Could therapy be harming me?

No matter what happens in therapy I will still walk away from it with no family, and at worst I might be involuntarily terminated from paying someone to have a conversation with me for an hour a week. Is it really going to be better to walk away with no defenses? I mean, I built these up over decades of suffering, aren't they serving a purpose helping me live out this life?

Reality is what I need to run from, because no one can fix the facts of my existence for me. Who really wants to live just for themselves, not me! Most people need to feel unconditionally loved by someone, and I'm not sure you can buy love. I'm tired of being the weird one, the sad one that needs help. Everything I get from people is fake, and it just makes me more sick. I don't deserve this **** hole existence.

Come on and tell me to stop playing the victim now... tell me how all my fault it is that I feel this way. That's what I wanted to hear.

I do believe therapy has the potential to do more harm than good. Sometimes it is neutral and it seems some find it beneficial. But therapists do admit that it dies not always help and that they really don't know if it will benefit any given person or not. I further do not think the failure of therapy to benefit a person is that person's fault. It may or may not be the fault of the therapist and/or type of therapy. Sometimes, without fault of anyone, therapy simply is not the vehicle to get someone where they want to go.

Many, many people are greatly harmed by therapy. We don't really talk about it, deal with it, or want to look at it, but it is true.

Some people are helped.

I think it's really hard to have the relationship be the way it is (telling someone SO much) and know that one day it will most likely end.

I also think that it usually isn't the client's fault when therapy fails. The therapist is the professional and is supposed to know how to deal with us.

Sorry you're feeling this way.

Your intuition is correct that we develop defense mechanisms for a purpose. The problem is that sometimes our defense mechanisms also have very unfortunate side effects and sometimes we keep old habits and patterns which no longer serve us well, because that's what we know. We can't see a way out sometimes, another way of solving our problems, a healthier, better way.

In my experience, that's where therapy comes in. Even if you do feel like you are paying someone to listen and be there for you. Therapy isn't that (though that can be a part of it if you are so alone right now). In fact, therapy is about learning how to discover and use other options in your life. How to change even though right now it may seem like nothing is changing yet or like you're not making as much progress as you'd like, as fast as you'd like.

To answer your question, now I don't know you, but generally yes. Bad therapy can do harm. That is, for example, if you're not yet at a point when you're ready to let go of a defense mechanisms but an inexperienced or just inapt therapist insists until you do. The idea is not to try and get rid of your defense until you've replaced it with something better.

I'm sorry to tell you that I'm not going to tell you it's your fault for feeling this way. It sounds like you were dealt a bad hand, and you have the right to be angry and sad over that.

I, too, have worried about disarming my defenses in therapy. As my T herself has acknowledged, they've gotten me a long way. But in certain ways, they've also hurt me and prevented me from living my life fully. So I am trying to take the leap this time.

I hope that you can find what you need out there. I will say that my personal opinion is that too much is made of the whole "unconditional love" thing. I don't really believe it exists. Humans are imperfect; they make mistakes; sometimes they love, sometimes they hate, sometimes both at the same time. I suspect that the grieving over the idea that unconditional love doesn't exist is something that almost everyone, good childhood or bad, has to deal with at some point. And for those of us who had less than awesome childhoods, a good, solid, conditional love can be pretty grand.

Okay, I'll tell you to stop playing the victim! I would tell that to anyone at every time in any situation.
But Petra5ed, in all love and care that I can have for someone I don't know in person - let me say this..
You think you are paying someone to have a conversation with you. That in itself justifies your question whether you should walk away. I am blunt enough to say yes to this - IF that is really how you see your therapy.

If you feel therapy is harming you because it breaks down the defenses you have built up for decades, as you say, then there are a few questions: Who are you without these defenses? Who are you with these defenses? Which person do you want to be?
Yes, you'll still walk away with no family. Yes, T is just a T and not your friend or substitute for what you never had.

But there is a world out there that has these substitutes! You don't have to live for yourself if you don't want to. You are not doomed to eternal misery and loneliness. There is life out there and hope and love. And the "paid conversation" could be the key to help you find out how you can gain access to that world out there.

And you already have access - here on PC for example you know you're not alone! You know how to reach out. You are smart, you are respected. I am sure you can have all this out there in the world just as much.
Just because you pay for therapy, doesn't mean it's fake.

Not everything you get from people is fake - I believe that is a fear you have - but that doesn't make it a truth.

If you ever need to chat, and I am here - feel free to message me. I try to be as real as possible :-)

Lots of love,
Amelia

Seems to me that you're someone who feels intensely but realizes that most others don't... that's IS a sad place to be.
I also don't think it's weird to need help; just the opposite in fact.

Emotionally sensitive people are some of the most beautiful people on the planet, imho. And in a world that virtually teaches the practice of emotional distancing, it only makes sense that they would need help find a way to balance the two.

Playing the victim? Maybe.
Maybe you've been victimized by life?
Maybe you should consider accepting that as your past but that it won't be your future.

(A sincere hug)... I don't do fake ones.

My T insists he sees a lot of harm in therapy especially now he's in a supervisory role. Something he didn't recognize when he first became a T all those years ago. There are times when I opt out of therapy or when my T calls a halt to it because I need to focus on the here and now for whatever project and therapy can be so overwhelming that it knocks me off center when I most need to be focused. I'm very grateful that I have a T who recognizes that there's a time and place for therapy and that it isn't the magical treatment some people like to believe it is. Having said all that I feel that working through feelings gives you a greater understanding of them and yourself and releases a lot of crap that needs to be released for you to fulfill your emotional growth.
I do believe we should be a little weary of it tho, like you say those defenses are there for a reason. I hope you feel better in yourself soon.

Petra5ed, I suspect if someone asked you if you liked yourself very much you would say no? And I think that's why you are so hard on yourself.

You might still need your defenses for now. So leave them there for now - but take a look inside yourself at the real you. I don't mean person with all those stories and lies attached that others or life have cruelly convinced you are you. You are the perfectly fine, ordinary, unique and totally worthy person underneath all that. Stand up tall and chuck out all the lies. You're great and there's a life to lead with all sorts of wonderful things in it. Ask yourself what things are important to you and then start letting yourself have those good things. You need to give yourself unconditional love and acceptance and don't look for it outside of yourself. Some love from others might come along too - but you'll not be dependent on it.

I LOVE THIS RESPONSE! Daisy, you have said it so perfectly, something more people should say and believe for themselves. Thank you so much for this!

I think the goal is to teach you how to find those fulfilling relationships outside of therapy.

I have thought the same as you at several points (I have been in therapy for 4 years).

I guess you need to ask yourself that if your defences worked great and you were fine, what led you to therapy in the first place? I don't want to be 'OK' or 'Neutral', I want to be happy.

Therapy can help me to like myself enough that I will risk making those kinds of relationships outside of the therapy space.

Wow, thanks everyone for the insights. I obviously wrote this in a self pitying mood and reading all these replies is like free therapy, LOL.

The first line made me laugh I have to say. "Who are you without these defenses? Who are you with these defenses? Which person do you want to be?" I'd say without defenses I'd just be me but I have no idea what that looks like. I don't think I've considered a perspective like that, I'm too obsessed with risk avoidance to worry about what I want it to be, which seems like it could be contributing to my problem. ****** thinking is a tough habit to give up.

OK this is interesting... what do you mean by that? I don't get it at all, but it's not the first time I've heard that. Do you mean other people don't have such intense emotions?

You're probably right, and self-absorbed on top of it as well, so it is like a constant barrage of self-hatred. I need to figure it out. Very confusing. On the one hand I'm convinced I'm the best ever and on the other I feel like the scum of the earth.