Does it matter to you what type of therapy others find useful?

Based on another thread - I personally did not find cbt useful and in fact it was awful and harmful in my opinion to me. That does not mean I believe it is not useful for anyone else. It does not matter to me one way or the other if what I find useful is that which others find useful. I have found that on this board it is interesting to see the array of what others find useful or not and why they think it is or isn't.

Second that.

I find psychoanalytic therapy is right for me although the insurance gurus insist that CBT would be more helpful.

F@ck then, I'll pay out of pocket.

I know people who have found approaches, that I find to be invalidating, awesomely helpful to their lives.

I'm more bothered by unhealthy therapeutic relationships that are pandered off as "healthy" in front of newbies who can't tell the difference yet. But....like everyone else, my experience is subjective.

Not really.

Similarly, I don't get on with CBT. I don't have the slightest problem with others benefiting from it. However, I do have a problem with it being held up as a universal talk therapy for the vast majority of mental health problems the way it is here in the UK (in my experience).

A psychiatrist once told me that CBT doesn't work with everyone because it depends how your brain processes and analyzes information. If your brain works in a particular way - great, CBT can get results. But if your brain works in a non linear way, then it pretty much is a waste of time, unless it's for a very specific problem, eg quitting smoking. I tend to agree with this view, but not everyone will.

Regarding other therapies, I generally don't care what others find helpful but I would feel dubious about therapies I feel are ethically questionable. Then I would care, and would voice my opinion that I think they are wrong - maybe like those therapists who say they can "cure" being gay, or whatever. Stuff like that I'd make no bones about coming out and saying I have a problem with it.

But how does anyone else know what will or won't work for someone? I find any number of descriptions about therapy to sound off/odd/wrong/weird/unhealthy to me for me to engage in them - but I would not be able to tell someone else it is wrong for them.

Perhaps they mean cheaper.

I like the cold, distant, uncaring type of therapist and I have found some psychodynamic ones to fit that bill. To me it is not connected to any particular type of therapy. The time I tried cbt, I disliked the therapist because of what I found to be over= perkiness/cheer - not coldness. I hated cbt itself because I thought it treated the client like they were a half-witted drooling village idiot. If a client finds cbt to be different than I did - then good.
And if one wants and finds useful a warm fuzzy therapist or even perky and cheerful- then have at it is my thinking on it.

That's why I said my opinion is so subjective.

I'm referring to things that are outside the bounds of proper boundaries specifically. I know some people might need a different, more personal approach, but I am really concerned about the type of relationships I sometimes read about here. I don't want to call anyone out about it, so I don't want to be too specific.

I think I tend to be tuned in to the ways culture influences me and other people and the ways people influence me and each other. I consider these influences to be natural, not inherently a bad thing. But it hadn't popped into my mind before I saw this thread to consider whether it "matters to me what type of therapy others find useful." So it probably doesn't matter to me that much, or I'd have thought of it before I suppose it matters in the sense that I read articles about whether therapies work, and those articles are about whether they work for other people. When I read posts on here about some aspect or practice of therapy working or not working for someone, I often try to relate it to what I think could work for me and vice versa. So "what type of therapy others find useful" is kind of a way of understanding therapy.

But I guess the idea of this thread might be more about people criticizing or advocating well known types of therapy like CBT, psychodynamic, etc. I haven't got any strong feelings for or against CBT or psychodynamic for myself or others. I like psychodynamic since I like being intuitive and theoretical but I think CBT is okay for some things too. I like to think I have the human qualities needed to be as capable as village drooling idiots (and people with any other intellectual disabilities who have at least average human qualities) of benefiting from relatively straightforward, CBT-like advice sometimes, regardless of what it means about the therapist's or my own intellectual qualities.

Im a mix...Kind of "to each his own" but it really gets me when people try every new therapy without researching. I mean, some stuff is bizarre! lol. But, whatever works for them is fine I guess.

I seem to like responding to lots of interesting things you say Stopdog. The thought that we couldn't know what will or won't work for someone comes across to me like extreme relativism. Like philosophical arguments that no one can know anything for 100% absolutely sure. (You know, maybe we're all amoebas duped into thinking we're human or whatever.) And my answer to that is- so what if no one can know anything for sure, we still go on experiencing life the way we do, blah, blah, blah.

So anyway, you were talking about knowing what will work for others in therapy. I'll probably agree it's a bit fuzzier than engineering bridges. But you can intuit that some things are probably more likely to work for some people than others if you've been reading their threads for a while.

Well, I probably didn't exactly understand the context of what you were saying, but that was how it came across to me.

To each his own. I dont care what others think of of my therapy, and it doesnt matter to me what others do.

Stopdog I once had a therapist who was very smart and perceptive but cold distant and uncaring. I wish I could put you in touch! You'd love her! But I found out that she died earlier this year.

She wasn't great for me but I think she'd have been your dream T. I don't think she gave a rat's *** whether her clients liked her and she was practically allergic to self-disclosure. Also she was a great dresser. Whenever I couldn't think of anything to say I'd just stare at her boots--they were always fabulous.

I've learned there are many different therapy models that work for different people for different reasons, and that just make sense. I do get annoyed with people who trash a therapy method entirely as if it could never be helpful to anyone. Just rude really.

i also think it's good there are so many different styles of therapy because people differ as to what works for them. what hasn't worked for me may work fabulously for someone else. i have seen IFS bashed here as being a therapy where people are not taking responsibility for their stuff but blaming their actions on their inner children and i think those criticisms are borne out of not understanding how IFS works. admittedly, it is an unusual type of therapy but is very helpful for some.

Of course, no one can know with total certainty what will work or not for a given person. But I think there are some standards of reasonableness that are useful as guideposts. There are modalities that have evidence-based research to back them up, and there are Ts who consistently practice far, far beyond and in conflict with those standards. I think that poses a concern.

I rather misunderstood the title here, I'm with Learning on that, I thought the question was related more to whether what one hears of what works for other people, does that then influence one in choice of therapy for self. In which case I'd have to say a resounding yes!

But if someone were to criticize the type of therapy I'm doing? Hm. Actually I don't think that would matter, because it's not the modality that's the issue, it's the competence or otherwise of the T practising it. All therapy modalities must work to some degree even quackery type ones. It's the person of the T who probably does the damage or helps the most...

Having said that, I have an instinctive horror of the way CBT is taking over the mental health system - results based and all that really fits the apparatchiks' needs in their cost/benefit analyses - CBT has its strengths and uses, but not at the expense of other modalities. These days in the NHS in UK, you can hardly get any other modality of therapy at all, only CBT based and then usually time limited. If you can't afford to pay privately, you're pretty much sunk if your issues can't be addressed with CBT alone. Moreover, any two bit unqualified inexperienced person can do a brief course in CBT and claim to be a practitioner. You get that a lot in the NHS, but also with private Ts.

Perhaps it's just a reaction to the overemphasis on CBT as the cure all panacea for every mental health issue going that has people feeling so negative towards it? I think if I were doing CBT and it was helping (and I do actually use CBT techniques for myself) I'd probably be quite annoyed by people slagging it off generically. But I think I'd also realize that it's probably because they've had CBT shoved down their throat and it either didn't work or even caused damage. And I have to say, CBT and psychoanalysis are diametrically opposed in terms of philosophy and approach and understanding and well just about everything, so inevitable that would create some sort of divide...

Sorry again for long ramble, I think I'm indulging in displacement activity this morning

Well, some therapies have empirical support and some don't. Also some are more effective for certain problems than other ones. I don't think all therapies are equal. I mean it's not like picking perfume, not totally subjective.

But this does not mean one type of therapy is the best or that it's totally objective either. Nor does it mean we have to agree on the best one. From what I can tell, some psychologists are more focused on eliminating dangerous therapies, like ones that have real potential for causing harm. Otherwise they don't say you have to do a particular kind of therapy.

Of course some other ones really do try to sell a particular kind, like CBT. I think CBT is neat and tidy, comes with a manual, and insurance companies love it for that reason. But that doesn't mean it's necessarily better than psychoanalytic psychotherapy. But its' way shorter and cheaper.