How has therapy changed you?

I have benefited in many ways through therapy.

I learned how to forgive my father for not knowing how to raise a child.

I learned to see my mother in a more realistic way.

I learned that hurting myself didn't really do me any good.

I learned that I was using sex to hurt myself and others.

I learned to be honest.

I can't say that it has cured my depression but it has kept my thinking straight so that I can manage it without harming myself.

Overall I've gained great incite through years of my therapy.

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a few years ago i was deep in an eating disorder, super impulsive , self-harming and suicidal, pretty much psychotic 24/7, in and out of hospitals way too much, non med compliant. i also blamed myself for everything that happened with my former T . eye contact was hard with my current T, i would dissociate most sessions and have a lot of flashbacks. i also used illegal drugs off and on. i met T when i went to a residential treatment facility and was not independent at all.

after 5 + years of work with my T, i am less impulsive and more responsible, have held a job for almost 2 years and was even promoted... have successfully completed a few semesters in a community college, havent self-harmed in years or used drugs, take my meds every day, am still psychotic some times but with more insight and not as severe as before, havent been inthe hospital in 3 years. i have a lot more coping skills and do not dissociate as much and am able to actually talk some about trauma in sessions.

i can see the changes i have made and it makes me feel good. my T also reminds me of how i was then and compares it to me now. it feels good to be proud of myself for my progress and hopeful for more and more.

Sorry to hear that. Is your new T allowing you to fully assert your harmful experience with previous T?

When I read these accounts of dramatic life improvements as a result of therapy, I wonder:

- How many are still in therapy.

- How long it took and what else was going on in your life that might have allowed you to also heal or move forward?

I don't mean to imply anything, I just simply cannot envision why or how these things would happen as a result of sitting in a room with a paid professional.

in my case, it was not just my therapist but the residential program i was in. i was in the program for almost 5 years. it is similar to gould farm in MA. i am still in therapy with my T. for the first 3 years i was not well, fighting therapy and fighting changing my life. my relationship with my T has been very healing for me bc of what happened with my former T. i am by no means recovered or totally fine now...but i am a lot better than i was 2 yrs ago. i do think that "sitting in a room with a paid professional" has been a huge aspect of my progress and recovery.

Some truly awful things that I won't get into here happened to me that, as awful as they were, were the catalyst that made me truly *want* to change the path my life was taking. You're right, therapy alone won't heal you or move you forward. It takes buckets of motivation. You have to supply that yourself, one way or another.

I no longer have an eating disorder, have more self-confidence, and am better at regulating my emotions and managing anxiety. With the help of my meds, I'm able to actually apply what I learned in therapy- went from near daily anxiety/panic attacks and depression to only having 2 all of last year. Basically, it's helped me be a functional human being instead of faking everything. I'm finally feel peace and can manage the rough times that pop up. I'm not currently in therapy, but recently popped back in to give my T an update, because I'm so proud of my progress.

1.) I'm not in therapy anymore. I do have a therapist on standby in case an urgent life event comes up, and is unmanageable with my current resources. Also, I enjoyed group psychodrama a lot, so might pop in again. It really helped me understand relationships in general.

2.) My last therapy took 18 months with as much therapy as I wanted 3-5days/week, and 2 -4 hour/sessions, including emails and phone calls, with no limits. One month I saw her 25 days and in a row. She answered ~2/3 of my 600 plus emails. No texting.
From the beginning of therapy I was encouraged to quit idling on the couch (i.e. what purpose was it serving, why did I need it to protect me ), and go out and experience life again through different lenses.

3.) My moving forward did happen with a "paid" professional. Poorly paid, I might add. She supplemented her measly "income" from me, with my offer to do volunteer work. Every hour of volunteer work equaled an hour of therapy, a 60 minute hour, because I wanted to get my money's worth. I understood that this is how some rich people contract in therapy. I offered to work for a charity of her choosing but she left it up to me. She is a champion for children, and would do more volunteering with them if time was available, so I chose to volunteer with children. They were my many "burst" of sunshine throughout therapy, and still, post therapy.

I hope this helps your understanding how therapy worked for me, BudFox.

Therapy has made things worse for me. Back in February of 2015 I ended up in a mental hospital where eventually they told my wife exactly how I planned to kill myself even though neither one of us wanted her to know. She knew I was suicidal and that's all she needed to know. I threw away my medicine and never went back.

Fast forward several months to the summer and I feel like maybe I could trust a doctor again. I goto a different mental hospital to try to get information about their outpatient program. They end up committing me against my will and force me to let them tell my wife my medical information or they will have me committed to a state run hospital.

So with all of that my already preexisting paranoia really skyrocketed and I can't trust doctors anymore.

Therapy made my depression worse. I am in sort of a bad mood today so I don't know if I'm being objective, but who cares.

Partly it made it worse because we ended up digging in my past. I was initially struggling with feeling unloved, unable to find God and feel a sense of meaning and connection in my life. But when we went into my past, I ended up reinterpreting my past as never having had those wonderful moments of connection and meaning. It seems I sort of made them up.

I think the therapist thought this might give me some sort of comfort, not sure why. I guess it's one thing to be sad about losing something you had, but in my view a worse kind of sadness about never having had it.

It's like being sad about losing your girlfriend and the love she gave you and you go to a therapist and he says, Buddy she never loved you in the first place...she was after you money.

Of course, there are positives to this, only in the sense of not deluding yourself in your next relationship. But still stings badly.

So it's much harder for me to get excited about things, cause now there is constant skepticism about whether I'm deluding myself or if this is real. And I used to be a very excitable person. Like the smallest things. Which is how I was able to survive given the difficulties I faced. But now it's like there's a voice, sad and severe, that's always behind me, asking me: Hold on now before you get all excited...Are you sure?

So in a way I've kind of realized, because of therapy, that if this is reality, I don't want to live in it. I would be happier either not living or living in fantasy. There's a reason humans have imagination, that they can dream.

Sure, my therapists keep trying to get me to see that living in this bare reality is still better than living in fantasy, but still not buying it. Maybe once my reality becomes, out of luck or something I do that really makes me happy, so good then I can leave fantasy behind. But for now I need it.

I'm better able to grant myself my own humanity--and to forgive myself for it, too.

Partless: So do you really think you were living in fantasy world, or did the therapists convince you of something you don't actually believe?

Seems our defenses are there for a reason. My experience with my main T forced me to take a rather harsh look at my life, and it mostly served to sink me further into depression also. It was like cruelest of practical jokes.

I am worse off now because I was abused by a Therapist who was looking for excitement, adding to his client list, supplementing his income by using my vulnerabilities to write articles for publication and was looking for someone to have a good time with . All obtained at the expense of my life for which he wouldn't give two cents.

Therapy has helped me to deal with competing priorities in my life and to have more confidence in my choices. I don't have everything totally set yet but at least I have a better ability to say what I do and don't want.

Therapy also gives me a chance to practice being more emotionally open and authentic than I am used to being, so I am getting better at recognizing and articulating emotional needs, my own and others'. I think as a result my relationships overall have improved, which makes me happier in general.

I talk more to the people in my life and feel closer to them and I have hugely improved eye contact.

I think there are probably a lot of lousy therapists out there, I think I have chanced on one (the 6th one I interviewed), who is a good therapist in a quiet, subtle, unassuming, humble way. I'm still seeing her, it's been less than a year so far.