Counselor says I need to become empowered

I don't know how it shines through. I feel broken and beat. But I have been known as a shiny optimistic cheerful positive person. Funny, quirky and upbeat is how people described me. The Robin Williams syndrome, I guess... But then, look what happened to him? Something very bad and if someone as famous and rich (wealth of family, kids, too) could have fallen...

Oh yes, making plans and strategies on paper is a lifelong habit of mine. At this moment my kitchen tiled wall is plastered with post-its. I tape life maps up on my bedroom walls. The inside of every closet door has similar things. I even have my running schedule up in the bathroom...along with tips and motivations...

It is the depression that ruins everything for me. I think about that Robin Williams would have agreed. I have a very bleak outlook now. Very dark.

I recently found out that there are more suicides in the western American states. This freaked me out because I live in a western state. I lived here for a year when I was first married and fell into a deep depression. My then partner and I escaped by joining Peace Corps and we went to live on a tropical island.

Years later my ex got a job back in this same state I hated. I told him I would rather be homeless than move back here. And I have been here for 20 years! I feel like this particular state is like a hex for me. But I did accomplish things here. I finished graduate school here and raised my kid here and had half a dozen jobs...some fulfilling and interesting...and was deeply involved with a spiritual community. I wrote and won a grant to create gardening programs in the elementary school system. Then my ex left me to marry someone he met online. I have been stuck here ever since. I helped launch my kid from here and I should have moved after that. But I didn't and after some bad things that happened I fell into major depression.

I think you are absolutely right that I am feeling more hopeless than victimized. Well, both of those...because feeling hopeless actually leads to being victimized.

Were you talking about U.S. boot camp? When my brother came back from boot camp all he talked about was how he was going to kill his drill instructor.

I must say that at this moment I have lost complete faith in this counselor. It is a sham to think you can help a person by talking to them 20 minutes a week. And...never in person. Always by phone.

Yes, I believe in writing things down and making plans.

I feel rather ashamed to say that in my marriage my partner was the "point person" - the one with the notebook. And I was the follower. It does not mean I cannot meet goals. No one held my hand through three years of grad school.

But the depression is like a freak animal that has taken up residence in my soul.

I think planning a move...and working on it bit by bit...would actually be the best therapy. Even if I never make it I will die trying.

Thank you. You are a great peer counselor.

Oh yea easy for me to say on an anonymous internet forum, but i know it's different in real life, real time. Especially if you are already struggling and not wanting to get into confrontations. I would likely stew on it then at next session say WTF. One problem is that therapists are basically strangers (especially in your case, never having met) and they have the audacity/insanity to boss you, and then you are forced to either get uppity with this stranger which is weird or say nothing and feel like an insect.

YES! This is exactly what I tried to tell my T! That I need him to just understand where I am for a bit instead of trying to pull me up out of it!

He said... That he didn't understand.

Having never met this person -- to me she is just a voice...and I am by no means stalking her FB page to see what she looks like -- there is a bit of space around this situation which I like.

Yes, she is kind of bossy and I knew that from the start. I am a fairly good communicator so if all I have is a voice and a phone connection I will go as deeply as possible with that. Right now I have a few goals. I need to move to a cheaper apartment (once again, alone) - I need a job where hopefully I won't get fired in a month like the last one - and it was determined in these phone sessions that I hate the area where I am living and I want to plan a big move back to my homeland. On top of this I suffer from debilitating anxiety, depression, and suicidal ideation. I don't think compassionate hand-holding is going to get me out of my 2.5 year old slump. I am dug in deep.

I did send Dr. Feisty several emails today. (She invites this but I don't abuse it...only when a lightbulb goes on I will shoot her a couple messages) - basically I said I have been very unhappy that my mental pain has not in any way abated in two months of working with her. I mean this is goal oriented CBT therapy. But I have not met goals and I feel lousy and now am freaked out about having to move again this summer.

I don't think she will play the "blame the client" game for lack of progress because I have been working intensely hard.

I think it might be what you point to....the structure of the thing is weak. Maybe 8 or 10 20-minute phone sessions cannot bring about radical transformation. If she would just admit that her model is for those with mild depression...then I guess we could amiably call it a day. From the start I presented with anxiety, depression, and suicidal ideation. Not a mild mix.

Since I refuse psych meds I think it will only be a matter of time before I am labeled treatment resistant and they suggest ECT. What a medieval farce!!

In the name of empowerment it seems it is my duty to challenge Dr. Feisty. A nice WTF might be in order.

I sincerely just want to get better. I am prepared to keep going, exploring, and experimenting. I simply do not want to spend my last years like this.

I see what you are saying and wish you the best of luck. In my therapy in now way would I be able to just "jump up and do it," and anything of the sort would bother me. I did do CBT and it didn't work for me, yet a humanistic approach has. I truly hope you are able to figure things out and work things out that helps you Wishing you the best.

My therapist was helpful when he gave this advice.
He used my legal studies and skills as a therapeutic avenue to help me being empowered.
My GP empowered me by encouraging me to stand up and confront with abusive authorities, or refusing dangerous advice.

Sounds that your T is acting as the one who refuses wetting her shirt : she is professing "advice" you can find in any rag paper and expects you act on it.
I had a similar crappy experience with a CBT psychologist.
She advises you to empower yourself, but my own personal perception is that she wants to withhold your power. She is more interested in her own power than she is at helping you.
Her calling a thinking error your wish to move away is much more telling about her stuff, her issues, her inability to empower her clients, her counter-transference because you are actually much stronger and wiser than she is.
Actually, you seem much more sane than your therapist. You recognize your boundaries, your values. OTOH, all what she wants is fitting the mold of normal, whatever it costs her. Insecure folks like her want to fit the mold of normalcy at all costs.
She looks much sicker than you are. You also seem much more intelligent, and it seems she noticed it : therefore, she looks like trying to drag you inside her own stupidity.

You have every right to leave her.
You pay her to help you, not the other way round. If your plumber messed up your kitchen, would you think that you are at fault ? No, you'd fire said plumber because he didn't do the job.
Yes, you have mental illness. But nope, having mental illness doesn't make you a child unable to decide for yourself.
She thinks that people with mental illness are childlike and need decisions to be made for them.

Your vulnerability is nothing to be ashamed of. Mental illness makes you vulnerable.
People abusing you are the one squarely responsible. They blame you because they refuse to take responsibility for their actions.
OTOH, you have nothing to be ashamed of your vulnerability.
Those people are old enough to take their own responsibilities. They actually know they are responsible. They just refuse to follow the basic rules of living in society.
From what you describe, your counselor chooses to scapegoat you because of her refusing to take her own responsibility for failure. Her launching the lecture about victimhood is a pale strategy for deflecting blame from herself.
She thinks that "people with mental illness are children for whom decisions must be made", so she thinks that everything you say about being a victim is caused by your mental illness.
Actually, disagreeing with her opinions is a sign of mental illness because she is a "counselor".

You can run, run, run the other way and never look back at her. It's perfectly legal and perfectly ok.
As my GP says, "you are not married with your counselor". You are free to leave no matter "counselor" spouting her doom and gloom crap upon you. Remember, the doom and gloom is squarely about her dirty feelings about her clients she refuses to acknowledge and work on. Her actions speak volume about her cheap words.

I have never even met this counselor in person. She is employed by my insurance company. We have only had phone contact. I think she is doing CBT goal oriented short-term therapy. I think this might be appropriate for someone with mild depression and maybe someone one or two issues. I emailed her a few days ago and said I did not know if this therapy was appropriate for someone with severe anxiety and depression, and suicidal ideation.

The feedback from everyone has been appreciated.

Thank you everyone for your responses. They have been very helpful.

I do want to do whatever will help me get out of severe depression. I feel I could handle moderate depression on my own...but my depression and suicidal ideation are wearing me down.

I sent this counselor an email and said I was disappointed that this "treatment" has not improved things in the last two months.

I now realize that with CBT a lot of the blame can be put on the client. Like they aren't working hard enough.

But I have been working hard to apply CBT. I now doubt its claims of being successful as short-term therapy with anything other than mild to moderate mild depression.

I've had a T say I'm choosing to be a victim and need to take personal responsibility.

Tbh that pissed me off so dang much.

I'd be p*ssed off as well.
I'm always wondering what are they trying to get at whenever they say those things, without any empathy? All they'll get from me is stomping and defiance, tbh.

My (former) T once said something similar (the bit about responsibility), but framed it very differently, and this to me makes all the difference. she said:
I'm cannot rescue you, in fact no-one can rescue you but you. But I'll be here, alongside you and supporting you, while you're figuring out how this works for you...

I'm usually from the Dissociative disorder forum and ptsd forum I kinda get offended on the victim mentally blame game. It's apart of the struggle, so I don't feel ashamed for having to constantly approach our traumatic experiences. After a while years on end even that can get shameful. I totally agree you have to take on their empowerment approach because one day their might not be a need for psychotherapy. Most family cant support you personally coming from yourself is some of the best follow up care you can get.

I have repeatedly read online and in books to seek support, to share what is going on with friends and family, and to reach out. Now all I hear about is that I am being a victim. This from a "professional." Frankly, I am pretty disappointed in this kind of labeling. The online suggestion to seek support is a myth. This psychologist calls me once a week or every few weeks and now that I think about it she acts more like a "life coach" than a psychologist with an advanced degree. The application of CBT is like "therapy light" and is a joke. I bought a workbook and have been doing the exercises on my own.

I talked about this support thing with my t recently, when i was researching diet plans last year. All of them ALSO pushed the support idea. I was like, i dont get it, i dont really HAVE any friends or family to get support from.

Maybe they mean, in psychological and diet terms, if you ALREADY have a lot of people around you in your daily life, that you get support from them? Like if youre a younger parent, or an active grandparent? But for an unemployed single person, unless you have developed a "chosen" family, i dont think we can all of a sudden start leaning on people.

Then you really have to be ready to make a commitment to them. Just taking someone to the grocery store one time isnt really helping them. And boom your whole life is taken over.

Idk. Maybe making more connections in life is the solution to these life problems? But i kinda like my life as it is. I think?

I don't like my life as it is. I would like "support" and connection. I just think it is a myth that one is going to be supported when one is vulnerable.

When I am feeling better I don't "need" to lean on people but I enjoy connection.That is really the ideal...to be inter-connected.

It is just a truth about life that the world does not care when someone is down and out.

I certainly do not like to feel isolated. But I also hate it when people take potshots.

I have been here before. Getting so low that it is unbearable. Slowly, slowly things change. I end up meeting new people and having connections. That is a better way to live. But it also leaves me feeling bitter about people and disappointed in them.

It is best to be inter-dependent but to also know that 99% of people are crap. This includes the so-called professionals.

It does suck. But I fell for it too, so at least you are not alone in that. She promised "coordination of care" and said she was optional but was there to help me. I didn't tell her that I didn't need her services at first. In fact she "closed my case" once and then called me again about a year later. I don't remember if I went along with it a second time or not. I know I didn't do it three times

And yeah, she would be disappointed that I was not doing whatever she thought my goal for the week ought to be. Like taking a walk three times a week would fix my dissociative disorder. It was discouraging though, and I am sorry if you are also feeling discouraged by it.

We probably have the same insurance co! And maybe even the same person calling us

What you said (I bolded it).

I have found CBT useful over the years. But all the CBT in the world did not suffice to bring me through this. Even my ts think I am pretty good at CBT and DBT. But those techniques, which I do pretty automatically, did nothing for that freak animal residing in my soul.

Reading through your responses on this thread, I see some pretty serious resilience. I think that is more important than empowerment.

We spoke a great deal my CBT facilitator (psychiatrist) and I about empowerment. It wasn't going to happen unless I made the commitment to doing the work. An increase in self-esteem would be one of the successes - and it was. I definitely feel a sense of more control over my life - certainly my reactions to what comes anyway. I would say I am empowered in that I can choose to take action in my life. I can choose to improve it. I can choose to bring about change.

I relate to the word resilience. Thank you for reminding me of a strength. Now that's peer counseling at its best.

How do you know it isn't just the right combination of medications that is keeping you in balance? When both medication and therapy are used I don't see how one could parse out what is effective. It seems like it must be a combination, and it would be as logical to say it is the right combination of medications that has brought you relief so that you can shift your attention to improving your life. If you got better doing CBT (which is really not rocket science) maybe you would have gotten better despite therapy. In the past you have been accomplished, responsible, and action oriented. You have been a wife, a mother, have served in the military, and attained a high level of competence as an avid outdoor enthusiast. Maybe you simply returned to your baseline.

Empowerment is really not a word that speaks to me. Had the therapist said something like "improved self-esteem and functional efficiacy" I would not have to be scratching my head figuring out what she meant.

Words like "victim mentality" and "empowerment" are highly-charged, vague, and even slightly negatively narcissistically colored words.

If the job of a therapist is to be supportive and helpful, then saying things like it is the client's responsibility to improve is condescending crap. Would a doctor say to a cancer patient that it is the patient's responsibility to improve??? I certainly hope not. The patient hires the doctor to facilitate treatment. When a cancer patient dies it is often said that the patient "put up a good fight" which is like saying the patient chooses to be a winner or loser. Again, condescending crap.

CBT is not rocket science. It is basically self-help therapy that focuses on behavior over insight. It is basically meant to be used in the treatment of mild to moderate depression...not severe anxiety, depression, and suicidal ideation. If CBT is not improving my serious symptoms and I am left without relief the therapist or counselor should be attending to that.

Perhaps I don't know if it is the therapy or the meds. That is a valid point raised I had not considered. Perhaps there is no coincidence between being relatively stable and feeling a sense of empowerment. But which comes first and can you have one without the other?

When my life is in balance and things are going well I don't use the word empowerment. I think I would use the word grateful. Some, but not all, things are in our control. Some periods of life are better than others.

I got a response by email from the counselor I have been working with through phone chats. I had expressed that I did not think that CBT was bringing the results I wanted in the time I have been practicing it.

Of course she put it back on me. That perhaps I was not vigorously applying myself.

She also talked about off-loading me by "helping" me find support "out in the community." She seems to have forgotten that is how our relationship started.

This is the progression of events:
1) Mental health care appointments with a counselor through my insurance was too costly 2) I could not find feasible support out in the community. It was all too expensive. Or else reduced rates were being offered by people who were not even qualified or working towards any type of certification. 3) I became suicidal and called the hotline provided by my insurance company. 4) The hotline person filed a report with my insurance. I was referred to the mental health department of the insurance carrier and they hooked me up with phone chats with a therapist.

It seems that now this therapist is wanting me to repeat all of the above.

So this is what comes of criticizing treatment. A hand slap from the counselor with the threat of dismissal.

Is any of this helping? Really.

Clearly this therapist is one who couldn't make it in private practice.

Hmmm.I would hate to think that --- although it crossed my mind. However, she has a PhD degree. With that kind of degree she could certainly have a private practice.

Meh. She is all I have.

It would not be good for me to be left without any support. At least this way I have someone checking in with me.

Haha. Jokes on me. I now see I have been fighting it but the truth is I actually need to become empowered. The wolves are at the door.