didn't realize that staying up until 4 am and eating microwaved potatoes was making me feel that much worse until I was taught how to crawl out of that hole. It was also group therapy, sitting in a room with like 12 other people who've been in the same place as me. I had never had friends who understood what it was like. Like, talking to friends about how every day I am filled with vague but intense dread and suffering just kinda freaked them out, but the group was like, "Yeah I feel, I've laid awake in bed for 4 hours staring at the ceiling with my soul on fire too"
Therapy with a professional was good for me because I could assume that his advice and insight was probably more objective than mine or my peers. Buddies could tell me that Trisha was being a huge bitch and I should ghost her on all social media, but they could be personally invested. If I were feeling shit about some aspect of my character or value as a person, my therapist could provide me with a nuanced second opinion, drawn from his experience with others with struggles and negative thought patters like me. Plus, some things you just can't tell your friends without causing a bunch of drama.
Cognitive behavioral therapy focuses a lot on mindfulness. Basically, recognize the thoughts you're having, assess them calmly and as objectively as you can, and be conscious of their effects and next steps. A therapist could point out things like toxic self criticism or petty anger and I could learn to recognize it the next time. Also, just in general talking about your feelings really helps you digest and parst your thoughts.
I hope this helps explain some things for people. There's a lot of pseudoscience as well as weird pressure to go to therapy as well as to not go to therapy. I figure my personal account gives more insight on what it actually was like for me.
Well yeah, the only material benefit I can get by reading theory is the ability to tell other people to read theory. You can by drugs with stonks gains this is materialism 101 jack.
I went see a dude who turned out to be at least a succdem
Well Kinsey Grant, therapy requires money. Did you think they could use that stock money for some therapy?
US therapy is just rehab to get the slaves back to work. I choose STONKS
