I hate therapy

Needless to say, my experience is diametrically opposed to yours. I am not a person of faith at all--I have zero use for religion. I didn't participate in therapy needing to have faith in its mysterious ways; I don't honestly find them so mysterious. All fees are market driven; the going rate in my community for PhD level practitioners is $120/hr, and I'm not sure I would pay that unless I felt I had exhausted other options.

What a client brings to therapy will have at least as much impact upon the process as what the T brings to therapy. There is the necessity of finding the right practitioner who balances out what the client brings or I think the process suffers. And it's disgraceful that there are so many undertrained/incompetent therapists. But I also believe that the intensity of a client's feelings about therapy--positive or negative--is often an indication of the areas in which that client is vulnerable and in which defenses will arise.

I've been telling my therapist since the beginning of therapy that I don't understand what therapy is supposed to actually be doing for me. And so far the only answer I've gotten is 'it's in the relationship' and 'it's not in the words'.

Those are fairly esoteric answers, certainly nothing that you can really put your finger on.

My therapist is not phD level and costs more than the rate you mentioned. I actually think mine might maybe be a decent therapist, I just can't work out for the life of me what's actually going on and what I'm supposed to be getting out of it.

I've just been told that therapy helps, so from my perspective, the whole thing does have an aura of the religious about it.

Well, I don't think there's a lot that therapy "does for" anyone. It provides a sort of protected lab experience in which relationship behaviors and cognitive processes can be explored both through action and through reflection. The basic dynamic for most modalities depends upon a T who is sufficiently competent to "hold their own" center relationally while the client responds in any number of ways that often reflect their past, especially problematic experiences in relationship.

If you take up all the space in sessions ranting (as you maybe facetiously said above), then I wouldn't imagine there's much interaction going on during sessions.

I see you're in NY, so I would imagine fees are higher because the cost of living is higher than where I am in the Midwest. If your T's fees are grossly higher than others with similar credentials in the area, then I'd want to know what justifies that.

What gives you the sense that he probably is a decent T?

I'm only a handful of sessions into therapy, so I have a lot to say. I do let the therapist have a word in edgewise occasionally, but you're right, there's not a whole lot of interaction apart from the parts where we both agree that things have made me sad at some point.

What gives me the sense that my therapist is probably halfway decent is the fact that I feel anything at all. I have seen a couple of other therapists and I just felt like I was having a chat over a cup of tea. It was all very pleasant but I didn't have any feelings.

With this T I have an over-abundance of them, for reasons I couldn't begin to explain.

I found it quite frustrating the woman would not explain what was supposed to be happening. She did not win by not explaining, I simply go see others in the psych dept who explain, and a specific other one who does at least make attempts to explain. The explanations are often just nebulous crap, but I appreciate the effort. And I read a lot of their textbooks (mostly which boiled down to "this is not a science, we pretend and if the client has faith in whatever crap we tell them, we get the credit, and if it doesn't help, label the client resistent and get rid of them") and I sit in on graduate classes because it is easy to do since I teach in another school at my university.

I would guess that those feelings being stirred up are a good indication that something that needs to happen is happening. If the feelings are stirred, then as long as he keeps himself competently centered, things should proceed. But a few sessions into it is just way too soon I think to assess outcomes.

I never found the stirred feelings - frustration and rage - were alleviated in any way by the therapist continuing to not explain. They increased until I found another one who would explain and around whom I had no frustration or rage. The lack of explanation about what to expect, what to process actually meant, what the the therapist was actually being paid to do etc made things worse until I found the second one. With the second one, things do not progress as far as I can see, certainly not about why I decided to try therapy again in the first place. But I have figured out a way to make the second one useful too - differently than the first one, and still not what I see described on here when people wax on about the joys and benefits of therapy.

I'm not drawing any equivalency between feelings stirred and explanations. They are separate issues. In my experience, as long as there are emotionally based defenses that are necessary to the self, explanations will not be accepted. It has nothing to do with their validity or lack thereof; just that we hear what we need to hear when we hear it. It really isn't much within the control of the speaker when that happens.

My t thinks if he elicits a strong emotion from me, then he's getting a reaction. And by working through it, it no longer becomes an issue. Like there are some topics I can't discuss yet.

It sounds like that you're angry with yourself. Even though you name all what's wrong with therapy, you are still turning up.
The T must hold a significance for you.
It would be beneficial for you to hold into those feelings and rack about them.
Believe me, if someone doesn't hold any significance for you, you'd be gone.

right now i hate therapy too

I kind of agree. My therapy is kind of ok and kind of helped in some respect but then there have been times when my t asked such uncalled for and convoluted and dumb ***** questions that it totally messed with my head and aggravated me.

For example she asked me (TRIGER) if my dad sexually abused me. There is nothing in anything I ever shared and I share a lot even suggests that i was sexually abused or that I have the kind of father. I asked her what made her even think that? She never answered.

Then she once asked if I meet men in bars. I don't drink and don't go to bars and she knows that. I am almost 50 boring conservative looking very traditional school teacher who goes for conservative men like college professors. The heck? I asked why she asked and she couldn't answer

She then told me I shouldn't just date one men but should date several ( I have no time for that but ok) but then she said I should introduce the one I date to my brother. When I asked why if i need to date many men in her opinion yet I need to bring one of them home to my family? How does it make sense?

Then every time she sees me she says I lost weight. I did not. Since the day I have met her I have been exact same weight. I keep telling her yet last time she says again oh you lost weight. I am not heavy or thin just average and don't discuss my weight as it is a non issue. Wtf?

List goes on. This is crazy making. In general I need therapy I think but when she says Shyt like this I wonder if I am getting worse being triggered by her dumb questions?

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I think people come here and post when they have an issue with therapy. It's why googling anything is always something to be cautious of. If I google side effects of X med and I don't stick to the standard drug sites, I'll find myself deep in the bowels of the interwebz reading about how this drug turned this person into a newt (and they got better when they stopped taking it). It's not that those experiences didn't happen or aren't valid, but people don't tend to go hunting for information when things work as they should.

I, personally, feel I've benefitted from my years in therapy. I have a chronic depression and I've chosen a therapist that practices DBT, which is skills based. When a difficult emotion arises, we talk about it and we look for ways to engage that emotion in a healthy way. Plus, for me, my insurance covers all but the co-pay (and with me going IP earlier this year, I don't even have to pay for the co-pay right now). That means it doesn't drain my bank account and I get help.

I've posted occasionally, I've expressed frustration with my T. I find him to be competent, I like his personality, and he's behaved ethically towards me. I have a lot of negative feels because of my childhood and that sometimes interferes with me dealing with him in a factual way, but that's not his fault.

I skimmed through the responses, but it might not hurt to look at a different form of therapy and one that's cheaper than who you're seeing. If I suddenly had to pay out of pocket for my T, chances are, I'd have to find another one as much as I like him.

Sometimes I compare therapy to going to the gym, or physical therapy— or any kind of regular exercise, really.

Technically, in order to strengthen a muscle you have to partially break it down, When it heals, it grows back stronger and bigger. Sometimes you have aches and pains where you never knew there were muscles in the first place. It can suck and it hurts but that's only if you're actually doing work and changing things.

Our memories, emotions, and biological & electrical parts of the brain all work like a muscle. It takes work, often very difficult, to change our patterns.

If there's trauma, there's another layer of work to be done but the body/soul/mind know how to heal when it's guided properly.

http://www.amazon.com/Falling-Therap.../dp/0333804309

I found this an interesting read.

My therapist has never told me that she cares for me. Now that I think about it, I can't ever remember a therapist telling me that. I think I've seen about 6 different ones if you don't count ones that I only saw 2-3 times. Maybe they did and I forgot.

Maybe it depends on what school of therapy they practice whether or not they say they care for you?