Mental Health Professionals

I certainly have had days where I wished I had not gone, wasted money and put the effort in... But over a larger timeline it has gotten me out of a few rough places. Today for example I think was the best day I ever had with a therapist but mostly it is very unpleasant and there is nothing natural or normal about someone poking your brain with a stick. That said I stand by it considering the alternatives of self medicating or worse. I do wish the best and hope things improve therapist or not.

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I have. CBT was a terrible experience for me and made everything worse for me, as an example. Just because something has not happened to you, does not mean it can't happen to anyone. Therapy can be useful, but it also has the potential to not be.

I've only experienced being poked one time by one psychiatrist who my therapist told me he was a dinosaur and that was a good experience for me. I was the last client that psychiatrist ever saw. I've read people broke therapists. I broke a psychiatrist. I complained to my therapist that my psychiatrist poked me and he said good, he's like a shaman, he's finding out where it hurts. The psych had started asking me questions about my father and I was like, 'cuse me, we don't go there, you're not my therapist, I'm just coming to you for meds. He poked me and I took his stick and lit it on fire. That was before Dbt when I still had a PD.

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I've read meditation and mindfulness can harm people who've had trauma so I understand . Funny you should mention CBT, that's what I'm doing now after years of psychodynamic therapy and Dbt.

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This was my experience exactly. It steeped me in self-pity, encouraged an entitlement because of my life's unfairness. Instead of helping me be stronger, more autonomous, happier or more social, left me like relating to others like a sad-eyed kid on a charity poster.

I am trying to relate to this... What happens that put's you in that position if you do not mind answering? I personally have never been told about things that were unfair though I sure they were if I dwelled on it.

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NPD is not caused by therapy. By the time a person with NPD sees a therapist their personality has been formed as PD are only dx at 18+. A person with NPD could manipulate a weak therapist. Usually a person with NPD only goes to therapy because they are manipulating another person. A therapist has to be as sharp as a tack to nail an adult with NPD to the wall.

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It sounds like you were able to manipulate your therapist. A good therapist will not be moved by a person with NPD, or a psychopath. Generally when a person has NPD or psychopathy they need to see a psychiatrist not a therapist. It's not the therapist's fault they were in over their head.

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I did not say anything about NPD.

Therapists can just be bad and not all clients who do not do well with therapy have ndp nor are they psychopaths.

That's a much better attitude, sorry I temporarily forgot about the supportive and nonjudgmental culture of this forum.

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True enough. I need to make sure I stay within the nonjudgmental and supportive culture of this forum. I'll give the floor back to the OP.

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True, a person can have narcissistic traits without having full blown NPD. I need to gracefully bow out of this thread and return it to the op as his attitude is much more in line with the supportive and nonjudgmental values of this forum.

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there is no magic wand to fix things... And I know antidotally of some very bad therapist with an agenda. But that also goes for clients too... I also believe from personal experience that medications in combination with therapy does help the majority of ppl served. I use to have a very counter view to the one I hold now... And it was very painful & had to grab on tight and fight my way back with support. Thank you commenting here. I appreciate it

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I said nothing about any magic wand. I would not let a therapist magic wand anything even if they could - what a horrible thought to me that is.

I don't have a diagnosis nor do I see a psychiatrist or take drugs or have any mental illness. I am more of a garden variety client. If what you have works for you - then great. But I do not agree with client blaming when therapy goes wrong.

If my posts upset you to the point of insult, please put me on ignore. Diagnosing violates community guidelines.

I'm not upset and I'm aware of the community guidelines which I stated in my previous post. My therapist is working with me to not ignore people and to not react. Thank you for the opportunity to work on my skills. I believe you were talking about narcissism. I don't talk about things I don't have personal experience with either in myself or a friend or family member. I realize that other people have different values.

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Therapists led me to discuss the predominantly negative--slights, wounding, weakness, whining, past and present. It was an education in how to be depressed.

Today was a positive day with my current T.
It pointed me in the right direction & the principles I learned today will be useful... Just for the record I had to ask her to repeat the same thing 5 times in 5 different ways with examples so I got the point she was trying to make. I appreciated that she took the time.

Therapy put me in a very bad place when it ended in toxic and abrupt fashion. I did the work but the work was largely a farce. Far from providing relief, the last therapy caused abject misery and torment.

As for therapy being like invasive surgery, I agree about the invasive part. But the surgery metaphor fails in my view. Therapist training does not equip them to dissect the psyche in any objective or systematic or legit way. I know they like to think of themselves as clinicians in the vein of medicine, but really they are more like glorified coaches or buddies or tutors, in my opinion.

As for being necessary, I could go on an annoying rant about that, but I won't.

The metaphor of surgery does work for me, but surgery as it was two or more hundred years ago, before physicians had a good understanding of anatomy and physiology and no concept of the germ theory of disease or antibiotics.

That is a true fact. I wish the science that governs mental illness was on par with something like cardiovascular surgery...but it is what it is...at least we have moved on from demons and electro shock treatment.

FYI: Electroconvulsive therapy is still very widely used and can be quite helpful in many cases. Just letting you know.

Did not know that was still in use... What conditions would that treatment be a match for?

Treatment-resistant depression is one. They use a MUCH lower dose of electricity than they did back in the day. It can be useful for people who haven't responded to medication therapy, or who can't take medication for whatever reason--pregnancy, for example.