Do you think therapy works for everyone?

She sounds like a bad therapist. At a minimum, she's a bad therapist for you. I think when psychodynamic therapy has been helpful to me, it's helpful precisely because it takes me to the next level in understanding the things I already journal and think about.

I like to think I'm introspective and insightful but I nevertheless benefit from my therapist's perspective. I think I benefit though because she isn't a moron--which is more than can be said for some of my previous Ts.

That she ignores you or changes the subject when you ask for help with coping skills suggests to me that she is not at the top of her game. It sounds like you've been very motivated to work and she hasn't met you halfway. If you're still interested in therapy maybe try someone else. It can take several tries before you find someone who is any good and also compatible with your needs and personality.

I assume you posted this to shame those of us for whom therapy failed.

I doubt it, but couldn't say for sure. I think Starry night is right, in some circumstances the person in therapy is not at the stage of life to benefit from it. They are not open to change. I do think this would have an effect on the effectiveness of therapy.

I think there are also cases whereby the very nature of the relationship or a bad T can significantly harm a client and that the client can be ready, willing, engaged, trying and it still be harmful, for many reasons.

Just because this was not added in to the post does not detract from those cases mentioned first, that can still be a factor. Both can be factors in therapy not working.

I think you have jumped to a conclusion and come across as very defensive. With some of the 'client blaming' that goes on I suppose it can be hard to tell sometimes but I just wanted to say hat I read nothing in this post that blanket blamed or shamed all those who have been in ineffective therapy.

Therapy fails for all sorts of reasons. It is not always, or even usually, the client's fault/because the client would not work hard enough ********. Clients can work super duper hard and be at 110% and all the other pointless stupid cliches -and therapy can still fail. Therapists are not gods or geniuses (frankly I have not found many of them to be intelligent at all) and they **** up a lot. I find it funny when clients want to blame other client's for it failing. Like attaching to the authority or oppressor and assimilating their view point. Like when women tell other women not to go to work but to stay home and take care of their family sort of oppression.

Who is blaming and shaming clients, or am I blind to the obvious?

Ironically, when I was in the thrall of therapy I had just that sanctimony to blame other clients too. I was so "doing the work," so "ready to change" and saw myself the enlightened one. The joke is on me.

I wonder if it's possible to attribute X virtue to Y success without also implying that people who fail at Y lack X?

I graduated college because I worked really hard. I really did work very hard. But I don't believe people fail to graduate college because they didn't work hard. I think it's totally possible to work your *** off and still not graduate.

Can I believe both of those things at the same time without contradicting myself? Can I flatter myself that I work hard at school, or work, or therapy, and that's why it worked for me? If I can't--if one can work hard at these things and still not have a positive outcome, does that mean my positive outcome is due to some other factor? Luck? Privilege?

I feel there's got to be some nuance or middle ground here.

Some people do fail at school, college etc because they don't work hard. Some work hard and still fail. Some work hard and pass. There are lots of situations and maybe we all need to accept that there is no black and white here.

Yes, but it often gets written as an absolute, self satisfied and other blaming fashion.

Though a graduate, I see no analogy between mastering subject matter in school and talking to someone in a room to change my relating to the world. Incidentally I eventually did achieve many changes. But therapy was definitely a hindrance, not a help.

I would not be so smug to tell anyone less successful in school "well you have to want it" or "well you have to do the work."

Yeah, I know it gets written as absolute statements, on both sides. That is what really ***** me off. Why can't both sides just see the the other's point of view and move on. Oh well, I should learn that a lot of society is highly opinionated and keep myself well away from iton my own little fence.

Seems to me client blaming is so fundamental to therapy that it becomes a reflex for both clients and therapists. Like breathing. It keeps the whole thing afloat. It is merely a matter of course that responsibility for failure is assigned to the client.

Patient blaming long has been part of the therapy culture certainly since Freud's time. He and his followers brutally assessed those who failed to thrive under their brilliant ministrations as evidenced in "negative therapeutic reaction" analyses. So much of Freud's thinking is now considered bunkum, but patient condemnation lives on in some quarters.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/21/he...mind.html?_r=0

I definitely don't think therapy works for everyone. I think probably more people get minimal or no benefits than those who find it helpful.

Therapy only reinforced my self-image as juvenile and helpless. I had to experience my strength and resilience for myself. I had to claim or reclaim missing parts of myself only by doing, not talking in a room.

Somebody told me once everybody has 52% to play in any situation. It is neither all the therapists fault nor all the clients.

Two things that determine whether therapy works are the therapist and one's reason for seeking treatment. There are some issues that many Ts just aren't very good at helping with. There are also a lot of bad Ts. Or you may have a perfectly fine T but not be into the process or know know what you want from therapy. It's really not so black and white as therapy works or doesn't work. A huge amount of people have never been to therapy, at least not long term, and function very well. It's a very individual experience that is hard to generalize across groups.

No, definitely don't think therapy would work for everyone.

Well, it might depend on what you mean by "works"... or "therapy."

Supposedly, CBT and similar psychotherapy systems help for ADHD--not just coping techniques and comorbid conditions, but actual symptom reduction! So I've seen three different therapists who do CBT. I have gotten zero help. The short version of this story is that all those studies that said CBT helps with ADHD were using measurements that don't even apply to me. For one, all the skills or knowledge imparted by the therapy (that were specified in the study text) were things I already knew without therapy! Yes, those things were super-useful, my life would definitely be worse without them, but that's the easy stuff I already got out of the way by doing things like reading ADHD-related articles on the internet. Second, it turns out that many of the ratings scales used to measure progress in the studies conflate acquisition of coping techniques with symptom reduction; I would have looked pretty darn functional on most of their dumb scales before treatment even began.

I also have depression, specifically the kind of depression where you feel sad (or apathetic) because some emotion-related biological process is out of whack. I'm pretty sure therapy couldn't help with that; it's not like a therapist can just talk you out of a medical problem. Fortunately antidepressants worked perfectly, but while I wasn't treated, my screwed up emotions did cause me to develop some messed up ideas that lingered even once the health problem was fixed. (Not like psychosis, but like cognitive distortions.) I think therapy could have really helped with that sort of thing! Except, I fixed those without therapy too. If I still have any remaining cognitive distortions, the therapists either haven't noticed or haven't been able to talk me out of them.

That's not to say everyone should just be able to do self-help instead of therapy. I had some very particular circumstances that made it more feasible for me, and the main reason I did self-help before therapy was because therapy was previously too expensive.

My pdoc considers my depression inadequately treated because I'm still sad about unpleasant life circumstances (related to ADHD). But, it's not like a therapist can fix those circumstances or make me stop being sad about them.

I think since your current therapist seems to stink, it's probably worth a try with another therapist. But I think you mentioned reading self-help books and stuff, so it's quite likely you got all the easy stuff out of the way already and even a good therapist will have trouble making further improvements. (Or to put it another way, you did therapy on yourself and it worked.)

Yes, there's middle ground, but that doesn't mean people are going to stand on it.

Suppose someone made a forum topic titled "Do you think everyone who goes to college can graduate?" and described her concerns about possibly never succeeding in college despite repeated attempts and wondering whether it's worth her resources to enroll a third time. And someone else makes a reply saying, "Probably not everyone. You have to want to do the hard work, I think, to get a degree, and I personally know some people who are getting nothing out of college because they don't participate in class or don't want to do the tough stuff or take teachers' suggestions." That's effectively telling the topic starter she's failing because she can't be bothered to work hard. The literal words, taken out of context, are true. No one is arguing that you can get benefit from therapy or graduate college while putting in absolutely zero effort. But that wasn't a standalone blog post or something, it was a reply to this topic, to OP's question about whether she should continue with therapy/college.

But I actually think that post is more of a faux pas resulting from a reading comprehension mistake (hey, we've all had them), rather than a deliberate an attempt to shame or criticize someone. Possibly the similar posts as well.

Here's another analogy: Suppose the OP has a physical medical problem and asked "Do you think [a certain medical treatment] works for everyone?"--Then people start talking about how that treatment can't somehow magically cure people who don't even submit to the treatment. That's (a) completely obvious (b) completely missing the point.