Anyone on here a psychology professional?

I've never had a therapist ask me for feedback in a formal way. The one who did all the damage made it clear she did not want to hear my honest assessment. She preferred to maintain her delusions. And there was nobody there to encourage her to do otherwise. Other therapists were not interested in hearing my honesty either.

It wouldn't hurt for therapists to show some interest in what clients are actually saying and feeling, since client point of view seems to be almost entirely absent from the professional literature. I get the same sense from watching therapist YT videos. Clients are objectified and marginalized. Mere cogs in the machine. The client's voice only matters in the context of therapy, where it can be interpreted and made real by the therapist. Clients talking among themselves or giving unsolicited feedback on blogs or on Yelp cannot be trusted. They've gone off-script. They are unsupervised children who might say something crazy. I think all therapists should be made to read direct accounts from clients who have been harmed and traumatized in therapy.

If the only feedback therapists get is directly from their clients, oh my that is dangerous. Therapy clients have myriad reasons for holding back the truth, as Stopdog alluded to. How many clients feel empowered or safe enough to tell a therapist they suck to their face? How many are going to allow themselves to even believe their therapist sucks, given their possibly huge emotional and financial investment in the process? Plus many clients just stop showing up and are never heard from again.

Sitting in a little room with a near stranger aka therapy is living life with the extraneous variables being controlled. The only craziness I have to deal with is my own. They try to keep their crazinesses down to a stable set, is how I see it.

I agree with others, that a peer forum is better than one with professional therapists.

About the sidebar conversation re: feedback to therapists: While I've had some horrendous therapy experiences in the past, my current therapist does listen to me rant about the profession--often agreeing on specific points. I've also complained loudly and repeatedly when something with her approach isn't working, and she accepts that, too, although it's harder to work through at times.

I've found that the complaining has been helpful because it gets things unstuck and is a better alternative to staying silent out of fear, but it's always a risk.

Anyway, I appreciate that therapists don't post here as therapists. I do remember one who showed up to offer pearls of wisdom, but ended up creating a what makes a bad client thread (in response to what makes a bad therapist thread). So, it does not always work the way one might think.

The therapist I see does not particularly want my feedback nor does it seem to really enter her consciousness at all - I like giving it - but it is not for her sake that I do it. It is not done because she is open and receptive to it. I simply don't require her to be such.

Yep, feedback to my T has resulted in one of three things (I really wish I could draw a flow-chart -- it would work well):
1. First response -- "What does this remind you of from your past?" ("Mother" is always the right answer).
2. Second response when told that the first response was sucky -- "Awww" face + "Was that invalidating?". No further conversation over it.
3. Third response when told that the second response was sucky as well -- "Well, [insert specific sucky emotions] is so familiar to you from your past, that it's no surprise it's always present" i.e., the third response neatly loops back to the first response.

something you might not be aware of....the health care system in america recently changed...

if you are in the USA all americans must now have health insurance that includes mental health care. if one cant afford health care they are supposed to go to their local social services office (same office where you get welfare) and sign up for medicaid (state health insurance)

once a person is signed up with their insurance plans they call their insurance company. the insurance company will let the person know whether they are supposed to choose a primary care physician, therapist, or psychiatrist and a dentist from the members handbook they were sent or whether one has been assigned to them.

if you are having trouble affording health care contact your social services agency they will explain how to get the best insurance plan with in your financial means.

if your state or locations social services "opted out" that means they chose not to change their income bracket or the number of people that they can help at one time, it doesnt mean those in that state do not have to have health insurance. my point you may end up on a waiting list but still fill out the forms so that when your name gets to the top of the list you can be put on the states health insurance plans.

outside the USA you can contact any social services agency and they will tell you what you must do to get a mental health treatment provider and your locations health insurance plans.

i guess you dont realize that most us "professionals" got into the field bc WE are damaged- so its really more of "the educated damaged leading the damaged." we are all in the same pain here. also, psych professionals dont want to be "on" all the time.

I think another difference is that music production professionals or microbrewing or almost every other professional - actually know what they are doing and can explain it. Therapists, to me, really don't know what they are doing, they spend a great deal of time guessing and hoping, and cannot explain it at all. They have theories perhaps, but there are so many different types and it is not a real science, that them trying to give advice as a professional would be useless or certainly no more useful than anyone else's.

Yes certainly not a science. The usual retort is that is it more art than science. Unfortunately that does not clarify anything, and just obfuscates further.

There are actually sites where therapists respond to client inquiries in the vein of "Dear Abby". Most of them I find horrifying. It's already quite a stretch to give life advice or moral instruction to a client in person, but doing so over the internet based on a few sentences from an anonymous person, that's a crazy sort of hubris.

The below example is terrifying in its paternalism and sermonizing:
Ask Psychologist Dr. Robert Saltzman, Ph.D.

My T actually welcomes feedback and will make changes because of it.

A forum is not a proper environment for psychotherapy. Besides, personally I would find it intrusive to read what my clients post online - if they want me to know, they can tell me or bring a post to session. Anything else would be, in my opinion, an intrusion into their space and disrespect for their pace in therapy.

I would not think this forum to be the damaged trying to help the damaged. We all have issues in our lives, some smaller or fewer, some bigger or more, but I have yet to meet someone in perfect health, with a perfect life and sense of well-being. In the couple of years that I've been on these forums I have seen members truly involved, giving some very thoughtful and supportive responses and feeling supported by other members. I think many people are helped by writing here on these forum. But this is not a psychological service and it shouldn't be.

There are a few who come on from time to time and I have always appreciated their input. It has never seemed to be an attempt to act as a therapist to any particular poster. It has always seemed to be where they are coming from their area of expertise to help someone see something differently, or give practical guidance to someone - like what the usual process is for something related to therapy.

If that's true, then my therapist is an extraordinarily accurate guesser.

You are right that it isn't "science" in the traditional sense. But that doesn't mean it has little value or use. I think what complicates it is that the whole thing is centered around human beings that have infinite variables. That is probably what makes it technically "unscientific." No chemicals or matter to experiment on.

Further, although plenty of therapists give advise, my understanding is that they generally are not supposed to do that. They are supposed to help us find the answer within ourselves. If they are giving advise, then I agree - it's no better than anyone else's. What is different about therapists is that if you have a good therapist, you should feel understood and accepted. The therapist should have no personal agenda mixed in with the therapy. It should all be about the client. It is a one-way relationship that should not serve the therapist in any way other than payment and perhaps feeling good about their client's progress. Other relationships do not work like that. I think it takes a lot of skill for a therapist to successfully sustain relationships with some of us during our worst times.

So in my therapeutic relationship, it does feel like she knows what she's doing. She was fabulous at pretty quickly identifying what was at the root of my chief problem, and due to her experience, she knew exactly what she thought it would take in order to get me beyond where I was stuck. Then she waited patiently for opportunities, and was aware when I was not, that things were moving in the right direction. She would listen to me talk, and with excellent timing would voice observations that were huge light-bulb moments for me. And I ALWAYS felt emotionally safe. So things that had me swimming in shame for so long (whether deserved or not), could come up, see the light of day, and were unable to crush me. They turned to dust in that environment of acceptance. It has been a healing relationship.

But Stopdog, no one has taught me better than you that not everyone needs such a thing from therapy. I admire how you absolutely know who you are, and are very clear about what you do and don't need out of it. That said, I'm not sure it's fair to discount that therapists can do a lot, based on their training and expertise, to help someone resolve things that have a person stuck and unhappy. Just the percentage of people on here that report positive, helpful, even life-changing experiences with therapy ought to make the point that therapy with a good therapist can be profound for a whole lot of people. Although there might be a guess here and there, with a side of hope, I think the unscientific evidence of percentage here says that there is more to it than guesses and hope. I can understand, though, that someone who genuinely has minimal or a one-dimensional need for a therapist might very well experience it as not worth all the value most of people here put on it.

I said all that to hopefully explain where I think some of us come from that has been so confounding to you.

But it is not only unscientific. The whole thing is also very opaque and nebulous. As someone said, the pillars of an ethical profession are transparency and informed consent. I don't think it is ethical to just say people are all different, therefore the biz doesn't need to explain itself, and reveal its outcomes and its methods.

No argument that that's how it should be. But in reality? Seems it is increasingly common to read of the prevalence among therapists of personality disorders, narcissism, emotional instability, and so on. If that is true, then the dispensing of advice and guidance, or even empathy and understanding, takes on a different meaning.

Hear hear.

I actually did stand up for myself once. It was a long time ago. I said to her I am going to not come back. She asked me why. I said I do not think you are strong enough to know. And that she might kick me out here and now. She snarled and spouted an Of course I'm strong enough! I told her I simply did not find her intelligent enough to be my therapist.

She completely lost it. She yelled at me to get out which I did, calmly. I just finished by saying See, you did kick me out just as I said. She went even madder and shouted YOU ARE KICKING YOURSELF OUT! again and again

to the point nurses came running because they thought a patient had freaked out and might harm someone. I left quietly and with my dignity.

I won.

But the same time, thinking back, that woman treated many, many more after that. It scares me.