Quote:
Originally Posted by Suraya
I don’t know if this will be the most coherent post as my thoughts are kind of just rambling around in my head after coming home from therapy today. Does anyone else ever ponder the idea that therapy might actually make you more feel worse? Make you feel more depressed? I’m starting to think that being in therapy has made me a more depressed person. I’ve suffered with depression most my life, but it’s come and gone in waves. Now it’s kind of settled into a deep wave of despair and it isn’t lifting. I’ve developed a deep need and attachment for T after four years of being with her. I have almost no desire to live – no motivation to do anything I used to enjoy – no hope or goals for a future. I think about therapy and T and why I feel horrible and what I need to do to heal….I think about this nearly 24/7. So how does therapy help if all I do is think about therapy and think about T?
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Unfortunately, your experience is not uncommon. Yes, in many cases therapy not only doesn't fulfill its purpose but makes things worse, and it's not just because some specific therapists are incompetent and/or unethical. This is not an issue of "bad apples". This is a systemic issue that needs to be addressed, but we are not close to that point yet. This is not to make a generalization and to say that therapy generally doesn't work. Individual therapy experiences are extremely diverse for making such a broad statement, especially when everyone has their own idea of what it means when therapy "works". But cases like yours are way too common to be dismissed as exceptional or as a problem of incompetency of lack of professionalism in certain individual therapists. There are some big systemic flaws in psychotherapy education and training and a widespread denial of it that does a great disservice to both consumers and providers. I hope I will live to the day when this issue is addressed, but this may not happen..