Placebo effect

I guess we'll agree to disagree and I do agree that it may be harmful for certain people, er can't say that for everyone. I know some people who've been harmed by therapy, but I know some people who have not. I also know some who've been and were ambivalent about it. There are always going to be people who get "hooked" on therapy and I'm going to stand by the fact that this has more to do with the therapist and the type of therapy - not the entire discipline. How do you account for the people who don't get dependent. There are plenty who go short term, address their issues, and phase out after 6 months or so. I think there is a certain dynamic at play when we see these more damaging client/t relationships. I don't think it's representative of the general population.

I found cbt to be damaging.
I will never use that sort again.

I think people just usually quit going after a few months whether their issues are resolved or not. I also think people who don't have "deep" issues would just get better without therapy. I don't attribute any success that might happen like that to therapy at all. If someone is helped it is probably rare and probably would have happened anyway without the therapist. How does therapy work anyway if it supposedly does work? Is it the cheerleading of the therapist? Is it the techniques they might offer? What would cause it to work? I don't get it.

I really take real exception to this. I have been helped tremendously by therapy; I would call it life saving and life changing in fact. Without therapy I would absolutely be dead. I would not have healed and recovered without the help of my therapists.

In 2011 I quit leaving the house, couldn't stay home alone, quit driving, and quit eating. I spent days upon days mired in panic, derealizaion, and depersonalization. I used therapy and CBT to reverse all of those things. Not only did I get to keep my job, but I used CBT skills to abolish my long-term fear of driving on the highway.

I don't think therapy or CBT are placebos, but frankly for all I care, they could both be labelled "sparkly unicorn placebos for idiots" and I still wouldn't give a ****. Both are tools I used to conquer panic attacks and get my life back.

If that is how therapy helps someone then I don't think it IS very helpful. But we're all entitled to our opinions. Nothing anyone says has made me think otherwise. I see how people act and that just reinforces my opinion.

I see people thanking and applauding those who say therapy failure is the client's fault, but those same people seem to want to shut down the opinions of others who disagree. I am just glad to be free of the blindness I had toward therapy. I am much more healthy to be out from under that now.

I just thought it was an interesting article and I have not found therapists admit it much. To me, the idea of placebo is very different than if one feels better during or after therapy for whatever reason. If a client feels better and can attribute it to therapy then fine. It really does not have to be a fight between those for whom it works, those for whom it did not, and the rest of us somewhere in the middle.
For ME - time usually works. The therapist has finally become most useful for me to sit there and listen while I go on about serious illness/mds/etc because she is not involved and generally I can say what ever I want without dealing with her response like I would have to do with friends etc. But in terms of why I went to see her - she has had not effect upon that. Time has - like it always has. It gets intense and then eventually it gets less intense - therapy has not changed that at all. Also - my issues were not all that huge or serious - my life pretty much worked even when I decided to see a therapist.
But just because it is how it is for me, does not mean I cannot understand that it may be different for others. CBT actually made me worse - I quickly stopped it and got better.
I won't do CBT ever, but if others find it useful - okay with me.
Placebo effect in general interests me. It was not meant to be fight between factions.

After getting good results from CBT - (placebo, meds, just having a pleasant chat with my T, who can say?) - I wonder about relapse.

People who have had three or more depression episodes are reported to have relapse rates as high as 80% over two years. Source: http://www.thelancet.com/journals/la...222-4/abstract

Is benefit from a placebo effect less durable than benefit from the actual treatment?

I think the concept of the placebo effect is interesting, and so were the articles. I enjoy reading about therapy. I also really enjoyed reading about how you use therapy, stopdog. Thank you for posting. I also do not think the same thing works for everyone, which is why all of this therapy crap is such a difficult process to pinpoint and explain. The whole thing is kind of whispy and elusive and that drives me NUTS sometimes. It is all so vague.

I think sometimes that's true and sometimes it's not. I just know the therapy I had helped me. I had therapy in my early teens and was started on meds then. I didn't stay in therapy because even though I had a pdoc I bonded with and really loved, I dont think she particularly helped me. She hospitalized me for self harm at age 12 (in an hospital with no other kids therr until about a month after I arrived). I was not helped by this experience either - there were accusations of abuse that never happened, simply because I fit a profile. They simply didn't know how got help me and kept me there for 9 months. So I was not eager to seek treatment when my H decided to move out. I was so lost and scared and anxious that I knew I had to at least get my meds in order. Luckily the pdoc found was not like others I had met 20 years earlier. Ive had depression and severe anxiety (mostly social) and sometimes panic - so with kids I needed someone to help me navigate through and keep my life on track. It was a different experience - no looking for problems that weren't there and no going on and on about unmet needs in childhood. It was help and support for what was happening at the time. Since childhood I believed something was wrong with me and to have people finally say that there actually wasn't something inherently wrong win me was something I'd never had. The DBT and CBT helped too with my emotional regulation and overal functioning - things that as a parent I needed some serious help with. But it was the relationship that helped the most. There's transference but with clear boundaries in place I understand the reality and don't see it as an issue, at least not anymore. There were certainly no tricks up their sleeves and I never felt manipulated or like they were trying to pull something on me. They always encouraged me to improve my life, to keep social connections, find fulfillment. Even parenting support too. I feel a sincerity and real care - I know I'm a client and have no delusions it's anything more, but I know they care. They are people I'm glad to have in my life but know I can survive without. I know I'm lucky that I didn't end up seeing providers who could have been ineffective or worse, harmful.

Therapy has helped me and hurt me. Whether it was a placebo effect, actual therapy, or time that helped, idk and idc. All I know is that it worked, so I try to continue to utilize it even if all she is is a cheerleader.

My therapy experience was less placebo and more collusion and brainwashing that the stirring actually accomplished something. Psychodynamic therapy reinforced a self-image of a damaged, poor persecuted casualty entitled to coddled treatment as victim of my cold, cruel childhood. A frank friend called me a wide-eyed poster child, and indeed I was --a poster child for Tana Dineen's "Manufacturing Victims."

In my psychoanalysis the therapist was not superior, and her sparse observations were apt and respectful. However, it pulled me into a subterranean world of abstraction, where everything meant something, nothing was as it appeared. Again, I plumbed every rotten pocket of my childhood. I literally went into what’s called meditation psychosis where everything is symbolic and magical, seeing signs and omens and losing several friends and a job. And no, when I returned from the underground --via time and real world friends --I had not healed or changed or done anything except foolishness.

My group therapists simply bullies. They were bad apples. Oh, and there was scattered therapy in childhood for family and me—equally useless.

I complied mightily, journaled, reported dreams and imagined progress. All this was churning water. Therapy only underscored my response that others are smarter, more capable and sagacious, and I'm hopelessly beneath their elevation. I was duped, just as those brained washed throngs in cults or at the feet of some guru in large group awareness training --those seminars at hotels. (The training helps them so much they return for more and more.)

But I was completely capable of change. Years beyond therapy I stopped seeing anyone else as gurus, became calmer and gained a sense of competency.
Knowing myself--was creating a future, not weeping around my past.

Therapy couldn't accelerate my gains from time and experience. Most of my therapy experience wasn't bad apples. These people have maintained practices for decades. I can't begin to speculate the percentage of clients who are authentically helped in therapy, the percentage where improvement is merely therapy-client collusion and who is harmed.

I know for me, and some unknown-sized subgroup, therapy is harmful at its foundation. It's feigning omniscience to decree my case as bad apples, or me as among the sicksicksickies Freud and friends described suffering "negative therapeutic reaction" or labeling me irresponsible.

No one knows what really happens in other rooms. I dislike the game where someone pretends power to look into someone's past or pathology.

I think what reading this thread has done for me is to reinforce my "own" belief that I need to read all I can about psychotherapy/psychology/CBT/DBT/psychoanalysis/schema therapy/fill in type of therapy I might "try" here and make an informed decision about whether or not I want to engage. And yes, I do understand that some people are hurt by therapy, some are indifferent to therapy and some are helped by therapy. It's all individual and no one knows the mind or needs of another person and can't make the decision for him/her about whether or not therapy will be helpful to that person. Personally, I think it's helpful that we hear both positive experiences of therapy AND negative experiences in therapy. It makes us better consumers, but I don't think anyone can say their experience is the only one that counts. I think that the reason therapy works for some people and not others is very individual, whether that is a placebo effect, mentoring, a hired friend, positive regard, the cheerleading effect, medication effect or just time passing, it can work for some people. And in this painful and difficult world, I've been willing to give it a try, but I respect someone else's decision to turn away and look for another path.

In my opinion, it's probably a combination of things. Great if it works for a person, very sad if it is hurtful in any way. The thing I wish would happen is that the profession did more to weed out the "bad apples", but then I feel the same way about a LOT of other professions!!! Such as physicians, psychiatrists, teachers, policemen, nurses & lawyers. I've had my fair share of disasters with all of the above and I found that just like therapists, their colleagues closed circle and protected them.