I am honest here... thanks for any help.

Quite frankly, at this point, I'm tired of dealing with psychologists/psychiatrists.

In my experience, they - psychiatrists - either just want to give you medication right away or - with psychologists - after quite a few sessions already paid for in hard money, it turns out they can't help you due to not having the right qualifications or they don't have time for regular enough appointments or I just don't mesh well with them, not enough trust, etc.

I've wasted so much time and money on trying to find a therapist or whatever expert I may need to solve my problems.

I am also skeptical about psychotherapy being efficient enough especially at the price it comes at for one hour of talking. It's a really really inefficient use of time. Surely there are other options? I am otherwise not against certain forms of psychotherapy but under such conditions I can't do much with it.

I also cannot do much with the forms of therapy that are aimed at building some emotional connection with the therapist. Or the forms that require free association, I am hopeless at that sort of stuff. CBT is not bad but I think I need more than CBT, unfortunately.

Also, my own views on medication is - with the exception of people whose brains have imbalances of genetic origin - that it's only good temporarily while you find the root cause of your issues and then you can modify your own mindsets, attitudes, behavioural strategies and/or your environment.

So medication is completely out of the question for me, though considering the severity of my issues, maybe I'm delusional about my ability to avoid it forever. Though I'm sure they are nowhere near as severe as some other people's on these boards. Not yet anyway. So I am still hoping to avoid it... I don't know about the future though, will I get worse or better.

I think what I'd like is someone who has intuitive understanding of people who I can talk to regularly enough, a few hours a week at the minimum, and not for much money. I don't know if that is enough to solve my problems of course but it would be nice to have this for a start. Anything like that available?

Social workers might be less costly than psychologists.

Maybe give online counseling a try? There are sites like this one betterhelp.com and others. They have pay by month plans which are less than normal therapy and plans with unlimited emailing and some limited number of phone sessions a week. Icing on the cake, since they're online emotional attachment seems more unlikely.

Great answers, I can actually use this, thank you so much.

And finally, the possible use of group therapy!

Thanks, that's not an option though, I need something one to one

I've also combined therapy with meditation, mindfulness, yoga, regular exercise, and increased socializing. I don't know if any of those might help you as well, but it might be worth a try. For me, it helps the weekly therapy session feel less pressured, as I know it's only one of a number of things that I am doing to take care of myself.

Thanks, I could definitely do with increased socializing but my problem is actually blocking me from doing so.

The rest is not a problem as I do regular training and I like introspecting

Life coach ? Might be helpful.

"Life coaching is the process of helping people identify and achieve personal goals. Although life coaches may have studied counseling psychology or related subjects, a life coach does not act as a therapist, counselor, or health care provider, and psychological intervention lies outside the scope of life coaching."

?

I don't think I need this if that's what it is (quoted from wikipedia)

But thanks!

Great topic. I like the idea of betterhelp.com if it works like it could - where therapists could read about you and choose you to work with. Like the OP, it seems hard to make a match and the financial commitment is just too high.

I had such a great T for several years in another state. Been trying to find another for some time willing to go DEEP in my past but they all disappoint.

I've registered on betterhelp now, will let you know my experiences with it if you want.

I don't go near psychiatrists, but I can relate to your predicament with therapists. I have also wasted a lot of time and money in pursuit of help. Feels like needle in a haystack, and I have given up for the time being. Plus more I read and experience, the less clear I am as to how a therapist would help.

And yes steep fees can be major problem. One psychologist wanted USD$220/hr just to talk. I don't get it.

I would love to have a dedicated person to talk to a couple times per week, but I don't know what sort of person either. Maybe a spiritual professional.

For me a critical thing is that there be little or no power disparity. I don't want to end up subordinating to an external authority. I did that before and ended up shattered.

Right all that makes sense about the haystack analogy. I agree on the power disparity issue, not that I can ever make myself subordinate anyway but yeah it would be no good.

Can I ask what sort of issues you have and what made you start and think that therapy would not help you?

I seem to have major issues with attachment rejection and abandonment (plus more recent traumas and losses). The reason I question whether therapy can help me is that my ex T was very adept at bringing out these terrible needs and deficits, but once exposed she did not know what to do and ended up pushing me out the door. This left me profoundly disillusioned and devastated.

Trying to find a new T after that, given that the immediate issue was now harm from prior therapy, became something of a nightmare.

At this point it is unclear to what extent therapy merely uncovered these issues, versus actually inducing them.

What are the issues you need help with?

What do you mean by she ended up pushing you out the door? Did she send you away? Why on earth?

As for uncovering vs inducing an issue, I think there are issues that are buried from the conscious mind, are dormant and perhaps inactive yes but it doesn't mean that if you find access to them that you actually induce them because 1) it was already causing other issues anyway, everything is connected in the brain 2) there is no guarantee it would not have been awakened later in life either suddenly in some other setting or over time gradually.

Just my opinion.

My issues, hmm, I have some old coping mechanism resembling schizoid PD that no longer works consistently - it used to work for 10+ years - and that left me unstable mentally/emotionally. You could say that such a dormant inactive issue as mentioned above was awakened suddenly in a life setting.

I do think that that coping mechanism was just hiding issues with rejection and abandonment in general. What does attachment rejection mean in your case? Do you reject others or do you fear others rejecting you?

It's complicated. I developed strong feelings for her. I said so. She did not share those feelings. I experienced that as the most painful rejection of my life. She decided we should stop and I should see another T. But termination felt like more rejection plus abandonment. There was intense attachment and even dependence. I reached out repeatedly in attempt to restore the attachment bond. She refused then cut off all contact. This left me in total despair. Was maybe a replay of early childhood trauma or distress.

Yes I agree. What I meant though was the experience in therapy was itself extremely painful and even traumatic. It was not just an awakening of old wounds or deficits. Many of the subsequent Ts that I tried wanted to bypass this and go into old patterns, instead of working thru the therapy trauma. From my experience there is much denial in the therapy biz about this. I also came up against defensiveness and even some outright hostility.

So do you tend to be detached and avoidant? Are you saying this tendency got exposed in therapy and the coping mechanism broke down? What do you think is the origin of this?

Yea that would seem logical. I fear others rejecting me. Thats why the therapy rejection was so gutting. I was powerless to prevent it because of the attachment and dependence.

Hm well... I'm not a therapist or anything like that so sorry if I'm off with my thoughts here but I think this is a chance for you to figure out why this was so bad for you. I guess I don't know the answer myself, though.

Yeah I agree you should work through this too and you should have help with it :|

Yeah I'm detached, unable to connect, and I score dismissive-avoidant in attachment style tests. No it was not in therapy, I met some guy with who I somehow felt connected for a short time. That was the immediate result of something getting stirred up in my mind, something that felt like I'd long forgotten it. And yes, the coping mechanism broke down because now I'm not as comfortable with being detached and avoidant all the time. Though it still feels OK for the most part but not always.

Yeah, I try to avoid getting attached and I avoid dependence even more. I have a friend who I can feel connected with sometimes and that's new actually, I was too detached before to feel anything like that, but I would not want to feel dependent at all even with her.

I hope you can solve your issues! I don't have any conclusion on how well betterhelp works yet btw, I'm still in the process of negotiating to get a counselor for myself who fits my needs.

I have figured it out mostly. But that for me is only a mental exercise. Doesn't ease the pain much or at all. I don't know what another T can add to this, other than perhaps a few insights. I know that telling the story to a an empathetic ear could be helpful, but it would have to be a pretty special person. I am so profoundly disillusioned that the possibility seems remote.

Have you been able to put together some sort of early childhood narrative that explains all this? So with this guy do you mean the coping mechanism broke down in a good way, or did it feel threatening? I am avoidant also.

I think, like with many things, there's a level of trying to sort out what's useful and what's not for yourself and also determining how it's useful.

For example, let's use myself. My depression is biological. This is really an undisputed fact at this point. We've found a medical treatment (ketamine) that works and it's so utterly put my depression into remission I realize now how helpless I was to change anything. There isn't a therapy on the face of this planet that would have fixed my depression. My T knew this. He's DBT trained and so I found and still find seeing him useful. Twenty years of depression and what he does is rooted in practical skills coaching. I know what I need and I find he helps.

Contrasting that with another example, my best friend had a chronic mild depression. It got worse for a bit so she tried Wellbutrin and stuck with it for about a year and a half before coming off. It fixed whatever was going on in her head and she didn't need it again, but she knows it's an option should it ever arise. Therapy on the other hand? Eh. She just needed a friendly ear and we're besties so I was more than happy to be that friendly ear.

My advice to people in general when they ask about mental healthcare is that I recommend skills based therapy and if they find that isn't enough to pursue psychiatric care. The reality is that a brain under stress *does* undergo chemical changes and a medication can help right those changes. Like my friend. She needed something temporarily, she took it, and then she didn't need it anymore. Why is that any different than needing an antibiotic or some other medication? Yes, it's trickier to sort out because we can't yet crack open the brain and know what's going on (ha! and in my case 20+ antidepressants and other meds never made a dent - ketamine grew pathways that apparently I was missing).

Long long long answer. Anyway, my point is, I think there are useful therapies and useful drugs but the brain is tricky and so are our personality and moods and so we have to decide what we're willing to live with. In my case, we were getting pretty desperate as my depression hovered right between "nightmare" and "a$s end of demon town."

I find for me what works is not simply a mental exercise but getting in touch with some thoughts and buried emotional reactions that are behind/causing certain bad/undesirable emotions. When you confront it head on it helps a lot for some reason. Mental exercise/analysis on its own is not enough. I'm sure I'm saying all trivial stuff here but I'm rather new to the whole thing. Also, sorry if it was indeed really trivial.

Well it's not from early childhood really, it's more the result of teenager stuff. I have a lot of memories on it but I probably didn't connect all dots yet. Refer to above technique again.

With this guy, I liked the good feels, but when the relationship eventually didn't work out with the guy, I didn't know what to do with the mental/emotional change. I'm slowly getting there...?

I agree that a brain under stress is going to worsen symptoms, and that what you describe as a benefit of medication and/or skills based therapy works for some...but it is not true for everyone. I very much regret ever listening to people who told me to take medication, that I would be able to get on top of things and get better. I have spent my entire adult life in pain, with periods of drugged haze, and nothing changed or got better (in a few cases, bad therapy made it worse). The medication actually caused more problems for me and now I have a mental health record and stigma I did not have prior to getting mh drugs. I have no one in my life, so when I take medication, I am just a medicated hermit, haunted by a very complicated past. The idea that I can take medication temporarily, or that it will fix anything for me, has been a dangerous and disillusioning lie.

I just point that out because I don't think I am alone in having challenges that medication and skills protocol do not even touch. So, there's therapy, which is a problem because it's such a long shot, and finding a good therapist is very hard. I have been very hurt by therapists in the past. I've got one now that is really good for me, but the problem is that all those other failed and harmful approaches make me wary of her even after a year of weekly appointments.

I don't know what the answer is. I just know that for many, it is not simple. I am glad for those who do find a solution.

I can say with relative certainty that the roots of my depression have nothing to do with chemicals in the brain.

I think the basic confusion comes from the way psych drugs were first developed. For example with the earliest antidepressants it was noted that serotonin processing was impacted. So researchers reasoned that serotonin must be the cause of depression. But further research showed it was not so. The story stuck though, precisely because it made biological psychiatry appear to be a legit form of medicine, and that its new pills were like antibiotics for infectious disease or insulin for diabetes. When people take the drugs, they experience changes and assume the "medication" is "working". But the effect does not prove the theory. It's actually the reverse--the drugs introduce a chemical imbalance.

If it works for someone, that is great, not knocking it. My own experiences with SSRIs (admittedly brief) were not positive.

I believe most cases can be treated without any medication whatsoever but it requires effort from the patient's part - more effort than just popping a pill daily.

Where my statement comes from: experience. I had an issue years ago that the psychiatrist wanted to give me medication for, I walked out the door, never went back and then managed to solve the problem entirely without medication.

...The betterhelp site didn't really work out for me so far. It seems to be fine for people who just want to talk superficially. But the quality of the service is really variable depending on who gets assigned as a counselor to you. With the first counselor, they didn't even care to respond to my messages regularly or at all. Second counselor was enthusiastic but way too superficial. I'm on the third counselor currently, having trouble getting my messages through to her but I'm giving her one more week to understand my stuff. I have to rephrase everything like three times before she gets what I mean.