I was never looking to therapists to tell me nothing was my fault. If I'm chronically despondent, I figure it's because I have an approach to life that is not working for me. I prefer to see that I'm the cause of my own unhappiness because that means I can change things.

Usually, when my life feels intolerable, it means I need to change something. I never found therapists helpful in identifying what concrete decision I needed to make. For seven years I lived with a partner with a serious drinking habit. Through attending Al-Anon and reading their literature I learned way more than I ever learned in therapy. It helped me to eventually leave that living situation.

I think it's great that some people have found therapy to be a positive experience. For people with chronic mood disorders, I think it's over-rated. The only remedy for depression, in my own experience, is me making myself do what I don't feel like doing. Sitting in an office relating my past and analyzing it got me absolutely nowhere. I usually left the office feeling agitated.

When I voiced that the process of going to a therapist did not seem to be leading to any improvement in my life, I did not mean that as a way of accusing the therapist of incompetence. I did not attack anyone, but I sure got attacked. It happened repeatedly to me, if I dared to say the process was not working for me, with multiple therapists. Their response bordered on vicious. They were wedded to the belief that what they do is productive and that any failure couldn't possibly be due to the process being ineffective.