Why Therapy?

How do you know it is the EMF's? Because aren't they similar to radio waves? Of course I have heard about this kind of sensitivity but I have never known anyone who talked about it. My thing is light and noise pollution. My apartment is flooded with light from security lights outside that are over the top bright. The outside lights on the building are left on 24 hours 7 days a week and are close to the windows. I don't even live in a high crime area. It is just someone's idiotic over-sight to use lights that are ridiculously bright and leave them on around the clock. Noise levels have gone up since the property owner started ripping out carpet and replacing it with cheap hard flooring which provides no insulation and in fact amplifies sound. I wear ear protectors a lot, and sleep with them on as well as eye shades. I think it is the lack of comprehension in property managers that makes me mentally ill. (I also wear ear protectors when I shop because it definitely irritates me to hear junk music blaring so loud I can hardly think.) Wow, yeah, these kinds of things are very unhealthy.

This is a good point. Many psychological symptoms are the result of physiological problems. A severely malnourished person can have depression, severe anxiety and even visual and auditory hallucinations. Once nutrition is restored a lot of symptoms may disappear, especially psychosis.

Sometimes, this really is the answer. We don't know why, but for some people it meds are very effective. Many of us just have to go with what best suits our habits, lifestyle, personality and symptoms. You have to stick with what works and if the positives of meds outweigh he negatives, then by all accounts it is probably the best choice for you.

It's such a charged topic, but yet so important to question treatments that are handed out without much investigation of the cause. I have endured medication manufactured mental illness for 20 years. Professionals say the condition was latent and that medication only brought it out. If that's the case, then is cancer that certain products bring out simply latent in the person already? I don't think so. I think these drugs are toxic, and potentially dependency-creating cancers of their own.

When I went off mine several months ago, all my symptoms went through the roof. It appeared that I had to get back on, but I refused. My therapist, I could see, was clearly conflicted, but my pdocs had left (one moved, one died) within short order and I felt it was my chance to trust my instincts on this. The medication was making my body ill in ways I could not/cannot articulate. Anyway, I was at high risk, but committed to seeing if therapy alone could do something.

It did. My therapist does not accept a diagnosis if there's trauma and active trauma triggers going on. She says she has no way of knowing what's really happening until the person is stabilized, and that a person can be short changed with the wrong diagnosis before this happens (which is what I think happened with me--mh professionals looked at the bipolar dx and pegged me one way, when I was really dealing with something else). I finally got some ground under me when some trauma issues were addressed. I have a long way to go still, but I feel so much better with this approach.

I will not be perfectly mellow, not like I was on meds, but I feel so much healthier and better about myself. I simply do not accept the dx I have been saddled with and that caused me to get wrong (and sometimes, harmful) treatment.

This is not a judgment against anyone who takes medication. This is my experience. I think it's important to share our different experiences and to do what most mh professionals do not do: question treatment. The same goes for therapy and what that should look like. It's going to be different for different people. It's so important to explore what works for each of us and to be open to considering that mh professionals do get it wrong. Sometimes (maybe more than that, I suspect) spectacularly wrong. And it's the person who suffers.

I seldom find the system positive and have followed the holistic path myself. However , perhaps there are signs that things are changing. Here in the UK the requirements to get people ' seen ' within a certain amount of time and given ' something ' usually results in CBT/ Medication whether this is what the person ' needs ' or not. Then the boxes can be ticked. I am interested in DBT- we don't have this too much in the UK and perhaps it would be of benefit to people if we did. Our biggest shift in recent years has been from CBT to mindfulness.

Because I have similar reaction when in a room where I am in close proximity to my neighbor's home office (Wifi and many other electronic devices), as I do when using my mobile phone.

Another possibility is toxic mold. Can also cause neurological damage.

There is a doc in Seattle (Dietrich Klinghardt MD PhD) who is one of the leading minds in the area of chronic illness (Lyme, Autism, all the degenerative neuro diseases, etc). He considers EMF stress priority #1. He knows his s**t.

He did a study with 20 Autistic children in his practice. He had the parents of 10 of the children follow strict observance of EMF mitigation in their homes. Those 10 children had rapid and marked improvement. The other 10 did many other interventions but not the EMF stuff. They made little or no progress. Klinghardt tried to publish these results but no journals would touch it. I heard Telecomm industry has the largest lobbying budget in the world now, higher than Pharma.

I am noise and light sensitive too.

I am using a DBT workbook I bought titled "Depressed & Anxious: The Dialectical Behavior Therapy Workbook for Overcoming Depression & Anxiety" by Thomas Marra, PH.D. In this book Dr. Marra discloses that his father was diagnosed with schizophrenia, so I trust Dr. Marra is sensitive to the mental health needs of those he is addressing in the book. It is a pretty comprehensive workbook, and includes worksheets. I think it is easy to progress into DBT if one has a background in CBT. In a way, DBT seems to be very much like CBT with the added component of mindfulness practices.

I despair for future generations. Also, I am very concerned with techno waste. I watched a YouTube video on a techno manufacturing waste lake in Chinese Mongolia. From large pipes gray techno sludge poured into a huge lake of simmering gray toxic matter. It was visually traumatic to view. For my part I try to make my devices last as long as possible, usually until they are so obsolete as to be unusable. Recycling of techno stuff is slowly improving but not fast enough, and people have become addicted to constant upgrading. I really need to read more about the kind of things you talk about.

Well said and very sorry to hear that. If they say the condition was latent and brought out by drugs, they should probably have a way to verify that.

Treatments handed out with investigation of cause, that is a central issue to me. All these DSM disorders only describe symptoms or behavior, and if you stop there you might propel the patient down a dangerous path, suppressing symptoms of god knows what while introducing new ones. Organic diseases (infectious, autoimmune, inflammatory) can mimic mental illness.

And it's all so specious. A group of people got together and decided that when you pass through some arbitrary threshold you are no longer "normal" and you have a "disorder" (or maybe several, since there are hundreds now) and require treatment. And often it seems the disorder is implied to be some brain disease, but with no supporting evidence.

I say burn all the bloody DSMs, or at least 90% of it. It seems to be primarily a tool for insurance billing and for pharma to continually expand the customer base. But its dogma has permeated all of society.

Late to this thread I guess, but just want to say that maybe it depends on the illness.

I think it would be crazy to suggest medications first if somebody is just having problems adjusting to a new school after the person just moved to a new neighborhood. Therapy must be first line.

But with schizophrenia or bipolar or other severe mental illnesses with psychotic features, I think the biological approach might need to be first or concurrent with therapy.

The sad state of affairs is that medication being first in many mild cases is really about managed care and expense of providing therapy, not about what works best.

I started this thread about Why Therapy? and it ended up including discussions about medication, level of care, and lifestyle. I personally have found this a very fruitful thread, containing many new ideas and resources, and want to thank all who participated. It has helped me a lot.

An aspect of therapy that bothers me is that it often fosters dependency, which I think is different from trust. I am no longer keen on experiencing transference with someone who is practically a stranger. The risk of being emotionally damaged by an incompetent therapist is high. I find it too insulating an experience, especially because I have sought out therapy at times in my life when my vulnerability and porous boundaries have put me at risk for abuse. I think group therapy would be a safer bet than one-on-one therapy, providing that the group leader or leaders were competent and sensitive.

I know that's what many people say, but is there actually an evidence base to support this? I personally am disturbed by the idea of someone with a serious mental condition immediately have their brain chemistry tweaked in an unpredictable way, as a first step, unless we are talking emergency situation.

Can I ask if your skepticism extends to all pharmaceuticals, or just psych meds?

Budfox, I wrote a very long reply then deleted it. This is a tough subject for me because somebody close to me has schizophrenia and I did a lot of reading on the subject over the years, even doubting at times the existence of such thing as schizophrenia or mental "illness" in general. Deep down I'm an idealist and would like nobody to take meds, and be instead healed in other ways through social relations and better nutrition and environment.

But as far as research, I had read convincing evidence that medication for schizophrenia works quite well, not in the sense of cure, but in the sense of numbing the person's brain to the horrific visions and sounds. It's virtually impossible to provide someone with meaningful talk therapy when they're in the jaws of psychosis and unable to feel grounded and connected in a rational give and take meant to disabuse them of their notions. With meds, it can be easier for them to go through therapy.

Sadly, antipsychotic medications also affect other aspects of a person's psyche, sort of like trying to kill a bee on a window with a hammer.

Excellent points. Everything you describe played out with my main therapist last year -- the process induced extreme dependency that sort of bypassed the organic establishment of trust, there was intense and devastating transference for a paid professional who was something of a stranger, she turned out to be incompetent and caused massive emotional damage, and the whole thing was insulated from the outside world (even her office lacked windows).

I think what you said about a therapist being something of a stranger is crucially important. Trust in the normal sense is difficult or impossible in this scenario, and yet is expected and even required.

Pharma in general, but psych drugs in particular.

I guess I really only have two things left to say about this topic. First, be careful of the natural=good/unnatural=bad dichotomy in thinking. No, I'm not accusing you of thinking in quite that rigid a way, but it's a pervasive logical fallacy that informs most of our thinking in one way or another.

It's really easy to be disturbed by and skeptical of anything that messes with natural brain chemistry--or body chemistry, for that matter--but sometimes our natural state isn't our friend. Pharmaceutical birth control, for instance, was and continues to be a godsend precisely because it alters the body's natural state. I don't think it's much of a stretch to say that psych meds can be helpful because they, too, alter a natural state.

Second, sometimes HOW or WHY something works (or doesn't) isn't as important as the fact THAT it works (or doesn't). Now, I don't consider myself an uncurious person, but I can't say I give a particular shite how or why the light bulb above my head works. Right now, when my brainpower (such as it is) is focused on something else, I'm just happy that it works. When it breaks, I'll probably not look into how or why. I'll just buy a new one. Similarly, while it might potentially be a little worrisome that nobody really knows how or why my psych drugs work--while it might worry me when I read very compelling evidence that, for instance, the whole 'chemical imbalance' thing is BS--mostly I'm just happy that they do work.

These are excellent points. I encountered an incompetent T and quickly terminated but there was still damage.

Partless: Ok that sounds reasonable. I have read conflicting things but I am no expert. Just asking the question. I am horrified by how much of pharma medicine is accepted uncritically by the vast majority of society, and simultaneously by how much of it seems to be built on deception. So I take nothing for granted.

Argonautomobile: I dont disagree with you. I am just asking questions and exercising skepticism, which is not the same as condemnation. I find it troubling that in the realm of psych drugs even asking questions is sometimes considered a hostile or inappropriate act. Brings to mind this quote:

"To learn who rules over you, simply find out who you are not allowed to criticize."
- Voltaire

I believe pharma-based medicine has demonstrated over and over that it cannot be taken at its word and that skepticism is essential. And after reading the history of biological psychiatry and psych drugs, I believe this area requires special vigilance. Powerful forces have shaped the narrative. And in a manner that kinda resembles social engineering. Just my take.

Sure, and I think that's a good approach to have, to go in there with a healthy dose of skepticism, to ask lots of questions, and don't accept anything right away before thinking it through.

What is great about Psych Central is that we can actually have a discussion about these things. The approach I have taken towards my own healing has changed drastically since I came on Psych Central. There is something invaluable about being able to talk with so many people who have experiences they can report on. I feel less alone, and that is healing, and empowering. So for me this points to the fact that group support and self-advocacy is essential in the healing process, because to just hand over one's care in such critical areas as mood regulation, behavior modification, motivation, and efficacy...is as our philosophically minded friends on this site say...acting in bad faith. Learned helplessness can be rectified and to do so is to act in good faith. If we can start by taking back power and the authority to create our own healing journeys...this can't help but to have a positive influence on all the other area of our lives. Physicians and health care providers who welcome our feedback can only improve their level of care, because they have increased their understanding.

This is very well put. I think the great irony of talk therapy is that the better you are, the better it works. Maybe to the point that those who benefit most from therapy hardly "need" to be in it at all.

This is reasonable--I do very much appreciate a curious mind when I see one. Uncritical acceptance of anything is, as DD put, a sign of bad faith. I think the issue becomes so emotionally charged in part because mental illness has struggled so long and hard for legitimacy. Any criticism, no matter how reasonable, does have a tendency to ruffle feathers because it harkens back to a time and attitude where mental/behavioral issues=moral failings.

(That is, when you say something like "Lifestyle changes are preferable to medication in the treatment of depression," what people sometimes hear is, "GET BACK ON THE BIKE, FATTY! YOU WOULDN'T BE SO DEPRESSED IF YOU DIDN'T FILL YOUR FAT ****ING FACE WITH HO HOS ALL DAY LONG!" ) Which, hey, is no less hurtful for the fact that it's probably true.

Add to that the fact that so many people struggle to stay on their psych meds even though personal experience as well as "experts" say to just take your ****ing pills, and you have a situation that really DOES shut down meaningful debate. That's a fair point.

I have not found this to be true at all.