Psychotherapy inherently flawed?

Thanks, so how did it go?

Funny, I just sent an email to my therapist that contained basically what you are saying...here is part of it. He hasn't responded yet, I'm assuming we will discuss it tomorrow.

"Essentially, I'm walking down this road and looking at the loss except this time, I'm feeling it rather than pretending things are okay. Those things that carried over. When my mom would clean the house, or make dinner, go shopping...the times that those things happened I've carried with me...essentially replacing lost love with a clean house, or shopping or cooking. I have been hard on myself for feeling sad, way to hard. If I'm walking through those memories without the protection of denial, but basically naked.. then sadness is appropriate. The absence of pain would really be abnormal.

And I still want a mom to walk down that path with me, I shouldn't have to do it alone. I want a mom to tell me I'm great or to hug me when I'm overwhelmed to drink coffee with, to help ease life when it becomes too much. When people write tributes to their parents, I ache with jealousy.

When I was a little girl, I'd often fall asleep praying that I'd wake up and my mom would magically be ok. I didn't care that we were poor and lived on welfare or that I had crappy clothes, I just wanted her to be okay. I still sometimes wish there was a drug that would do that for her. But not for her, for me.

Things get narrow here for me because it's hard for me to imagine that I won't always want that and that it always will be painful for me not to have that with someone. There isn't a place where I can go and pick out a mother and say, love me, want me, make me your pride and joy, let me tell you the awful things I've done and still love me even if you're disappointed.

I feel broken because that is a void that can't be filled. It's impossible to imagine that even the best therapy can ever heal that sadness. I don't know how a person becomes whole without something so basic.

When we do the exposure therapy, you become that replacement and then I become needy, angry, frustrated, and sad. It's weird. I know you are not her, you can't replace what was lost, you can't fix it....and that intense emotion overwhelms me. I'm in an emotional state of being alone again but this time I'm acutely aware of it and the rest of my world falls apart. What is your role? To bear witness to the destruction? Why wouldn't I want to harm myslf? When I'm alone and in pain and I can't see the present world, what reason would I have to live? "

Sent from my SM-N910V using Tapatalk

I see your points. However right now I'm personally not interested in evaluating the goodness or badness of therapy as a whole, because a) even though I think there are some flaws, my opinion won't change anything and b) there are a lot of problems in the world and I have to solve my own first and foremost. I am just expressing some insight on how I personally am able to make it useful for me in case other people can find that helpful. I have found that if I take the right approach to therapy, it is valuable to me. Whether or not or how it causes harm to some or what should be done about it is a different question.

I'm sort of wondering what kind of response here would feel supportive to you. I'm somewhat confused as to whether you are venting or seeking a debate.

No response needed. I took exception to what you said about the dilemma of the client who has gone through harmful therapy and going forward does not know if a therapist is ethical or competent. You said the client "simply" has to try again, and that they must be committed or they will never get better. There is a lot about this I find disturbing. For me it is creepy therapy orthodoxy, and I was giving an alternate view based on direct experience.

Thanks, so how did it go?

Well, yes, if you think therapy is inherently bad, it makes sense you would disagree. I don't know why you need to call my posts creepy or disturbing though. If that's your idea of venting then fine but it feels mean spirited to vent at someone about their post just because you disagree. I feel like you can easily express an alternate viewpoint without that verbiage because to me it feels hurtful.

It went okay. Part of the destruction is the allowing myself to feel it, to unstuff it and attach the feelings to the events. As I spent years numbing. He says the scar will still be there but it will be less painful than it was 3 months ago. Which has been true so far but also tells me that therapy can move at a snails pace.

But he did agree that the limitations to therapy can feel cruel as we move through the work. It does. We are currently taking a break from trauma therapy because I was at the breaking point. Working on dbt stuff for now.

Sent from my SM-N910V using Tapatalk

What I can't understand is when someone pays hard earned $ for therapy but they berate their therapist or perceive they are being harmed by their therapist AND have no attachment to their therapist.

Masochism? I don't get it.

Can you clarify what you mean? Are you questioning why someone would both berate their therapist AND keep seeing them? Or arif there is no attachmentyou questioning why they would do this AND claim to not be attached?

It's the 3 things together:
complain about your therapist-a lot
Pay them money
And most importantly, claim you are not attached or in love with your therapist

???????? What's the point?

It's the 3 things together:
complain about your therapist-a lot
Pay them money
And most importantly, claim you are not attached or in love with your therapist

???????? What's the point?

For that reoson I gave up on therapy. I hate myself and no matter what T or anyone else tell me, it wont change. And a lot of things they tell me, I can read in a book.

Are you trying to ask someone specific these questions? Might be best to be direct.

Or do you mean hypothetically?

Hypothetically, I could imagine someone might be ambivalent about the individual one goes to for therapy, or be not attached or in love with them. I don't even think that's unusual, or that it would necessarily stop them from being useful. Paying them money isn't really an optional part of the deal - you engage them, you pay. And I complain about a lot of people. My landscaper for example- he sucks, but I continue to pay him money as he does a job that I don't feel like doing myself, but I wish he would do it better.

Are you trying to ask someone specific these questions? Might be best to be direct.

Or do you mean hypothetically?

Hypothetically, I could imagine someone might be ambivalent about the individual one goes to for therapy, or be not attached or in love with them. I don't even think that's unusual, or that it would necessarily stop them from being useful. Paying them money isn't really an optional part of the deal - you engage them, you pay. And I complain about a lot of people. My landscaper for example- he sucks, but I continue to pay him money as he does a job that I don't feel like doing myself, but I wish he would do it better.

No its not. I was abandoned and neglected and therapy had helped me understand that it wasn't I that was unloveable, it was people in my life that were incapable is love.
The caring from T has changed that inner message.
Therapist doesn't have to be all hugs and kisses and sworn declarations of mature love. It just has to contain a skilled T and a client whose willing and able to think.

Psychotherapy is just as inherently flawed as is humanity, quite simply.

If so i'm not clear what the client is paying for. Also much of the marketing promotes the image of therapist as sage or shaman, less flawed than the rest of us. I believe Freud himself conceived of the relationship as superior-inferior.

And owing to the therapist's inscrutability, the client has a difficult task in judging the truth of this or anything really.

. . .
Why I have stayed with therapists beyond the point at which I believed there were good possibilities at hand: I hoped I was wrong. I thought they might know something I didn't (and I couldn't know if this was true because of the cagey way they avoided discussion of what secrets they may or may not have about their diagnosis, prognosis, or treatment plans for me). I wasn't confident I could find anyone better based on what I'd seen to date in the industry.

. . .
Mainly though, it's the cognitive dissonance. It is so very hard to accept that a person who is charged with helping you, whom you are paying to help you, whose ability to help you is something that you have spent considerable time, effort, and heart on already, can't or won't. It can be absolutely monumental heartbreak, and if one already arrived at the therapist's door in a state of heartbreak, of breakdown, dealing with acceptance instead of dissonance can represent a shot at a breakdown the likes of which one has only limited chances of overcoming. This I know.

If so i'm not clear what the client is paying for.